Videos About Pongo
- Watch Chrysanthemum Tran's: "Maybe All Transgender People are Really Vampires"
- Pongo Poetry Mentor Reading, 2019
- Pongo on PBS NewsHour with U.S. Poet Laureate
- Youth Poet Laureate Maven Gardner reads "Dear Mom"
- Pongo Teen Writing in Juvenile Detention
- The Impact of Trauma & How Pongo Helps
- Pongo and the Healing Power of Poetry
- Pongo's Mission w Margaret Larson, KING5-TV
- Pongo Receives Seattle Mayor's Arts Award
- Richard Interview with Parenting Expert
The Pongo Publishing Teen Writing Project is a volunteer, nonprofit effort with Seattle teens who are in jail, on the streets, or in other ways leading difficult lives. We help these young people express themselves through poetry and other forms of writing and publish annual anthologies of their work. This site is dedicated to them.
TEEN WRITING
Welcome, Teens!
Pongo is place to express yourself
Teens, 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. We appreciate the importance of what you have to say. Honesty is the quality we value most. Check out the Pongo writing activities, choose a topic, and give it a try. You might win Pongo's quarterly $100 Pongo Prize! For inspiration, check out all the serious poetry by other teens!
Featured Activities
Home to Me
In this poem you can use your senses to evoke your childhood home or imagine the home you’d like to have.
I Am Old and New
This poem allows you to reflect on change and possibility.
Poem Of The Week
Did Any of Them Ever Hear?
A young woman struggling to be heard and known: "I was just another damaged face / without a name."
TEACHING RESOURCES
For Counselors and Teachers
How to use the Pongo website
Counselors and teachers, we want this web site to be a resource for you, as well as the teens. The many writing activities can be downloaded. The teen poems can be shared, as encouragement to new writers and as topics for meaningful discussion. The site gives an overview of Pongo’s methods and offers trainings. We'd like to hear from you and offer our support!
Seattle Trainings
Join us in May or October!
Pongo would like to share our techniques for facilitating therapeutic poetry. Please register here for an upcoming training in Seattle.
National Visits and Trainings
Pongo in Your City!
Pongo is supporting writing projects around the country by offering Presentations and Trainings in our mission and methods.
PONGO NEWS AND INFORMATION
Read More, Get Involved
Sharing our work with the community
You can read about Pongo's outcomes , including surveys of Pongo writers. You can find out how to volunteer or to donate . You can find out how to start your own Pongo-inspired project . We always have some cool news, like the visit to Pongo in juvie by famous rapper Macklemore . You can buy books of Pongo teen poetry. Pongo's blog is about the significance of expressing deeply felt pain in poetry - including the resilience that this writing represents.
Book on Pongo's Method
"Writing with At-Risk Youth"
Pongo's founder, Richard Gold, has written a book about Pongo's method for facilitating poetry with young people (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2014). A great resource! Available online, including through Amazon. Please check out the editorial reviews!
My mom was in the bedroom
As I entered the messy bedroom
She was lying on her bed
I knew something was wrong
I ran up to her
I said, “Mom, Mom.”
I shook her, and she didn’t wake up
I yelled for my dad
“Something’s wrong. I think she’s overdosing.”
He helped me drag her into the bathroom and sprayed water on her
I started shaking her
She came-to and faintly said, “What’s wrong, What’s wrong?”
She said, “I’m okay,” and nodded off
Tears just came to my eyes, and that’s when I left my house
My dad took care of her after that
I’m alone since I was fourteen
I remember at first
It made me wish there was someone I did love
But after a while I just became independent
I didn’t think about anybody else
