History of the Wick Poetry Center
“Out of painful beginnings, my brother Walter and I have found great meaning in…the success of Wick Poetry and the future of young poets.” —Robert Wick
Directors
David Hassler, current
Maggie Anderson, founding director
1984
Robert and Walter Wick establish Wick Poetry scholarship funds for Kent State undergraduate poets. The winner also receives an all-expenses-paid trip to the summer Bisbee Poetry Festival in Arizona, where he or she reads alongside major American poets.
1992
Maggie Anderson becomes the committee chair for the Wick Poetry Program.
The Wick Poetry Program expands to include an annual reading series, which features nationally renowned poets.
1994
Wick Poetry celebrates its tenth anniversary.
1995
The annual Ohio chapbook competition, which partners with Kent State University Press to publish the books, is established.
The first Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize, judged by Gerald Stern, is awarded to Victoria Redel. This annual prize offers an award of $2,000 and, through partnership with the Kent State University Press, publication of a first full-length book of poems.
1999
Wick Poetry begins offering outreach workshops to area schools and the community.
2000
David Hassler is hired to expand outreach and to teach an undergraduate writing course, “Teaching Poetry in the Schools.” The course, still offered each spring, allows Kent State students to teach poetry to local grade-school students and senior citizens.
2004
Wick scholarships for incoming freshmen and undergraduate students grow to annual awards totaling more than $25,000.
Wick Poetry celebrates its twentieth anniversary by inviting former prize winners, interns, fellows, judges, and scholarship winners from around the country.
2005
Wick Poetry Program officially becomes the Wick Poetry Center. With Maggie Anderson named as founding director, the center expands public readings and community outreach by hiring David Hassler as the full-time program and outreach director.
2006
Wick begins the Bisbee Summer Fellowship Program, a multigenre workshop for Northeast Ohio MFA students. Selected students participate in a three-week workshop that includes one week at the home of Robert and Estellean Wick in Bisbee, Arizona.
2009
Wick Poetry Center celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary.
The first set of Traveling Stanzas is created. Traveling Stanzas, a collaborative project between the Wick Poetry Center and Glyphix design studio, combines the creative talents of Kent State visual communication design students with local students, veterans, healthcare providers, and patients at area hospitals. Traveling Stanzas posters promote awareness of poetry and art throughout northeast Ohio by appearing on mass transit systems, business, schools, and libraries.
Maggie Anderson, founding director, retires, and David Hassler is appointed director of the Wick Poetry Center. Nicole Robinson is hired as the program and outreach coordinator.
2010
Speak Peace: American Voices Respond to Vietnamese Children’s Paintings, which combines paintings from the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, with poems written by American children, veterans, and established poets, opens in Kent, Ohio, and begins its three-year tour of the United States.