Naperville Teen Launches City's 1st Poetry Walk

NAPERVILLE, IL — Campbell Kohls wants to inspire Naperville residents and visitors with words. The Neuqua Valley High School senior is organizing the city's first Poetry Walk, which will feature poems from more than a dozen Naperville students in honor of National Poetry Month in April.

The poems will be posted in the windows of 15 businesses in downtown Naperville during the first week of April, Kohls told Patch. She said the poets range in age from fifth grade to 12th grade.

Kohls first fell in love with poetry in eighth grade after one of her Crone Middle School teachers assigned her a poem to memorize and perform. Shortly after, she began following Button Poetry's spoken word videos.

When Kohls got to Neuqua Valley High School, she tried out for its spoken word poetry team, so she could follow in the footsteps of her spoken word poetry heroes. She was selected as a team substitute and tapped to fill in for someone. "The rest is history," Kohls told Patch. Today, she's the team's captain and was recently chosen as Fox Valley's poet delegate.

There's no doubt that poetry seizes Kohls's attention, which is why she found herself fixated on a poem she stumbled upon in an Ohio bookstore window while visiting a college. Kohls told Patch she was entranced by the imagery and lyricism of the poem, which had been written by a fifth grader.

"I read it and reread it and took a picture of it," Kohls told Patch. It was this captivating poem that inspired Kohls to create Naperville's inaugural Poetry Walk.

Kohls said she reached out to the English departments at "nearly every middle school and high school" in Districts 203 and 204, even popping in on some Zoom meetings to explain the Poetry Walk to students. Ultimately, she received 15 submissions and set out to talk to business owners in downtown Naperville to see which ones would display the poems in their windows.

Due to corporate restrictions and other limitations, Kohls said it was a "challenge" to find 15 businesses downtown that were on board with the project. With this in mind, she said, "It might seem like a small number, but in reality it’s a really big number.”

“The ones that were accepting were very open to it and welcoming," Kohls told Patch.

The 15 original poems will be displayed at businesses on Jefferson, Washington and Jackson for at least one week. Participating businesses include:

• Anderson's Bookshop
• Francesca’s Boutique
• Naperville Running Company
• Adagio Teas
• Chico’s
• Eddie Bauer
• Paper Source
• Lauren Rae Jewelry Boutique
• Pinot’s Palette
• Karisma Boutique
• Everdine's Grilled Cheese Co.

Kohls told Patch the goal of the Poetry Walk is “[t]o catch the eye of someone walking by and have them go home and write or talk about it.” She said she was "absolutely floored by the complexity" of some of the submissions.

She added, "Even though it’s only 15 poets, it all seems like they're connected to each other in this wonderful submissionland of paper poetry.”

Kohls said she hopes the effects of the Poetry Walk will stretch beyond the windows of each business and into the heart of the community to "foster a growth of language and poetry” throughout Naperville.