The Wick Poetry Center is partnering with the Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park to conduct a Poetic Inventory of the park. Just as community members are able to contribute to the practice of vital science in the park through tracking plant and animal populations, such as annual songbird migrations, testing the waters of the Cuyahoga River, or listening to and counting the coyote calls at night, we believe our writing community can contribute to the ways in which we know this ecosystem.
Poets participating in the project will be given the name of a species to inspire their work. Through this process we will create a web of poetry that challenges and deepens our understanding of all the life in the valley. In the words of Eric Magrane who has conducted two of these inventories:
“These projects are about getting to know places through paying attention to one’s neighbors. Literary field guides and poetic inventories ask their contributors and their readers to (re)consider the more-than-human inhabitants of one’s home, of one’s region, and extended, of the biosphere at large.”
—Eric Magrane
We want this project to be inclusive of all writers who feel they have a connection to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We want to expand the ways in which writers often engage with the land. To that end, please share this call with other writers. We welcome submissions from writers of all backgrounds and identities, including BIPOC and LGBTQ+ writers. Additionally, we invite individuals interested in shaping and expanding these conversations to contact us.