CavanKerry and The Poetry Society of Michigan

This post is part of our series in honor of ADA Awareness Month.  While on a national level the focus is disability employment awareness, CKP is focusing on artists.

Jack Ridl, Honorary Chancellor of the Michigan Poetry Society (MPS) and a member of the CKP ADA Advisory Board, describes the MPS’ outreach program in which the members work with individuals or groups who lack a particular ability or who live in an overwhelming situation. CKP collaborates on this program by donating books.

The Poetry Society of Michigan has created a program in which the members work with individuals or groups who lack a particular ability or who live in an overwhelming situation. The poet offers opportunities to write poems, read poetry, talk about both and discover the impact that doing so has on the person, her/his daily life, and on the member of the Society. It is poignant, profound, and powerful how adding poetry in this way affects the recipients each day, perceiving what heretofore has been overlooked, unrealized.

CavanKerry Press has enabled this program to have what it could not possibly afford–access to CKP’s astonishing works, books that matter and connect with those taking part in the program. Someone with Multiple Sclerosis, for example, can ask for Body of Diminishing Motion, Joan Sidney’s important work. You can imagine what it means to discover that there really is someone out there who has, through her exquisite art, offered what it is REALLY like to live with this malady. Imagine what it means to be so deeply understood, to feel less alone, to receive the permission to create out of his/her actual difficult world. Imagine the member of the society coming to know this world from the inside, to know how care is transformed into caring empathy, how difference is erased by shared understanding.

Yes, this program is another where who is helping whom is mutual, where a soulful kind of healing transpires through the loving generosity of the intelligently caring talent in The Poetry Society of Michigan and of the great good heart that is CavanKerry Press.

CKP’s commitment to making poetry accessible to everyone isn’t just words in a mission statement—as evidenced by the letter from Jennifer Clark, a member of the Michigan Poetry Society who participates in its outreach program.

“Thanks for sharing these treasures. Thank you many times over.” These words are is just some of the lovely comments that have come my way since distributing the beautiful books you selected and sent my way as part of the outreach project between CavanKerry Press and the Poetry Society of Michigan.

Since then, I have received a dozen emails from the older woman who organized an opportunity for me to read and discuss poetry. In one, she wrote, “I have no background in basketball other than a gym class a hundred years ago, but Jack Ridl has caught me in Losing Season.  It is fun to read and I keep going back for more.” She is finishing Walking with Ruskin and loves the faith and nature themes. When she finishes it, she’ll share it with her granddaughter and daughter and then, as she’s done with Losing Season, donate to the library of her retirement center so more people can enjoy the book. Also, in a few weeks I’ll be taking up her invitation to have lunch at her retirement home and meet/discuss poetry with her and her 96 year old friend (to whom she lent Losing Season and “she loved it!”).

I’m sorry if this rambles on but thought CavanKerry Press ought to know how the books you send out through this outreach project take on a life of their own. Here in Kalamazoo, you are rekindling love for poetry, creating new friendships, helping people feel less isolated, and, in my case, carving out precious space in a crowded, noisy world.