Showing posts with label Wick Poetry Center. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wick Poetry Center. Show all posts

Thursday, September 12, 2024

September 19 thru 21: The Wick Poetry Center Celebrating 40 Years

From our friends at the Wick Poetry Center in Kent:

In honor of the Wick Poetry Center’s 40th anniversary, we invite you to join us for a celebration at Kent State University. Over two days and three nights of festivities, our keynote speakers, Padraig Ó Tuama, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, and Adrian Matejka will give readings and host engaging panels. As we celebrate four decades of creativity and community, we are also delighted to feature poet and founding director Maggie Anderson, along with our accomplished Wick prize-winning authors.
Register by September 13th at WickPoetry.com.
 

Thursday, April 4, 2024

April 10: Cornelius Eady and Arlene Keizer at Kent State


Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize Reading
Featuring Cornelius Eady and Arlene Keizer

When: Wednesday, April 10, 7:00 pm
Where: African Community Theatre, Oscar Ritchie Hall (225 Terrace Drive), Kent, Ohio

Cornelius Eady is the author of several books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed Hardheaded Weather, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, The Gathering of My Name, which was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, and his most recent collection The War Against the Obvious. With poet Toi Derricote, Eady is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poetry and poets. He is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Literature, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy, and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award. Eady has been a teacher for over twenty years, and is currently the Chair of Excellence in the English Department at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Arlene Keizer, an Afro-Caribbean-American poet and scholar, writes about the literature, lived experience, theory, and visual art of the African Diaspora. The recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, she later earned an MA in English and Creative Writing (Poetry) at Stanford University and a PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Black Subjects: Identity Formation in the Contemporary Narrative of Slavery, and her poems and articles have appeared in African American Review, American Literature, Kenyon Review, PMLA, Radical Teacher, TriQuarterly, and other journals and exhibit catalogues. New poems are forthcoming in Obsidian: Literature and Arts in the African Diaspora. Arlene completed Fraternal Light: On Painting While Black published by The Kent State University Press with the support of fellowships from the Beinecke Library at Yale and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where she has been reading Beauford Delaney's mail. Born to emigrants from Trinidad, she lives in Brooklyn, NY and teaches at Pratt Institute.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Maj Ragain Poetry Park



Join us as we dedicate the

Maj Ragain Poetry Park


When we make the poem, wood pulp paper, black spittle ink,we build a refuge for ourselves and others…It is respite, a temporary shelterwhere we may learn and listen to one another’s hearts.-Maj Ragain ’90


We hope you will join us to honor one of Kent State’s most beloved teachers and to celebrate his role as a cherished poet, a mentor and a distinguished alumnus and professor.

Thursday, September 14 | 5 p.m.Wick Poetry Center126 S. Lincoln St., Kent, OH 44242

Free and open to all.

Register for the Dedication

As we continue to honor the gift of Maj's life, we invite you to an open poetry reading on the following day. We will gather at Last Exit Books and Coffeehouse to share a favorite poem by or about Maj.

Friday, September 15 | 7 p.m.Last Exit Books and Coffeehouse124 E. Main St., Kent, OH 44242

No registration required.

 

Tuesday, September 13, 2022

This week in Kent, Ohio

 From our friends at the Wick Poetry Center:


Join Us This Week for Events and Workshops 



We are excited to share this week's events and workshops. Come and celebrate design and poetry with us at the Akron Art Museum this Thursday at 6 pm. A Mapping Akron workshop will follow at 7 pm.On Friday, the Wick students and interns will facilitate our weekly workshop, Wick Weekly, from 1-2 pm in the May Prentice House. Find us on Friday from 3-7 pm at the Black Squirrel Festival at Risman Plaza with fun games and Wick swag.On Saturday, we will host our Market Stanzas project at the Haymaker Farmer's Market. More details are below and on our webpage:
Wick Events and Workshops 2022/23
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the "Celebrating Our Own & Open Mic" event has been rescheduled to Wednesday, September 28! Celebrating Our Own banner

CELEBRATING OUR OWN & OPEN MICNEW DATE, SAME LOCATION: WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 28, 7 P.M. | WICK POETRY CORNER IN THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, 2ND FLOOR

 

This event will spotlight the 2022 Wick Poetry Center scholarship winners. Each winner will have the opportunity to share their work. An open mic, in which anyone is welcome to read, will follow. Come celebrate poetry with us by sharing your poems and discovering the new voices around you.  


More information about this week's event:Market Stanzas

MARKET STANZAS

Saturdays, September 3, 17, 24, and October 22 | from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. | Haymaker Farmers’ Market

Market Stanzas is a community arts project created by the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University in partnership with Haymaker Farmers’ Market in celebration of their 30th anniversary. Community members can share memories about the market, its vendors and volunteers, and the important way it serves the Kent community to the online gallery or by visiting the Traveling Stanzas Poetry Makerspace at the market. Each visitor's contribution will add to a growing community poem: haymaker.marketstanzas.com.  

Market Stanzas is funded by generous grants from the Kent Rotary Foundation and the Ohio Arts Council. 


Poetry & Design Talk

TRAVELING STANZAS POETRY & DESIGN TALK 

Thursday, September 15, 6:00 p.m. | Akron Art Museum (1 S High St, Akron)

For 13 years, the Traveling Stanzas project with Wick Poetry Center has translated the creative expression of poets in our community into stunning works of visual art. New posters from this project will be on display starting 9/2. Join us for a conversation between the young poets and the poster designers. 


Mapping Akron

MAPPING AKRON - EXPRESSIVE WRITING WORKSHOP

Thursday, September 15, 7:00 p.m. | Akron Art Museum (1 S High St, Akron)

Following the presentation about Traveling Stanzas (see above), join Teaching Artists from the Wick Poetry Center for a writing and placemaking workshop from its new initiative “Mapping Akron.” In a yearlong series of creative writing and placemaking workshops with everyday Akronites, the Wick Poetry Center will build an interactive, digital map of Akron, which will explore individuals’ sense of place and home and contribute to the vital artistic ecosystem of the city. 


Wick Weekly

EVERY FRIDAY: WICK WEEKLY POETRY WRITING WORKSHOPS

Every Friday, 1:00 p.m. | Wick Poetry Center (in May Prentice House) Starting September 2nd

Join the Wick Poetry Center student workers and interns for a free workshop each week. Wick Weekly invites Kent State students and community members to engage in informal writing prompts and activities. No prior writing experience is required. 

Wick Weekly follows the Kent State University Academic Calendar, and will not take place on days when the University is closed. No registration is necessary.


We hope to see you at the events.Wick Poetry Center

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Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Poets for Science

David Hassler of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State updates us on Poets for Science:

During this time of crisis when we must rely on accurate, science-based information regarding the Covid-19 pandemic, the Wick Poetry Center would like to share news of the Poets for Science exhibit which traveled to Vanderbilt University during the first week of February.

Founded by poet and environmental activist Jane Hirshfield, the Poets for Science movement collaborated with the Wick Poetry Center to launch this exhibit at the March for Science on the National Mall in 2017. Featuring 25 poems curated by Jane Hirshfield, this exhibit offers interactive stations where visitors create poems from science-based texts. Visitors can also contribute a line to a community poem, modeled after Gary Snyder’s, “For All.” 
Charles Malone, outreach and program manager of the Wick Poetry Center, spent three days with Vanderbilt’s Communication of Science and Technology program, assisting exhibit visitors with the interactive exploration of the intersection of poetry and science. “It was a joy to share the conversation that Jane Hirshfield began at the March for Science in 2017. They responded to the narrative of working scientists discussing the importance of their work through our Emerge application,” said Malone.
Malone was joined by Samantha Horwitz, a Kent State University undergraduate Chemistry major who also studies English and Creative Writing.

Below are examples of poems created by visitors to the gallery using the Wick Poetry Center’s Emerge™ application: 
Kate Snyder’s poem echoes the symbiotic relationship between arts and sciences practitioners.
Cao Yutao was inspired by Tim Dodd’s “The Everyday Astronaut.” Yutao’s poem speaks to the shared humanity overcoming the disharmony of the Cold War’s Space Race.
More Poems in the Emerge™ Community 
During the exhibit, visitors also had the opportunity to contribute to a Thread community poem.

Said Malone: “One of my favorite contributions to the Thread was by a student named Adora. The prompt asks us to pledge to something in our fields that is important to us. Gary Snyder’s poem uses the form of the Pledge of Allegiance, which he spins to express his connection to the soil and animals, to the diversity and ecology of the place where he lives. Adora first simply pledged to the name of her field, Psychiatry. But then she made an inspired poetic decision to show us what Psychiatry means to her. She wrote:
‘I pledge to my innermost thoughts
and the marvelous wonders of the mind.
Insufficient would it be to pledge
and not vow to be ambitious
in my endeavor to expand
my knowledge of self
with confidence
in my ability to do as such.’
Another student, Molly, offered these lines: 
‘I pledge allegiance to cosmology,
to our place in the universe,
to what dwarfs us and makes us look up
o stars and star stuff, to galactic ballet,
to the bigger-than-me, to the gorgeous system
of which I am an infinitely small subset’.
It was remarkable to see how participants responded to these ideas and these tools for conversation.”

Co-presenter and Kent State University undergraduate student, Samantha Horwitz, was able to connect with another student that shares her same love for science and creative writing after her reading of the Thread community poem.The two were able to engage in the deep and philosophical ideas of pedagogy, and discussed their frustrations of chemistry lab instructions.

Horwitz recalled, “We talked about the frustration with instructions on lab reports that say things like ‘no metaphors,’ when the very best science teachers use metaphors to get across the most abstract ideas. From the humanities standpoint, I think that poets also employ a lot more problem-solving and analytical techniques than they might originally think.”
Samantha Horwitz engaging with a student at Vanderbilt University
Malone and Horowitz also participated in a panel discussion facilitated by Vanderbilt Dean David Wright with Austen Applegate from the National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine, Dr. Jay Clayton from the English Department, Dr. David Wientraub, director of the Communication of Science and Technology program, and Professor Kate Daniels, Director of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt.

The ultimate synergy between artists and scientists captured the core values of the Poets for Science movement, as expressed by founder, poet, and activist, Jane Hirshfield. She writes, “Poetry and science each seek to ground our lives in both what exists and the sense of the large, of mystery and awe. Every scientist I know is grounded in curiosity, wonder, the spirit of exploration, the spirit of service. As is every poet.”

Please check out the following links for more information about the Poets for Science project:
Poets for Science Website
Responses to the "I Pledge Allegiance" Thread Prompt
Vanderbilt Community Poem: "I Pledge to the Big, to the Small"
No Metaphors in Lab Reports: Essay by Samantha Horwitz

Friday, April 5, 2019

Traveling Stanzas / Lakewood Public Library Poetry Contest


Poetry Contest
Submissions accepted between Monday, March 4, 2019 and Monday, April 22, 2019 at 9:00 p.m. To submit a poem, visit the Traveling Stanzas exhibit and use the theme, Immigrant Voices, to compose your work. Poems will be judged by local poets. Winners and two runners up will be selected from the following age groups: K-8 grade, 9-12 grade and over 18. The contest will culminate with a poetry reading by the winners. Submissions accepted at any Library service desk or can be emailed to events@lakewoodpubliclibrary.org. Please include your name, contact information and age group.

Thursday, February 7, 2019

Coming Up at the Lakewood Public Library

This spring Lakewood Public Library and Wick Poetry Center will be presenting an interactive poetry exhibit with a plethora of supporting programs focusing on poetry and the immigrant experience. Here are a few highlights:

Exhibit ─ Traveling Stanzas: Immigrant Voices
Presented by The Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University
Main Library Second Floor Gallery  
Lakewood Public Library and Wick Poetry Center present Traveling Stanzas: Immigrant Voices, an interactive exhibit including creative writing tools and activities. Acknowledging the unique experiences of immigrants in our community, this public display engages a dialogue through the intimate and inclusive voice of poetry. The exhibit is open to visitors from March 1, 2019 through April 30, 2019, with supporting programs throughout the spring and summer.

Poetry Contest
Submissions accepted between Monday, March 4, 2019 and Monday, April 22, 2019 at 9:00 p.m.
To submit a poem, visit the Traveling Stanzas exhibit and use the theme, Immigrant Voices, to compose your work. Poems will be judged by local poets. Winners and two runners up will be selected from the following age groups: K-8 grade, 9-12 grade and over 18. The contest will culminate with a poetry reading by the winners. Submissions accepted at any Library service desk or can be emailed to events@lakewoodpubliclibrary.org. Please include your name, contact information and age group.

Traveling Stanzas: Immigrant Voices Opening Gala
Featuring: David Hassler, Director Wick Poetry Center; Katie Daley, Teaching Artist Wick Poetry Center and a performance by Global Connections
Friday, March 8, 2019 music starts at 6:30 p.m., opening remarks begin at 7:00 p.m.
Main Library Grand Reading Room
We invite you to celebrate the opening of Traveling Stanzas: Immigrant Voices. David Hassler will speak about the history and impact of the Traveling Stanzas exhibits, and Katie Daley will speak about leading workshops in our community to create poetry featured in our exhibit. The poetry created in these workshops is directly reflected in this public display. There will also be a performance by Global Connections and a poetry reading.    

Poetry Workshops
Led by Leanne Hoppe
Thursdays: March 14, 2019; March 28, 2019; April 11, 2019 and April 25, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
Tuesdays: March 19, 2019 (18 and younger only); April 2, 2019 and April 16, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
Main Library Second Floor Gallery
From the Italian, stanza means a room—a place to pause. Indeed, Traveling Stanzas offers individuals moments of pause, with which to reflect on their lives, their city and a shared experience of their community. Leanne Hoppe, local teacher, editor and translator will lead workshops in the Traveling Stanzas Exhibit to give attendees a structured moment to explore the interactive tools. Tuesday, March 19, 2019 is reserved for individuals 18 and under.  

WordStage- Give Me Your Tired: Expressions of Immigration
Sunday, April 28, 2019 at 2:00 p.m.
Main Library Auditorium
Poet Emma Lazarus wrote, “The New Colossus”. Its most iconic line reads, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. Join us for this performance featuring immigrant stories through the poetic voice. The poems featured will come from community members and influential poets. WordStage is a chamber music reader’s theater dedicated to the presentation of works with special literary, historical and musical merit.

Traveling Stanzas: Immigrant Voices Poetry Contest Reading
Tuesday, April 30, 2019 at 7:00 p.m.
Main Library Auditorium
The Traveling Stanzas: Immigrant Voices Poetry contest will culminate in a poetry reading featuring the winners and two runners up from each of the three age categories. The winners will be selected by a panel of local poets. Each submission is inspired by the Traveling Stanzas Exhibit, exploring the theme of immigrant voices and reflecting on the impact of immigration in our community. Join us to hear from the winners as well as from a local poet.

For details on these and additional programs, visit lakewoodpubliclibrary.org.

Lakewood Public Library

15425 Detroit Avenue
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
(216) 226-8275

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Wick announces their poetry season

The Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University has announced their slate of events, readings, exhibits, and a creativity festival, starting this Thursday (!) with a poetry reading at the Akron Art Museum.


Wick Poetry Center Reading Series
2018-2019
We are excited to share this years' reading series with you below. Join us for a full slate of readings and events starting this week at the Akron Art Museum. From the Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize Reading honoring Michael McKee Green's new book with contest judge Khaled Mattawa to Celebrating Our Own and our 17th Annual Giving Voice, we hope you'll join us this year.

To open, we are inviting you to attend the first event of the Series: Poetry Reading at the Akron Art Museum this Thursday, September 13, at 6 pm. 

POETRY READING WITH URBAN VISION STUDENTS AT THE AKRON ART MUSEUM

Date: 6:00 pm | Thursday, September 13, 2018
Location: Akron Art Museum 1 South High Street Akron, OH 44308
Poetry Reading with Wick Poetry Center and Urban Vision below the Nasser Al-Salem Arabi/Gharbi neon installation in the lobby of the Akron Art Museum. Stay and tour the exhibition FRONT: An American City after the reading.
Register for free here.

KENT CREATIVITY FESTIVAL

Date: 11:00 am - 5:00 pm | Saturday, September 29, 2018
Location: Lester A. Lefton Esplanade outside of the May Prentice House,  Poetry Park
The Kent community invites you to join us for the annual Kent Creativity Festival! This will be an opportunity for people of all ages and skill levels to come together to create, share, and explore the creation of all kinds of art. 

THE STAN AND TOM WICK POETRY PRIZE READING FEATURING KHALED MATTAWA + MICHAEL MCKEE GREEN

Date: 7:30 pm | Thursday, October 4, 2018
Location: Room 120, CAED
(College of Architecture and Environmental Design, 132 S Lincoln St, Kent, OH 44240)
A recipient of awards and grants from the Academy of American Poets and the Cabin Literary Center, Michael McKee Green is a 2018 artist in residence at the Boise Public Library at Bown Crossing. Poems of his appear in journals such as Michigan Quarterly Review, Tagvverk and Fog Machine, and his poem "In Remit" won the Burnam Poetry Scholarship (Judge, Ed Skoog). Currently, he is an MFA candidate at Boise State University, where he sits on Ahsahta Press’ editorial board and teaches creative writing.
Khaled Mattawa was born in Benghazi, Libya, in 1964 and immigrated to the United States in his teens. His collections of poetry include Tocqueville (New Issues, 2010), Amorisco (Ausable, 2008), Zodiac of Echoes (Ausable, 2003), and Ismailia Eclipse (Sheep Meadow Press, 1995). He is also the author of Mahmoud Darwish: The Poet’s Art and His Nation (Syracuse University Press, 2014). Mattawa has also translated many volumes of contemporary Arabic poetry and coedited two anthologies of Arab American literature. Mattawa is the 2010 recipient of the Academy of American Poets Fellowship. He has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a translation grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Alfred Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, the PEN American Center Poetry Translation Prize, three Pushcart Prizes, and a MacArthur Fellowship. In 2014, Mattawa was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Currently, Mattawa teaches in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.


POETS + PAINTERS

Date: 6:00 - 8:30 pm | Friday, October 19, 2018
Location: Group Ten Gallery (201 E Erie St, Kent, OH 44240)
A collaboration of words and art between the artists of the Group Ten Gallery and the Wick Poetry Center.

CELEBRATING OUR OWN + OPEN MIC POETRY NIGHT

Date: 7:30 pm | Wednesday, October 24, 2018
Location: Room 306 ABC, Kent Student Center
Come to celebrate poetry with us by sharing your poems and discovering the new voices around you.

WORLD POETRY READING

Date: 7:30 pm | Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Location: Room 120, CAED (College of Architecture and Environmental Design, 132 S Lincoln St, Kent, OH 44240)
Kent State international students, staff and faculty members from different countries will share poems they love from their own cultures facilitating a global conversation through the intimate and inclusive voice of poetry.

TRAVELING STANZAS INTERACTIVE EXHIBIT

Date: January 24-February 24, 2019
Location: Taylor Hall
The 2018-2019 school year marks the 10th anniversary of our Traveling Stanzas project. What began as a collaboration between Kent State University’s Wick Poetry Center and Professor Valora Renicker’s Visual Communication Design students has evolved into a leading international poetry exhibit pioneering state-of-the-art digital tools. With Traveling Stanzas, the Wick Poetry Center is at the forefront of a national movement to pair technology with art as a means to increase access to creative expression, encouraging new voices in poetry and facilitating meaningful conversations in communities around the world. This year we are excited to feature the following Traveling Stanzas projects 

GEORGE BILGERE POETRY READING — CO-SPONSORED BY NEOMFA

Date: 7:30 pm | Tuesday, February 19, 2019
Location: Room 306 ABC, Kent Student Center
George Bilgere's seventh collection of poetry, Blood Pages, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 2018. He has given readings for the Library of Congress, the 92nd Street Y in New York, A Prairie Home Companion, and at schools and literary venues all over the country. He has received a Pushcart Prize, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council, the Midland Authors Prize, the May Swenson Poetry Prize, and the Fulbright Foundation. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has called Bilgere's work "a welcome breath of fresh air in the house of American poetry." He teaches at John Carroll University in Cleveland.

KATE DANIELS POETRY READING— SPONSORED BY RALPH AND JUDY KLETZIEN

Date: 7:30 pm | Thursday, April 18, 2019
Location: Room 310, Kent Student Center
Kate Daniels was born in Richmond, Virginia. The first in her family to graduate from college, Daniels earned a BA and an MA from the University of Virginia and an MFA from Columbia University. She converted to Catholicism as an adult, and her often lengthy, narrative poems engage engages themes of working-class experience, family, trauma, racism, and Southern culture. Daniels has won the Hanes Award for Poetry from the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a Pushcart Prize, the Louisiana Literature Prize for Poetry, the James Dickey Prize, the Crazyhorse Prize for Poetry, and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation and Harvard University's Bunting Institute. Her work has been widely anthologized, including in Best American Poetry. She has taught at Bennington College, Louisiana State University, the University of Virginia, and Wake Forest University. Currently, she is a professor of English and Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University.

17TH ANNUAL GIVING VOICE

Date: 6:30 pm | Thursday, May 2, 2019
Location: Ballroom, Kent Student Center
The 17th annual performance of Giving Voice features local students (grades 3-12), Kent State University undergraduate students and international scholars performing original poetry. All material is created in Wick outreach programs, including workshops led by Kent State University undergraduates enrolled in the service-learning course “Teaching Poetry in the Schools.”

All events are free and open to the public.
We hope to see you at the readings!
   In peace and poetry,
   
   David Hassler
   Director
   Wick Poetry Center

Cited...

The poet doesn't invent. He listens. ~Jean Cocteau