Because my voice is banned.
the dragon that speaks
for the boy
In a castle my dragon
is telling people what I
need to say because my
voice is banned. This dragon
speaks for me. Why
is my voice banned?
Because there was a war
that we lost, and now I will
put my voice in this book.
Someday I will bring my voice back.
—Jason from Oak Springs Elementary
Read more poetry by kids in this series.
Read more poetry on The Good Life.
–Photo credit: greyloch/Flickr
This was a poem we all loved; Jason is such a great kid. He wrote this after his Badgerdog teaching artist introduced him and his 4th grade classmates to Mercé Rodoreda, as part of a project we did called In Front of Strangers I Sing. You can read about how the kids explored Rodoreda’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War, in the chapbook we published (which is available to read, for free, online): http://www.badgerdog.org/badgerblog/publications/
I really love getting some back story, and how a poem came to be. Another poem in this series, “My Chances,” After Federico Garcia Lorca’s “Rundown Church (Ballad of the First World War),” had me searching Google to find the original.