Sunday, March 11, 2001

Adversity and Verseby Kevin Merida
His goal is to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Words just dance in his head. He stitches them
together like a couturier, then wields them like a lyrical samurai.
Is he limping, walking on three legs,
slumped akimbo, eating mashed potatoes
and vanilla pudding for dessert?
Larry Robertson is 14. When I met him at Hart Middle School in Southeast, he was dressed inwhite jeans and a white T-shirt and wearing a black wool glove on his left hand. A black wool
FUBU cap was pulled down over his forehead. If Larry is Hart's poet laureate, he certainly
looked the part.
"I want to be so well known that they ask me to do readings and speak at universities and pay
me a whole lot of money," he said.
I love Larry's confidence because I know so many kids who don't have any. The thing is, there
are Larry Robertsons all over the city -- all over America -- in schools written off as too troubled
to instill hope. We need to erase some myths about public education -- namely, that there areenvironments in which kids simply can't excel.
What Hart is doing -- in a community that has struggled with economic disadvantages and drugs-- is showing kids their possibilities. Give some credit to Nancy Schwalb, who directs the Hartbased D.C. Creative Writing Workshop. The school is developing a roster of future literary stars-- kids like Delonte Williams, Roosevelt Jones, Pamula Twyman, Sitembile and Yasmine Knatt,
Monique Covington and Amani Al-Fatah, a precocious 13-year-old who's written 108 pages of anovel she's been working on since fourth grade. Titled "Joey's New Neighborhood," it's about arich black family that lives in a 320-room mansion but hasn't forgotten the folks it left behind.
"My biggest interest is in writing books," said Amani. "I like to write stuff with feelings,
emotion."If George Bush wants to do something worthwhile in his spare time, he should have his limo roll
up to Sixth Street and Mississippi Avenue SE so he can give some presidential oomph to Hart'swriting program. He could talk about how Hart may be the only inner-city middle school in thecountry with a literary magazine. Then he could walk around the neighborhood, where I once
lived, and shake some hands, demystify Congress Heights for all those who watch the nightly
news and wonder if anything good ever goes on there. "We want to have a program here that issuch a shining example that parents will be camping outside to get into Hart," says Schwalb,
whose goal is to establish the school as a citywide writing magnet.

You can see what the writing program has done for Larry Robertson. In sixth grade, kids pickedon him because he was different, outspoken, independent. He would say things that didn't goover well with his peers: Basketball is stupid; black males who play sports stereotype
themselves. He would change the radio station if a song came on that was degrading tofemales.
The result: He got into fights and got suspended a lot. Depressed, he started writing "to avoid
doing something horrible." And he got better and better at it. He won writing awards, such as
the Parkmont Poetry Festival contest, a citywide competition for public and private schools. For
two years straight, he made the team representing D.C. in the National Teen Poetry Slam. And afunny thing happened: As his poetry took off, respect among his peers grew, and he stopped
getting picked on, and he stopped getting into fights.
And how is Hart's poet laureate treated now? "Oh, standing ovations, applause and numerous
positive comments that last for months," Larry said in deadpan fashion. "Nothing big."Hardly a school assembly goes by that Larry isn't asked to do a reading.
It was like diving into your world
without a life preserver,
but I never died.
Cuz I have the average life span of anevergreen.
Heart of branches with minor thorns,
not mature enough to pierce me into love.
That's why I was there wondering,when will bliss be blunder?
so that misery will have its company
and cake.
Those passages are from "Folly," which I watched Larry write in 20 minutes, all 10 verses, as an
exercise in Schwalb's after-school writing club.
Larry has become The Man at Hart, and not by bouncing a ball or pimp-walking through thehalls trying to play gangsta. If only there were more programs in public schools designed to help
kids find their niche, then we'd have more Larry Robertsons and Amani Al-Fatahs.
What I worry about are the kids whose talents never get nurtured, who get left behind simply
because they haven't been shown their options, kids who don't aspire to win the Nobel Prize
for Literature because no one has told them that it's possible.
Kevin Merida's e-mail address is meridak@washpost.com.
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