About Poetry Paths
Imagine a poem stitched into a quilt that is hung in the window of the Lancaster Quilt Museum near Central Market, or an automated auditory poem activated by passersby while the Pennsylvania College of Art & Design glows in the growing dusk. Imagine poems inscribed on and in large-scale sculpture as well as custom sidewalk inserts you can follow across the city.
Poetry Paths, a poetry and public art project produced by the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House at Franklin & Marshall College with support from the City of Lancaster’s Office of Public Works, will incorporate the written word into the Lancaster streetscape using sculpture, pavement inserts, and blank urban canvases such as brick warehouse walls, stoops, and store fronts. Related programming brings poets into the City’s public schools and community centers to lead writing workshops with Lancaster schoolchildren and residents. Poetry Paths was founded in 2009 with a substantial grant from the Lancaster County Community Foundation with additional support from Franklin & Marshall College.
Poetry Paths on the Street
From 2010 through 2012, Poetry Paths will commission and install two- and three-dimensional visual art that features commissioned poems by eminent poets and texts by local writers including children throughout the City of Lancaster. The “sites” on the Paths will include five unique, stand-alone pieces of public art that incorporate poetry texts. These commissioned pieces of public art placed in the center and four quadrants of the city—tentatively planned for the Amtrak Station, Penn Square downtown, the Franklin & Marshall campus, and two other sites yet to be selected—will anchor the project. Incorporating and connecting these foundational installations will be a series of repeating, continuous pavement inserts or stands specifically designed to display poems, as well as urban canvases such as brick warehouse walls and store fronts, that wind the Paths throughout the city from downtown into the diverse neighborhoods. Featured poems, penned by both famous poets and Lancaster residents in English and other languages, will focus on city living, Lancaster history, life among other people, and other topical subjects associated with this place and its dwellers.
By the spring of 2012, visitors to Lancaster, virtual tourists, and city residents will be able to use a downloadable map or a virtual tour available on their cell phones to follow the trails of words throughout the City. In person and online, curious readers who embark down Poetry Paths will witness how poetry's words in public spaces can seed new perspectives, make seams where before there were empty spaces or divisive boundaries, and create a living song within, about, and for the City of Lancaster.
Poetry Paths in the Schools and Community
In addition to creating a public art project throughout the City, Poetry Paths has begun producing literary events and related programming in Lancaster City. During the 2009-2010 school year, Poetry Paths’s Poet in the Schools Barbara Strasko, Lancaster County’s Poet Laureate, will lead poetry workshops for school children at five public elementary schools. (As of December 2009, Barbara has already led workshops in Ross Elementary School on Queen Street, Fulton Elementary School on Orange Street, and Buchanan Elementary School on South West End Avenue.)
Poetry Paths poets will also lead writing workshops in four local community centers and host literary events a few times each year in different locations throughout the City.
Over the years, Poetry Paths will continue to develop innovative programming around the Paths to bring new voices to the City and increase our residents’ ongoing access to the visual and literary arts.
Our funders
Poetry Paths is envisioned by the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House of Franklin & Marshall College, funded by the Lancaster County Community Foundation and Franklin & Marshall College, and produced by the Writers House with support from the City of Lancaster Public Works Department and the Office of the Mayor.
Our staff and advisory committee
Poetry Paths Staff
Kerry Sherin Wright
Founder and Executive Director
Kerry is the founding Director of the Philadelphia Alumni Writers House at Franklin & Marshall College and an adjunct assistant professor in the English department. Before joining Franklin & Marshall in 2003, Wright served for six years as the first Director of the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Wright has a PhD in English literature from Temple University, and she received her Masters in creative writing from Hollins College and her Bachelors in religious studies from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a writer of both scholarly and creative prose. Kerry previously orchestrated several successful public poetry projects in Philadelphia, including the installation of a magnetic poetry wall in West Philadelphia and a continuing partnership between the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Kelly Writers House at University of Pennsylvania in which city poets publish poems on topical events in the commentary pages of the newspaper. Wright was recognized upon her departure from the Kelly Writers House at Penn with the creation of The Kerry Sherin Wright Prize, an annual award that supports an event or project that "best captures" her spirit of "aesthetic capaciousness and literary communitarianism." She serves on the boards of the James Street Improvement District and the Pennsylvania College of Art and Design’s Public Art Advisory Committee. She lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with her husband Scott and their son Skyler.
Tashya Leaman Dalen
Program Coordinator
Prior to joining Poetry Paths, Tashya Leaman Dalen worked as a landscape architect through leading planning and architectural firms in New York City and her freelance practice in Harrisburg, PA. She also has led several successful community design projects through her work with Harrisburg’s Community Action Commission. Most recently, Tashya received the Harrisburg Mayor’s Award for adopting a vacant lot from the city and guiding youth in an after-school program in designing and constructing a public park. The space is now used for community performances, including theater, dance, and the spoken word. An adjunct professor in landscape architecture at Messiah College and Philadelphia University, Tashya has a Masters in Landscape Architecture from Cornell University and a Bachelors degree in History from Messiah College. As a designer, her approach has been to create distinctive senses of place that bring people, art and nature into a closer relationship. She speaks Spanish and, with her husband Craig, has led trips for Messiah College students to Costa Rica. Tashya grew up in Lancaster County and currently lives in Harrisburg, PA with her husband.
Barbara Strasko
Poet in the Schools 2009-2010
Barbara Buckman Strasko is the Poet Laureate of Lancaster County, appointed by The Lancaster Literary Guild. In 2009, she was named Teacher of the Year by River of Words, an International Environmental Poetry & Art Contest for Youth. For many years, she has been a teacher, counselor and literacy coach in the School District of Lancaster. Many of her students have been winners in the River of Words Contest and received their awards at the Library of Congress. Barbara was chosen as one of “The Best New Poets of 2006.” Her poems have appeared in: The Best New Poets of 2006, Rhino, Tar River Poetry Review, Brilliant Corners, Ninth Letter, and Nimrod. Her chapbook On the Edge of a Delicate Day was published by Pudding House Press in 2007.
As a poet-educator, I use the language of poetry to promote sensitivity, self-expression and healing. Poetry teaches us to observe closely, to appreciate beauty and to further understand human emotions. I see a poem as a moment of change, and think the writing of poetry is a powerful way to shift our perceptions of ourselves and the world. I believe that poetry can be used as an act of translation, connecting unlike individuals and cultures.
– Barbara Strasko
Erin Hillmar ‘10
Franklin & Marshall College student intern: Designer
With additional support from Franklin & Marshall College staff members:
Dulcey Antonucci
Director, Media Relations, College Communications
Ellen Brown
Assistant Director, Writers House
Srirupa Dasgupta
Director of Web Content, College Communications
Janice Mansur
House Coordinator, Writers House
John Romanski
Director of Web Services, Information Technology Services
Ryan Sauder
Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations, Development
Poetry Paths Advisory Committee
The staff is supported by an Advisory Committee charged with representing the diversity and interests of Lancaster’s residents throughout the project. Members include:
Lisa Riggs
President, James Street Improvement District
Mary Colleen Heil
President, Pennsylvania College of Art & Design
Leslie Fordham
Public Art Manager, City of Lancaster
Camille Hopkins
Principal, Ross Elementary School
