These lines of poetry were written by children in Community~Word Project residencies, as they explored ways to express their hopes and fears through poetry. Their poems are based in their own experiences of living in communities that are coping with high unemployment, underperforming schools, and too often, drugs, gangs, and violence.

As CWP Teaching Artists transform struggling classrooms into creative, supportive environments, children experience the power of poetic language and discover that their ideas are important and need to be heard. To reach the wider world beyond their classroom, students create performances of their original poetry, incorporating gestures, choreography, and physical expressions; they also receive their own copies of a printed anthology of their individual and collaborative poems.