The Poets’ Plaza at the Harwood Art Center (2005)
The Poets’ Plaza is an outdoor gathering and performance space. Each bench is dedicated to one of the four elements – air, earth, fire, and water. Lines of poetry by four famous poets – Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, Mary Oliver, Joy Harjo, and Jimmy Santiago Baca – decorate the benches. Local poets and parents from Escuela del Sol Montessori helped choose the lines of poetry, and they stamped the verses into wet clay to make the tiles. Children at Escuela del Sol made tiles of animals, fish, plants, and planets to enhance the benches.
The north bench is dedicated to air, with four lines from Joy Harjo’s poem “The Book of Myths.” To the east, lines from Rumi’s “Say, I Am You” are inscribed into the earth bench. An excerpt from Jimmy Santiago Baca’s “Winter Poems Along the Rio Grande” graces the south bench, dedicated to water. To the west, the fire bench contains Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day.”
Angelica Lucero, Jen Horne, and Kate Kennedy were assistant artists on this project. The Poets’ Plaza was funded by the City of Albuquerque Public Art Program.