Social Justice Through Poetry | Part I

At the beginning of the month, I held a workshop on Hollaback! at Northeastern University for the Computer Clubhouse 2012 Teen Summit. We talked about the pervasiveness of street harassment, methods of holla’ing back, and how to be an effective bystander.

During the second half of the workshop, teens had the opportunity to come up with creative ways to respond to street harassment through all mediums of art: poetry, comics, skits, and drawings. In this post, I want to share one of the poems that came out of the workshop, a haiku (“A Japanese poem of seventeen syllables, in three lines of five, seven, and five.”) written by Nick:

“A Hollaback Haiku”
Whasup Baby Girl?!
Snizap! You’re on Hollaback!
Bet you feel dumb now?

I love this haiku. It’s funny, quick, and action-oriented. The premise (previously explained and performed by Nick) is a girl is getting catcalled by a harasser who calls her “baby girl,” to which she responds by snapping his picture and sending the image to the Hollaback! website. She gets the last word in this encounter after feeling empowered to report the harasser. By doing so, she demands safety in the streets by standing up for the respect she deserves when approached in the public sphere.

Do you haiku? Think you’ve got the nerve to come up with a snappy haiku to respond to injustice? Share with us in the comments below!

-Jane

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