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Big Read program encourages literacy and understanding

Edward J. Carvalho presented his poetry recently as part of a Big Read program for students in Rock County and Walworth County high schools. Terry Mayer.

WHITEWATER — The audience sat transfixed as poet Edward J. Carvalho began to read during his presentation at the Janesville Performing Arts Center.

He began with poems about patriarchy and a history of emotional and structural violence to women in his family. The character studies focused on his grandfather, Able.

The poems were full of violence and dread.

They also were filled the kind of imagery that students at the high schools Carvalho visited during the week of workshops would have loved — full of a peculiar logic that makes sense to poets tortured by angst and to students driven by raging hormones.

Along with his presentation at the Janesville Performing Arts Center, Carvalho spent four days traveling to schools in Walworth and Rock counties was part of the Big Read program, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Carvahlo's workshops and readings were part of the initiative to revitalize the role of literary reading in American popular culture.

At high schools including Delavan-Darien, Milton and Janesville, students participated in workshops, while listening to Carvalho talk about the writing process and his own work.

Carvalho also conducted a poetry workshop at the Lake Geneva Public Library, hosted by the Lorine Niedecker Writers Workshop.

Carvalho lived through his own period of juvenile anguish.

“I was just a punk,” Carvahlo admitted. He credits one teacher who took him under his wing with his turnaround.

Carvahlo argues that youngsters start out with a love of words and reading, but something happens and they lose interest along the way.

“Kids love to write poetry and play with the language, but somehow it gets beaten out of them before they leave high school in many cases,” Carvahlo said.

The Big Read is designed to change that by incorporating great books into public life.

Read the full story in the March 18, 2010 e-edition of Weekender HERE.