2018-2019 Grant Recipients
The Wingspan Poetry Project
Developing the Poetry Audience
Initiated in 2013 by poet/educator Elizabeth Jacobson and offers weekly poetry classes at local shelters, offering the residents an opportunity to be creative and reflective in a safe and comfortable environment. The participants say that reading and writing poems helps them to unearth parts of themselves that are both stunning and tough to look at, and which endures on the page after we are gone. These intimate classes help to bring the participants closer in relationship to each other, forming stronger personal bonds, which we trust eases some of the trauma they are going through.
The Painting/Poetry Collective
Uses of Poetry
The Poem/Paintings 2018 is scheduled for exhibition in the fall of 2018 at the Santa Fe Center for Contemporary Arts. Santa Fe visual artist, Shelley Horton-Trippe, and Santa Fe Poet, Catherine Meng, formed the Painting/Poetry collective in 2015 with the shared goal of finding new ways to engage with poetry off the page. Working with twelve nationally recognized poets from around the country, Horton-Trippe will create a series of large-scale paintings and over fifty small-scale pieces in synesthetic response to each poet’s work.
Archipelago Books
Poetry Translation
Archipelago Books will publish Pan Tadeusz: The Last Foray in Lithuania by Adam Mickiewicz, translated by Bill Johnston. Considered one of the highest achievements in Polish poetry for the extraordinary beauty, simplicity, and precision of its language, this romantic national epic is engrained in Poland’s literary consciousness. It has influenced Polish literature like no other text.
Copper Canyon Press
Poetry Translation
Copper Canyon Press will publish Written in Exile: The Poetry of Liu Tsung-yuan, translated by Bill Porter. This will be one of the first English-language translations and one of the most comprehensive of Tsung-yuan, one of China’s greatest poets. The collection will be printed in a completely bilingual (English and Chinese) edition and include illuminating contextual notes by Bill Porter.
Manzano Mountain Art Council
Youth, Art, Music & Culture Outreach Project
The Manzano Mountain Art Council (MMAC) has served its community for over 20 years with consistent general arts, culture and education advocacy. The Youth, Art, Music & Culture Outreach Project strives to offer a safe, welcoming environment where youth are exposed to a variety of artistic mediums. MMAC has incorporated poetry writing workshops and spoken word performances into their programming.
VOX Press
Prison Writes Initiative
The Prison Writes Initiative is Mississippi’s only liberal arts based educational program for inmates. Their programs have served all sectors of the Mississippi inmate population: men, women, youth, the elderly and the disabled. The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry funds Poetry Workshops in seven facilities in the Mississippi Delta.
Voces de Libertad
Poetry Workshops
Voces de Libertad poetry workshops are held twice monthly at the Santa Fe County Youth Detention Center. The youth range in age from 13-18 and are mostly Hispanic, Native American, African American and Mexican. Many of the guest instructors are poets of color, some of whom faced difficult challenges in their youth. The instructors provide role models for the youth who embody success and positive cultural values.
Reel Fathers
Poetry Outreach - Fathers in Focus
Reel Fathers works with men, youth and families to promote a positive experience of fatherhood. Their Fathers in Focus Poetry Intensive is an outreach program that builds on highly successful program cycles for students at Santa Fe’s Capital High School. The program brings a dynamic combination of reflection, dialogue and writing/sharing of poetry on the theme of Father to youth in schools and communities throughout the region.
SOMOS
Taos Poet Laureate Program
The Society of the Muse of the Southwest (SOMOS) supports and nurtures the literary arts, both oral and written, honoring cultural diversity in the Southwest. SOMOS collaborated with the Town Council of Taos to appoint the inaugural Taos Poet Laureate in 2017 with funding from the Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry.
Telepoem Booth Organization
Audio Poetry - Collect Calls Project
The Telepoem Booth is a pluralistic, multi-sensory art experience that invites the public to visit a vintage 1970s phone booth, look up verse listings in the Telepoem Book and rotary dial a number on the phone to hear a modern or classic poem. The organization will collect recordings of new poems from New Mexico poets that will reflect the diversity of the region. The first Santa Fe Telepoem booth will open at the Center for Contemporary Arts.
Artworks
Poetry in Schools
Artworks is a program of Partners in Education Foundation for the Santa Fe Public Schools. In 2017, Artworks reached over 1,500 students and 60 teachers in 16 different local public schools. During the Poetry Experience, students attend readings by established poets and create their own poems that are meaningful to them. The readings and original poems by the students are related to a specific theme. Many of the students poems are included in a published anthology.
Santa Fe Girls School
Poetry Workshops
Joan Logghe, the third Poet Laureate of Santa Fe, conducts poetry workshops with the students at the Santa Fe Girl’s School. The school has embraced Joan and her participation as poet-in-residence. Joan and her students have published 17 volumes of poetry and artwork since the program was introduced in 2000. Poetry has the ability to empower the young women in the program and help them to find their voices at a time when social pressure is at its peak.
Forest Woods Media Productions
The Poet and the Poem celebrates its 42nd year on-air in February 2019. The Witter Bynner Foundation for Poetry supported trial national distribution in 1996. In 1997, the program moved from regional radio WPFW-FM in Washington, DC to the Library of Congress where the Foundation has supported the series since 1997, allowing the Encyclopedia of Broadcasting to name The Poet and the Poem the longest-running poetry program in US broadcast history. The series has recorded and archived all US Poets Laureate among its thousands of recordings.
Teatro Paraguas
Poetry and Theatre in Performance
Teatro Paraguas presents a variety of public presentations including the work of new playwrights and poetry open mic nights. The theatre was established in 2007 and provides a venue for alternative theatre and other performance art forms. Teatro Paraguas "Son De Domingo" events provide opportunities for poets and musicians to perform in an intimate setting on Sunday evenings. The theater is committed to working with teens and young people from both native Hispanic and immigrant families.
