Michigan State arts and humanities senior Grace Carras speaks at the Poetry Room, an open mic event for aspiring poets in the Lansing area. Carras is one of eight winners in Lansing's Sidewalk Poetry Contest. Photo courtesy of Xavier Cuevas.
Picture walking along a sidewalk in the city of Lansing. There are pebbles, leaves and perhaps even small cracks in the cement. Now imagine that you come to a piece of sidewalk that has words etched into it.
If you're in REO Town, those words belong to Michigan State arts and humanities senior Grace Carras, who was recently announced as one of eight winners in Lansing's Sidewalk Poetry Competition.
Residents of Lansing's REO Town, Old Town, Stadium District and Eastside neighborhoods can expect to see her poem and others etched into their sidewalks as a long-standing poetry project by the city comes to completion this week.
The city's government, the Arts Council of Greater Lansing and the Lansing Economic Area Partnership, or LEAP, awarded in fall 2017 a grant to the Lansing Poetry Club. A competition was held in which participants from the Tri-County area could submit a poem relating to a neighborhood in Lansing.
The requirement for the poem? It had to be under 27 lines so it could fit on a slab of sidewalk.
The poem by Carras will go to REO Town, a district of Lansing located south of the downtown area. Her poem is titled "for the poets who gather here."
"It's a brilliant poem and it captures both the bravery and the vulnerability of poets who step up before a crowd of people to recite their work,” Ruelaine Stokes, a coordinator of the project, said.
Carras is no stranger to spoken word poetry, as she refers to it as her "one true love." She's worked as an intern for MSU's Residential College of Arts and Humanities, or RCAH, as part of their Center for Poetry.
"I mean, when you're around an especially creative community, I think it's impossible for it to not rub off on you a little bit,” Carras said.
The chance of her poem being etched onto an REO Town sidewalk almost didn't happen. Carras said she hesitated to submit a poem, thinking it was for older writers who had more experience in composing poetry.
But Carras did submit a poem in the end, and according to her colleagues, that's just one part of how much Carras has grown as a poet.
“She and Masaki Takahashi started The Poetry Room, which is an open mic series in Lansing and, it's been like watching someone bloom. Grace really come out of her shell,” Laurie Hollinger, assistant director of the Center for Poetry, said.
The Center for Poetry's purpose is to make poetry a public focus and an accessible art for students like Carras, Hollinger said.
“What we do is, essentially our mission is to grow the influence of poetry in everyone's everyday lives to make it more accessible,” Hollinger said. “And we do that by bringing in a nationally-known poets and writers for readings.”
The Poetry Room, of which Carras is a co-founder and co-host, is a monthly Tuesday-night open mic event. Each event has a loose theme, which participants can adhere to. The goal is to get artists in the same room to collaborate and build off of each other's ideas.
“I, for sure, feel pretty consistently inspired when I'm around that community and in those open mics,” Carras said.
Lansing's poetry community is for everyone who has interest in it, Carras said.
“The thing about the Lansing poetry community is it's so unique and with its inclusiveness," Carras said. "Everything that happens is for everybody who has even the slightest interest."
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