I thought the list members might like to hear about his.
-------------------

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE     Media Contact: Michael Evans-Smith, 303-433-4936

October 11, 2000                                                    or
Ghada Elturk, 303-441-4941

WORDS OF POETS PAST AND PRESENT ETCHED IN STONE PATH

"Poets Way" Dedication October 11 at Boulder Public Library

BOULDER--The unveiling of Poets Way, a walkway with the words of some of
the world's great poets located at the Boulder Public Library's south
entryway was held on Wednesday, October 11, 2000, at 11:30 a.m., when the
first four of fifty engraved sandstones were revealed.  Related events took
place at the Main Library auditorium from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., including video
screening, poetry reading, dance, music, and much more.  A reception
followed.  The event was free and open to the public.

The sandstones have been engraved, by a process of photo-stenciled
precision sandblasting by Great Pane Glass Works, Inc., whose partial
client list includes the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc.; Carnegie
Hall, New York City; Mountain Bell-Denver, Executive Offices; Denver Center
for the Performing Arts; and the Tabor Center, Denver.

"I regard the Poet as a sentinel warning us against the approach of enemies
called Bigotry, Lethargy, Intolerance, Ignorance, Inertia, and other
members of that brood." -- Gandhi

Project coordinator Michael Evans-Smith said, "We hope that Poets Way will
rekindle in those who see it the flame of the imagination.  The voices and
the footprints of time will be engraved in the sandstones that visitors
will walk upon.  It will mirror the personalities of poets and will
encourage viewers to understand how social, political, and religious issues
impact our perception and understanding."

The project includes a Teachers' Guide, which illuminates poetry's creative
processes and diverse range.  It is intended to show that poetry can serve
both as a pathway to a clearer vision and a detour from situations that
tend to propagate stereotypes.  As the Teachers' Guide develops, it will
include each poet's biography and the full text of each selected poem in
English, its original language, and in Braille.  There also will be a
reference guide to the major events in the lives of the poets, the key
personalities who shaped their works and those artists and writers who have
been influenced by them.

Michael Evans-Smith notes, "It is our hope that Poets Way inscriptions and
accompanying Teachers' Guide will contribute to a poetic revival as their
readers rediscover poetry's timeless message.  Poetry matters."

"What the soul does for the body is what the artist does for the people."
--Gabriela Mistral

Evans-Smith continued, "Whether you love poetry or have never even been
exposed to it, you can still come to Poets Way and leave with a new
perspective.  Poets Way takes a comprehensive, multiethnic approach across
the spectrum of poetry.  Poets know that reality is a context made up of
moods or recollections joined by chance or design, sets of associations
grown over the years, and are often people who have suffered under
oppression or written from their own personal experience in secrecy or
beneath a willow tree, from a prison cell or beside a creek.

". . . poetry contains both the possibility of a revolutionary morality and
what appears to contradict it." -- Jean Genet

The Poets Way and Teachers' Guide project organizers, supporters, and
volunteers include:

Ghada Elturk, Boulder Public Library Community and Cultural Outreach

Daniél Escalante

The Poets Way Advisory Committee: Mandy F. Yick, Mercia de Reipurth, Sara

Elturk, Rachel Harding, Yunn Pann, and Jane Golden

Robert Carl Cohen, PEN-Colorado Chapter President

Lorajean Current, Boulder Council for International Visitors

Naomi Horii, Many Mountains Moving

Gandhi-Hammer-King Center

Eugene Kim, Duft, Graziano, and Forest, P.C.

Daniel Minter

Ray Ramirez, Native American Rights Fund

Poets Way is dedicated to those who have challenged and helped reshape the
prevailing expectations of people everywhere, and especially to the wisdom
of those poets who live and work in relative isolation.

"The poems are in the scars, and in what I recall of all this, when my
hands are too battered to do it anymore." -- Linda Hasselstrom

Poets Way and the Teachers' Guide are funded by the Boulder Arts
Commission. For more information contact Ghada Elturk, Cultural Outreach
Librarian at the Boulder Public Library, at
mailto:[log in to unmask] or by calling (303) 441-4941.



%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%