National Poetry Month

Poet Jennifer Hambrick Featured in Columbus Monthly Magazine

~ Jennifer Hambrick ~ Leave a comment
The “Creative Space” column in Columbus Monthly magazine, April 2025. Story by Peter Tonguette, photography by Tim Johnson. This photo by Jennifer Hambrick.

I’m honored to be featured in the “Creative Space” column of this month’s issue of Columbus Monthly magazine. I’m especially honored to be the featured artist during April—National Poetry Month.

Written by veteran arts writer Peter Tonguette, the “Creative Space” column highlights the unexpected spaces where selected Columbus artists find inspiration while creating new work. As Tonguette wrote, I found creative and gustatory nourishment to complete a poetry commission at The Whitney House restaurant, in Worthington.

In 2019, Columbus’ Sunday at Central concert series commissioned me to write a new series of poems for a multidisciplinary performance of The Four Seasons by Antonio Vivaldi, featuring music, spoken-word poetry, and live-mixed digital art projections. The four violin concertos in The Four Seasons had been published in the 18th century in an edition containing four sonnets, one devoted to each of the four seasons of the year.

The poems I drafted at The Whitney House update the sonnets published with the concertos, exploring the seasons of contemporary relationships in a blend of nature imagery—a nod to the original sonnets—and images drawn from present-day urban experience.

Every work of art is a mixture of countless silent and invisible ingredients—years of training, hours and hours of deep thought, the magic of inspiration. The place where the artwork was made, the environment that nurtured the artist’s ideas into new expressions, is almost never mentioned in an artwork’s creation story. But now it’s part of the story. Columbus Monthly’s “Creative Space” column is a testament to the creative vibrancy of Columbus, where art is nurtured where you’d least expect it.

If walls could speak.

Deep thanks to Peter Tonguette for featuring me and to photographer Tim Johnson for working his magic.

Two Poets Walk Into A Speakeasy … This Tuesday Night

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Hambrick - Matchsticks door
The front door of The Light of Seven Matchsticks, peephole and all. (Photo: Jennifer Hambrick)

No joke, my friend. It really happened.

And Tuesday night, April 30, we’re doing it again – and inviting you to join us.

I’m excited to be giving a double-feature poetry reading with my friend and fellow poet Rikki Santer Tuesday, April 30 at 7 p.m. at The Light of Seven Matchsticks, a subterranean speakeasy below Natalie’s Coal Fired Pizza, in Worthington.

Please come, and bring a poem to share at the open mic.

Named after a fictitious novel that features in Wes Anderson’s film Moonrise Kingdom, The Light of Seven Matchsticks blends literary class and sass with a mysterious vibe redolent of the 1920s Prohibition demimonde.

My husband and I are big, HUGE fans of Natalie’s and had heard tell of the speakeasy, so we decided to check it out one evening last summer.

True Prohibition-era speakeasies obviously didn’t have street signs, so we weren’t looking for one for The Light of Seven Matchsticks, either.

But we found the place, descended the charmingly nondescript outdoor staircase, peeked through the peephole in the frosted-glass front door (because you gotta), and stepped into one of the funkiest little places ever.

Inside, we made our way in the low, mysterious lighting to one of the velvet-lined booths, found the menu (that’s part of the fun), and enjoyed some nifty eats and drinks.

I was crunching on yummy duck fat popcorn when I said, “I’d love to do a poetry reading here.”

Fast-forward a few months: I message my friend Rikki, “There’s this great, funky place in Worthington I want to introduce you to.”

Rikki, who loves funkiness at least as much as I do, had heard of The Light of Seven Matchsticks but had never been there. So we met up for drinks and snacks after work.

“I’d love to do a poetry reading here,” I said.

“Let’s do a double feature,” Rikki said.

And here we are.

Please join us Tuesday, April 30 at 7 p.m. at The Light of Seven Matchsticks.