Hello, teens! Hello, counselors and teachers! The Pongo Teen Writing Project is a volunteer, nonprofit program for teens who are in jail, on the streets, or in other ways leading difficult lives. We love to help young people express themselves through poetry, especially teens who have never written before. We believe that people who have led difficult lives have important things to say. And we want to share teen poetry and our teaching techniques with caring adults. This site is dedicated to our authors!
FEATURED COLLECTION
What Every Guy Tells MeCheck out this poem and collection from juvie. (Of course, ALL of the Pongo books are great!) [ READ ]
FEATURED ACTIVITY
You Don't Know MeIn this poem you can explain some things about your life that other people don't understand [ WRITE ]
PONGO IN THE NEWS
Juvenile offenders put it out there with poetry: Seattle-PI, April 24, 2008 [ READ ]
Children's Poetry from the Psych Hospital: KUOW Radio interview May 1, 2008 [ LISTEN ]
UPCOMING EVENTS
Pongo Prize! Starting in 2010. A quarterly $50 prize for a teen poem submitted on our site.
Pongo Workshop: May 2010. One-day workshop in Pongo techniques for counselors and teachers. [ MORE INFO ]
FROM THE PROJECT JOURNAL
Pongo now has a blog!
Sharing stories of our work with teens
We all know how hard it is to express and comprehend deeply felt pain. Pongo teaches creative writing to teens (and others) who have led difficult lives. Many have experienced multiple traumas in their childhoods. Many have too few people who truly listen to what they have to say.
These tragic circumstances and lack of support affect the young people’s abilities to feel good about themselves and to heal. But writing can make a difference. It will be my goal in this blog to share stories of this work – and the difference it has made in my life as well as for the teens. My first entry is called Telling Your Story, Claiming Your Life, and my latest is about a Pongo workshop at a women's prison, Mission Creek. [READ]
TEEN POETRY
Welcome, Teens!
Pongo is place to express yourself
Here you can WRITE FROM THE HEART about who you are as a person. You don’t have to be an experienced writer to create Pongo poetry. A lot of our writers have led difficult lives, which means they have important things to say. Please check out the Pongo writing activities , choose a topic, and give it a try. And you can check out our poetry collections to see poems that other teens have written.
And, if you're interested, Pongo now has a quarterly $50 prize for a teen poem submitted on our site!
[writing activities]
[poetry collections]
TEACHING RESOURCES
For Counselors and Teachers
How to use the Pongo website
We want this web site to be a resource for you as well as the teens. The many writing activities can all be downloaded for you to use in your classrooms. The teen poems can be shared in classrooms, too, as encouragement, examples, and topics for meaningful discussion. In addition, we have included several essays for you by Pongo’s founder, Richard Gold, that describe Pongo’s approach and techniques for teaching writing to teens who have led difficult lives. Pongo’s message to you, as people who care about youth, is that there are natural ways to inspire young people to write in a heartfelt and healing way. We’d like to hear from you, too.
[writing activities]
[poetry collections]
[teaching respources]