Alumnus, Faculty Member Composes Poem for KC Library Anniversary
Photos courtesy Kenny Ellison.
Glenn North has a number of titles on his resume — he’s a 2006 graduate of Rockhurst University, an adjunct faculty member in the English department, director of inclusive learning at the Kansas City Museum and poet laureate for Kansas City’s Historic 18th and Vine District.
By his own admission, some of the credit for what he’s accomplished is due to another title — library patron. So it makes sense that when the Kansas City Public Library was seeking someone to compose and read a poem as part of the kickoff event for its 150th anniversary celebration, North got the request.
“All Are Welcome Here” is the result, an abecedarian poem (where the first letter of each line is a consecutive letter of the alphabet) that serves as a love letter to the library and a meditation on its unique role in a complicated society. It was inspired in part, he said, by the hours he spent among the stacks himself.
“When I was in grade school, on Saturdays my father would drop me off at the library,” he said. “And I remember on this one particular Saturday in fifth grade, he had tickets to the ballpark. He asked me if I wanted to go to the game instead, and I felt kind of disappointed that I wasn’t going to the library.”
North remembers combing the shelves at the central branch of the Kansas City Public Library, discovering J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” and, after being pulled in by its first line, devouring the book in a single sitting. It was a spark for his interest in poetry and writing.
“I thought that if I could make anyone else feel this way, that’s what I wanted to do,” he said.
In addition to his own experience, “All Are Welcome Here” builds on work done by Tommi Laitio, public innovation fellow with Bloomberg Center for Public Innovation at Johns Hopkins, who delivered a keynote address at the same anniversary kickoff event where North shared the poem. Some of Laitio’s work centers on the notion of conviviality, which he defines as including friction and perhaps discomfort from the exchange of different ideas and interaction with people from different backgrounds. North said that idea resonated with him — the library as a place where ideas exchanged, and resources accessed, help make a community better.
Though not North’s first commissioned poem — he’s one of the few, if only, poets to have a work commissioned through Kansas City’s 1% for the Arts program — North said “All Are Welcome Here” is close to his heart, and he took his time in the writing process to express the power of public libraries.
“My pride comes from the high esteem that I hold libraries in and the part they played in my development,” he said. “Libraries provide an opportunity for self-determination. I’ve encountered information in libraries that has changed my life.”
Read "All Are Welcome Here" at the Kansas City Public Library's website.
