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David Hassler; dhassle1@kent.edu; 330-672-1769; www.growingseason.net
As the Program and Outreach Director for the Wick Poetry Center since 2004, I feel lucky to have a job that I love, one that gives me an opportunity to work with students of all ages, from 8 year-olds to 88 year-olds, and to engage in the serious play of poetry!
I first got my start by taking Maggie Anderson's poetry workshop in 1990 and later won the Wick Ohio chapbook contest in 1993 for my chapbook, Sabishi: poems from japan. After graduating from Bowling Green State University with an MFA in poetry in 1995, the Ohio Arts Council hired me to be a poet-in-the-schools. For ten years I drove around Ohio teaching poetry in classrooms, grades k-12, senior centers, and community centers, learning as I went along, and sometimes falling flat on my face! In 1999 Maggie Anderson asked me to begin developing an outreach program for the Wick Poetry Center and in 2004 that position became a full-time, permanent position.
I feel like the Wick Poetry Center, and all of its programs, is a place of grace, certainly a place where I first began to find my own voice. Now the Wick Poetry Center is celebrating 25 years of encouraging new voices!
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