Another Sheepshead Do Gooder Wants Your Votes
It looks like Steve Barrison isn’t the only Sheepshead Bay resident vying for the Brooklyn Community Foundation’s Do Gooders award. Manhattan Beach resident Sue Yellin got in touch to tell us about Pam Laskin and her work at the City College of New York’s Poetry Outreach Center .
As director of the program, Laskin helps place poetry mentors in many Brooklyn public schools. The goal is to encourage poetic activity in the lives of young people across the city, compensating for budget cuts that strip the art out of school curriculums. During the month of May, the center organizes The NYC Poetry Festival, a celebration of poetry, and all the public school children come to City College to read their poetry. Poems are collected and published in an annual anthology, Poetry in Performance. This is all free of charge to the schools.
A submitter to the Do Gooders award writes that you should vote for Laskin because of her “energetic and complete devotion to art and poetry in particular … Everyone has poetry in side [sic] them, and Pam helps them to see that gift!”