Joseph Heithaus

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Poet, Professor, DePauw University

COLLABORATION

I have been incredibly fortunate to have met  and collaborated with the other poets whose poems were chosen to appear in the stained glass murals of British artist Martin Donlin for the new Indianapolis International Airport:  Joyce Brinkman, Norbert Krapf, Ruthelen Burns, and Jeannie Deeter Smith.  The “Airpoets”  began meeting monthly to share our work after our poems had been chosen by the Writers’ Center of Indiana.  That collaboration led to the publication of Rivers, Rails, and Runways (2008) and Airmail (2011)    So much more has happened for me because we connected.

Joyce Brinkman, Indiana’s first Poet Laureate, has  put great energy into making poetry visible throughout the state.  Joyce, through the Brick Street Poetry Organization, has led the effort to have poems  about food production and rural life  painted onto barns in counties throughout Indiana.   The project is called Word Hunger.   Putnam County farmer and artist Jerry Bates came up with the conception for how my poem  “What Grows Here” appears on the Evans Barn on West Walnut Street in Greencastle.  

“Beneath”  en Espanol: “Por Debajo”

Town Square, Quezaltepeque, El Salvador

“Indiana Flight”

Indianapolis International Airport

What Grows Here

Evans Barn, West Walnut Street, Greencastle, Indiana

In 2009,  with fellow “Airpoets” Joyce Brinkman and Ruthelen Burns along with Indiana poets JL Kato, and Phoenix Cole, I made a cultural exchange trip to El Salvador organized in part by Beth Tellman, a fellow Hoosier who was in El Salvador on a Fulbright.  After an incredible exchange of poetry, and a life altering experience teaching poetry in the schools of El Salvador, the Indiana poets promised to find ways to bring the poetry of El Salvador, particularly the poetry of four poets from Quezaltepeque, ES back to the U.S.  Through generous funding from DePauw, I returned to Quezaltepeque in January of 2010 and worked with poets Jonathan Velázquez. Héctor Planas, Fabrizzio Sagett and Crosby Lemus on translations of their poems.  I came prepared with a number of rough translations already done by DePauw students (I don't’yet speak Spanish).  With the help of translator Marvin Gutierrez-Cortez and Beth Telman, chapbooks of their poetry were translated and were produced by Publicaciones Artefacto in late 2011.  They also translated some of  my  poems and created a bilingual chapbook of my work as well.  Publicaciones Artefacto is a Cartonera publisher, one of many throughout Central and South America  dedicated to making books of poetry out of recycled materials so that the books are affordable and, as each is made and decorated by hand, singular works of art. 

               

Each of the Indiana poets had their  work translated and painted onto a wall near the public square of Quezaltepeque  thanks to Camilo Ravey Fonseca  and Fundación Quino Caso.

Indiana Poets in El Salvador.  Top Row: Kevin Gutierrez Cortez , Joyce Brinkman, J.L. Kato, Phoenix Cole, Sandra,Gutierrez Cortez, Ruthelen Burns, Fabrizsio Sagett, Beth Tellman.  Bottom Row: Joe Heithaus, Marvin Gutierrez Cortez, Marvin,  Geova Velasques Dueñas, and Crosby .Lemus.  Photo taken by .JonathanVelasquez Osmin

Translating work at Quino Caso with  artist and director Camilo Ravey Fonseca looking on.  

Poetry

in El Salvador

Jerry,  Travis LaMothe, a fifth year intern at DePauw, and I executed Jerry’s design with no small degree of trepidation as we scaled  the side of the barn to scrape, prep, and paint it. 

Word

Hunger

“Indiana Flight” and

the “Airpoets”

Me and  Indiana’s first Poet Laureate Joyce Brinkman, Ruthelen Burns, and Indiana’s second Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf.  (If you are wondering, Indiana’s current Poet Laureate is Karen Kovacik).

WFYI, a local Television station followed us to ES.  They did a four part documentary that was aired in pieces on the show Across Indiana.  To view a segment with me in it, click Across Indiana to get to  the page, then click  “watch this segment” under  “A Universal Language.”

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Translations

Thanks to the work of  Jonathan Velazquez and the poets of Quezaltepeque,  the Trenes  Coleccion was published in El Salavador in the fall of  2011.  These are bi-lingual  chapbooks featuring the work of Jonathan Velázquez. Héctor Planas, Fabrizzio Sagett, and myself.  Translations were done by Jonathan, Beth Tellman, Marvin Gutierrez Cortez, and DePauw students and faculty. 

I have also worked with Ghassan Nasr on some translations of Arabic Poetry.   We translated the poem “Numerical Conjecture” by FOWZIYAH ABU-KHALID and it appeared in Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contempoary Arabian Gulf Poetry.  The poem also can be seen in the on-line journal Blackbird.