Poetry in the Parks
"It's not what you look at that matters. It's what you see."
- Henry David Thoreau
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Poetry in the Parks is a public humanities project that began in 2019. Within each instillation, a national, state or local park is celebrated through the words of a poet . . . and a poem is celebrated through the beauty of a park.
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Housed on Instagram, the project's mission is to increase participants' abilities to see, to borrow Thoreau's words . . . that is, to increase their awareness of the sacred mystery, majesty and delight that is constantly revealing itself in the land communities to which we belong.
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A secondary and no less important goal is to make the serious delight of poetry accessible to people everywhere. Here are some of the ways we hope you will get involved:
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Following the success of the collaboration "I Sing the Body Electric," Poetry in the Parks is developing poetry films for two additional poems--" Joy Harjo's "Remember," and Billy Collins's "The Biography of a Cloud." We are seeking video and photo contributors for each of these projects, and welcome submissions from around the world.
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For more information on the project timeline and submission specifications, please visit our Current Open Collaborations page.
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Share Your Time and Talent
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Poetry in the Parks is a not-for-profit public humanities project dedicated to crafting stronger communities through artful attention. If you are a musician, poet, voice artist, videographer or photographer who has an interest in volunteering your time and talent, please contact us using the contact form on this page or via poetryintheparks@gmail.com.
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Adopt the Project Curriculum
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Poetry in the Parks welcomes the opportunity to work with parks that would like to develop poetry installations, and we are particularly eager to train park volunteers, educators and youth to develop their own Poetry in the Parks films.
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Park Administrators and Educators who are interested in finding out more about the project curriculum are invited to contact us using the contact form on this page or at poetryintheparks@gmail.com.