“Dear Earth: Young Teens from Hope River” Celebration and Reading

The  public is invited to a special reading to celebrate young teens from DaVinci Middle School on November 9 at 7 pm at the Natsoulas Gallery in Davis.  This is a free event and will mark the publication of Dear Earth: Hope River Poems by  Young Teens (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2023). This chapbook contains 22 poems written by DaVinci 7^th graders during the 2022-2023 Hope River pilot project which Julia B Levine, City of Davis Poet Laureate, designed and conducted.  Additionally, to coincide with the chapbook’s publication a sound installation, named Hope River, will be installed in Central Park. Visitors to the installation can listen to each of the 22 chapbook authors read their poem as they walk the path. All aspects of this presentation are free and open to the public.

This project, funded by the American Academy of Poetry and the Carnegie Mellon Foundation, as well as the City of Davis Arts and Cultural Affair program, was designed to help young teens develop more resiliency and hope in the face of climate change. The project involves poetry, science and technology. In addition to writing poems in response to prompts designed by Levine, the seventh graders at DaVinci listened to local businesspeople, researchers from UCD, and state employees, present brief presentations on successful climate mitigation projects. Each student also created a sound-file in which they read their final poem; these files were then linked to a geolocating app on the bike-path behind the school. This sound installation was named Hope River. Finally, the entire seventh grade and the teachers involved, walked this path listening to the poems they’d created.

Levine, a retired child and family psychologist, firmly believes kids and teens need our help in navigating the climate crisis without losing hope; therefore all the materials she designed and used for this project are included in the appendix of Dear Earth. She hopes anyone interested in replicating this project will find the materials useful. The chapbook will be on sale at the November 9^th event, as well as available through the Avid Reader, or online through the 16 Rivers Press