LINCOLN CITY – This summer, the Lincoln City Cultural Plaza project will transform the grounds around the historic Delake School with new parking, sidewalks, public art, and landscaping that will support cultural and community activities for decades to come. Observers of the project, passing by on Hwy. 101, may have noticed the foundations of a curving, meandering path on the west side of the building, now home to the Lincoln City Cultural Center.

This feature is called The Poetry Path, a drivable and accessible surface that will connect the gathering spaces around the Plaza. This inviting walkway will be 10 feet wide and 430 feet long, decorated with embedded “currents” of colored aggregate arranged around sandblasted letters. The Poetry Path design is ready except for one important element: the poetry.

That poem will be written this summer using input gathered at two public forums led by Lincoln City poet John Fiedler and funded by a grant from Oregon Humanities.

All interested members of the community – residents, visitors, writers, readers, students, historians, and more – are invited to participate in this public program. The events will be held from 4 to 5:45 pm on Tuesday, July 11, and Tuesday, July 18, at the Driftwood Public Library. Admission is free and you may choose to attend one or both forums.

At the forums, Fiedler will lead discussions of the geological, tribal, and historical context of the land where the Cultural Center now stands, just a few hundred feet from Devils Lake, D River and the Pacific Ocean. Participants will be asked to provide ideas, words, images ,and other materials that Fiedler will synthesize into the final phrases that will be sandblasted into the Poetry Path.

This project is co-sponsored by Driftwood Public Library, which is providing the meeting space, and Friends of Driftwood Library, who will furnish the refreshments. The North Lincoln County Historical Museum is also providing research support.

This program is made possible by a grant from Oregon Humanities (OH), a statewide nonprofit organization and an independent affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds OH’s grant program. Oregon Humanities offers programs and publications that help Oregonians connect, reflect, and learn from one another.

John Fiedler earned his master’s degree in English from the University of Washington and completed coursework for a PhD in English at the University of Chicago. He served as a professor at Hope College in Michigan and as a newspaper reporter in Florence before becoming an elementary school teacher at St. James Santiago School in Lincoln City.

For more details, or to help with the forums, contact Cultural Center board member Christi Clark, LCCC Board of Directors, 541-994-9994 or christineneskowin@gmail.com ; or John Fiedler, Project Leader, johnfiedler60@gmail.com.