Community
The Poetry Initiative partners with community organizations to bring poetry to the larger South Carolina Public. These partnerships help pool resources to bring poets closer to the community. Many institutions and organizations have existing programs that celebrate the poetic arts in the state.
The Poetry Initiative brings to these partnerships extensive experience in programming, connections with poets and a galvanizing promotional force that has allowed us to ally with museums, libraries, business and community arts organizations to connect poets and the general public in creative and mutually beneficial ways.
All our partnerships are designed around the needs and mandates of our partners.
The Frisson Project
PARTNERSHIPS WITH MUSEUMS
Frisson seeks to establish collaborations between Art Museums
and Galleries and the Poetry Initiative to celebrate the creative frisson
that can come
from the meeting of the two genres of the arts. Frisson seeks to generate
a wide range of audience that will embrace and appreciate the Museum’s
exceptional display of art. Frisson creates a new and dynamic audience
for Museums and poets alike and seeks to find innovative ways to meet the
objectives
of the museums in their outreach work....more
Partnerships with Libraries
The Poetry Initiative recognizes that one of the most important venues for the promotion of poetry is the library. The library is the site for learning and for the pleasures of reading. The library has become a central place for the community to meet to talk about books. But the library is also that quiet place where people can come to discover in silence and isolation, the richness of the poetic arts. Librarians are lovers of books and librarians love to turn people on to reading.
Workshops
The Poetry Initiative sponsors and organizes a series of workshops for poets that are designed to meet the specific needs of various groups in the community. These workshops include:
- Specialist workshops like the First Book Project.
- The Women's Shelter Workshops series.
- The Gay and Lesbian Workshop series.
- Workshops series with the African
American Writers Alliance.
- The First Book Project
- Click here for poems and pictures from the 2008 children's workshop:
Playing with Words and Nature: A Children's Celebration of Spring
Other workshops open to the general public will be announced on the web site.
Poets on the Job
The Poetry Initiative will conduct Poetry Residences with several businesses, government agencies and corporations in the region. These residencies will be modeled on the many poetry residences conducted by Poetry Societies around the world.
A poet will be assigned to a business (advertising agency, bank, post office, the legislature, the museum, textile factory, library, restaurant, pool hall, mall etc.) where they will be "in residence" for a few weeks and where they will learn more about the kind of work that is done in these places, but also, where they will write poems based on their experience there. The poems will then be presented at a reading at the venue. They will also conduct two or three workshops with the staff in these places who might be willing to participate.
With a high media profile for these activities, this series could grant significant positive publicity for many of these businesses. The Residencies will be sponsored by the businesses, but administered by the Poetry Initiative. Each artist will receive a fellowship of $1,500.00 for each two-week residency....more
© 2003.University of South Carolina.
