Who knew that Starbellies and Things are Cooking could be so gosh-darn poetic?
Sarah Chaffee did, apparently.
Chaffee, gallery director and partner of McGowan Fine Art, has been pushing to get poetry in downtown merchants’ windows for years. It all started with a visit to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Chaffee found herself drawn to these large plexiglass plates hanging with brackets off of the museum’s railings. On them was poetry.
“I thought they were stunning,” she said of the plates. She decided that the idea would look just as lovely in Concord. But instead of plexiglass plates, Chaffee envisioned verses in downtown merchant’s windows.
Back in Concord, she presented the idea around downtown and no one was quite sold. One day, she complained to Mary McGowan, president of McGowan Fine Art, about the others’ unwillingness to participate.
“She said ‘Why don’t you just do it?’” Chaffee said. Thanks to McGowan’s advice, Chaffee placed poetry in the window of McGowan Fine Art during last year’s “Love, Lust and Desire” exhibition. In Chaffee’s eyes the endeavor was successful. When she caught wind that the New Hampshire Writers’ Project’s literary festival was coming to Concord, she knew exactly how she wanted to chip in. And with that, Chaffee became the organizer of “Poetry in Windows.”
The writers’ project set Chaffee up with New Hampshire poet laureate Walter E. Butts who selected the poets and poems, while Chaffee got to work on the downtown merchants. “They were a little skeptical,” Chaffee said of the merchants. She told them that the festival would get thousands of people walking throughout downtown and with poetry in their storefronts that would be thousands of extra eyes gazing upon their windows. “They were sold,” Chaffee added.
New England College’s MFA poetry program agreed to sponsor the project and Advantage Signs got on board, too. The sign company not only put up the poetry but also helped Chaffee select fonts. To celebrate, the documentary film “Helvetica” being shown at Red River Theatres on Oct. 21.
Passersby can take a stab at what font belongs to which poem – the answers will be shared at the movie showing. We’ll give you a hint: fonts include Garamond, Avante Garde, Palatino, Arial, Helvetica, Times New Roman, Bank Gothic, New Baskerville, Futura and what Chaffee refers to as “the most reviled typeface in the world” – Comic Sans.
Where to find the poems:
– Patricia Frisella, Bead it!
– Patricia Fargnoli, Things are Cooking
– Alice B. Fogel, Concord Cooperative Market
– Maxine Kumin, McGowan Fine Art
– Marie Harris, Starbellies
– Roger Martin, Concord Antique Gallery
– James Rioux, Gibson’s Bookstore
– Mimi White, Lotions ‘n’ Potions
– Don Kimball, Gondwa
– Mark DeCarteret, Britches
