MICHELE KOTLER

One of the most interesting people I met during the Writing In Public conference was Michele Kotler, Founder and Executive Director of the Community-Word Project, a New York City based arts-in-education organization. The mission of her organization is to inspire children in underserved communities “to read, interpret and respond to their world and to become active citizens through collaborative arts residencies and teacher training programs.”

It was clear to me after hearing her talk during the Writing in the Schools panel that the world is a better place because she’s in it. She looks very young, but speaks with great conviction about issues of class and race in America.

I called Michele when I got into Manhattan yesterday, and we had breakfast this morning at Veselka (“Ukrainian Soul Food in the Heart of the East Village”) on the Lower East Side.

During her presentation in Ann Arbor, she said that she’d wanted a career that combined poetry with social change. I don’t hear many people talking that way these days, and I was curious about what shaped her life decisions. She told me that her public schooling had taken place in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens in New York City, a predominately African-American community. Because of her skin color (white) and the economic state of the city at that time, growing up wasn’t particularly easy. Her family was working class and her father supported the family by driving a taxi cab. Unknown to her until college, she was dyslexic.

The economic and social conditions that determine people’s futures in this country didn’t look particularly bright for her until she met a teacher who told her she’d make a fine poet.

When she arrived at Sarah Lawrence as a scholarship student, she was astonished by the way the students around her spoke. They had come from privileged spaces that were infinitely distant from the world of Jamaica Queens. She told me that at first this made her angry. She decided then that she wanted to work with people whose voices are not often heard in the cultural life of this country.

Michele earned her MFA degree at the University of Michigan and returned to New York where she started the Community-Word project. This work must be deeply gratifying on many levels, but it is also very difficult. It obviously requires someone with saint-like patience and persistence.

I think Michele Kotler is the kind of grassroots cultural worker who won’t exit until everyone is ferried across to the other shore. And Terry Blackhawk in Detroit and Jeff Kass in Ann Arbor have the same level of commitment. You can read more about what they do and you can learn how you might support their efforts by going to their websites: http://www.communitywordproject.org/; http://www.insideoutdetroit.org/; http://www.neutral-zone.org/.