By Garrett Speller
The Williamsville Central School District has always been a strong supporter of the creativity and artistic endeavors of its students. Unlike other districts that cut or reduce music and arts classes from its curriculum to stay within budgetary constraints, Williamsville goes out of its way to hold an annual festival celebrating the visual, musical, dance and poetic compositions of its students.
Although there are numerous other concerts and programs throughout the year, the biggest exhibition of poetic and artistic creativity in the district is the April Poetry & Arts Festival, which took place on a beautiful Sunday last month (April 25th). The format of this festival is unique because each year, district wide, student-written poetry from every grade level is submitted and evaluated by a panel of teachers, who undertake the difficult task to choose which works will be read at the festival.
Added to this, students compose works of music, dance and visual art to compliment, accentuate and/or accompany the poetry. A guest poet of national or international renown is also invited to interweave his or her works with the poetry of the Williamsville students.
Some notable guest poets of the past few years have been Carol Ann Duffy, Jane Hirshfield, and Naomi Shihab Nye.
This year, the guest poet was Dan Gerber, who inherited vast sums of money from the famed Gerber Baby Food Company then used the freedom that money provided him to truly look at the everyday, the commonplace and the prosaic, to see, contemplate and write about the wonder and magic of it all.
This year’s festival was without a doubt a veritable smorgasbord of genuinely reflective, thought provoking and inspiring work.
