Description
The gang leader says she doesn’t like poetry. But will the juvenile detention writing workshop show her how to express love for her newborn daughter? A teen boy dies of a drug overdose. Can his final poem speak what he could not say? In April 2005, in the middle of a career change, I volunteered to facilitate a poetry workshop with teens, ages twelve to seventeen, at Denney Juvenile Justice Center in Everett, Washington. Kids in Orange: Voices from Juvenile Detention is a memoir based on this experience. The story is a journey of finding and empowering one’s voice during grief and loss and details my experience leading the poetry workshop and moving through the death of my father. Information about the workshop and the teen’s poetry is on their blog at www.denneypoetry.org
Chapter One
