In this year’s project, students created poems about their homelands and their arrivals in the United States. Jack Straw’s vocal coaches helped students read their poems out loud in the classroom. The students then recorded their poems in the Jack Straw studios, where the students received individual vocal coaching, provided each other with feedback, and helped the engineers with the recording process.

Students in our 2014 project came from Bhutan, Burma, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guinea, Iraq, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Somalia, Thailand, Uganda, and Vietnam. The Stories of Arrival project culminated with an anthology, audio CDs, this web page, and the airing of Jack Straw-produced radio pieces on KBCS-FM.

The Stories of Arrival poems were broadcast through the month of April 2014 as part of National Poetry Month on KBCS 91.3 FM. Jack Straw produced a series of radio pieces for broadcast, each featuring two of the students’ poems and music by Jack Straw artist Victor Noriega.

Listen to the first radio piece, featuring Foster poets Hae Ta Eh and Rita Rai:

 

Listen to all of the students’ poems as they appear on the CD:

Artists