Daydreams poetry installation at Tippet Rise

This summer, we've collaborated with our sister organization, Tippet Rise, to create a special audio poetry installation for its visitors to enjoy. Set inside artist Patrick Dougherty's stickwork sculpture Daydreams, the project features poets and actors performing eleven audio poems that illuminate the beauty of the natural world and the human heart.

Now through the end of Tippet Rise's open season, visits to Daydreams will include a sampling of favorite poems recorded for our film series, from classics by John Keats and W. H. Auden to new works by contemporary poetic stars like Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Kimberly M. Blaeser, and Seán Hewitt. Actors Juliet Stevenson, Catherine Dryden, and others perform favorite poems, while poets Nithy Kasa and our co-founder Peter Halstead provide their own readings of great poems of the canon. Performers from the US, UK, and Ireland are represented, from shoots by director Matthew Thompson that took place in all three countries—some at Tippet Rise itself.

The Daydreams sculpture was built in 2015 as part of Tippet Rise's stunning 12,000-acre grounds, in which large-scale outdoor sculptures dot rolling hills and the pastures of its working ranch. Earth artist Patrick Dougherty created the sculpture by weaving willow branches through and around a replica frontier-period schoolhouse, open to Tippet Rise's visitors to encounter.

For 2021's open season, we and Tippet Rise invite its visitors explore this joint installation at Daydreams, where nature, art, and poetry now come together to create an extraordinary immersive experience.

The full list of poetic offerings now at Daydreams:

• Joseph Aldous, Catherine Dryden, Jensen Gray, Liam Jefford, and Sofia Oxenham read W. H. Auden's "O Tell Me the Truth About Love" (co-produced with Tippet Rise)
• Kimberly M. Blaeser reads her poem "Wellspring: Words from Water" (co-produced with Tippet Rise/In-Na-Po)
• Juliet Stevenson reads Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with Feathers" (co-produced with Poet in the City)
• Catherine Dryden reads Nikita Gill's "Love in the Time of Coronavirus"
• Doireann Ní Ghríofa reads Augusta, Lady Gregory's "The Heart of the Wood" (co-produced with Druid)
• Peter Halstead reads his poem "A Second Opinion" (co-produced with Poet in the City)
• Seán Hewitt reads his poem "Barn Owls in Suffolk" (co-produced with Druid)
• Peter Halstead reads John Keats' "To Autumn" (co-produced with Poet in the City)
• Doireann Ní Ghríofa reads her poem "Brightening" (co-produced with Druid)
• Doireann Ní Ghríofa reads her poem "Recipe for the Bad Times, the Sad Surprise Times, the No Light Times" (directed by Doireann Ní Ghríofa and produced solely by Doireann Ní Ghríofa/Poetry Ireland)
• Nithy Kasa reads W. B. Yeats' "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" (co-produced with Druid)