Haiku master Matsuo Bashō once wrote, “Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” Since the birth of the written word, poets have crafted personal stories that complicate our understanding of what it means to be home. In this hour-long presentation, performer and scholar Dr. Adam Henze shares poems about big cities, small towns, and the search for home on the roads between them. Adam will read influential works about the hospitals, schools, churches, and prisons in our communities, weaving in his own original poems and stories about his journeys throughout the state of Indiana. Poetry is an engaging way to explore how issues impact us as people, making this an ideal presentation for teenagers and adults to consider the topics that connect and divide us as urban and rural communities. Register to receive a Zoom link to join this event online.

Adam Henze is a Research Associate at the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community at Indiana University. He received a PhD in Literacy, Culture, and Language Education from Indiana University, and won two Outstanding Dissertation Awards for his doctoral research on spoken word pedagogy and hip hop literacies. Adam is thrilled to be working with Indiana Humanities again on the Speakers Bureau, where he previously served on the One State / One Story: Frankenstein program and as the official poet of the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500. Adam is the Director of Power of a Sentence, a literacy and creative writing program in Indiana prisons, and serves as Director of Programming for Southern Fried Poetry, Inc., which hosts the longest-running poetry slam festival in the world.