For the past three summers they have operated a writing program that has been successful enough that the city has funded it to run year-round.
But the real measure of his work, Oliver said, are the students who return to update him on their successes.
Loni Rainey, an art teacher at Parkview Arts & Science Magnet in little Rock, attended Say it Loud! Readers and Writers poetry workshop when she was nine years old. She was reluctant because a diagnosis of dyslexia had made learning more difficult.
“I wanted to be a teacher but I was discouraged because I couldn’t comprehend what I was reading,” she recalled. “My mother made me, my older sister and younger brother join his poetry group. I was in third grade, but reading on a first grade level.’
In Oliver’s program, the group wrote poems and made an anthology of their work.
“Seeing my words and feelings on paper at that age helped me a lot,” said Rainey, who kept attending. When she was 15, Oliver took the group to Chicago to a Gwendolyn Brooks conference, she said.
“My mother, an avid reader, made me take six books to have Walter Mosley sign them. He signed them. Then he asked me if I had ever read any of his books and I said no. He said, ‘Next time I meet you I want you to have read my books.’”
Rainey went home and read five of the books, which surprised her and gave her a great sense of accomplishment.
“Mr. Oliver encouraged me and helped me have confidence…,” she said. “Without him, I wouldn’t be a teacher… Meeting actual writers and poets motivated me to try harder and not give up. Hearing these people I considered famous coach me and encourage me and let me know I am important really helped.”