WRITE YOUR ROOTS—All-Town Collaborative Poem
Write your roots with us!
At Chapter 510, we believe that writing is an act of liberation, that narrative matters, and that imagination is a source of power.
Every year in April (National Poetry Month) Chapter 510 organizes Write Your Roots in partnership with the City of Oakland and the Oakland Roots. Write Your Roots is an annual all-Town epic poetry project which activates our multi-racial, multi-generational Oakland community to write a collaborative poem together on themes of Narrative, Embodiment, Lineage, and Power.
This year's Write Your Roots poem is on the theme of EMBODIMENT, and will be a poetic opportunity to love your body, love yourself, and show us what love looks like inside you.
During the month of April (National Poetry Month), we will share our Write Your Roots poetry curriculum for elementary, middle, and high school educators to use in your classrooms.
Write Your Roots will culminate on the last Friday in April (the official Oakland-city proclaimed Write Your Roots Day) with a celebration of the GRAND OPENING of Chapter 510’s youth writing center.
Write Your Roots in person at the Dept of Make / Believe or online below by OR ON April 29!
Curriculum & Forms for Oakland Educators
Have your students contribute to this year’s all-Town poem. We’ve created and easy 30-minute lesson plan and links to printable forms! Once your students complete the poetry, email Info@Chapter510.org by May 15, and we will come and get them.
2022 Write Your Roots Partners
WRITE YOUR ROOTS 2020:
Because THIS CITY BY Oakland
My motherland
looks like a colorful town
smells like fresh air all around trees
tastes like pure life
an ancient, peaceful place
The feeling when I'm in Guadalajara
hot weather
the smell of the rain
the city is like heaven
That's how my motherland is
just beautiful
My motherland is a small village
we visit every summer
feels like a second home
a green land in México
where my mom was born
and my grandmother lives
…. (real full poem here)
write your Roots 2021: Because we are power
Oakland is made of the real deal
(he, she, they, them and
those who care). We are Oakland. Oakland is
Oakland is Oakland is Oakland is us, is not
for praise or to please. Is safe ways to help,
Oakland is made of the lake on Sundays, the
hills and the valleys of beauty and hope, of earth,
of a growing oak tree, of interstates,
potholes and poets. Is painted
boards of bright colors for warmth in our eyes, is
geese pooping at Lake Merritt, swarming helicopters,
is culture like ingredients in a stew, coming
together to make something new— (read full poem here)
