Famed poet, playwright and filmmaker Aralee Strange only lived a fraction of her life in Athens, Ga., but she had quite a lasting impact. After decades in New York and Cincinnati, she moved to the Classic City in 2007. She wanted to find other creatives to connect, collaborate and befriend so in 2009 she started Word of Mouth, a monthly open-mic poetry reading.
“I had friends here, but didn’t know any poets,” she explained in a 2013 Flagpole feature. “I just figured that in a town like this, there’s going to be some poets somewhere, and I thought the only way to meet them was to start a reading. So, I originally started it just to see who was out there and see if it would fly.”
Ultimately, the endeavor proved to be so much more for the creative community in Athens. “Writers are sort of a bunch of loner people. You don’t just meet ‘em,” Strange used to say. Seeking to combat that isolation, she founded Athens Word of Mouth, an open mic poetry reading that meets the first Wednesday of every month at The Globe. Writers are often seen as singular creators, holed up in their garrets with inky fingers or eyes dulled by the glare of a laptop screen. While this may be true for some, most writers—both those you bump into at Hendershot’s and those you read in high school English—thrive on community. Writers form deep personal and creative bonds with other artists, sharing their work, asking questions, editing and giving suggestions. The UGA creative writing workshop was developed as a way of providing this network at an institutional level, but groups like Word of Mouth continue the tradition of a community-based space of challenge and collaboration.
Strange passed away in June of 2013, but her legacy continues in Athens more than a decade later. Word of Mouth readings are still held each month at The Globe and the Aralee Strange Fund for Art and Poetry has extended the reach of her legacy even further.
Since 2017, the fund has supported a variety of programs — bringing together UGA’s Mary Frances Early College of Education, the Georgia Museum of Art and the Athens Clarke County School District — to help young people connect art and poetry. Over the years, these dedicated educators have taken a variety of creative approaches to the program goal, but each one has provided new experiences for local students to connect with each other, other creatives and creative pursuits of all kinds.
Most recently, in 2024, Kevin Burke (professor), Ruth Harman (associate professor) and Lou Tolosa-Casadont (clinical professor and World Language Program coordinator) in the College of Education’s department of language and literacy brought together the following parties for an after-school experience of art and poetry:
- local artist and musician Juancho Cano
- hip hop artist and teacher Montu Miller
- Heather Garland (Clarke Central High School sculpture and ceramics teacher)
- Christian Cordon (Clarke Central Spanish teacher)
- Mallory Lind (associate curator of education at the museum)
- Kaitlyn Loyd (assistant curator of education at the museum)
- and Clarke Central students in the Spanish and art clubs
Over two and a half months, they worked together to learn about art and poetry and then to create their own. Unlike traditional classes, in which information flows from the teacher to the students, Burke, Harman and Tolosa-Casadont focused on Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR). As Harman puts it, “YPAR means that students are positioned as the knowers and researchers…. Youth are at the center and adults support them in realizing what they want to say and do.”
Loyd described the vision for the project [this year] as exploring “intersections of visual art, poetry, literacy, equity and justice in education,” and everyone involved brought something to the table.
Cano originally hails from Colombia, where he was a member of the band Bambarabanda. These self-taught musicians found one another at a club in Pasto, Colombia, where they played together and created a mix of “irreverent words, genres and colourful party,” as the band’s website puts it. In particular, their music was inspired by Carnival, the annual festival that leads up to Lent (the Christian observance that focuses on sacrifice). In the U.S., Mardi Gras is the best known version of Carnival, which features public celebrations, parties and indulgence.
Cano joined the high school students to talk about Carnival. Although in previous years, students have come for a tour of the museum, this year funding issues made that difficult. Instead, Lind and Loyd went from the museum to Clarke Central. There, they talked about the artist Nick Cave, one of whose Soundsuits is on view in the museum’s galleries. Cave often creates these sculptures to be worn, inspired by Mardi Gras and Carnival attire, Indian clothing and West African dress. Covered with found objects like twigs, hair, toys and buttons, they make sounds when performers wear them and dance in them.
Students then worked on their own projects, creating brightly painted papier maché masks and writing poetry in Spanish and English that addressed Carnival themes and the art they made. “They developed masks and poetry according to their own vision of what they felt their cultural connections to these artifacts are,” said Harman, explaining the YPAR aspect of the program. “It was a deep connection between participants’ heritages/roots, self-expression and finding oneself,” said Tolosa-Casadont.
Garland said that the students seemed to love the experience. “My room was packed when the project started, and all of the students were so enthusiastic and lively. They came in with such positivity and ready for this interdisciplinary experience.” She was impressed with the students’ growth, pointing out that although many of them had never taken a 3D art class, “They were able to work with an artist to learn how to create a 3D form with relieved components and develop a full mask from these lessons. They also spent an afternoon writing about their mask, and some of the stories were so beautifully written and so full of emotion. You can tell that this project really connected them to their past experiences, their home countries and memories of their families.”
At the end of April, students presented their artwork and poetry to their classmates and held a reception at the museum where they displayed their work. “Having that final presentation really helped them to think like an artist through the process of creating, presenting and talking about their works in a public space,” said Garland.
Just like Aralee Strange herself, the fund established in her name forges connections: between art and poetry, between different colleges and units on campus, between the university and the local school system. A perfectly Strange tribute to a creative who left a big mark on Athens and UGA.
Curious about the museum’s connection to the Aralee Strange Fund for Art and Poetry? Our former director had these words to say in a tribute a few years ago.
Authored by:
Hillary Brown
