Voice for the Homeless.

WOLF, Bob; AUTHORS; HOMELESS men; REBEL Yell: Poems & Stories by Nashville Homeless, A (Book); SCHOOLER, Diane; POETRY (Literary form); GOLLER, Josef; ROBERG, Robert

This article profiles Bob Wolf, published author and former columnist for the Chicago Tribune. In 1988 he took a job teaching General Equivalency Diploma courses to homeless men in Nashville, Tennessee. While teaching, he began talking with them about how they came to be homeless. Soon they were writing down their own stories. Wolf collected their writings in A Rebel Yell: Poems and Stories by Nashville Homeless, published by the Nashville Board of Education in 1989. The book includes poetry, fiction, autobiography, design, and a children's story. He also created the Free River Press, devoted to work by homeless writers. Five Street Poets, the first volume published by Free River Press, contains the poetry of Diane Schooler, who now runs a writing workshop for the press in Knoxville; Josef Goller, a counselor at Matthew 25, a Nashville shelter for homeless men; Robert Roberg, who teaches English as a second language in Palmetto Beach, Florida; Rebel Yell, a self-described hard-core street person, and El Gilbert, whose volume of poetry, Lion's Share, was published in October 1990. Josef Goller's volume of poetry, From Within Walls, written while he was in prison, is the next scheduled release.