Pittsfield Poetry House project culminates with exhibit at Ferrin Gallery

PITTSFIELD - Ten years ago, sculptors Gene and Susan Flores installed a series of roofed sculptural seats, "Love's Seat Project," in Battery Park in lower Manhattan. Each seat was inscribed with a love poem.

"The park at that time was primarily a transportation hub, the location of the Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty and Staten Island ferries. But as we spent time there, we came to realize that it also had a vitality, a secret life of its own," Susan Flores said.

She told the story of the "Birdman," a 70-year-old who came to visit the Battery Park exhibit every day and to display his skill and talent for taming the birds that landed on his outstretched arms to eat from his can of seeds. Jonathan Kuen, a city worker charged with clearing out the homeless there each morning, would be besieged by the illiterate in the group to read the poems aloud.

When it came time to remove the seat project and the trucks arrived to take them out, Flores said the Birdman came upon the scene and shouted in distress, "Oh, no! You are taking the little houses. Please leave us the poems."

The exhibit, she said, had come to be a focal point for people to gather and read, to eat lunches

and snacks, for lovers to kiss and hug, for writers to muse and work, for people to sleep, think and live out their quiet moments. The removal of the roofed seats was a significant loss to the park regulars, she said. She hoped that perhaps there had been an integration of some part of the whole that would remain intact within them.

Years later, the Floreses, now of Plainfield, came to believe that people were losing touch with the written word. Computers, TVs and other high-tech items are luring people away from the art of writing.

Thus, they created a project to rectify that.

The Floreses created the Poetry House, which for six months lived on North Street across from the Ferrin Gallery. The wooden house invited passersby to enter, write a poem and hang it within for others to read.

One of the poems it inspired was about the house itself: "You step inside and there is a metal table and a piece of paper and a pencil and the table is very cold."

Cold steel vs. warmth of ideas

The writer certainly grasped the intention of the installation.

"My husband, Gene, and I sculpted the desks, small, the exact size of the desks used by Jane Austen in her writings. . The desks, made of cold steel, provided a place to express the warmth of ideas," said Flores.

The installation culminated with an exhibit and reception at the Ferrin Gallery on Saturday, April 26. The poetry created in the Poetry House was displayed in the gallery in the same manner in which it hung in the house - on clotheslines with wooden clothespins.

This timely display of poetry was being celebrated as part of an April poetry week bonanza in and around Pittsfield. The project yielded all types of poetry, from comments about the city to poems obviously written by children - "Homework, homework, I hate you, you stink!"

Love poems were contrasted by poems dark with drug themes and poems seeking peace for self, family and world. There were poems expressing self needs, aspirations, doubts and celebrations of life. This poetry reflected the spirit and soul of regular everyday people that went beyond the mere showy, funny and descriptive to create a collage of emotions, sensory input and collective life experienced in Pittsfield.

The Pittsfield Poetry house is not the only project of this type for the Floreses. A month ago, they installed a group of Writing Houses in Floresville, Texas.

"My husband's family settled this town. It was one of the earliest Hispanic settlements in Texas and he still has a lot of cousins there. It's a small Southern town still retaining racial strata that needs to be sifted through. We were hoping to get some of the old family stories recorded before they become lost. So far people are writing and signing their names as well, but no old stories have been revealed. But the process takes time and we have just begun there."

The Poetry House here was originally placed in Stockbridge last summer, where it had a great degree of success. They moved it to Pittsfield to get in touch with a tougher, more urban population. They have been delighted with the degree of involvement they have had, especially with younger groups, Flores said.

What's next for the Poetry House?

"It will be going to Cummington, just outside of the Cummington Creamery. We have a lot of poets and writers in the area," Flores said. "Poet Laureate Richard Wilbur lives there. And it will be closer to our home in Plainfield."

Gazing around the gallery at the hanging poems, Flores said she was awed by their variety and scope. Although the monetary recompense for these writing installations is absent, clearly the value is in a different sphere, she said.

"(There are) so many different voices expressed here. And the involvement of the young people is surprising and satisfying. It's been a rich endeavor. It will go on as long as we can keep doing it. And as long as writers are inspired by these kinds of projects, it seems probable that the writing circle will go on and on."