Poetry is larger than just printed collections. Learn about fresh ways that poetry is springing out of classrooms and books into the world around us and the poets and groups making that happen in Northeast Ohio and nationwide. David Hassler of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State will discuss their interactive Traveling Stanzas project; David Wilson of LAND Studio will share the ways they’ve incorporated poetry into their public art projects around Cleveland; and Cleveland poets D.L. Ware and Mimi Plevin-Foust will show the innovative ways they are filling their neighborhoods with poems. Come away with fresh inspiration and ideas for your poems and communities.
David Hassler directs the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University. Since 2009 the Wick Poetry Center’s Traveling Stanzas community arts project has brought interactive poetry exhibits and public art installations, workshops and digital creative writing tools to everyday people in Northeast Ohio and nationwide. In 2019, Kent State University Press published a Traveling Stanzas retrospective entitled Speak a Powerful Magic: Ten Years of the Traveling Stanzas Poetry Project. Visit www.travelingstanzas.com.
D.L. Ware is a veteran, social worker, and Buckeye neighborhood poet who created and facilitates Veterans' Voice. A 2019 Cleveland Plain Dealer City Champion, Ware’s poetry is featured in murals and embossed in the ground in the Love Lunes Over Buckeye project. His Ode to Lake Erie is also embossed in the ground in partnership with LAND Studio and the Northeast Ohio Sewer District.
David Wilson has helped LAND Studio manage public art installations, cultural programs, and civic space development projects across Cleveland which has been their mission for over 30 years. Their project Love Lunes Over Buckeye married Damien Ware’s poetry with design and programs to convey a message of love, hope, and inspiration through neighborhood togetherness.
Mimi Plevin-Foust created Poetry Rx which offers poems in prescription vials as medicine for the soul [WARNING: MAY CAUSE FEELINGS OF JOY]. She won the Gordon Square Review Poetry Contest and has published poems and articles in numerous magazines including Carve, LearnVest/Forbes.com, and POZ.
