by Lily Böhkle
At the Martin Luther King Jr. assembly, after listening to students’ poems about race and identity, librarian Lynn Cohen and film teacher Kristina Jankowski-Frasier were inspired, and began to develop a new idea together.
“A lightbulb went off and we decided, ‘lets make a documentary,’” Cohen said.
They decided to create a documentary about the effect of poetry on racial dialogue for Race Reels. Race Reels usually consists of a short documentary about an aspect of race, followed by a facilitated discussion. The film, called “Slam I Am,” will premiere on April 7.
With a clear time limitation of a couple months, Cohen and Jankowski-Frasier began thinking about how to approach it, including what their goals were for the film and how they wanted to organize it.
“I wanted to combine my passion for poetry with my commitment to people being able to have that dialogue about racial issues,” Cohen said.
Junior Hannah Timmermann, who is in the documentary, found this project joined some of her personal experiences with her love for poetry.
“I’m glad they’re looking at a different aspect, a different way to handle racial issues,” she said.
Cohen said the next step was to talk to members of the slam poetry club, including Timmermann, and to arrange videotape readings of poems about race and identity with explanations from the poets about their experiences and inspirations.
Timmermann wrote a poem titled “How to tell your racist stepfather that you held the hand of a black boy” when she needed to find a way to do just that.
“Remind him that the inside of an empty heart/is blacker than midnight./Is darker than anyone’s skin./Is all they see in him.”
Though her stepfather never saw this poem, her boyfriend was touched that she wrote a poem about their relationship.
“I didn’t originally write it for people to see, but I let them see it and everyone who has seen it has really liked it,” she said.
Junior Jaime Serrato-Marks , who is also in the film, said writing a poem about his race was a way to start defining himself and understand his changing views. The calculated word choice in the poem forced Serrato-Marks to put very specific words to his ideas, he said.
“I didn’t write about changing my views,” he said. “My views changed as I wrote.”
This documentary is a way to bring the importance of poetry and the importance of racial dialogue together in a way that has not necessarily been done before through film, Cohen said.
“It will be interesting to show how you can mix poetry and race,” junior Alex Chin, who is also featured in the documentary, said. “Poetry can get messages across.”
Lily Böhkle can be contacted at [email protected]
