by Hollie Nielsen, AWC Central Scotland
March is Poetry Month, and the Ed Team encourages you to read some poems this month! In particular, we recommend the poems of presidential inaugural poet and youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman in her book Call Us What We Carry. Ms. Gorman’s book is especially relevant this month because the Ed Team is focusing on SDG Target 4.7: Global Citizenship and education for human rights, gender equality and appreciation of cultural diversity, among other subjects. In her poems as well as in her activism, Ms. Gorman is a committed advocate for racial equality, gender justice and the environment. In these poems, she captures the grief of the global pandemic but gives us hope and healing. For example, “School’s Out” starts with “The announcement/ Swung blunt as an axe-blow” that school has been canceled and all students must leave. After their crying, the students realize they don’t need graduation day; their ancestors’ drums roar for them. “There is power in being robbed/ & still choosing to dance.” “In The Deep” starts with the despair of the pandemic “Like a ship bucking at sea” and ends with the realization that it is kinship that sees us though the storm. In “The Miracle of Morning,” we read about “how we will weather this unknown together” and that “In suffering, we must find solidarity.”
We are Global Citizens, weathering a storm together and finding strength in our community.
