Voces Locas: Poesía de Mercer 2022
Welcome to Voces Locas: Poesía de Mercer, produced by Mercer International Middle School students and Jack Straw Cultural Center during the winter and spring of 2022, in tandem with our ongoing dual language program at Denny International Middle School. This webpage and our audio recordings and anthology of the students’ poems are the culmination of a project with Jack Straw artists and students from the eighth grade Dual Language Spanish Immersion program at Mercer International Middle School in Seattle, Washington. In this project, students in Cassandra Garcia-Stokes’s class worked remotely with Jack Straw’s professional writer Raúl Sánchez, vocal coaches Brenda Arellano and Marco Adiak Voli, and audio engineers Daniel Guenther and Camelia Jade to write, perform, and record their own poetry. This is our second year working with students at Mercer to help them create and share their stories and poetry and build respect for each other’s experiences.
In addition to these audio recordings, we published an anthology of the students’ poems, both in the original Spanish and translated to English.
Bienvenido a Voces Locas: Poesía de Mercer, producido por los estudiantes de Mercer International Middle School y el Centro Cultural Jack Straw durante el invierno y la primavera de 2022, en conjunto con el programa de inmersión en español de Denny International Middle School. Esta página de internet y nuestras grabaciones y antología de los poemas de los estudiantes son la culminación de un proyecto con artistas de Jack Straw y estudiantes del octavo grado del programa de inmersión en español en Mercer International Middle School en Seattle, Washington. En este proyecto, los estudiantes de la clase de Cassandra Garcia-Stokes trabajaron de forma remota con el escritor profesional de Jack Straw, Raúl Sánchez, los entrenadores vocales Brenda Arellano y Marco Adiak Voli y los ingenieros de audio Daniel Guenther y Camelia Jade para escribir, interpretar y grabar su propia poesía. Este es nuestro segundo año trabajando con los estudiantes de Mercer para ayudarlos a crear y compartir sus historias y poesía y fomentar el respeto por las experiencias de los demás.
Además de estas grabaciones de audio, publicamos una antología de los poemas de los estudiantes, tanto en español original como traducidos al inglés.
Voces Locas was produced by Mercer International Middle School students and Jack Straw Cultural Center with the generous support of the Washington State Arts Commission, ArtsFund, the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture and The Creative Advantage, Seattle Public Schools International Education and the OSPI Heritage Language Grant, and individual donors.
The Jack Straw artist team included writer Raúl Sánchez, vocal coaches Brenda Arellano and Marco Adiak Voli, audio engineers Daniel Guenther and Camelia Jade, production intern David Reyes, designer Levi Fuller, and Executive Director Joan Rabinowitz. Mercer students Sebastian Simbron Rodriguez and Nico Brannock created the cover art. Special thanks to the students of Mercer’s eighth grade Spanish immersion program and Mercer staff. We especially want to thank our partner teacher Cassandra Garcia-Stokes, as well as these poets’ previous dual language teacher Sofía Peña and all the Beacon Hill Elementary dual language teachers, Denny DLI teacher Liz Olsen, Administrative Secretary Elona Thompson, and Principal Sherrie Encarnacion, who helped make this project possible.
Artists
Raúl Sanchez
Raúl Sanchez is the former City of Redmond Poet Laureate 2019-2021. He teaches bilingual poetry. He runs the Poetry in the Park bi-weekly readings at Meadowbrook Pond…
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Brenda Arellano
Brenda Arellano is a performer and devisor based in Oakland after almost a decade in Chicago. She was a company member with the Chicago Neo-Futurists and she recently performed…
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Marco Adiak Voli
Marco Adiak Voli is an actor, creator and collaborator originally from Nicaragua, now based in Brooklyn, NY. He has studied at Cornish College of the Arts (BFA in Original Works…
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