Kent State University
IN-49: Innovation C

https://www.kent.edu/sustainability/kent-cuyahoga-50
CONCRETE POETRY: CELEBRATING THE CUYAHOGA RIVER THROUGH POETRY AND DESIGN WITH WORKS THAT APPEAR ON CONCRETE WHEN WET: AND RIVER STANZAS POETRY BOOK

CONCRETE POETRY
How do we connect to the Cuyahoga River? The flowing water touches our emotions, our communities, our environment and our history. In the 50th anniversary year of the last Cuyahoga River fire, the Concrete Poetry project invited us to reconsider and reconnect to the river and its legacy. The 1969 fire occurred at a pivotal time and helped spark the environmental movement leading to protective legislation and the sustainability movement today.
The Office of Sustainability at Kent State University convened our talented partners at the Wick Poetry Center and the College of Visual Communication and Design to create the engaging pieces in this book. Like other Rainworks designs, the poems were applied on concrete sidewalks and pathways with biodegradable water-repellent spray. On a sunny day, the letters remained invisible. But as rainwater flowed through campus and downtown Kent to the Cuyahoga River, the designs were revealed to passersby, a visual representation of our connection to the river.
We celebrate with gratitude the legacy of renewal that sprang from the last Cuyahoga River fire and all those who contributed to it.

Melanie Kintner Knowles & Leah Graham
Office of Sustainability, Kent State University

Kent State’s Office of Sustainability convened partners to create the designs. The poems are from the Wick Poetry Center’s Cuyahoga River Stanzas. The designs are from Aoife Mooney and Sanda Katila’s typography students in the School of Visual Communication and Design. Additional designs share facts about the watershed. The images that appear on the ground are meant to bring a smile, give us pause or educate.

This project is a collaboration between the Office of Sustainability, the School of Visual Communication and Design and the Wick Poetry Center. Thank you to TechStyleLab for providing the stencils for the concrete designs. Designs are installed through the Kent State University Campus and downtown Kent, Ohio.

CONCRETE POETRY OPENING RECEPTION: TAYLOR HALL VCD GALLERY MARCH 7, 4-7 P.M.
AN EXHIBITION OF STUDENT WORK FROM SECTIONS OF INTRO TO TYPOGRAPHY, SPRING 2019
Exhibition on display from March 7-21 during Taylor Hall VCD Gallery Hours: Tuesday-Friday 11 a.m.-5 p. m.

An exhibition of student work from the School of Visual Communication Design's sections of Intro to Typography Spring 2019 classes. This show is a result of the collaboration between the School of Visual Communication Design, Wick Poetry Center and the Office of Sustainability. It is a celebration of Earth Month at Kent State and aims to promote awareness of the 50th anniversary of the burning of the Cuyahoga River.

RIVER STANZAS POETRY BOOK
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Cuyahoga River’s rebirth in June 2019, the Wick Poetry Center created a community arts project entitled River Stanzas: A Collective Dreaming of the Cuyahoga. With a major grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and in partnership with the Conservancy for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and Northeast Ohio schools, Wick Poetry Center’s outreach team, led by Charles Malone, began field trips and workshops in the summer of 2018—“river walks” and “river talks”— to bring the river to the city, and the people of the city to the river.

From Mohawk, the name Cuyahoga means "crooked river.” From Seneca, “place of the jawbone.” Through the powerful poems in this collection students of all ages listened to the river speak and gave voice to their own felt experience of the river – its value in our lives, its history, and our shared future. As stewards of the next generation, they rose to the challenge of conveying the many ways that the river sustains us and teaches us about our connection to the environment and our community.

Our collaboration with Kent State’s Office of Sustainability and talented Kent State design students, led by professors Aoife Mooney and Sanda Katila, truly expanded the reach of these poems. Many of these typographical designs were “published” on sidewalks and pathways throughout the city of Kent and on campus through an innovative “Concrete Poetry” project described in this book’s afterword. We are grateful to this rich interdisciplinary work, the vision and creative hands of so many talented people.

From the crisis of a burning river, we now have the opportunity to celebrate the success of our stewardship of the Cuyahoga, to showcase our community’s vibrancy through poetry, art, and design. May we all be inspired to dream and be thoughtful, creative stewards of the river for the next 50 years.

David Hassler
Director, Wick Poetry Center

Entered by Leah Graham 2/28/2020