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From our friends at Heights Arts:
From our friends at Heights Arts in Cleveland Heights:
The Heights Poet Laureate will receive a yearly stipend and participate in civic and community events, as well as manage Heights Arts’ popular Ekphrastacy – Artists Talk and Poets Respond series throughout their tenure.
History: The Cleveland Heights Poet Laureateship, established in 2000 by Heights Arts to celebrate and elevate poetry as an essential art form for the community, is the first and longest-running laureateship in the state of Ohio. In 2023, with the endorsement of both Cleveland Heights and University Heights, the laureateship expanded to become the Heights Poet Laureateship. Every two years, Heights Arts’ staff along with the Heights Writes Community Team of volunteers with expertise in the literary arts and the Heights community solicit applications to select a poet from the Cleveland area for this honor.
“We were thrilled to join Cleveland Heights in the Heights Poet Laureate program,” says University Heights Mayor Michael Dylan Brennan, “... and I look forward to our participating in the program going forward. University Heights is committed to supporting the arts. Adding poetry to our city events has been inspirational and has helped bring residents together.”
The current Poet Laureate, Siaara Freeman, is a dynamic voice in the Cleveland poetry scene, a 2023 Room in the House fellow with Karamu Theater. Freeman is also a 2022 Catapult fellow with Cleveland Public Theater. Her accolades include the 2021 Premier Playwright fellowship with Cleveland Public Theater, the 2020 WateringHole Manuscript fellowship, and being a four-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize. Freeman’s work has appeared in The Journal, Josephine Quarterly, Cleveland Magazine, and other notable publications. She has gained recognition for her viral poems and has toured both nationally and internationally.
The meeting will be posted on the Heights Arts website for those who cannot attend. Applicants for the laureateship must commit to serving the full 24-month term if selected and must either be residents of Cleveland Heights or have a significant connection to the communities. Applications will be accepted from November 1, 2024, to December 31, 2024. Detailed information and the application can be found at Heights Arts Poet Laureate.
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Join Heights Poet Laureate Siaara Freeman and guest poets Beks Freeman, Carrie George, and Philip Metres for a night of surrealism and the unconventional. For this Ekphrastacy, poets respond to the current exhibition on view in Heights Art's gallery, Irrational Objects: Backwards Into the Future. Their live poetry will undoubtedly respond to and interrogate surrealist themes of the unexpected and uncanny. Artists in the exhibition will also speak about their work. Reserve your spot today!
Heights Arts
2175 Lee Road
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118
heightsarts.org
Congratulations, Siaara Freeman! The following is from our friends at Heights Arts:
HEIGHTS ARTS APPOINTS 11TH HEIGHTS POET LAUREATE
Heights Arts proudly presents the Heights’ eleventh Poet Laureate —Siaara Freeman. She begins her two-year term in April, joining a long line of celebrated laureates, the most recent of whom was 2022 Academy of American Poets Fellow Ray McNiece. The new laureate’s official duties will begin in April (National Poetry Month), at Heights Arts’ popular Ekphrastacy—Artists Talk and Poets Respond series.
About Siaara Freeman
Currently a teaching artist for the Center for Arts Inspired Learning, Freeman has a wide-ranging, much-heralded foundation in writing and performing arts. She has spent recent years with Cleveland Public Theatre (Catapult Fellow 2021-22); as Watering Hole Manuscript Fellow (2020); Tangerine Chapbook Fellow (2018); Poetry Foundation Incubator Fellow (2018); and she is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Her first collection of poetry, Urbanshee, was released in August 2022. Her poems have appeared in many publications including BOAAT, Tinderbox, Josephine Quarterly, and The Offing, which describes Freeman as “an avid reader, a reliable nerd, a poet, a performer, and the friendly neighborhood hope dealer.”
Freeman has performed at poetry festivals, colleges, and universities both locally and internationally. Norway, Canada, and Costa Rica have hosted her, as have educational institutions including Oberlin, Ohio State, Allegheny College, Michigan State, Louisiana State, and Penn State. In conjunction with the Picturing Motherhood exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2022, she made a five-minute “commercial” spoken-word video that aired on the museum’s website to promote the show.
Of her hero, Toni Morrison, in a piece for Cleveland magazine in 2019 Freeman writes, “She (Morrison) was transcendent, yet undeniably human. She had no need to rely on stereotypes or tropes. She knew blackness, women, Ohio, magic, herself, and she used that knowledge and her boundless imagination to give us worlds where her characters existed, but we could as well.” It was clear to the members of the Heights Writes Community Team whose members select the new laureate every two years, that Freeman herself would transcend the ordinary through her poetry writing, performances, and work with young people. Team member Annie Holden speaks for the Team. “On paper, Freeman is deeply impressive. In person, she has a level of energy and dynamism that electrifies the space she inhabits.”
Cleveland Heights – Home to the Arts
Freeman joins a long line of celebrated past poet laureates. Says Freeman about her appointment, “I am incredibly honored to be chosen to continue in a legacy carved by such brilliant and generous poets. It is a privilege to sit amongst personal heroes and close friends who embraced the opportunity to serve the community.”
Cleveland Heights Mayor Seren honors the laureateship and what it represents in a city with arguably the biggest population of artists and arts professionals in the region. “Poetry grounds us in our shared humanity in times of celebration and sorrow, and as “home to the arts” Cleveland Heights recognizes poetry’s significance through this laureateship. I look forward to working with Ms. Freeman to give her art a broader platform in our community.”
A New Partnership with University Heights
With the naming of the new laureate comes a new partnership between Heights Arts and University Heights, an evolution that will change the title from “Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate” to simply “Heights Poet Laureate”. Heights Arts’ executive director Rachel Bernstein shares her thoughts about Freeman’s upcoming tenure. “The Heights Poet Laureate program is the longest-running laureateship in the state and has been conferred through Heights Arts since our inception in 2000. Not only are we thrilled to welcome Siaara Freeman as the next laureate who will lead us into our twenty-fifth anniversary in 2025, we are equally excited about our new partnership with University Heights to expand this position to the greater Heights area—something I have been hoping to do since I became director. Cleveland Heights and University Heights share a school system and a library system, and we are grateful for Mayor Brennan’s enthusiasm in supporting another cultural asset in the Poet Laureate, which will expand civic engagement through the arts. I look forward to Freeman sharing her inspiring words and presence with a new community.”
University Heights Mayor Brennan shares Bernstein’s enthusiasm. “As we continue to grapple with the many challenges in today’s post-pandemic world, poetry can help us reconnect and heal. University Heights is excited to support the Heights Poet Laureate, and we look forward to working with her at our community events.”
Inaugural and Upcoming Events
The new laureate will be welcomed officially by Cleveland Heights on April 17, 2023 at Cleveland Heights City Hall, and at University Heights City Hall on May 1, 2023.
Her first public events will occur at Heights Arts’ Ekphrastacy – Artists Talk and Poets Respond event on April 20th at 7pm, and at a Heights Arts “Community Celebration of Laureates Past and Present” on May 4th at 7pm at the Grog Shop.
From our friends at Heights Arts:
Cleveland Heights Poet Laureateship
Serving as Poet Laureate may increase your future funding possibilities. Our outgoing poet laureate, Ray McNiece, was awarded a substantial grant from the Academy of American Poets as a direct result of his role as CH poet laureate. Says McNiece of his laureateship, “Serving as The Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate has provided me with the opportunity not only to refocus on my poetry, but more so on my role as a community poet. Writing is often a solitary art, but the laureateship by its very nature engages my art, particularly through the Ekphrastacy series, which provides me and other poets in the community with an opportunity to work with a wider audience.”
Learn more and apply to be the next Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate
Ekphrastacy: Artists Talk and Poets Respond
The Ekphrastacy literary program is a series of artist talks + poetry readings held regularly in the Heights Arts gallery, in conjunction with our four, yearly exhibitions. Cleveland-area writers are invited to view the installed artworks and respond with poetry. Five weeks after the exhibition opening, the artists talk about their work and the poets read their poems, often resulting in a surprising dialogue. Participating poets receive an honorarium for their participation.
Learn more and apply to perform in the 2023 Ekphrastacy: Artists Talk and Poets Respond series
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| Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate Ray McNiece [photo by Herb Ascherman] |
Ray McNiece, Poet Laureate Fellow, Cleveland Heights, Ohio
From our friends at Heights Arts. The first Haiku Hike is this Saturday, August 28th, at Cain Park.
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From our friends at Heights Arts....
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| Ray McNiece, new poet laureate of Cleveland Heights |
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| 2017 Haiku Death Match winner Ray McNiece (image courtesy Heights Arts) |
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Welcome to Appletree Books' 2018 Writer in the Window event sign-up! In
celebration of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November, we
are, for a third year, inviting Cleveland-area writers of all ages and
all genres (you need not be writing a novel) to spend some time writing
in our front windows. Sign up below for Writing in the Window 2018, and
our NaNoWriMo coordinator will get back to you ASAP. **Please note:
writers under age 12 must be accompanied by an adult. Writers under 12
should have a parent or guardian complete this form and indicate
arrangements for adult supervision in the "Requests" area below. Thank
you! **Note the second: I try to respond to sign-ups within a day, but
that is not always possible. Please be patient. If not, I can be reached
at jane@appletree-books.com. (Personal information will not be shared.)
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