With “The Landscape of Poetry,” the Lowell Parks & Conservation Trust (LP&CT) joins a national project, “Writing the Land,” to raise public consciousness about our country’s natural resources by focusing on our local conservation land.

The Lowell component of Writing the Land puts writers to work as preservationists, using words and ideas to bring attention that can lead to further protection of nature in our midst. Each of three poets will be poets-in-residence at one of LP&CT’s conservation properties in Lowell (West Meadow and Hawk Valley Farm, as well as the soon-to-be-protected Perron Farm).

Each poet will be nationally published in a Writing the Land book, “Windblown,” which will feature conservation lands across the country. We will amplify the project by offering a free “teaching poetry on the land” program, host a poetry workshop for the Pawtucketville Mem. School at Hawk Valley Farm, and produce a crowd-sourced poem.

The poets include:

Resi Polixa Ibanez is an interpretive park ranger excited about integrating creative arts methods into their work sharing stories with a general public. Resi is also a graduate student in literacy education and language accessibility.

Poet, writer, and storyteller, Sanary Phen was born in a refugee camp in Thailand during the Khmer Rouge era in Cambodia. She and her family emigrated to the United States in 1981 and resettled in Lowell, Massachusetts which has been home for more than 35 years. Sanary has a deep love and appreciation for the community and takes pride in giving back to the city and its people. She has over 15 years of professional experience in human services and the nonprofit sector.  She is currently a freelance writer at the Lowell Sun and is a committed volunteer for the Cambodian American Literary Arts Association.

Paul Marion (b. 1954) is the author of Union River: Poems and Sketches and Lockdown Letters & Other Poems and editor of the early writings of Jack Kerouac, Atop an Underwood. Recent work has appeared in Café Review of Portland, Maine; So It Goes of the Kurt Vonnegut Museum in Indiana; PoetsReadingtheNews.com, a national site; and SpoKe 7 a Boston area annual. He is the former director of community and cultural affairs at UMass Lowell.