Teen Poetry
Image: Jillian Christmas recites poetry to Teen Art Group participants in the exhibition Denyse Thomasos: just beyond, December 2023
This collection of poetry was written in response to the exhibition Parviz Tanavoli: Poets, Locks, Cages by youth who are currently participating in the Gallery’s Art Exchange and Teen Art Group programs. Jillian Christmas, the Gallery’s inaugural Poet-in-Residence, worked with the students and guided them through their poetry making process.
Art Exchange is a full-scholarship visual arts program for students aged 13 to 15 and is a collaboration between Arts Umbrella and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Students explore, critique and observe exhibitions at the Gallery. Then, they respond by making their own work at Arts Umbrella. Find out more »
Teen Art Group (TAG) is an art program for youth aged 15 to 18, presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery and Emily Carr University of Art + Design (ECUAD). At the Gallery, students are introduced to a new exhibition each month, and then they respond to the ideas explored two weeks later in a studio session at ECUAD. Find out more »
POEMS BY ART EXCHANGE STUDENTS
I unlock this cage
And Fly Away
Forever
This is not a cage
But a sacred cottage
Where your voice call
And the world is quite sure
Of your song.
This is not a cage
This is a place where love is kept.
Quality time
I choose friends.
I hold onto family.
The people who support me
In Who I am.
Past
Memories
Regret
Grave mistakes
This is not a cage
It is a space of values, morals, colourful innocence
Stored deep in my heart.
My words
Bite your tongue
My words,
Sacred,
take them back.
My words
Punishment, uninvited
I choose to listen.
This is not to protect
What’s outside of me.
I choose to hold onto the pain;
Like gripping molten steel to protect myself from what might
Burn my hands later.
Search deep into the heart as
It was the lock.
It is a dream to embrace my spirit.
It remains gone, a memory of dreams
From youthful times
It stands alone now.
People
Heart too close too fast
Pushes away
Babble.
I need to expand, grow, change.
A lock is a warning
The door it lives on, a ward against
Those old world threats.
POEMS BY TEEN ART GROUP STUDENTS
Protecting
sleep in silence
a grave of fire once
bright as the sun
internal rain
through windows of the body
a storm inside my soul but
in the eye
a world of nothingness
—Ella
My innocence
of femininity
knit the yarns
that hold onto
hope
—Anonymous
Memories are the most abstract
thing to protect
—Willa
Struggler. I choose to look back.
I wasn’t alone. away with the
hard times. Future different
me, I choose to remember I’ve
grown
—Eliza
It is a new warmth
a manic ease
sacred and nurtured
worthy of tenderness;
It is not a cage just because it is unfamiliar
—Asha