The Pongo Teen Writing Project, founded and directed by Richard Gold, is set to return to this year’s Northwest Folklife Festival over Memorial Day weekend. Pongo is wrapping up its 17th years working with teens in juvenile detention and young people institutionalized with mental illness.
A Pongo table will be set up on the VERA stage during the festival. A collection of poems from troubled teens, “There Had to Have Been Someone,” will be available for sale. The title poem appears below.
Additionally, two readings of poetry by youth not in the Pongo program will take place in the EMP Sky Church noon on May 26-27. Finally, Pongo adult volunteers will read from the Narrative Stage on Memorial Day, May 28, at 2 p.m.
THERE HAD TO HAVE BEEN
by a young woman in juvenile detention,
age 14
There’s no important person in my life.
There just isn’t.
Hasn’t always been this way.
At some point there had to have been a person
That made me feel
Happy
As happy as my splat pink hair.
At some point there had to have been a person
That made me feel
Loved
As loved as a small baby bluebird
In Mama Bluebird’s nest.
At some point there had to have been a person
That made me feel
Important
As important as The President,
At her inauguration.
Right now
There’s no important person in my life
But at some point
There had to have been.