POETRY

Young voices,
in their own words.

Poetry has always been one of the places where Pseads students discover that what they notice, feel, question, and imagine is worth listening to.

THE STUDENT ARCHIVE

A poem can be evidence of a person meeting their own voice.

Across years of classroom work, young people have written about science, family, identity, nature, justice, uncertainty, love, possibility, and the ordinary moments that become extraordinary when someone pays attention.

This page is the beginning of a living student-poetry archive. We are starting with work that is already preserved publicly in Pseads’ history, and can continue adding poems from the anthology and classroom archive as those source files are gathered.

100,000+

student poems have been generated through Hope on the Rize and the historical Blue Skies, Bright Star poetry work.

Open book displaying a poem titled "Sky Dreamers" with illustrations of stars in the top right corner.

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Written after
reading Dedan Gills.

Students sometimes wrote directly back to Dedan, without being asked to. Pseads remembers these poems as a dialogue across generations.

8TH GRADE STUDENT

Create

The journey that beholds you
Pages of a flowing river
Finding paths to peace
Discovering primordial visions of life
8TH GRADE STUDENT

Share

A second student response moves through images of wisdom, knowledge, melody, and sacred thought.

WHAT STUDENTS SAY

“In the Pseads poetry program, I learned to search deep inside myself and found a spirit of creativity, a new beginning.”

STUDENT

YOUTH POETS WE HAVE CELEBRATED

Poetry moves from classroom to community.

Pseads has invited young poets to share original work at gatherings and public events, giving student writing a life beyond the page.

Leila Colbert
Wilfie Wild
Lily Wild
Gracyn Gellert
Sailor Costello
Lucy Bakowski

2025

The first Pseads poetry anthology.

Pseads’ Fellowship history notes that the first Pseads poetry anthology was created in 2025. This new archive is designed so anthology selections can be added here cleanly once the final publication files and permissions are assembled.

WHERE THIS BEGAN

Blue Skies, Bright Star belongs in the history of Hope on the Rize.

The original poetry-and-science program was not simply a poetry archive. It was the classroom foundation that evolved into today’s Hope on the Rize learning model.

Every student voice adds something the world did not have before.