The 2022-23 concert season recently came to a close and saw the culmination of a major poetry and music commissioning project in which I had the tremendous honor to be involved.

Last season marked the 75^th-anniversary season of the Chamber Music Columbus concert series, for I was honored to serve as poet laureate. The anniversary season unfolded in a year-long celebration involving the commissioning and public performances of seven new poems, the world premieres of more than a dozen commissioned musical works by internationally recognized composers, and seven concerts at Columbus’ historic Southern Theatre featuring some of the finest classical chamber music ensembles in the world.

My involvement in the project came about in early 2021, when Katherine Borst Jones, president of the Chamber Music Columbus Board of Trustees and professor of flute at the Ohio State University, invited me to serve as poet laureate for Chamber Music Columbus’ 75^th-anniversary season. The laureateship came with a commission to write an original poem for each of the seven concerts on the season and to perform a different one of my poems at the beginning of each concert.

With this commission, Kathy gave me rein to let my imagination soar. As I wrote in my artist’s statement for the project, I crafted all seven of my commissioned poems conceptually around the idea of the elements, or raw materials, of chamber music – wood, metal, air, hands, beginnings and endings, time, and space. These musical elements serve as guiding metaphors in my poems, and each element acts as a bridge connecting our experiences with music to our experiences in other aspects of life and the world around us.

For three quarters of a century, Chamber Music Columbus has brought the finest chamber ensembles in the world to Columbus to perform. The roster of artists who have performed on this series through the decades reads like a Who’s Who of classical music.

The 75th-anniverary season continued that tradition with performances by some of the foremost classical music chamber ensembles on the international scene today – the American Brass Quintet, the duo of harpist Bridget Kibbey and violinist Alexi Kenney, the Callisto Quartet, the Cavani String Quartet and soprano Louise Toppin, the Calidore Quartet, the Merz Trio, and the musicians of the VIVO Music Festival.

These performers gave the world premieres of commissioned works by Libby Larsen, Huw Watkins, Karim Al-Zand, Mark Lomax, Korine Fujiwara, and Ching-Chu Hu.

My deep thanks to Kathy Jones and the Chamber Music Columbus Board of Trustees for extending me the honor to serve as poet laureate of this remarkable anniversary season, and congratulations on reaching this milestone.