Poet In Residence Claire Donato at Germantown High School

Claire Donato with Germantown English teacher Stacy Dore

Students writing!!!

Rapt attention

Above are just a few photos from the day spent accompanying the truly amazing poet Claire Donato in her role as visiting poet at the Germantown High School. We at the Millay Colony began this program last year in an effort to extend our gifts to the larger community. If we are able to support all these incredible artists, why shouldn't the surrounding areas benefit from this?

So, with some generous funding from the Hudson River Bank and Trust Foundation, we were able to bring Claire back up to Millay for a mini-retreat and a few days in school. What followed was the best kind of poetic mayhem! Students were engaged, lively, and making their own versions of Shakespeare's sonnets with pens, markers, and white-out.

Students will be making books of the work created in class, and there will be a culminating presentation in May. More photos to follow as well as a report from Claire and examples of student work in our Spring Newsletter.