Poetry in motion: Edison’s Arts & Culture Crawl brings music, murals, and verse to the streets

KALAMAZOO, MI — Kalamazoo’s Edison neighborhood occasionally does things differently. For example, other places commonly have art hops or art walks, but Edison has an art crawl, intended to slow the pace and let people see and feel the neighborhood’s vibe.

Edison’s upcoming art crawl will have customary things like music, food, and crafts for children, but a different feature will be poets performing at some of the stops. This is a collaboration between the Edison Neighborhood Association (ENA) and the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival (KPF). The free event is called the Washington Avenue Arts & Culture Crawl, and it will begin at noon on Saturday, Oct. 11.

The starting point is the Dormouse Theatre, 1030 Portage St. From there, Crawl participants can cross Portage and walk two blocks south to Washington Avenue, then walk along it to Cameron Street. The total distance is seven-tenths of a mile, and there will be activities from 12 to 4:30 p.m. Here is a link to the schedule and a map.

Black Magic Media schedules musicians for the Crawl, and they will include singer Good Maybe performing from 12 to 12:30 at Dormouse Theatre; deejay Quin Alan Ellis, 2 to 2:30 at Cauldron, 812 Washington Ave; and vocalist Asia Sings, 3 to 3:30 at the intersection of Washington and Cameron streets.

The Arts Crawl is held twice a year. “This year we wanted to collaborate with some other organizations because when you collaborate, everybody brings their own sort of following, and that helps increase engagement,” says Emma Master, director of programs for the Edison Neighborhood Association. “Having a live poetry walk is a new thing for us, but I think it’s really going to work. We had wondered how to get people to walk the whole thing. The artists on the street corners should help with that. People would want to see all the performances and then they’d be more inclined to walk from one space to the next.”

The Kalamazoo Poetry Festival was founded in 2013, and for almost a decade, its main activity was holding a festival every April. Two years ago, it hired a part-time executive director, and things changed quickly.

“Our mission is to help every voice be heard through poetry. We’re making sure we have a presence in all of the neighborhoods and across the city all year round.” — Casey Grooten, Kalamazoo Poetry Festival Executive Director

“Now we do events all year round,” says Casey Grooten, who became the executive director in May 2024. “We have 10 to 15 community partners that we do things with, from poetry workshops for youths and adults to writing groups, open mics, readings. We also do a couple of special sets of readings now for works in progress, including fiction. 

“Our mission is to help every voice be heard through poetry. We’re making sure we have a presence in all of the neighborhoods and across the city all year round. We’re always looking to be in the neighborhoods and to have more poetry actually out there in the world.”

There are 11 stops on the Crawl, and each has a scheduled time for activities. “We want to encourage folks to move through the whole thing,” says Emma Master. “That’s why the time slots are as they are. It gets people to crawl together because they can only have access to performances at a certain time–with a little flexibility.”

Participating poets are:

Vidal Wilger at Dormouse Theatre, 1030 Portage, 12:45 to 2:15 p.m.

Jezreel Cruz at FIRE, 1249 Portage, 1 to 2:30.

Friends of Poetry at Edison Market Gallery, 1261 Portage, 12:30 to 2.

Brendan Barnes at Cauldron, 812 Washington Ave, 2 to 3:30.

Writer’s Disorganization at Race and Washington Streets, 1:30 to 2:15; Devin Bullmer at Race/Washington, 2:15 to 3:45.

Mark L. at James and Washington Streets, 2 to 3:30.

Friends of Poetry at March and Washington, 1:30 to 2:15; Zoe Reyes at March/Washington, 2:15 to 3:45.

Leslie Barajas at Division and Washington Streets, 1 to 2:30; Markeva Love at Division/Washington, 2:30 to 4. 

Cameron Decker, Elizabeth Bullmer, and Kathy Jennings at Washington and Cameron Streets, 4:15 to perhaps 4:45.

A large field is at Washington and Cameron (called simply Wash/Cam in the neighborhood), and it will have activities from 1:30 to about 4:30, including tea-towel stamping for children. Other activities for kids will be scattered along the way.

At Wash/Cam from 2 to 4, free food will be available from Wurst of the West.

The Arts Crawl is not the only place in the Edison Neighborhood where poets will have an impact. A pocket park is being created at the plaza in front of The Creamery apartment building at the intersection of Portage and Lake Streets. A major feature of the project is putting a mural on a wall of the building, and the mural will be a poem. It will be a tightly edited amalgamation of poems written by several middle school and high school students during a summer program of Kalamazoo Parks and Recreation.