Provisions

A collaboration between artist Rainey Tisdale ‘94 and poet Charlotte Boulay, HC staff

Entrance Ramp Gallery, Lutnick Library

April 1–June 2, 2025

Provisions invites the Haverford community to experience poetry as tangible nourishment that girds us for the work of being human. The exhibit showcases Rainey's "poem preserves"—buckeyes inscribed with carefully selected poems, nestled in glass jars like summer produce put by for winter. Opening during National Poetry Month, with poems curated by Charlotte and Rainey, Provisions offers words to sustain us on seeds that grow toward light. A number of the poems were written or contributed by Fords, and at least one buckeye in every jar is from the Haverford Arboretum. The jars line the library’s Entrance Ramp Gallery shelves like a community larder, where we can reach for exactly the words we need when winter settles into our bones, when we forget how many ways there are to be alive and tender together in this beautiful, troubled world.