Re: Poetry Update and Thank You
[{"sender": "Lisa New", "recipients": ["jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com>"], "timestamp": "Wednesday, 2 December 2015", "subject": "Poetry Update and Thank You", "body": "Dear Jeffrey, \nMay I drop by before the New Year (perhaps on the 9th, or on the 17th or 18th?) to get your \nadvice about my renewal of the Templeton campaign, and also my needs in the coming year for \nPoetry in America? Below is the letter I'm sending out to my friends and supporters, and at the \nbottom a message just for you.... \n-Lisa \nThat you are receiving this letter means that you are among a special community of friends whose \nsupport— financial, moral, intellectual, logistical— has allowed my initiative, Poetry in America, to \nrealize what seemed, a year ago, almost certainly too ambitious a vision. That vision was to \nproduce the highest quality educational video on American poetry, creating a body of \nhumanities content capable of reaching a broad community of learners: formal and \ninformal, online and residential, young and old, American and international. And it was to \nbegin— rapidly— to disseminate and distribute our work. \nWhether you donated to Poetry in America through Filmmaker's Collaborative (our 501c3 fiscal \nsponsor), through Harvard, or through WGBH; whether you appeared on camera or talked an \nelusive friend into appearing on camera to discuss a poem; whether you lent us your film crew, or \nprovided overnight use of your hotel suite or apartment or of your whole skyscraper; whether you \nhighlighted our work on your stage, or talked your colleagues into becoming corporate sponsors; \nwhether you flew to Boston to install state-of-the-art editing and video storage equipment, or asked \nyour children's school to let us film there; whether you encouraged your family foundation to take \nan interest in the project, or gave us a lesson in IP, in licensing, in the rudiments of finance, or of \ndistribution; whether you praised, or gave timely, much-needed criticism— you enabled what we \nhave done. \nHere's what we have to report, and to show, a year later, thanks to your help. Links offer sneak \npeeks of works -in-progress across the full portfolio of Poetry in America projects. \n• The first eight-episode season of the public television series Poetry in America (a co-\nproduction between WGBH, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, and my own new \nproduction company, Verse Video), is now fully funded and in production, with episodes featuring  \nBill Clinton, Herbie Hancock and Sonia Sanchez on Langston Hughes, Frank Gehry on Carl \nSandburg, Katie Couric on Elizabeth Bishop, Nas on Whitman, and many more scheduled for \nnationwide launch in 2017. \n• Poetry in America's many initiatives to reach Middle and High School teachers and their \nstudents are taking root. Our first online course for Middle and High School Teachers, Poetry of \nthe City, will launch this Spring with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Companion \nmaterials to this course will be made available for free on PBS LearningMedia. This course is \ndesigned to meet the needs of English Language Arts and Social Studies teachers in the US and \ninternationally. \n• We are eager to begin production of The Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky. Designed, too, for \nMiddle and High School teachers, The Poetry of Earth, Sea, and Sky will draw English Language \nArts instruction into dialogue with science, and will include extraordinary footage of the natural  \nworld, conversations with poets, scholars, and scientists as well as footage shot in class and in the \nfield with great teachers. \n• A recent partnership with Greenwich Country Day School and the Success Academy Network \nof charter schools will provide a base for the production of a new collection of classroom-ready \neducational material on The Poetry of Art Sport, and Play. This collection will include \ndiscussions on poems filmed everywhere from sports fields to Broadway theaters, and will feature \ndancers, athletes, fashion designers, and more. \n• With a growing archive of footage capturing teachers and students reading American poems, \nwe are eager to expand our reach and move into America's schools, disseminating, testing, \nand learning from teachers and students using our materials. We hope to be able to begin work \nevaluating the impact of poetry on literacy levels and character development and, eventually, to \nproduce a full suite of materials that foster character development along with intellectual growth. \nWorking closely with such partners as The Nantucket Project, Nautilus Magazine, The Aspen Ideas \nFestival, and The Big Think, and, of course, HarvardX, Harvard's provider of free open online \ncourses, we are continuing to create rich educational media on poetry for adult learners and \nlifelong learners. These materials include short form videos such as this one on Robert Pinsky's  \n\"Shirt\" (as featured in The New Yorker), and, this spring, the sixth module of the free seven-part \nPoetry in America MOOC, which has registrants in over 150 countries. \nGrowing rapidly, and outpacing our current staff and infrastructure, Poetry in America has a \nfundraising goal this year of 2.5 million dollars to fund its expanding group of projects. We've taken \na big step, hiring the design agency Threespot to help us develop our web presence. Our \nwebsite— to launch early 2016— will eventually serve as an online hub for our TV show and \neducational projects. We hope you'll join us then for a virtual launch! \nFinally, Jeffrey, you have been such a wonderful supporter of my Poetry in America project. The \nLeon Black gift changed everything for me last year. It paid salaries for staff I desperately needed \nto complete projects (detail below), but first and foremost, it gave me leverage, enabling me to set \ndown a solid Harvard base for my activities by giving the school something to point to: this public \nhumanities project among the list of projects the Dean supports. The money did it: as soon as they \nheard about the gift, they took my project more seriously. Because of that gift, the Faculty of Arts \nand Sciences, which is space-stingy, found and rewired a studio space for me to house my video \nproduction operation and team. That gift woke up the Deans to the importance of Harvard's role in \nproducing the highest quality humanities content for the WORLD, and not just for Harvard \nstudents. My main employee has half of her salary paid with these funds, and the foundation of our \ncollection for PBS LeamingMedia is being made with this support. This gift represented one of the \nmost consequential shifts of the last year, allowing me create content and launch projects this year \nthat make future projects that much more likely. If I can keep this base sturdy at Harvard, refilling \nthese coffers, I will be that much more able to keep working. \nI am also so grateful for the help you gave me in defining my project for Templeton, and, what help \nyou have offered to give in bringing them around. I have, since Templeton turned me down, gotten \nfunding to produce video on two of the poems I'd proposed to Templeton and to create, and test, \nthat video in schools as I proposed. One of my partners in that project is Success Academy, where \nI could also expand my work with Templeton. And there are still other poems that may satisfy their \ncharacter criteria more fully, including the third of the poems I'd originally proposed and that Joe \nBiden had agreed to discuss with me (on parenthood and humility). At this point, I'm gaining the \nplatform and the name recognition to be an effective spokesperson for the foundation on building \nliteracy and character in the schools. \nIt really means a lot to me, all financial help aside, Jeffrey, that you are rooting for me and thinking \nabout me. You push back a lot (as Larry does), and it's always annoying but I always learn. \nWith abundant gratitude, \nLisa"}, {"sender": "jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com>", "recipients": ["Lisa New"], "timestamp": "Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 10:31 AM", "subject": "Re: Poetry Update and Thank You", "body": "I'm in Cambridge sat?"}, {"sender": "Lisa New", "recipients": ["jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com>"], "timestamp": "Wednesday, 2 December 2015", "subject": "Re: Poetry Update and Thank You", "body": "That's ideal. Larry's away and I'll be working all day. I'm free any time."}, {"sender": "jeffrey E. <jeevacation@gmail.com>", "recipients": ["Lesley Groff"], "timestamp": "Dec 2, 2015, at 12:53 PM", "subject": "Re: Poetry Update and Thank You", "body": "Do you know Chomsky, he Is with me"}, {"sender": "Lesley Groff", "recipients": ["Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation@gmail.com>"], "timestamp": "12/2/2015 5:54:55 PM", "subject": "Re: Poetry Update and Thank You", "body": "did you want to send the below to Lisa? (or have me ask her?)"}]