“Community” serves as focus for upcoming events

Ponder the following quotation:

“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”  –  Kurt Vonnegut

This Vonnegut line is the focus of Indy’s theme for the One City, One Prompt program. The program is a series of hosted writing, performance, and community-building events across the country (and beyond), seeking to cultivate greater civility, deeper dialogue, and a unified sense of purpose. The Indianapolis branch of this program is sponsored by Brick Street Poetry, Transformative Language Arts Network, and the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, and aims to get Indy talking about community, using the aforementioned Kurt Vonnegut quote.

A variety of activities and events have been planned around this theme, including:

• Friday, Nov. 4, at 5:30 p.m. – Readings on “community” by Poets Laureate Bruce Dethlefsen from Wisconsin and Norbert Krapf from Indiana.

• Saturday, Nov. 5, at 10 a.m. – Public Discussion of Creating Community Through Words led by Joyce Brinkman.

Both events will be held at the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, 340 North Senate, Indianapolis, IN, 46204.

In addition to these events, Brick Street Poetry is inviting all poets to write poems in response to Vonnegut’s quotation. Poems are to be emailed by Dec. 1, 2011 to: kurtquote@brickstreetpoetry.org.  All poems submitted will be considered for publication in the Winter 2012 edition of the Tipton Poetry Journal.  One poem will be selected to receive $100 as the Editor’s Choice Award.

These Brick Street Poetry events are made possible through a grant from Indiana Humanities, with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.