Favorite Poem Project Complete
“In offering the Favorite Poem Project, my hope was to engage our community in thinking about the role poetry plays in our lives. It stays with us because of a delightful image, like e. e. cummings’ “wee balloonman” or Frost’s “Two roads diverged in a wood,” or because of the sound of the language, as in Edward Lear’s “They danced by the light of the moon,” or Poe’s “Quoth the Raven, nevermore.”
MVAAC Website Gets a Makeover
We know that the arts matter to you and we wanted to deliver a mobile-friendly website that made it easier to explore opportunities to engage with the arts in our community. Our primary goal in the redesign process was to create a more modern and design-forward experience for users.
State OK's Mount Vernon Cultural and Entertainment District
The Mount Vernon Area Arts Council was successful in getting state approval to designate the First Street corridor through Mount Vernon as an official Cultural & Entertainment District. The district runs from the First Street Community Center on the east to the west edge of the Cornell College campus. It extends for one block on either side of First Street, to Second Street north and south, and encompasses the entire Cornell campus. The district includes two National Historical Sites: The Downtown Commercial District and the Cornell College campus, and it traces the route of the historic Lincoln Highway.
MV Poet Laureate Marianne Taylor extends call for your favorite poems
Marianne Taylor, Mount Vernon’s poet laureate, has removed the deadline for submissions in the local Favorite Poem Project. “We had such a great turnout at our reading event on April 6 that I want to encourage people who haven’t participated to submit their poems,” Taylor said.
Arts Council brings Favorite Poem Project to Mount Vernon
People are invited to submit their favorite non-original poem online and explain why they love it or what influence it has had on them. Submissions must be a published poem written by someone other than the reader and must include an explanation. All submissions will be archived on the Mount Vernon Area Arts Council website.
2019 Lincoln Highway Arts Festival online applications are open
Artists who want to participate in the 2019 edition of the Lincoln Highway Arts festival are invited to apply for the show, which will be Sept. 14.
Local artists join middle school students in Mustang auction
The artists and the students each had a wooden cutout of the schools’ Mustang logo and were asked to express themselves however they desired. The resulting pieces are being auctioned to raise money for the middle school’s PRIDE booster group. Bidding begins at $5 for student pieces and $20 for the artists’ pieces.
Now that November is gone…
I thought it would be a good time to share a few of the poems that have been featured in the Poetry Box located in front of Mount Vernon’s First Presbyterian Church on Main Street. Each month I will be selecting a handful of poems to be placed in the box, roughly one per week, so that the poem can be read by all passersby.
Writers After Dark set for December 4
Writers After Dark, co-organized by Mount Vernon Poet Laureate Marianne Taylor, will debut on Tuesday, Dec. 4 from 7:30 to 8:30 pm in Zamora’s Lounge in the Cornell College Thomas Commons.
Posters for Peace Winner Announced MV MS 2018
While we were asked to select only one, we decided three others merited our comments. We loved the picture of the cat holding the umbrella for the other cat. It showed extremely strong graphic design ability and was a powerful image.
We thought the image of the earth with a rainbow heart in the middle was almost fabric-like in its colors and texture. Lovely!
MV HS Portfolio Class Field Trip
The Mount Vernon Area Arts Council was proud to support the MV HS Portfolio Class on their trip to Salisbury house in Des Moines, IA on Sunday Sept 23, 2018. Looks like fun was had by all! What an opportunity to provide for an educational experience for this group of students.
Mount Vernon Names Inaugural Poet Laureate
At its Sept. 17 meeting, the Mount Vernon City Council approved the appointment of Marianne Taylor as Mount Vernon’s inaugural poet laureate. Taylor, a former city council member, is a professor of English at Kirkwood Community College, where she teaches a broad array of writing and literature courses.
