Students introduce officials to verses

CROMWELL >> Normally, the hallways in Town Hall are quiet, with what conversation there might be conducted in mostly low tones. But that was emphatically not the case Thursday, as the building was suddenly alive with the exuberant sound of some 20 energetic second-graders arriving with an inventive “pick-me-up” for the town staff.

The visitors were child poets from teacher Karen Ambler’s second-grade class at the Edna C. Stevens Elementary School. Their visit, during National Poetry Month, is an annual event, one town employees look forward to, said Mayor Enzo Faienza.

In the company of a slew of chaperones, the children fanned out throughout the building, surprising employees and visitors alike with recitations of “Poems in Your Pocket” the students had created under Ambler’s guidance.

“It started in my class four years ago and it sparked an interest with my colleagues, so for the last three years, all eight classes have been part of it,” Ambler said in an email. “The poems can be about anything.”

“In reading, we have been studying figurative language, so now to celebrate National Poetry Month, we have been writing our own poems using different forms of figurative language,” Ambler said. The poems can include “similes, alliterations and onomatopoeias.”

Not everyone from the class made the trip, but the approximately 20 students who did came prepared with extra poems which they read, and then, in many cases, presented to the town employees they were visiting.

Faienza’s first-floor office was a favorite location.

Each year, when the class visits Town Hall, the mayor makes a point of collecting as many poems as possible, which he proudly displays on the window in his office that faces out into the hallway.

Three young poets— Grace, Nyla and Sara — stopped into at the town manager’s office. There, Nyla presented a poem to Executive Assistant Marion Biroini while Grace first read and then presented a poem to finance department Payroll Clerk MaryAnne Niver.

Responding to the sound of happy children, Town Manager Anthony J. Salvatore came out of his office to greet the visitors and their chaperone, parent Karolina Lipka.

In turn, Sara read a poem and then presented it to Salvatore. “On a day like today, it’s just what I needed,” Salvatore responded, thanking Sara, Nyla and Grace and Lipka for visiting him and brightening both his day and his spirit.

The girls left and the manager retreated to his office to speak with Faienza.

But there were more poems and more poets, and so now, seated behind his overflowing desk, Salvatore received a visit from Sean, who read a poem. Sean left, only to be replaced by Matthew, who arrived in the company of Ambler.

Matthew also read a metaphor poem he had written, of which both he and Ambler were very proud.

When Matthew finished, Salvatore thanked him, asked for a copy of the poem, and presented it to Faienza to hang on his window.

Salvatore greeted each visitor with a handshake and when he or she finished, high-fived them.

“This a big deal for the kids — and it’s a part of my job as mayor that brightens my day,” Faienza said after the students left. Town Hall wasn’t their only stop of the day, however.

Ambler and colleague Linda Haddad began the day by visiting classrooms in the school, then moved on to the Cromwell Belden Public Library, where they presented poems to the staff — and received bookmarks and pencils from the library staff in exchange.

After visiting Town Hall, the students then went to Covenant Village to read to the residents there, Ambler said. “It is an incredible experience to see the intergenerational interactions. I don’t know who loves it more! After we read to them, they even host the children, offering refreshments for the second-graders,” Ambler said.

And it wasn’t just Ambler and Haddad and their students. During the day, “the other six grade two classes visit Woodside (Intermediate School), the middle school and the high school to spread the gift of poetry,” Ambler said.