Grant Spotlight: National Council on the Arts Edition

May 20, 2013

by Maria Rosario Jackson

Waterfire in Providence

Waterfire in Providence, Rhode Island, is both a public art work and an event. Photo by Thomas Payne

We asked our National Council of the Arts members to share  some thoughts about projects from our recent round of grants that particularly resonated with him. Here’s what Maria Rosario Jackson had to say…

WaterFire Providence’s Livability Experiments: How do we enliven the places where we live? What makes us stop, smile and say WOW? What stirs our souls? How can we become more knowledgeable about what it takes to create vibrant places? The WaterFire Providence’s Livability Experiments project, without a doubt, will inform how we think about building communities that are awe-inspiring and that we proudly call home.

Koahnic Broadcast Corporation: Catalyzing and stimulating awareness, appreciation, and critical public discourse about Alaska’s native contemporary artists and their work is a brilliant effort to build on community assets and advance cultural vitality. Exploring the creative lives of native Alaskans—their passions, interpretations of the world, and unique points of view—will challenge thinking, spur interaction, and creativity, and enrich all involved.

Public Art Lab: I am thrilled to imagine what great new ideas will come from the collaborations of artists, scientists, and engineers in the public realm of St. Paul. Without a doubt these different perspectives brought together for public benefit will lead to new ways of thinking about challenges and opportunities in the public realm. Moments of synergy, collision of perspectives, collaboration, and imagination are vital to our exploration of what is possible!

Want to hear more NCA thoughts on recent grants? Here’s our post with David “Mas” Masumoto and Joan Israelite.

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Whose Idea Was That? Dallas Museum of Art presents “Downtown Artsy”

May 16, 2013

Dallas arts supporters Jennifer Karol and Catherine Rose

(l-r) Jennifer Karol and Catherine Rose, co-chairs of the 2013 Untitled: Art Ball to support the Dallas Museum of Art. Photo courtesy of Dallas Museum of Art

by Jennifer Karol and Catherine Rose

Untitled: Art Ball 2013 was the 48th annual Art Ball dinner and auction to support the Dallas Museum of Art’s (DMA) mission of engaging and educating the community. Held on April 13, 2013, and presented by the Dallas Museum of Art and The Headington Companies on behalf of The Joule Hotel & Retail, it raised $2.25 million, with funds benefiting the DMA for the museum’s programs, special exhibitions, and collection, and, as of this year, free general admission. In this inaugural “Whose Idea Was That?” post, we asked Untitled: Art Ball co-chairs Jennifer Karol and Catherine Rose to talk about the sponsor thank-you video they made, which you can see here.

As co-chairs of one of the DMA’s largest annual fundraisers, now honing in on its 50th anniversary, we knew we didn’t want to do traditional “B-roll” of sponsors to thank them for their support, but to credit them in an unforgettable way. We also knew that humor would be center-stage, and that we wanted a night filled with unpredictable and unexpected moments (two of the many “un” words we used to describe the event).

The idea for the video sparked last summer after watching the Opening Ceremony to the London Olympics when the Queen and “James Bond”(Daniel Craig) made a hilarious entrance into Olympic Stadium. This spoof caught everyone off guard, made us all laugh, and set a tone for the Summer Games. From that moment on, we both knew we wanted to do our own parody as a way to tell a story about the DMA and Dallas. We just weren’t quite sure how it would materialize.

Downtown Artsy came to be in a brainstorming session in mid-February with the producer Bob Hess when we decided that Downton Abbey was the perfect vehicle. People of all ages (i.e., Art Ball guests) watch the show. And even those who don’t watch still have some awareness of it because it’s such a current cultural phenomenon. It also allowed us to cast characters—from museum leadership to the city’s Mayor Mike Rawlings—to tell the fantastic story about the DMA’s return to free general admission and what that means for the city of Dallas. Art Ball proceeds will support free general admission for the community, and we wanted everyone to feel great about their contributions toward this vital initiative.

We worked up a storyline with Bob and brainstormed how to cleverly insert the most product placements possible for all of our generous sponsors. Bob wrote the script and we edited, edited, edited—telling a whole story that, in the end, was about five minutes long!

We filmed Downtown Artsy in the very swank penthouse of the nearby Joule Hotel from 3:00 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. on April 2. The hotel staff was beyond helpful—setting up the dining table with beautiful dinner place settings, and more. We had hair, we had makeup, and we had costumes (from Dallas Children’s Theater, Dallas Theater Center, and our own closets).

By 11:00 p.m., we were getting pretty silly. None of us are actors, so Bob and his team had their work cut out for them, and they were just fantastic. Bob would instruct, “Say this line just like this…,” and then the “actor” would repeat it verbatim. And Bob would coach and correct and cajole. Repeat, repeat, repeat—until he got a few takes he could work with.

Philanthropist, longtime DMA patron, and now scene-stealer Margaret McDermott was filmed separately over lunch the following day. She’s 101, has been a DMA trustee for over 50 years, and required only two takes, nailing her lines perfectly.

The following week was spent editing as well as filming the opening scenes, which were beautifully lit to truly capture that Downton Abbey feeling. We think the cameramen watched every single episode in preparation. They made the magic happen.

Hearing people laugh and clap at the premiere during Art Ball, and now seeing Downtown Artsy on YouTube and the BBC America website, has just been too much fun. It set a perfect tone at the beginning of the event, and you could feel people having a great time. But the most satisfaction came last week when a friend in New York City, who had not attended Art Ball, watched the YouTube clip and called us to share that she now knows every single sponsor for Art Ball. We worked really hard to pull it off—and it was so worth it!

Jennifer Karol is a Dallas-based philanthropist and longtime supporter of the Dallas arts community.
Catherine Rose, a Dallas native, has been a trustee of the Dallas Museum of Art since 2003.

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Art Works Podcast: Robert Ward

May 16, 2013

By Josephine Reed

Robert Ward. Photo by Robert Kolt

In this week’s podcast, we meet 2011 NEA Opera Honoree Robert Ward. When Ward passed away last April, the world of opera lost one of its most remarkable composers. However, Ward didn’t limit himself to composition: he spread his talents throughout the musical realm, working as a music educator, record executive, conductor, and even a military band director at various points in his career. A three-time Guggenheim Fellow, Ward composed eight operas, seven symphonies, three concerti, and numerous shorter works for orchestra. However, he is perhaps best-known for his operatic adaptation of Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, which featured Bernard Stambler as librettist. The opera, which premiered in 1961 at the New York City Opera, went on to win the 1962 Pulitzer Prize in Music as well as the New York Music Critics’ Circle Citation Award. In this clip, Ward recalls a scene in the beginning of Act III that Miller was never happy with, until he heard the opera. [1:53]

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Grant Spotlight: Half the Sky Movement: The Game

May 15, 3013

by Victoria Hutter

Maria Shriver at the Games for Change Pre-Launch of Half the Sky Movement: The Game

Former First Lady of California Maria Shriver was co-host of the Los Angeles launch party for the game on February 26, 2013. Photo by Getty Images, courtesy of Games for Change.

Meet Radhika, the heroine of Half the Sky Movement: The Game, a Facebook game that takes players on a journey of empowerment through opportunity. Players meet Radhika in her small village in India where they have their first chance to co-create solutions to significant problems facing many women around the world. In the course of the journey, Radhika meets other characters and travels through five countries before arriving at the podium of the United Nations.

Half the Sky Movement: The Game is led by Games for Change, a nonprofit that supports the creation of social impact games. Games for Change received a $75,000 Art Works grant from the NEA in 2012 to help develop and launch the game. (The NEA is among five other funders that provided support.) As NEA Media Arts Director Alyce Myatt noted, [Half the Sky] was one of the first games to be submitted [for NEA support] reflecting artistic excellence in graphic design: navigating the considerations and challenges of creating artfully rendered characters and environments along with well crafted storylines that successfully engage a general public. As with our other media grants, the Arts Endowment is committed to supporting media as art in addition to media about art.”

The game is part of a global initiative called Half the Sky Movement that raises money and awareness of women and girls living under difficult circumstances all over the globe. Author and columnist Nicholas Kristof and author Sheryl WuDunn started the movement through their humanitarian work that became a book, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide and then a PBS special.

Seven non-governmental organizations (NGOs) including the Fistula Foundation, Heifer International, and Room to Read are key collaborators. Their respective issues are explored in the book and define the quests upon which Radhika and game players embark.

Launched on March 4, 2013, the game has already garnered impressive statistics. As of this posting, there have been 623,500+ players, 1,781,000+ unique visits, an average of 9,000 players added daily, more than 144,000 book donations as a result of the game, and more than $88,875 donated for fistula surgeries, and a total of $261,225 in direct and sponsored donations.

As players progress they can make direct donations or accumulate points and move toward point thresholds that unlock real-world donations from the game’s sponsors, including the NGOs. Those donations include books and live-changing surgeries from sponsors such as Johnson & Johnson and the Pearson Foundation. In fact, Half the Sky Movement is the first game on Facebook with direct virtual to real-life donations and social actions contributed by players.

The NEA spoke with Games for Change Co-president Asi Burak about what it’s like to create a game that people all over the world can and want to play.

NEA: How did the idea to create a game around the book and the TV series begin?

ASI BURAK: The idea came from Nick and Sheryl. It was inspired by Nick’s encounter with Games for Change through our 2009 conference where he was a keynote speaker. At the time, MTV’s game, Darfur is Dying (created by Susana Ruiz), was gaining a lot of traction. Nick was writing about Darfur and the game showed him not only how many people can be reached through games but how you can reach beyond the converted with games. He said again and again, the game is not going to be as meaningful as the book. At the same time it can reach people who are not going to read the book. The idea that the game would be a gateway for people to get to know the Half the Sky Movement was at the top of our agenda all the time. It influenced the choice of Facebook as a platform. It influenced how we approached all of our decisions.

The reason Games for Change took on Half the Sky is that it was such a high profile opportunity that we said, let’s do this as a demonstration project. We can get together a coalition of funders and a coalition of partners and that’s what we did.

NEA: Aside from Darfur is Dying, were there other games that guided the development of Half the Sky?

BURAK: Definitely. First I’d like to say that Games for Change is not a [game development] studio. Think of us like the Sundance Institute. Our core mission is to make sure that more and higher quality games for change are created, and that the community shares knowledge. We also curate games and so we have around 100 on our website. People from all over the world create games to raise awareness of issues.

A good example is WeTopia. It is a Facebook game that we learned a lot from especially in regards to raising money. But unlike Half the Sky, WeTopia‘s content is disconnected from the issues it seeks to support in that you’re building a utopian city and through that you make donations but you don’t see any suffering. It’s a choice that they made. But we’re making a game based on a book and our game activities can’t ignore the fact that the book deals with very tough issues.

Darfur is Dying was very interesting because it was the first to guide players to take action outside the game—in that case it was sending letters. One of the most important things that we did in developing the game was to secure sponsors [that make donations when players hit certain point targets.] For us it was an opportunity to tell people, you have power, you can donate without spending money, and that generated much wider participation as a result. Read the rest of this entry »

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Art (Ed) Talk with Band Director Ted Rausch

May 13, 2013

by Elizabeth Miller

The US Capitol is in the background of a scene of people waving handheld American flags on Inauguration Day 2013

A view of the January 21, 2013 Inauguration Day festivities. Photo courtesy of Department of Defense.

“The arts are part of our everyday life, whether we realize it or not.” — Ted Rausch, Portsmouth High School Band Director

Band director Ted Rausch has his own philosophy when it comes to his high school marching band: no competition. Not only does Rhode Island’s Portsmouth High School band perform just for fun, Rausch ensures that his students never have to choose between marching band and their many other activities. His band is full of athletes, club members, and student leaders, and he likes it that way. But just because they don’t compete doesn’t mean they don’t get noticed. This past January, the marching band received an invitation to play in the Presidential Inaugural Parade in Washington, DC!

We had the opportunity to talk with Rausch about his own musical background, his path to becoming an arts educator, and some of the incredible opportunities his students have experienced through the high school marching band.

NEA: What do you remember as your earliest experience with the arts?

TED RAUSCH: Growing up as a child, my dad played clarinet and I would hear him play all the time. When I was in fourth grade, I started taking cello in school. I stayed in the band program all through high school and college. I was in sports, too. I played football in middle school and ran track, but I was always coming back to the arts, especially music.

NEA: What was your journey to becoming a music teacher?

RAUSCH: Well, I never really thought of myself as a teacher. I actually went to school to be a music therapist and studied psychology. When I was in college, I gave private music lessons to about 25 students and loved it. That kind of threw me into teaching, and I knew if I was going to be a teacher, it was going to be music. Music is something I just didn’t see myself not doing.

It wasn’t until after I graduated from college that I really started contemplating what I wanted to do. I decided to switch and got my teaching certificate and a Master of Arts in teaching. When I was in college, if you had told me that I would spend 15 years teaching at a high school doing marching band, I would never have believed it. And now I look back and I can’t see myself doing anything but what I am doing right now.

NEA: What do you think your students take away from playing in the high school marching band?

RAUSCH: I have my own philosophy, especially when it comes to marching band. I chose not to be a competitive marching band. Some marching bands only do competitions every weekend. I don’t do that, and I think my numbers are higher than normal because I don’t want to burn these kids out.

In Portsmouth, there are so many opportunities for kids to get involved. I don’t want to be a teacher that makes students choose band or basketball. So in my band, I have a lot of athletes, class advisors, and club advisors. One of the reasons kids are attracted to our band program is that we provide a lot of unique opportunities. We performed in the Presidential Inaugural Parade in Washington, D.C. We took a cruise to Bermuda with the band and chorus.

Each year, I take the marching band to perform at local elementary schools. When the marching band arrives, the younger kids come out to the parking lot. We let the kids play some of our instruments, they meet the high school students, and then we do a little parade around the school. That’s one of the highlights of my entire career. The elementary kids love it, and our high school students love it because they get to be mentors. When the elementary school kids grow and come to high school, they always say they remember when the band came down to the elementary school.

NEA: Can you talk about playing at President Obama’s second Inaugural Parade?

RAUSCH: Well, what really sunk in with the kids was that we didn’t seek this—we didn’t apply for it. Back in 1981, Portsmouth High School played in President Reagan’s Inaugural Parade. At the time, the music director applied for the Inaugural Parade, which it is something a lot of bands apply for and work toward. I remember getting the phone call right after Christmas saying that we had been invited to perform [at the 2013 parade]. I really thought it was a joke. In two weeks time, I had to submit all these credentials, but it was real.

NEA: How did that invitation to play in the Inaugural Parade come about?

RAUSCH: Well, that’s what I asked them. It turns out that we were noticed by parade staff based on a previous performance. Last year, we marched in the National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade in Washington [,DC]. At that parade, I guess we were noticed by Inaugural Parade officials.

It’s something I always tell the kids: you never know who is watching you perform or what type of an impact you are going to make. We had no idea that there would be an Inaugural Parade committee person watching us who would give that recommendation. The experience taught them to always be their best at any given time.

NEA: What do you think your students would say about the trip to DC?

RAUSCH: For a lot of the kids, especially the seniors, this was the highlight of their whole high school career. The kids knew that the last time Portsmouth performed at a Presidential Inaugural Parade was over 30 years ago. In our band room, we have the old 1981 Inaugural Parade plaque. When we got the invitation, I showed the kids the plaque from 1981 and told them here we are again in 2013. I think the kids got excited over what this meant for the school. Out of 160 students, only three were not able to go. Other than that, we were able take every single person and I’m proud of that.

NEA: As an arts educator, what are some of the things you think individuals in your field should be talking about?

RAUSCH: I would tell our fine art teachers to advocate for their own programs. I think each community and each school system is different. You have to know the nuances to foster an arts program and keep it going. I think a lot of these art programs come down to an arts teacher really pushing for programming that kids love and that adds value. Not a circus show for parents. You want to teach core musical elements, provide a good education, and have it be a fun and engaging learning environment for the kids.

The arts are such a value to any student going through any school system. I have three kids myself, and any time we go out to dinner, we bring a box of crayons and coloring paper. Because what do they do? They draw. The arts are so grounded in kids and that is something that we need to continue to foster.

Yet, I find it becomes a challenge to keep the school systems pushing this important stuff. The arts are such a huge part of who we are, and we don’t want to lose focus on that.

NEA: If you haven’t heard it already, at the NEA we say that “Art Works.” What does that phrase Art Works mean to you?

RAUSCH: My first response is, yes it does. The arts are part of our everyday life, whether we realize it or not. Music and art work every single day. It is part of our upbringing, it is something that makes us who we are. I think having arts in the school helps students to express themselves in ways that they can’t do during a math problem. It opens a lot of doors for so many people, and it gives them an outlet to be creative. The arts are such a foundation for who we are as individuals. They are one of the first things taken for granted, but they simply do work. Without art, we would not be the people we are.

Interested in reading more arts education stories? Keep an eye out for our next NEA Arts issue—Engaged and Empowered: The Importance of Arts Education—which goes live at arts.gov on June 4.

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The (Photography) Ambassadors

May 12, 2013

by Guiomar Ochoa

"Fourth of July" by photographer Tina Barney

TINA BARNEY (American, 1945), ‘Fourth of July,’ 1999, C-print, 30 x 44 inches. Gift of the artist and Janet Borden, Inc., New York. Donated by FAPE to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India.

Last month, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, hosted a panel discussion, in collaboration with the Foundation for Art and Preservation in Embassies(FAPE), titled Inside Photography: The Role of Art in Diplomacy.

FAPE is the principal non-profit organization that provides permanent works of American art for U.S. embassies worldwide. They do this through site-specific commissions, an original print collection, preservation projects and other arts initiatives. Founded in 1986, by spouses of former U.S. Ambassadors as well as the director of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Art in Embassies, FAPE has contributed to the State Department’s mission of cultural diplomacy by teaming up with American artists whose works promote cross-cultural understanding within the international community. All artworks sited by FAPE are contributions gifted by some of the United States’ greatest artists and donors.

FAPE has placed art in more than 140 countries across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa, including embassies in Kabul, Afghanistan, Vienna, Austria, Beijing, China, and Bogota, Columbia, among many others.

The panel focused on FAPE’s newest venture—adding photography as part of its embassy exhibits. The Photography Collection was inaugurated with special editions by artists Tina Barney—who was on-hand for the panel—and William Wegman. Barney and Wegman unveiled their works to Secretary of State John Kerry at a dinner earlier this spring. Each year, the collection will grow to include a new edition by a great American photographer.

Barney was on-hand at the panel to discuss the edition of photographs she recently donated to FAPE while explaining the inspiration she finds when choosing subjects to shoot. Since 1975, Barney has been producing large-scale photographs of family and friends. Her opulent color prints have been exhibited and collected by major institutions around the world. One of her current projects, Small Towns, focuses on communal events that occur daily in towns across America. “The communal act of repeating events over and over, year after year, that develops into traditions, has always been the main attraction in whatever I seem to photograph,” Barney said. Her photograph Fourth of July was donated to the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. Read the rest of this entry »

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Inside the NEA: Intern’s Perspective

May 10, 2013

Text and image by Jamie McCrary

Photo of NEA Arts and The Namesake on Jamie McCrary's intern desk

As I look back on the past year, I can’t help but think of what a whirlwind it’s been. A constant balancing act between friends, school papers, work commitments, and internship deadlines, it’s hard to believe I’ve only been in DC since August—and even harder to believe my time with the NEA is coming to a close.

Interning with the public affairs office has helped me rediscover my first love: reading. Arts education initiatives The Big Read and Poetry Out Loud pulled me back to this passion, reminding me of the value of a rich piece of literature. I’ve discovered a new favorite author: Jhumpa Lahiri. Curious to investigate our newest Big Read book, I picked up her novel The Namesake. I couldn’t put it down. There’s something about Lahiri’s writing that resonates with me in a core, profound way. Her characters, their struggles, the haunting messages she weaves through her words—all of these things push me to question the world around me, and myself as a part of that world.

While I am definitely taking away a renewed love for literature, the deeper value of this internship lies in the incredible amount of knowledge I’ve gained. I have learned the inner workings of a professional public affairs department and how my skills and interests fit into the needs of the office. I am certainly walking away with a detailed understanding of how the agency functions. Most of all, though, I have learned just how inspiring and powerful art can be in people’s lives.

Through the interviews I’ve conducted and transcribed, I’ve had the opportunity to engage in some startlingly profound conversations. While everyone talks about something different, each conversation is connected through a common strain: the transformative power of the arts. For an article for the upcoming issue of NEA Arts, I spoke with artist, educator, and storyteller Monte Yellow Bird. Yellow Bird is an artist-in-residence at the Holter Museum of Art in Helena, Montana, and works with the Cultural Crossroads Program, an initiative that exposes school groups to multi-cultural arts experiences. As we spoke, Yellow Bird recounted stories from working with Cultural Crossroads, giving me a sense for the power arts education really holds. His passion and commitment to his work is inspiring, and reminded me of why I work in and advocate for the arts. Read the rest of this entry »

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Art Works Podcast: Terry Tempest Williams

May 9, 2013

By Josephine Reed

Book

Book cover courtesy of Picador

In this week’s podcast, we meet Terry Tempest Williams. Over the course of her 14 books, Williams has been celebrated for writing about the environment in poetic language that reads like a literary text. She’s been described by Donna Seaman in Booklist as an author who is, “Scientific in her exactitude…and rhapsodic in expression.” In her 1991 classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, for example, Williams interweaves a study about the devastation of bird-nesting areas with a memoir of her mother’s life, illness, and death from cancer. It’s a parallel of a natural disaster with one caused by man: the cancer that killed her mother claimed the lives of a number of women in Williams’s family, as well as many others who lived in the areas surrounding the nearby Nevada desert which, for over a decade, was a site for ongoing, above-ground nuclear testing.

When Williams’s mother lay dying, she told Terry that she had left her all of her journals, but made her promise not to look at them until after her death. What she found in those journals eventually led, some 35 years later, to a second memoir about her mother, When Women Were Birds: Fifty-Four Variations on Voice.

In this excerpt from the podcast, Williams reads from the beginning of the book, and talks about her initial response to her mother’s journals. [3:03]

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Meet Langston Ward, 2013 Poetry Out Loud National Champion

May 8, 2013

by Paulette Beete and Kristin Gecan

2013 POL National Champ Langston Ward with his trophy

2013 Poetry Out Loud National Champion Langston Ward. Photo by James Kegley

On April 30, 2013, after approximately nine months of competition and more than 375,000 competitors, Langston Ward of Spokane, Washington’s Meade High School took top honors as the 2013 Poetry Out Loud National Champion. This year, Ward, who was also Washington’s 2012 state champ, wowed the judges—and the crowd—with recitations of “The Gift” by Li-Young Lee, “A March in the Ranks Hard-Prest, and the Road Unknown” by Walt Whitman, and “The Bad Old Days” by Kenneth Rexroth. We teamed up with our colleagues at the Poetry Foundation to speak with the Harvard University-bound champ on the night of his win.

NEA: You’ve competed in Poetry Out Loud for several years. Why did you keep participating in the competition?

LANGSTON WARD: Mainly the poems that I was reading. I never read a lot of poetry before the competition but this was one of the best [things] I got from this…was reading great poetry. So, once I shared the first couple poems that I read and connected with, I had to do it again. And I found more of them.

The first poem that I really connected with was “I Am the People, the Mob” by Carl Sandburg. From then on, it was kind of an addiction.

POETRY FOUNDATION: What are some other poems you really like, or poets you like?

WARD: I’m a Carl Sanburg fan… [I also like] “Chicago,” which I read about a year following. Beyond that, though, Sam Green—who was our first Washington poet laureate—I was introduced to him at the state competition this year, and I was really drawn to his work.

NEA: How did you select your poems for this year?

WARD: When I select poems, every year I try to read as many of them as possible. Typically, I read the first couple of lines, and if I’m curious as to what’s going to come next, I’ll keep reading…. When they connect with me, it’s an instant, “I know this is the one. I know this is the one.”

POETRY FOUNDATION: Do you share poetry with your friends or family?

WARD: Not really. This has kind of encouraged me to get more open about poetry with other people. This is the only format that I’ve really opened up with sharing poetry.

NEA: What do you think is the most important thing you’ve gotten out of being part of the competition?

WARD: I really appreciate poetry as an art form now….To me, it’s the ideal form of writing and expression in writing…. Being able to form a connection with that is priceless.

NEA: If you weren’t competing tonight, who do you think you would have voted for, and why?

WARD: I would have voted for [Josae Martin of] the Virgin Islands. All of her poems were really [great,] but her first one, I was really moved by that— “The Bones of my Father.”

POETRY FOUNDATION: What would you tell students interested in Poetry Out Loud who haven’t yet participated?

WARD: Don’t write it off just because it’s poetry, or [because of] what you’ve heard about poetry, or as a theater thing. Give it a chance. There are over 700 poems in the database, and it’s impossible for you to not find something that you can connect with and you can relate to.

POETRY FOUNDATION: How long do you think these poems or your interest in poetry in general, will stay with you?

WARD: For the rest of my life. That’s a no-brainer for me. I still remember the poems I memorized as a sophomore, and last year’s, and obviously this year’s. Beyond that, I don’t think this is ever going to go away from me.

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Our Reading List Recommended by…You!

May 7, 2013

Dig by Sadie Wendell Mitchell, a drawing of a young woman reading on a chair with stacks of books at her feet and in the background

Dig by Sadie Wendell Mitchell. From Library of Congress collection.

Given that we’re super fans of reading here at the Arts Endowment, we’re always asking each other for book recommendations. We thought it was about time we asked all of you. So we did.

Here are the reading recs from fans of our Facebook page. Have something to add? Let us know in the comments.

Haitian, Haitian-American novels, Edwidge Danticat, Jacques Roumain, Jacques Stephen Alexis—because of the gut-numbing problems the country is facing, and the fact that the international community has failed to respond well despite that Haiti is and has been in the hearts of a huge amount of Americans since the earthquake. — Adolf A.

I’m enjoying Marina Gorbis’ new book The Nature of the Future. Full disclosure, I’m biased though, because it features a section on National Endowment for the Arts grantee, Global Lives Project  — David H.

Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd’s Good Prose (wonderful insights into the art and craft of writing); and Gretel Ehrlich’s Facing the Wave: A Journey in the Wake of the Tsunami (a beautifully written and moving account of resilience).— Maureen D.

The Last Seer and the Tomb of Enoch by Ashland Menshouse — Bryan A.

Currently, the Game of Thrones series and Emma by Jane Austen. — Lauren S.

Re-reading John Collier’s Fancies & Goodnights — August R.

Re-reading Bless Me, Última [by Rudolfo Anaya] for the umpteenth time. My organization is spearheading a RI Latinos Read project in Rhode Island. — Marta M.

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