Upenn's Alina Grabowski at final class reading at Kelly Writers House.
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if i look back, i am lost
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@onebookonhenry
Upenn's Alina Grabowski at final class reading at Kelly Writers House.

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Kevin Powers signs students' books after his talk at the Free Library of Philadelphia on March 19, 2014
Welcome!
This site brings young writers into the public conversation about The Yellow Birds made possible by the Free Library’s One Book One Philadelphia program. UPenn student writers created exercises to examine Kevin Powers' poetic prose and then respond with writing that uses his strategies.  Middle-schoolers from Mighty Writers West and high-school students from Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences write here about home, sacred spaces, friendship, memory. UPenn students and I reflect on watching the author read to us all at the Central Branch. It’s a pop-up writing community with Powers’ voice underneath, a deep baseline, speaking war and death and exquisite attention to life. Our young people seemed relieved by the honesty. They've responded in kind.Â
Please enjoy. Entries are from Saul's English AP class unless noted otherwise.
-Lorene Cary, Senior lecturer UPenn, One Book 2002
While we slept, the war rubbed its thousand ribs against the ground in prayer.
Kevin Powers
Thanks to Ms. Steiner
Julie Steiner has made room for UPenn writing students to come share the 2014 One Book One Philadelphia novel, The Yellow Birds, with her AP English class at Walter Biddle Saul High School for Agricultural Science. The members of Lorene Cary's writing class are very grateful to the students and to Ms. Steiner, a 2013 recipient of the Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Foundation's Distinguished teaching Award.Â
We invite them and the Mighty Writers to our reading at Kelly Writers House on Friday, May 2, at 4 pm at Kelly Writers House, where we will display this site and thank them again in person.
And thanks to Dr. Chris Long, for introducing us!

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Writing haiku using Powers' nouns and verbs
Haiku by Erica
Friends learning their lives
Reading old obituaries
Showing their small measures
Thanks to Mighty Writers' West Philly branch for inviting us in to "pre-teach" our lessons. Â With these young writers' focus and experience, it was almost cheating; they were bound to write something good!
The Mighty Writers used a few of Kevin Powers' techniques, and some of his strong nouns and verbs, to create powerful prose descriptions of home and sacred spaces, and haiku about distance and mortality.
Phew. Yes, young and serious, but we had lots of fun along the way!
Haiku by Kyra
Took a photograph
The reds of the setting sun
Soon disappeared, gone.

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Make Kevin Powers Smile
Kevin Powers doesn’t smile, and he hardly makes eye contact as he reads to this audience of young people in the Philadelphia Free Library about anger and death and the shame of a young soldier who makes promises he cannot keep.
Haiku by Deanna
Lines giving its due
Measures of their wondering
Setting sun washed out
Home by Veyonna
The five minutes before she leaves all dressed in her uniform and ready to leave, my mother wakes me. It’s dark, dim, and it’s hard to see her besides her forest green work clothes. She says little to nothing before leaving down the stairs to be swallowed into the streets.
I try to remember her presence as if she were still here. I try to think she is in the kitchen and I can smell her cooking breakfast, but instead it’s only me burning toast. Half awake from lack of sleep or just listening to pounding feet coming up and down the stairs.
The scent of perfume is faint from me since my mom has been gone for way too long. The only sound I hear is the blaring of the T.V. as my sister watches. As if she is a rock forever immortalized.Â
Veyonna is a Mighty Writer.
A Story of My Own by Gionni Ponce
It started with a reading.
Powers read a section of his own work with a reserved ebb and flow to his voice—like the waves of the ocean just before the sun rises. I hadn’t thought about what his voice would sound like but it matched his words perfectly.
After reading, he sat in a chair with his eggshell shoelaces crossed under his legs and his hands on his knees. He never seemed nervous. Rather, it seemed his nature did not take to being the center of attention. He answered all the questions with careful thought and succinct words. There was one spot on the wooden stage floor that seemed to really interest him.
At some point, he begins talking about his mother. “I wanted to write a book that could help mothers understand what it is their children go through. This story is about them, too.” I’m struck by his care and compassion for his mom. It’s true that the story belongs to mothers.

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Home by Anye Frazier
Sanctuary by Natasha Stuckey
The lights, ancient in their space, lose the usual piercing brightness; instead, they opt to be reassuring and soothing in their color. The auditorium, just a turn away, looks noble with balconies behind and on the sides, painted a rich brown. They scream church in a school, yet go unused as instead classrooms hide behind them for they act as a barrier to the chatter of many. Always overshadowed by folding chairs warmed by the students, unless special events bring in parents who, in nice clothes, complete the scene. Downstairs the air seems yellow from the light and I look down on our gym from next to the desk there, maybe forgotten by someone long ago as I’ve seen none sit there in all my years. Still, I see everything: the dust, the students, the staff, my friends; yet nothing as I stand alone in my thoughts. Though my friends wave and playfully shove me, beckoning me to play sometimes I’ll stop in the middle of our game and stare. For when I graduate this school that means so much to me will become less so until in will become nothing in my eyes.