Pocket Full of Poems
Poem in Your Pocket Day celebrates all things poetry at Kenyon on Thursday.
The day is sponsored by the Academy of American Poets as part of National Poetry Month and is organized here by student associates and interns at the Kenyon Review.
Students and faculty will hang clotheslines and drape them with hundreds of poems along Middle Path, in the Olin Library, in Peirce Hall and in the academic buildings. With enough poetry for every person on campus, the organizers hope that all of the poems will be plucked, read and tucked away in someone's pocket.
Kenyon Review intern Gillian Gualtieri '12 of Westerville, Ohio, said Poem in Your Pocket Day is "a quirky way to increase the number of poetry readers and celebrate poems on campus in a fun and accessible way." Poem in Your Pocket Day will also honor the poetry created right here on campus. One of the clotheslines will be designated for poetry written by students, faculty and community members.
Along with the hanging poems, Kenyon Review associates have been preparing buttons, T-shirts and events for the day. Staged readings along Middle Path and poetry telegrams for purchase during Peirce Hall lunch hours will add a lyric touch to the campus.
The day's events will close with readings by poets Terrance Hayes, professor of creative writing at Carnegie Mellon University, and Yona Harvey, professor of English at Carnegie Mellon. Hayes won the 2010 National Book Award for Poetry for Lighthead. Hayes and Harvey, who are married, will read in the Finn House Cheever Room at 4:00 p.m.
Encouraging the community to "empty their pockets of pennies and fill them with poems," Poem in Your Pocket Day will donate all proceeds to Food for the Hungry of Knox County.
To learn more, contact Gualitieri at gualtierig@kenyon.edu.
By Cate Flanagan '11