Visiting Artist - Creative Writing

David Hassler

629 S. DePeyster Street
Kent, OH  44240
Phone: (330) 672-1769
Email: dhassle1@kent.edu

Poetry teaches us the valuable skill of concentration. In writing poems we deepen our sense of responsibility to others and to our environment. I encourage students to discover how poems have been used to preserve the stories and insights of people from different cultures, so they can learn to share and preserve the stories of their own lives. I enjoy working with students of all ages, and, in particular, leading inter-generational workshops through either school- or community-based residencies. I also like to incorporate music and movement with poetry and to script and stage dramatic performances of my students' work. Writing residencies are designed not only to give students knowledge of poetic traditions and the opportunity to have hands-on experience as writers themselves, but also to support the school curriculum and the Academic Content Standards. In a recent residency, I conducted workshops with middle and high school students, as well as senior adults, introducing them to poetry that explored issues of identity, family, race, freedom, and democracy. Through a discussion of these model poems and various prompts, they wrote dramatic monologues, poetry, and songs that gave voice to their own unique American experience. In an engaging and supportive residency environment, writing can be a way of discovering more about ourselves and our communities. In the writing process there are no mistakes; we learn from the choices we make.

I look forward to sharing my own writing via performance, workshops, and readings. Recently, I have been very interested in community storytelling and narrative documentary. I am particularly interested in poetry and creative nonfiction that explores important issues within a community. With photographer Gary Harwood, I have recently completed a documentary book, Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community, based on my interviews with Mexican migrant workers in Hartville, Ohio. Through photographs and first-person narratives, we tell the story of this unique migrant community, their pride in work and family, their struggles and joys.

I have worked as a teaching artist for the Ohio Arts Council's Arts Learning Program since 1995. I hold a BA from Cornell University and an MFA from Bowling Green State University. I am the Director of the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State University where I teach a service-learning course, Teaching Poetry in the Schools, and conduct writing workshops in local schools and senior centers. I am the author of two books of poems, Sabishi: poems from Japan and Red Kimono, Yellow Barn, for which I received the 2006 Ohio Poet of Year Award. With photographer Gary Harwood, I am the author of Growing Season: The Life of a Migrant Community, which received the Ohioana Book Award, the Carter G. Woodson Honor Book Award, and was a Finalist for the 2007 Great Lakes Book Award. I am also the co-editor of Learning by Heart: Contemporary American Poetry About School, After the Bell: Contemporary American Prose about School, and A Place to Grow: Voices and Images of Urban Gardeners.