The Wick Poetry Center and Glyphix design studio have recently been honored with three Gold ADDY Awards for their Healing Stanzas project.

The Healing Stanzas is a collection of 10 poems taken from workshops held by the Wick Center. The Glyphix design studio then designed posters for the poems.

The Healing Stanzas won the gold awards in the Public Service campaign category. The 2011 Akron chapter of the American Advertising Federation held the competition and notified the winners last month.

A gold award is the highest honor an entry can receive in each category. The categories range from public service to interactive media.

Valora Renicker, creative director of Glyphix design studio, entered the stanzas in the competition online. She said winning the awards shows the quality of work that Glyphix students produce.

“I think it’s a really great opportunity to show how well-prepared our students are for professional-level work,” she said. “To have the judges, who are professionals working in the field, validate — that is great because we can feel that we’ve done a good job making that level of work already.”

Renicker said the Healing Stanzas will automatically go on to the next level of the competition, which is categorized by region. The winners of the regional competition will be announced in April.

David Hassler, director of the Wick Poetry Center, said winning the awards shows the potential of the collaboration of poetry and graphics for the Healing Stanzas.

“The awards are a wonderful affirmation of what can happen when we work across disciplines with quality collaborations,” he said. “The ADDY Awards are another way that we can use poetry in ways that we might not be accustomed to think about poetry.”

Posters of the Healing Stanzas debuted around Kent, Akron and Cleveland in businesses and transportation services earlier this semester.

Contact Kelly Tunney at [email protected].