Dave Lucas, left, leads the Bellflower Group, while Kurt Koenigsberger, right, started the New Gutenberg Annex
It all started when Kurt Koenigsberger, associate professor in the Department of English, asked himself how he might give students a material sense of how literature is made. In 2017, he cleared out a study space and started the New Gutenberg Annex with the goal of making it possible for more students to feel manuscripts and to learn more from them.
The Annex has become a nucleus aimed to “support the community to deepen their relationship with the printed word,” just as Koenigsberger hoped.
Alongside the success of the Annex, a new and upcoming group has entered the scene: the Bellflower Group, led by Dave Lucas, a lecturer in the English department. Its name was inspired by Bellflower Hall, the current location of both the Annex and the Writing Resource Center, for which Lucas is the events coordinator.
The idea of the Bellflower Group came from the Coffee House, a local business on Juniper Road, which Lucas described as the center for writing culture. He began asking himself what students who were interested in writing at other universities were doing. The challenge became how to bring students all interested in writing together.
The Bellflower Group had its first meeting in February 2024. Lucas and many CWRU undergraduates were joined by thirty students from surrounding Ohio institutions, including Cleveland State, Hiram College, John Carroll University, Lakeland Community College and Oberlin College.
Looking to the future
The Bellflower Group is still in the early stages, but Lucas is excited and ready to be surprised. Both Koenigsberger and Lucas are excited to see their students invested in their work, whether it be modern or traditional. Nonetheless, Lucas emphasized the vision for the group should be left to the undergraduates.
Koenigsberger and Lucas share a collective sentiment in the groups becoming part of the CWRU culture, perhaps to the point of a volunteer core in the Annex and discourse over poetry in the Bellflower Group.
“Community does not just happen,” said Lucas. “It has to be deliberately worked at.”
To them, young people with imaginations are where great things happen. And, if Case Western Reserve University’s motto is “Think Beyond the Possible,” they may be onto something.
The New Gutenberg Annex can be reached at letterpress@case.edu regarding all projects. Office hours can be found on the English department’s website.
More information on the Bellflower Group’s fall schedule will be available soon!