Haikus to hit the street in Johnstown with Rain Poetry

By Karen Price

Sitting on the floor and gathered around chairs at the Bottle Works during the Children’s Book Festival in Johnstown, children lifted the lids off shoeboxes and eagerly pulled out pinecones, seashells and twigs.

They turned them over in their hands, held the shells to their ears and then traded with their friends. The participants in Johnstown’s first of four Rain Poetry workshops also found pictures of flowers, trees, birds and animals. As teaching artist Aspen Mock talked about the connection between haiku poetry and nature, she helped them to think of words they could use to write about growth. 

The poems the students wrote that day will now be combined with work that children and teens created during workshops at the Cambria County Library and Bottle Works’ summer camp to make up the Rain Poetry Johnstown public installation at both Bottle Works and along the library-sponsored Storywalk. 

“It was a dynamic workshop, the students were joyfully engaged with the project and it was amazing to have them walk into a workshop and walk out as poets with a polished, publishable poem,” Mock said.

Rain Poetry was created to help celebrate PA Humanities’ 50th anniversary and launched  in Philadelphia in 2023, then moved to Pittsburgh this spring. The project engages local teaching artists to lead young people not only in learning about haiku poetry but also discussions about growth, the future and other themes that matter to them. The students then channel their self-expression into imaginative poems of their own, and PA Humanities creates temporary installations of their work in public spaces using an invisible, biodegradable solution that only appears when wet – hence, Rain Poetry. 

In Johnstown, local teaching artists Mock, Denise Urban and Eric Schwerer led workshops at the Learning Lamp-sponsored Children’s Book Festival, the Cambria County Library and the Bottle Works’ summer cryptid camp. Children in elementary school through high school participated, learning and practicing the haiku form and crafting their poems.

The poems are being installed on the ground both across the street from Bottle Works at the FNB Pop Plaza and on either end of the Storywalk along the Johnstown Greenways Trail, also known as the Iron Works Trail, that goes between Peoples Natural Gas Park and the footbridge leading to Cambria City. Poems will also be installed in the posts along the Storywalk so that families and friends can stroll the trail and read and discuss as they go along. 

“The library’s mission is to connect our community with resources that educate, entertain, and empower,” Cambria County Library children’s coordinator Leah Johncola said. “The Rain Poetry project provided a chance for us to connect youth in our community to local poets, who taught them valuable language and communication skills and how to utilize those skills to express themselves by writing poetry. PA Humanities allowed us this unique opportunity to not only help our kids and teens improve their literacy skills, but to do so through a unique art form that encourages personal growth and empowerment. The poems that were created will be shared with our community in a fun and engaging way that celebrates the work of our youth.”

Urban, who writes poetry and short stories and owns the Write Cup coffee shop in downtown Johnstown, led a Rain Poetry workshop at the library for teenagers. Their poems reveal their thoughts on growth, discovery and nature. Schwerer, who is the department co-chair of the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh-Johnstown, led one workshop at the library for elementary school students, and also led a workshop for the same age group during cryptid camp at Bottle Works this summer. 

“It was a thrill to lead haiku writing workshops at Bottle Works and the Cambria County Library,” he said. “Both Bottle Works and the library have enthusiastic staff with great energy. Johnstown kids know those are two great places to go to express themselves artistically. I’m excited to see the teenagers’ and children’s writing come to life as public art for all of Johnstown to enjoy.”

These public installations invite community members to see the world through the eyes of its young people and experience what they have to say. The biodegradable spray will last for about three months, so plan a visit during or just after rainfall, or bring along some water to sprinkle on the ground and reveal the poems like magic.

“We hope the installation of these poems that were created by young people will foster conversations and inspire our community to find their own voices,” Johncola said. 

Rain Poetry Johnstown is made possible through funding from the Community Foundation for the Alleghenies, the Pennsylvania Rural Arts Alliance from the 1889 Foundation Creative Health Impact Grant, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 ARPA PA Arts and Culture Recovery Program.