Using Poetry to Address Social Issues

A community based poet and writer, D.L. Ware is a literacy advocate and literary artist in Southeast Cleveland’s Buckeye, Woodland Hills, and MT. Pleasant neighborhoods. Since 2010, D.L. Ware has used his love for the literary arts as means to bring communities together. In 2015 D.L. was commissioned by Land Studio to create “Love Lunes Over Buckeye,” a literary place making project that displays “Lune Poetry” on the facade of vacant buildings along Buckeye road’s upper corridor. In 2016 he was also commissioned by the Cleveland Sewer District to create “Ode to Lake Erie,” a calligram poem that will be inlaid into the ground of the Sewer District’s “Buckeye Green Infrastructure” project. In 2018 D.L. developed and led a weekly creative writing workshop called “Veterans’ Voices,” a 9-week creative writing workshop designed to encourage and support US Military Veterans to write and share their military experiences as a community. ​Husband and father of 3 boys, D.L. finds the act of writing to be healthy and therapeutic and makes time to write daily.