Peace is a Haiku Song
The project was the brainchild of two Philadelphia living legends and visionaries— city’s first poet laureate Sonia Sanchez and the Mural Arts Program’s Executive Director Jane Golden. Peace is a Haiku Song was an interactive, 21st century public art project began in 2011 as a way to engage the global community in an exploration of the haiku as a vehicle for peace and urban transformation.
Sanchez launched the project with a performance and workshop at The First Person Arts Festival in November 2011 at Christ Church in Old City. Her inaugural haiku “Let me wear the day well…” served as a broad invitation for others to respond with their own expressions of peace through Twitter, Facebook, and a dedicated webpage, peace.muralarts.org, that makes submissions available to the public via a searchable interface. Over the course of the year, over 500 poets, of all ages and origins, contributed haiku to the website. As Sanchez traveled to cities across the country throughout the year, she continued to introduce thousands of people to the project.
In Philadelphia, youth ages 10-22 enrolled in the Mural Arts Program’s art education classes were key collaborators on the project. In addition to writing haiku, participating in mindfulness workshops, they explored visual art forms with similar meditative foundations, such as photography and calligraphy. The students also designed temporary public art pieces including mini-murals, bus and subway posters, benches, and sidewalk art featuring peace haiku they composed. These temporary pieces serve as teasers leading up to a permanent peace mural on South Broad Street painted by reknowned muralists Josh Sarantitis and Parris Stancell.
This exciting project culminated in a mural honoring Sanchez as a celebrated practitioner and teacher of the haiku. Peace is a Haiku Song by artists Josh Sarantitis and Parris Stancell is located in the Southwest Center City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.The mural is inspired by Sanchez’s belief that the haiku form is inherently non-violent in its intent and structure and engenders beauty, serenity, and brief reflection.
The mural is rich with symbols of peace (a white lotus flower, flying origami cranes) combined with images inspired by the surrounding neighborhood. The central building depicted is Tindley Temple (750 South Broad Street), named after Charles Tindley, a popular minister and hymn writer. Other neighborhood buildings are also depicted. The children’s faces that frame the mural symbolize our most valuable asset, our future. A ghost image at the right of the mural is Marian Anderson, who grew up a few blocks away from the mural’s location. The haiku poetry printed within the mural is from Tony Morrison, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, Maya Angelou, and others.
Mural production employed a new method of design transfer, where the design was printed onto 3 ft. wide by 20 ft. long sections of parachute cloth using a large industrial printer/copier. The sections were then numbered and painted in the usual manner.
The mural was restored and rededicated in 2024 in honor of Sanchez’s 90th birthday.