April is National Poetry Month, and Johnson County Library invites you to explore how poetry shapes our culture.
Poetry Festival
Join the annual Poetry Festival on Saturday, April 4 from 1 to 4 p.m. at Central Resource Library in Overland Park for an afternoon of hands-on creativity and performance. The festival encourages you to play with language and see how words shift when shared.
Drop-in activities include sidewalk chalk at the entrance, zine making, games and blackout poetry in the Carmack Community Room. The Storytime Room offers a Poetry Play Lab and Sit and Read. Strang Park features a Walk and Read path and poetry journals at the shelter.
Performances run throughout the afternoon with The Jazz Storytellers from 1 to 2 p.m., a poetry set with Glenn North, Jordan Stempleman and Wyatt Townley from 2 to 3 p.m., and an open mic from 3 to 4 p.m. Workshops with Stempleman and Townley offer space to experiment with craft.
Poetry Walk
All April, stroll Strang Park at 9879 W. 88th Terrace to read poems paired with art. The outdoor Walk and Read path invites reflection and slows the pace so language can do its work.
Poetry Resources
The Library offers tools to develop your writing, connect with other poets and find inspiration. Explore open mics, prepare for the Writers Conference, revisit last year's sessions or submit to ongoing writing contests. The next open category deadline is April 30.
This year's Poetry Category winner, Micah Conkling, was recognized for “Refraction,” written for the theme Architecture of Home. Conkling, from the Kansas City area, holds an M.A. in English from West Virginia University, and his work has appeared in Steinbeck Review, Ruminate Magazine and Deep South Magazine.
Refraction
My youngest, 3, her fingers eternally sticky from smuggled scoops in the Nutella jar,
squeals from our bathroom and summons me to run up the stairs —
“Dad, hurry! It’s a rainbow!”
Late afternoon sunlight breaks through the transom window,
shines through the thick, glass shower door and
imprints a prism on a wall.
I could tell her what it is.
When passing through an angular, transparent object, light refracts and breaks into distinct colors, which forms the spectrum of ROYGBIV.
I could tell her what it is. But I’d be lying.
It’s magic, it’s a miracle, it is a rainbow.
We marvel. Touching the wall, manipulating bends, making shadows.
When she remembers this house, I don’t care so much
if she can describe the floorplan or furniture, or recall
the pale pink April blooms of our front-yard flowering dogwood.
She might forget (I will not) the thud she’d make leaping out of bed,
the pitter-patter of feet scuttling across the landing
to wake us up, sometimes peeling open our eyelids with chocolatey hands.
I want her to feel that there was light and color in every room.
“No, really,” she might try to convince her own children.
“It wasn’t an illusion. We had rainbows on our walls.”
