Student Poets at the Wallace House

Photographer: Matt Hogue

Student poets from the Vincent 7th grade middle school read their persona poems based on the history of the Wallace House to friends and family on May 11, 2023. They are pictured here with poet Salaam Green, a teaching writer for the Alabama Writers’ Forum, and their English teacher, Erica Davis.

They had participated in Land as Persona: Many Paths to the Present, a collaboration between the Alabama Writers’ Forum and Klein Arts & Culture. Klein Arts & Culture Board Members and others visited the class to speak about time periods and persons associated with the Wallace House and Harpersville. “The goal of this curriculum is to teach students via oral history and, subsequently, persona poetry about the different peoples and cultures that exist, or have existed, in the state of Alabama” (www:writersforum.org).

Nell Gottlieb