2022-23 Grant Recipients
Nature Links Maine
(dis)Ability Slam Poetry
Nature Links Maine offers nature-based continuing education opportunities for adults with disabilities. The (dis)Ability Slam Poetry project will allow participants to explore poets who have used their art as a platform for raising awareness around issues of identity and social justice. It will also provide a platform for the participants' unique voices and stories to be heard.
Copper Canyon Press
Poetry Translation
The Foundation supports Tomoyuki Endo and Forrest Gander's translation of Shuri Kido's Names and Rivers. Kido is one of Japan's most influential contemporary poets whose work draws influence from Japanese culture and European Modernism. There is no better translation team than Endo and Gander to bring Kido's voice to English readers, while preserving the integrity of his poetry's defining characteristics and of the Japanese language.
Poetry Pollinators
Developing the Poetry Audience
This project will establish one to four permanent native bee pollinator houses along the Santa Fe River. Each bee house will integrate a panel for one poem that will be changed out seasonally and a panel for educational/project information. The permanently installed bee houses will be commissioned from local artists in a juried selection process. This dynamic public eco-poetry project will engage the talent of local poets and artists for educational purposes and for the benefit of our native ecosystem.
Prison Writes Initiative
The Prison Writes Initiative is Mississippi’s only liberal arts based educational program for inmates in 13 prisons across the state. Their programs have served all sectors of the Mississippi inmate population: men, women, youth, the elderly and the disabled. After initial support of Poetry Workshops in seven facilities in the Mississippi Delta last year, this year the Foundation will increase it's support to include programming on Death Row and adjacent long-term segregation units at Parchman Farm, Mississippi's largest prison.
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.
New Mexico School of the Arts
The Witter Bynner Poetry Series at NMSA
The Foundation supports a poetry series that will bring poets to the School's Creative Writing and Literature Program throughout the academic year for readings and master classes. The program will be a fully curated poetry series that will benefit the entire NMSA student body as it will be a cross disciplinary course. In addition, NMSA will create the Witter Bynner Poetry library within their larger library.
Reel Fathers
Poetry Outreach - Identity in Ink
Identity in Ink uses poetry as a dynamic catalyst to immerse high school students in a process of self-reflection, dialogue, and creative expression through poetic writing. Special attention is paid to the role played by family, father and a student's own volition. In 2022-2023, Reel Fathers will offer its programming at Capital High, Santa Fe High and Monte del Sol Charter School.
Warehouse 508
ABQ Unidos Slam Poetry Project
ABQ Unidos Slam Poetry Project sends poets from the Albuquerque poetry scene into schools and community centers to teach young people how to express their feelings, emotions, beliefs and stories using the art of writing poetry and the spoken word. The Foundation funds poets in the in-school program from September through April. In addition, the Foundation is supporting a workshop for youth to compete in the Green Chile Invitational Youth Poetry Slam in Albuquerque and a team to compete in the National Brave New Voices competition.
The Center for Contemporary Arts
Poetry Project
The CCA Poetry Project will identify and spotlight both established and emerging poets with input from local poets, writers and readers. CCA will connect their audience of more than 75,000 people a year with poets and poetry showcased in the cinema and gallery. CCA will also seek to work with institutional partners, including schools, not-for-profit organizations, bookstores and other entities that will help expand the program's impact.
Santa Fe Girls School
Poetry Workshops
The Foundation funds a Poet-in-Residence program at the Santa Fe Girl’s School. The school and its students have published 18 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.
ArtWorks
Poetry in Schools
Artworks is a program of Partners in Education Foundation for the Santa Fe Public Schools. Since 2013, Artworks has reached over 16,000 students and 400 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.
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.
