I Like It Here, and Love It Here: Lowell Poetry & Song 2026
Welcome to I Like It Here, and Love It Here: Lowell Poetry and Song 2026, produced by Lowell Elementary School students and Jack Straw Cultural Center. This web page and our anthology of the students’ poems is the culmination of a project with Lowell second grade students during the spring of 2026.
In this project, the students worked with Jack Straw’s poets Gabriella Garcia and Carlos Nieto to write their own poetry. Musician Tito Ramsey wrote a song inspired by the students’ poems, with special verses for each class. Jack Straw engineers Daniel Guenther and Ayesha Ubayatilaka then visited the students in class to record them singing the songs with Tito.
In addition to this poetry and song project, Jack Straw artist Leah Okamoto Mann of Kintsugi Somatic Arts led a four-week movement and music arts residency with K-3 students in the Distinct Program for students requiring specialized instruction and the ASPIRE program for medically fragile students. Over eleven sessions, with help from guest artist and sound healer Nova Ford, Leah guided students through a variety of musical and movement experiences and exercises that helped model musical and movement behavior, social emotional awareness, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration.
Audio: Lowell Poetry and Song 2026
Gallery: Writing with Gabriella and singing with Tito
Gallery: Aspire/Distinct Sound and Movement
Lowell Elementary Poetry & Song 2026 was produced by Lowell Elementary School students and Jack Straw Cultural Center with the generous support of the Washington State Arts Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, 4Culture, ArtsFund, and individual donors.
The Jack Straw artist team included poets Gabriella Garcia and Carlos Nieto; musician Tito Ramsey; audio engineers Daniel Guenther and Ayesha Ubayatilaka; photographer Sherwin Eng; designer Levi Fuller; and Executive Director Joan Rabinowitz. Special thanks to the second graders of Lowell Elementary and Lowell staff. We especially want to thank 2nd grade teachers Sharon Lasei, Bree (Bryanna) Jacobs, and Danielle Vaillancourt; Focus teachers Tobin Steers and Ava Gallion; Aspire and Distinct teachers Hannah Laveque, Marianne McLaughlin, and Cecilia Pardo; Instructional Assistants Joel Contreras and Mhret Gezehay; student teacher Autumn Reid; Principal Chelsea Dziedzic; and Administrative Secretary Tammy Watson, who helped make this project possible.
Artists
Gabriella Garcia
Gabriella Garcia is a writer from the Sonoran Desert. Her chamber opera, A Spring Like This, a collaboration with composer Nehemiah Jones, was developed and performed in 2025 with the…
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Tito Ramsey
Jack Straw teaching artist Tito Ramsey is a multi-instrumentalist and formally trained composer. His crisp pop songs tether instruments to pedals, pairing falsetto flourishes with electronics until a web…
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Leah Mann
Leah Mann is a multi-disciplinary artist, somatic practitioner, and embodied social justice activist. She is artistic director emeritus of Moving in the Spirit, a youth mentorship program utilizing dance…
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