A Princeton organization that promotes community engagement received a grant that will be used to get more people reading. WNIJ’s Yvonne Boose found out how they plan to do this.
Midwest Partners Foundation received more than $13,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest for the NEA Big Read. These funds will be used to bring people closer through a shared reading experience.
The theme for this NEA Big Read is Our Nature: How Our Physical Environment Can Lead Us to Seek Hope, Courage, and Connection.
Kayla Greenwell is with Midwest Partners. She said the book that they chose from the library is “You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World,” an anthology edited by Ada Limón.
“She actually would…have people come and sit and write as they're in the national parks and in nature," Greenwell said, "and ask them, you know, 'what can the landscape around you like tell you?'”
Limón was appointed as the United States Poet Laureate in 2022 and 2023. Arthur Sze will take the position next month.
Midwest Partners will have several events starting in October through May of next year.
“We’re definitely going to have events that mirror Ada Limón’s practices,” Greenwell said. “We're not going to work with the National Park Service, but we are going to do something like Starved Rock State Park.”
She also said the group will make an anthology from the poems that are created during this project.
Sixty-five organizations across the state received a total of more than $1 million dollars for NEA Big Read. Individual grants range from $5,000 to $20,000.
