Before completing a Los Prietos Boys Camp program earlier this year, Derek Young wrote such impressive poetry he was named Los Robles High School’s first poet laureate.
On Jan. 25, Young, 16, took part in a ceremony near the camp to honor the 100th birthday of the late William Stafford, a former U.S. poet laureate. Young was one of several readers at the ceremony and read one of his poems and one of Stafford’s. The local event, attended by more than 50 people, is part of this year’s worldwide celebration of Stafford’s life and work.
Los Robles High School is operated by the Santa Barbara County Education Office at the Los Prietos Boys Camp, a juvenile detention facility for boys operated by the county probation department.
Stafford was stationed at Los Prietos Civilian Public Service Camp, which was adjacent to the current boys camp, between 1942 and 1944 after he declared himself a conscientious objector when he was drafted for World War II in 1941. As a result, he did forestry and soil conservation work for four years in various government camps.
Stafford’s memoir, “Down in my Heart,” about camp life was published in 1948 and will soon become part of the Los Robles students’ assigned reading.
Stafford wrote poetry during his spare time at the camp, but his work wasn’t published until he was 48 years old. “Traveling through the Dark,” his first major collection, won the 1963 National Book Award for Poetry. In 1970, Stafford was named Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now know as Poet Laureate of the United States.
After learning of Stafford’s connection to the camp, the school honored Derek as its first poet laureate based on the overall quality of his submissions for the most recent volume of a poetry book published by the school’s language arts department every year. In the most recent volume, “Bridges,” the students express their struggles to cross the bridge from boyhood to manhood.
Mark Leufkens, the director of the education office’s Juvenile Court and Community Schools program, said in a press release that working on the poetry project has taught many students to express themselves effectively and has given them more self-confidence.
“I’m just really impressed with the way they started the program and the way they’ve grown it, and by the dedication of everyone involved,” Leufkens said in the press release. “This poetry project has not only proven relevant to the students’ lives, but it’s aligned to state curriculum standards as well.”
This article appears in Feb 13-20, 2014.