My Precious Waters, I Kiss You
Parkpoom Poompana, age 15
Fort Myers, Florida
© River of Words 1999
March 2006
River of Words
“When children can express their feelings about the planet, they realize they can make a difference.”
By Moira Bartel
Ten years ago, Pamela Michael awoke with a phrase echoing in her head: River of Words. “I knew it was the name of the rest of my life,” Michael told me over tea inside West Berkeley’s Sawtooth Building.
River of Words became the mantra for an educational nonprofit dedicated to building environmental awareness and community through art and an experiential school curriculum. Now, in its tenth year, River of Words (RoW) serves an international community of adolescent artists and poets. Its mainstay is an annual art and poetry contest that culminates with an awards ceremony at The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (held this year on April 22, Earth Day).
“When children can express their feelings about the planet,” says Michael, “they realize they can make a difference. That kind of learning gives kids a better education.”
RoW was originally part of the International Rivers Network but, several years after its founding, Michael decided to build an independent organization. She reached out to then-U.S. Poet-Laureate Robert Hass, who was passionate about environmental issues and bringing poetry to schools.
Hass has said: “There is no reason we cannot give our kids hope, and a sense of pride, and a love of our amazing earth, and a sense of purpose, and we need to begin now. River of Words is the seed of a place to start.”
They decided to focus on watersheds and water issues since both believed that studying watersheds could teach kids about caring for their community and the environment.
Watersheds are drainage basins for mountains, valleys, and flatlands — each with a unique ecosystem of flora and fauna [see Yuba Watershed article, p. 28]. Michael is passionate about them. They represent “a scaleable, meaningful way of looking at the natural world,” she says, noting that, historically, people have defined themselves by the watershed in which they lived. Our songs, culture and regional identity are linked to watersheds.
For Michael, it’s imperative to teach children new ways of thinking about water because it’s an increasingly limited resource: “The struggle over water in the 21st century will make oil seem like child’s play,” she warns.
Michael and Hass reached out to educators, poets, artists and scientists for help in developing an experiential, interdisciplinary approach. They created projects for teachers, park rangers and even Girl Scout troops that encouraged students to get out of the classroom and into nature.
Several years ago, RoW worked with Suzy Stewart, a third grade teacher in Marin County, to bring students to Redwood Senior Home to produce an oral history project. The idyllic center sits above Redwood Creek, a local stream where residents spend their time painting and walking. Many of the seniors have lived in the community their whole lives and retain intimate memories of the creek and surrounding land. “They have knowledge that gets lost if nobody talks to them about these things,” said Michael.
The third graders listened to the seniors share their childhood memories of the creek and returned to the classroom to write poetry and make art based on the oral history. But before sending the pieces to RoW, they returned to the center and shared their work with the seniors. Excited by the exchange, the residents created their own art and planned a potluck poetry reading for the teachers, kids and their families. Stewart and her students have since returned each year to Redwood.
Five years ago, Michael received an email in broken English from an 11-year-old Afghan refugee living in Pakistan. He and many of the other kids in the refugee camp were orphaned as a result of the Taliban genocide against the Hazara, an ethnic minority. Somewhere in the camp, he found a four-year-old copy of Ranger Rick magazine, which announced the annual RoW art and poetry contest. He emailed Michael to find out if it was too late to participate. Soon after, she received six poems and paintings from these refugee children. Two were honored as finalists.
The following year, 200 entries arrived in a pillowcase stitched together with string and covered in writing. The artwork depicted not only the genocide and persecution these children had lived through, but also their reverence for nature. There were paintings of birds, drought, the giant Buddhas in Bamiyan that the Taliban had destroyed, their homeland and also a longing for education. One painting showed children standing outside a classroom, peering in wistfully. Michael invited an Afghan-American journalist to look over the artwork. Moved by the images, he wrote an article for Parade magazine that appeared with photos of the camp. In 2004, one of the Afghan refugee children was a winner in RoW’s international contest. But strict Homeland Security laws have prevented him from visiting the U.S.
Michael continues to fight each year to bring him to the awards ceremony in Washington, D.C.
Moira Bartel is CG’s Operations Manager.
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