During the spring and summer of 2009, Meekins was a poetry depot. During that time, artists Gene and Susan Flores installed a public writing hut on the front lawn of the Library—a dedicated space for people to use words. This “Little House to Honor a Request for Poems” was moved from town to town, every few months, from 2007 through 2009. Made of wood and branches and steel with a stone step, the small hut (6’ x 6’ x 9’) offered budding poets the space and place to create their verse and share them by hanging them in the hut. The 79 poems gathered from that spring and summer at Meekins were collected into a small book of poetry, edited and designed by Kristen M. Sund—a copy kept safely in the Meekins Library.
The poems are honest, creative, lively, personal, happy, sometimes sorrowful, and often fun. Poets young and young at heart wrote poems. Drawings by the aspiring poets also decorate the pages. The poems celebrate life and sometimes the hut and library too!
Lovely house in poetry’s name
Sanctuary—open and private
Looking at my town’s life
Sweet Saturday morning
LIBRARY
Libraries are awesome
In them, outside
Books everywhere
Reading to dogs
A place to be quiet
Roses outside
Yelling is against the rules
ODE TO MEEKINS
Whose book these are,
I think I know,
They live inside the
building though…
They will not mind
me stopping here,
to watch their hallowed
words come clear
EARTH
Earth is
important to
us
I pretend I am the peony
But I know I am the ants
Green is a remembering
that takes away
the breath of winter
that sets the world
free
Children
in the distant
parking
lot
red truck
motion please
I listen to
wind rustle
gentle poems
What a day
What a life
What a hut
Now, in 2025 Meekins can virtually collect poems. There are so many wonderful poets and budding poets in Haydenville, Williamsburg, the Hilltowns and local communities. Share your own verse and your favorite poems here. Daria D’Arienzo, Meekins Archivist. #throwbackthursday; #tbt.
Posted to Facebook 4/3/2025
