Poetry Cubed: Interactive Poetry Sculptures to be Installed in Lancaster City

This month, the City of Lancaster Office of Public Art & Urban Design will debut “Poetry Cubed,” a new interactive public art installation by local poet and artist Tina Ortiz, also known as Thunda Khatt. Funded by a grant from the Lancaster County Community Foundation, the public project combines poetry, sculpture and community engagement in a new and interesting way.

A series of fully functional 3-by-3-foot Rubik’s Cubes will be installed at four locations throughout the city. The first two will be installed at the Lancaster Science Factory, 454 New Holland Ave., and the Lancaster Recreation Commission, 525 Fairview Ave., the week of July 21. Two more will be installed at the Lancaster Public Library and the Boys and Girls Club later this summer. 

The face of each cube will display an original poem, and the public will be able to manipulate the cubes to create unique poems using the existing words. 

Inspired by the ancient Chinese palindrome poem “Xuan Ji Tu” by Su Hui, Thunda Khatt envisioned “Poetry Cubed” while attempting to recreate the 29-by-29-character grid poem in English using a spreadsheet. 

“I only got as far as a nine-by-nine grid before realizing that the Chinese written language being made up of characters is a large part of why that poem was possible to write. Staring at my nine-by-nine poem made me think about a Rubik’s Cube, and how I could get similar results by combining poetry and Rubik’s Cubes to make life-size word puzzles that have the potential to result in well over 3,000 unique poems,” said Thunda Khatt.

For a poem to fit on each face of a functioning Rubik’s Cube, Thunda Khatt created a new form of poetry called HaiCube, consisting of three lines with three syllables per line.

The poems appearing on the installations were composed by Lancaster residents at a series of community workshops hosted by Thunda Khatt and Sir Dominique Jordan last August. Thunda Khatt and Jordan introduced 20 participants to traditional syllabic poetry forms, like haikus, sonnets and limericks, before guiding them through the process of creating their own HaiCube poems. 

The cubes were fabricated in collaboration with ATOMIC, a local scenic design and custom fabrication company located in Rock Lititz. After reaching out in early January 2024, Thunda Khatt worked closely with ATOMIC account manager Emily Mathason to turn the vision into reality. The cubes are 3D-printed with vinyl appliques designed by local graphic designer Adam Serrano.