By Diana Brement, Jewish Sound Columnist
A couple of issues ago, I mentioned King County Metro’s Poetry on Buses project and poet Merna Ann Hecht, whose poem about bread is one of 50 poems currently featured on the system’s Ballard Rapid Ride line.
The project is managed by Bellevue native Tamar Benzikry-Stern, through the 4Culture arts organization. Tamar was nice enough to chat with me, despite having a touch of laryngitis.
To begin with, I was surprised to learn that Poetry on Buses, which got its start in 1992, had been on hiatus for seven years.
It’s “always been about getting the word of the professional poet and the kid across the aisle on the bus,” Tamar explained. “When we brought it back we really wanted to honor those sensibilities,” but with some added features.
The project hired a “poet-planner” to create and facilitate a series of “writing home” workshops this past spring. Targeted to five immigrant communities from English, Russian, Somali, Spanish and Vietnamese language groups, the workshops helped participants write poems on the theme of “home” in their native language or English. Many were writing creatively for the first time, turning “cultural experience into an art form,” as a video on the project website says.
And that’s another innovation, the www.poetryonbuses.org website, which truly brings the project to the entire community. The bus poems, selected by a panel of local poets, are all available on the site, along with information about the project, bios and photos of the poets and, of course, their poetry. And one thing that has stayed the same — because of limited space on bus advertising placards — poems are still no longer than 50 words, as originally required.
Tamar began working at 4Culture in 2009. An alumna of Seattle Hebrew Academy and Northwest Yeshiva High School, she attended college and grad school in Seattle and New York. With an undergraduate degree in art history and a graduate degree in visual art and Jewish culture, she knows she’s fortunate to have a dream job at what she calls “my dream organization.”
As a “project manager for public art works,” she explains, “I work with artists primarily, and also with architects and engineers and others,” often to make use of the 1 percent for public art that is set aside from projects in King County to purchase and display public art.
Tamar, who lives in Seattle with her husband Ronnie and their 2-year-old daughter Eden, will teach a class on on graphic novels and Jewish memory during the spring quarter at the University of Washington. The class is offered through the Stroum Center for Jewish studies, which will also feature her in the “JewDub Talks” at www.jewishstudies.washington.edu on Jan. 29.
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“I think Maurice Sendak is a genius,” says Julian Stoller, age 11, “and I’m honored to be wearing his work.”
Dancing in the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Nutcracker” — with sets and costumes designed by the late, great children’s author — I’m sure Julian speaks for a generation of children and adults when he says, “I’m really sad. I grew up on them.” This is PNB’s last season using Sendak’s work, with its accompanying Kent Stowell choreography.
A ballet student since age 3, this is Julian’s third Nutcracker. He’s been given more responsibility this year, with a part as one of the toys in the toy theater gift Clara receives.
“They kind of build you up,” over the years of performing, he says, and this year his part is “less about the acting and more about the choreography.”
There are over 200 child performers in the Nutcracker, Julian’s mother Rebecca tells me. Children dance in every other, or every third performance, depending on their parts and age. Parents help backstage with makeup and hats, costumes, the kids can’t manage themselves, she says. “We get into stations and the kids just file through us.”
The Sendak show “has been a huge part of [Julian’s] life,” she adds.
During rehearsal and performance down time the kids knit hats for Seattle Children’s Hospital patients. They also write fan letters to principal dancers in an effort to secure a souvenir pair of toe shoes, many of which are worn only once or twice. Some shoes are more coveted than others, like the Peacock’s “fabulous blue shoes,” says Rebecca.
Julian will get the “tiniest bit of winter break” before resuming his three-times-a-week ballet classes. The Bush School 6th grader is also a talented visual artist who also enjoys acting. He’s certain he doesn’t want to be a professional dancer, “but ballet’s a great experience,” he says. “In any performing art it’s good to know ballet.”