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From: jeffrey E. [jeevacation@gmail.com] Sent: 12/2/2015 3:31:35 PM To: Lisa New Subject: Re: Poetry Update and Thank You Importance: — High I'm in Cambridge sat? On Wednesday, 2 December 2015, Lisa Wo sid wrote: Dear Jeffrey, May | drop by before the New Year (perhaps on the 9th, or on the 17th or 18th?) to get your advice about my renewal of the Templeton campaign, and also my needs in the coming year for Poetry in America? Below is the letter I'm sending out to my friends and supporters, and at the bottom a message just for you.... -Lisa That you are receiving this letter means that you are among a special community of friends whose support— financial, moral, intellectual, logistical— has allowed my initiative, Poetry in America, to realize what seemed, a year ago, almost certainly too ambitious a vision. That vision was to produce the highest quality educational video on American poetry, creating a body of humanities content capable of reaching a broad community of learners: formal and informal, online and residential, young and old, American and international. And it was to begin— rapidly— to disseminate and distribute our work. Whether you donated to Poetry in America through Filmmaker’s Collaborative (our 501c3 fiscal sponsor), through Harvard, or through WGBH; whether you appeared on camera or talked an elusive friend into appearing on camera to discuss a poem; whether you lent us your film crew, or provided overnight use of your hotel suite or apartment or of your whole skyscraper; whether you highlighted our work on your stage, or talked your colleagues into becoming corporate sponsors; whether you flew to Boston to install state-of-the-art editing and video storage equipment, or asked your children’s school to let us film there; whether you encouraged your family foundation to take an interest in the project, or gave us a lesson in IP, in licensing, in the rudiments of finance, or of distribution; whether you praised, or gave timely, much-needed criticism— you enabled what we have done. Here’s what we have to report, and to show, a year later, thanks to your help. Links offer sneak peeks of works -in-progress across the full portfolio of Poetry in America projects. e The first eight-episode season of the public television series Poetry in America (a co- production between WGBH, Emmy Award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, and my own new production company, Verse Video), is now fully funded and in production, with episodes featuring Bill Clinton, Herbie Hancock and Sonia Sanchez on Langston Hughes, Frank Gehry on Carl Sandburg, Katie Couric on Elizabeth Bishop, Nas on Whitman, and many more scheduled for nationwide launch in 2017. e Poetry in America’s many initiatives to reach Middle and High School teachers and their students are taking root. Our first online course for Middle and High School Teachers, Poetry of the City, will launch this Spring with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Companion materials to this course will be made available for free on PBS LearningMedia. This course is HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_029239