A Poetic Mashup

*Mashup: a song or composition created by blending two or more pre-recorded songs*

We have read "Let America Be America Again" (Langston Hughes, 1938) and "I Have A Dream" (Martin Luther King Jr, 1963). And from these powerful, beautiful and important texts from the African-Americans' struggle for equality, we have created new pieces of poetry. Students, individually, picked out one word, phrase, image or sentence from each of the mentioned texts. Then, in groups of 4-5, they used their favorites to create a new poem.

FIVE poetic mashups! Read them SLOWLY and ENJOY!

#1

Dream

Let freedom ring

Oasis of freedom and justice

Homeland of the free

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars

Dream

In every brick and stone

In every furrow turned

That's made America the land it has become

We hold these truths to be self-evident

That all men are created equal.

Free

I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars

By Henrik, Sahil, Camilla, Maud and Diana

#2

Who said the free?

Let it be

The dream it used to be.

The Land that's mine.

Sit together at the table of brotherhood

Little black boys and black girls

Will be able to join hands

With little white boys and white girls

As sisters and brothers.

Not be judged by the color of their skin

But by the content of their character

FREE AT LAST!

By Emilie, Ida, Ingela and Åshild

#3

FAITH

Let America be the dream

The dreamers dreamed

Even though we face

The difficulties

Of today and tomorrow

I still have a dream.

Let it be that great strong

Land of love

We the people

Must redeem.

With this faith, we will be

Able to hew out the mountain

Of despair a store of hope

From every mountainside

Led freedom ring

Equality is in the air

We breathe.

By Urd, Diako, Michelle and Sara

#4

I have a dream

The dream the dreamers dreamed

America never was America to me, and yet

I swear this oath: America will be.

With this faith we will be able to transform

The jangling discords of your nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

Let ut not wallow in the valley of despair

Every valley shall be exalted.

Equality is in the air we breathe.

I am the man who never got ahead.

By Taki, Herman, Didrik and Willy

#5

I have a dream that my four children

Will one day live in a nation where they

Will not be judged by the color of their skin

But by the content of their character.

Let America be America again!

Equality is in the air we breathe.

An oasis of freedom and justice

The mountains and the endless plains.

Together

At the table of brotherhood.

America never was America to me.

I have a dream that my four children

Will one day live in a nation where they

Will not be judged by the color of theri skin

But by the content of their character.

By Henrik, Sander, Sindre and Martine