We end the week with a look at the art and poetry project against violence in Kansas City and the online platform bringing a poet back to life.

Artist and Poet Pair up to Combat Violence

In Kansas City, an artist and a poet have teamed up to help fight against the violence that the local area is facing.

In normal times Ada Koch, an artist, paints beautiful red poppies for use in Kansas’ WWI Museum. However, she has recently been selected to use the poppies for a program called Art in the Loop.

The poppy is a symbol of life and the regrowth that follows on from destruction and death. The symbol, of course, is well known from Flanders Field where they grew in proliferation where the dead soldiers of WWI were buried.

For the project, Koch has teamed up with Glenn North a Kansas City poet to highlight awareness of the violence that is currently taking place on the streets of the city. The poem that North has penned for the project can be read on the streetcars.

The project is being run in collaboration with Kansas City Mothers in Charge, a group founded by a mother who lost her son to gun violence.

50% of the money raised from Koch’s sales of art during July will be donated to the group.

New Online Platform Brings German Jewish Poet Back to Life

The poet Else Lasker-Schüler is widely considered as one of the most significant when it comes to German poetry. She was something of a bohemian, an artist who swapped correspondence with a number of the most prominent cultural figures of the time.

The poet moved from Germany to Jerusalem in the 1930s and eventually she faded into something of an obscurity. Now, thanks to a new digital platform that has been created a significant collection of her work will be available online and it is believed that she will once more become a household name.

She fled from Nazi Germany to what was British Mandatory Palestine before eventually living in Jerusalem for the remainder of her life. The success that she had created for herself in Germany sadly did not follow her and the last years of her life were lived in poverty and obscurity.

It has been over 70 years since her death but not the National Library of Israel in collaboration with the German Literature Archive, both of whom have large collections of her work, have decided to honour her memory and make her name more well known by moving online.

The online collection, which is titled

is available to everyone and is in English. It offers a look at the works and the life of the poet and is accompanied by explanations from leading experts on her work.

In addition to the poetry interested parties will be able to look at telegrams, letters and even drawing linked to the poet all of which help to reveal the character behind the poetry.