Partners in Island Education (PIE) recently funded a two-day residency with slam poet Hashim Allah during a week-long poetry festival at the Vinalhaven School. Every year, the entire k-12 student body celebrates poetry during national poetry week. Students in third, fourth and fifth grades painted poems on decorated plywood and posted them on hiking trails. All students in the school made “Poet-tees,” shirts to wear with original and favorite poems printed on them. With a grant from the New Century Grant program through the Maine Arts Commission and the Maine Humanities Council, the Vinalhaven School Enrichment committee (funded by PIE) brought Hashim Allah to work with grades 6-12. Mr. Allah currently lives in Brunswick and used his inspirational original poems, enthusiasm and experience growing up in New York to take poetry off of the page and turn it into a living, breathing art form. Students got lessons in self-expression, hip-hop and self-worth through Mr. Allah’s encouragement and personal performance. The evening of April 29, Hashim Allah (who is also known as Hallahblack) put on a poetry slam at the local restaurant, The Harbor Gawker, on Main Street. It was a presentation that had students, teachers and community members standing up along the walls and clustering in any spare niche of space, reciting together “I will be, who I can be…” There were also performances by local high school students, to wild applause.