“Poetry in the Gardens” is a public art installation by the undergraduate students of Professor Terry Harpold’s Spring 2025 “Ecopoetry & Ecopoetics” course, in collaboration with Imagining Climate Change and IFAS/CALS Field & Fork Farm and Gardens. The Farm is located on the UF campus, 1062 Museum Drive, near Lake Alice and the UF Bat Houses.
Inspired by “Poetry in Parks,” a 2024 project of Ada Limón, the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, which placed historic American poetry on picnic tables in seven US national parks, “Poetry in the Gardens” enriches the experiences of visitors to Field & Fork Farm and Gardens with poetry installed in locations throughout the Farm. The eleven poems by celebrated American authors were chosen by “Ecopoetry & Ecopoetics” students for their expressions of the Farm’s biodiversity and its seasonal cycles, and the poets’ meditations on the vitality and resilience of human and more-than-human worlds.
We encourage you to walk through the Farm in search of the poems – most are easy to find, a few are hidden away at the edges – and to pause after you’ve read each to consider: Why this poem? How does it speak to this place? How does it speak to me, here and now?
“Poetry in the Gardens” invites you to reimagine a working farm as a space of reflection and reverie.
The poems + credits
- John Ashbery, “Alcove”
- Wendell Berry, “To the Unseeable Animal”
- Jennifer Chang, “Genealogy”
- Emily Dickinson, “The Bat is dun, with wrinkled Wings”
- Emily Dickinson, “What mystery pervades a well!”
- Elizabeth Dodd, “House Sparrow at Skara Brae”
- Lisa Fishman, “Out of the Field”
- Peter Gizzi, “Human Memory is Organic”
- Donald Hall, “Digging”
- Jane Hirshfield, “Optimism”
- Ezra Pound, “The Tree”
Field & Fork Farm and Gardens
Field & Fork Farm and Gardens is part of the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and the campus food system, providing over 10,000 lbs of organically produced fresh produce to the campus food pantry each year. Located in a beautiful area of campus across from Lake Alice and next to the bat houses, the farm is ringed with pollinator plants and native wildflowers. It offers an opportunity for students to learn about sustainable agriculture and food systems while enjoying and appreciating the surrounding ecosystem.
The “Poetry in the Gardens” collective
Joel Adcock, Rebecca Barnett, Lauren Betancourt, Kelli Brew, Damaris Casteneda, Caityn Cavender, Riley Fraunfelter, August Gerken, Andreina Gonzalez-Mansilla, Max Hamilton, Terry Harpold, Christopher Hernandez, Noora Idris, Michael James, Jade Johnson, Elliot Jordan, Tristan Krammel, Kendall Kurila, Zachary Kutcher, Natalie Melancon, Andrea Mottau, Tran Nguyen, Garrett Olson, Sa’mya Orr, Eris Patel, Walker Pawlik, Ariana Perez, Hailey Petriccione, Juliet Pis, Anna Prizzia, Sarah Rowland, Selena Schulz, Lauren Siegrist, Hannah Han, Cameron Titus, Lely Truong, and Gavin Willoughby.
“Poetry in the Gardens” was made possible with the generous support of a UF Beyond120 Experiential Learning Grant.
The poetry signs were manufactured by Signs By Tomorrow Gainesville. The signs and posts were assembled by Michael James and planted in the Farm by members of the collective.
“Poetry in the Gardens” is a temporary art installation. Each of the poems included in the installation is copyright © by its respective copyright holder(s) and is reproduced in the Field & Fork Farm and on this website for exclusively non-commercial, transformative, and educational purposes.