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Schools Chancellor Walcott Participates In 'Poem In Your Pocket Day' Event

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - Midtowners were treated to a little high art on their lunch breaks on Thursday.

Young children with the Community-Word Project wrote their own poems and read them before a crowd at Bryant Park.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott was among those at the Poem In Your Pocket Day event, marking National Poetry Month.

"To be able to talk about poems and what it means but then to understand what it means is, to me, extremely important and that's what today represents throughout the entire city," Walcott told WCBS 880's Marla Diamond.

Schools Chancellor Walcott Participates In 'Poem In Your Pocket Day' Event

Walcott read an Emily Dickinson poem at the Bryant Park event, and admitted to a bit of stage fright.

"I'm always nervous getting before a group, especially a group of students and those students like here who probably developed their own poems and I'm reading a poem that's already been done," Walcott said.

The event was held as third through eighth grade students have been taking the state's new standardized tests in math and language arts.

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