Kent State University and the Wick Poetry Center present the 11th annual Giving Voice performance, which features area students (grades 3–12), senior citizens, veterans, medical care providers, and patients from area hospitals, performing original poetry with guest musician Hal Walker.
The Giving Voice performance will take place on Monday, April 23 at 6 p.m. in the Kent State Student Center Ballroom.
The performance will showcase material created in Wick outreach programs, including workshops led by Kent State University undergraduates enrolled in the course “Teaching Poetry in the Schools.”
“Giving Voice is an opportunity for poets (from 8 years old to 90 years old) to share the miraculous moments that have happened between their paper and pen, and to literally Give Voice to the poems they have been writing,” says Wick Poetry Center’s Program and Outreach Coordinator Nicole Robinson.
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This diverse, multi-generational performance helps Kent State bridge a connection with the community, local schools and senior centers. It draws from community-based participation, and specifically strives to promote everyday voices in northeastern Ohio.
“This year Giving Voice will literally cause the audience to gasp as they listen to the wisdom and truths that our outreach participants share through their poems,” says Robinson. “Kent State student Leah Wettereau, who taught in 4th and 12th grade classrooms, wrote about her experience, and I am positive it will speak to the Giving Voice performance: ‘You will feel the shift, suddenly, as the air becomes electric.’”
This year the students’ reading will be accompanied by local Kent musician, Hal Walker, who will play a variety of instruments and sing with the children between readings of poems. Guests are encouraged to bring friends and families to the event, which is free and open to the public.
More information is available at www.kent.edu/wick or by calling the Wick Poetry Center at 330-672-2067.