News About Pongo
We have enclosed below one feature article about Pongo's work. It's not the most recent press, but it is a good overview of Pongo's mission. For a list with links to additional (great) articles and radio broadcasts, see our Other Articles page!
Juvenile offenders put it out there with poetry
When Richard Gold begins working with teens at King County's juvenile detention center -- youths held for robbery or car theft or assault -- he often asks them to write down a question anonymously. Any issue that scratches at them and which they cannot understand.
Almost always, he gets some version of the query: "Why does life have so much pain?"
Gold's poetry classes begin there, with the detention hall kids writing about neighborhoods that feel like wild jungles, or parents who don't want them or the experience of turning 18 and being transferred from juvie to jail.
Later, come lessons about metaphor, theme and the way one tiny, distilled detail can crystallize an experience.
Gold, 59, conceived the program decades ago as a Yale University graduate working with young psychiatric patients in San Francisco. There, he found that children were able to face issues through poetry that they couldn't handle in therapy.
But it wasn't until years later, after he retired from a career writing trade books for Microsoft, that Gold founded Pongo Publishing, a nonprofit devoted to working with youth in difficult circumstances and bringing their words to the world.
If the young people cannot write or read, Gold and his staff take dictation, the teens speaking in fits and spurts, the volunteers shaping their words into stanzas and refrains.
"I know you guys have had some difficult experiences, but there's a lot of meaning in that," Gold said Thursday, kicking off the first assembly at which the teens would read aloud for their peers. "What I'm talking about, I guess, is speaking the truth."
Through eight years of classes at juvenile detention, Pongo volunteers have compiled seven chapbooks of youth poetry, which they sell at the Folklife and Bumbershoot festivals, though the authors are identified only by their first names and ages.
Even that obscured acclaim brings a rush of pride, detention officers have found.
"Being creative is empowering for them," said Unna Kim, a recreation coordinator at the linoleum-and-steel facility, with its door locks and buzzers and fortified glass. "To get their emotions and issue on paper, I think, really helps them."
Pam Jones, director of juvenile detention, is so impressed with Pongo that last month she nominated the program for a Mayor's Arts Award. And though she said some of the youths initially consider poetry to be corny or weak, none of those reading betrayed the slightest embarrassment.
"People have a lot of stuff bottled inside and don't really get a chance to express themselves," said T'Shaun, 17, who writes in his cell during free time and is being identified by his first name only, at the request of detention officials. "That's how I see poetry -- I just let my feelings out on paper."
His piece, "The Strength of a Man," was to be the poetry assembly finale, and he had been practicing for weeks. But T'Shaun, held on a series of infractions from eluding police to ignoring a bench warrant, was banned from reading after a cafeteria altercation with another offender involving a squirt packet of salad dressing.
"He is so intelligent," said the teen's supervising officer. "But so angry."
Marquise, 15, read a piece titled "How Do I Start a New Beginning." But he was thinking about the poem he'd written to memorialize a friend, Allen Joplin, killed in a highly publicized gang shooting earlier this year.
"Last night my homie died and I'm contemplating whether I should attempt another homicide," the boy had written.
For Gold, the unpaid work has brought tremendous reward.
"With these kids, you're at this cutting edge of the search we all have for meaning," he said. "They're wondering, 'Why is it so hard to love people?' or "Can I change my life?' or 'Why doesn't anybody seem to care about me?' And when things go well, it almost feels miraculous."
The poetry assembly was brief, lasting less than an hour, though every so often a young reader or audience member would be quietly summoned away for a court hearing upstairs, their hands held behind their backs, their detention-issued plastic slippers slapping against the floor.
Poems with power and pain
A sampling of the gritty, introspective poems by King County juvenile offenders:
GANG PAIN
I remember the day I got put on.
I fought one-on-one and we went three rounds,
And the person I was fighting was way older than me.
I was feeling pain everywhere.
The first pain I felt was all over my face,
And that day was a painful day.
And I kept fighting.
After all the fighting, my whole body felt like I was in hell.
I will never forget that day I went through this.
After that I got jumped in it, too, and I think,
Was it worth it?-- 15-year-old boy
ALL I WISH
Why act like a whore to express your burning core?
You only had four boys and it wasn't enough.
You wanted more.
Not money or jewelry,
But a girl.
And no matter how much you prayed,
You still didn't notice all the gifts and cards you used to discard.
It hurt me softly, but you hurt me hard,
With belts, to almost hitting me with your car.
Your pepper spray was crucial but your words were brutal.
I still hate you and always will.
Your gifts and offerings can stand still.
All I wish is for love and free will.-- 16-year-old boy
IN MY WANDERING MIND
My brother has got taken (sic) away from my mom,
Like a lost child away from home.
Going to trial on two charges,
As is they were demons inside,
Attacking me.
Just the reality of what my sister wrote to me in a letter,
Like angels answering a lost survivor, gone astray.
Court and release,
Like freedom waiting to be captured,
And brought back to reality.
Like a folded up piece of paper.
Like a shattered mirror,
Falling slowly in the wind.
Like the black depths beneath the earth,
Hidden almost like a mask.
Like a blissful angel coming,
Out in the snow mountains.
I hide my feelings behind a mask,
So others can't judge me by my cover.-- 17-year-old boy