another poetry walk…
May 27, 2012
Here’s another poetry walk for your world poetry map, this one in West Yorkshire, in the north of England, near the town of Ilkley.
“Stanza Stones” is an ambitious collaboration between poet Simon Armitage, stone carver Pip Hall, the Ilkley Literature Festival and numerous other individuals and organizations. Six poems by Armitage — Rain, Mist, Snow, Dew, Beck (a creek or brook) and Puddle — describing forms of water in words “inspired by the language and landscape of the Pennine Watershed” were carved by Hall into slabs of stone on a 47-mile walking trail between Armitage’s home town, Marsden, and Ilkley. The 18-month project involved a number of workshops and master classes with young writers, who also collaborated with dancers and film makers in responding to the poems and the landscape. A book, Stanza Stones: The Anthology, includes the poems, photos, maps, artists’ statements and details from the collaboration.
You can learn more about the Stanza Stones on the Ilkley Literature Festival website or on Facebook. To see other poetry walks, scroll down to the Poetry Walks section of the links, at right.
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photo © Pip Hall
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more poetry in public…
May 6, 2012
Bill Dunlap is painting barns. Commissioned as sole artist for the statewide multi-year project known as “Poetic Aesthetic in Rural Maryland,” Dunlap combines poetry and visual art on the sides of barns. Some of his murals are painted with fantastical creatures; others display more traditional quilt patterns. Some carry well-known poems (lines from Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” or David Wagoner’s “Lost,” for example); others use writing by children in the school where Dunlap is artist-in-residence. Learn more about this colorful poetry project at Bill Dunlap’s website.
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more poetry in public…
April 28, 2012
Eugene, Oregon, is the latest city to welcome poetry in public places. This week was the official unveiling of “Step into Poetry,” an installation of poems in the Oak and 10th Street Overpark Stairwell.
Initiated by the City of Eugene in cooperation with the Lane Literary Guild, Oregon Poetry Association, and the Young Writers Association, the project features year-long displays of poems by Gary Adams, Barbara Drake, Cecelia Hagen (photo, above), David Laing, Carter McKenzie, Nancy Carol Moody, Deborah Narin-Wells, Paulann Petersen (Oregon poet laureate) and John Witte.
Read more about Step into Poetry in The Register-Guard.
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photo Brian Davies The Register-Guard
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poetry in public…
April 27, 2012
Bringing poetry into the public eye is a central element of the Sue Boynton Poetry Contest. Occasionally on these pages we note other places that have made a commitment to poetry in public. Here’s one.
Between 1992 and 2008, New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority, in collaboration with the Poetry Society of America, “brought more than 200 poems or excerpts before the eyes of millions of subway riders and rail commuters.” The program has been on hiatus since 2008, but has now been revived, beginning with a poster that combines art from “The Flora of Bensonhurst,” by Joan Linder, with the poem “Graduation,” by Dorothea Tanning, an American poet, writer and visual artist who died at the age of 101, in January 2012.
To see a larger image of the poster and learn more about the Arts for Transit program, see the MTA website. Find additional details in the New York Times. Plus, read the story in yesterday’s Gothamist, which explains that the selected poems will be screened in brief animations in New York’s taxicabs!
Egress Studio is working feverishly to design placards of the winning poems from the 2012 Sue Boynton Poetry Contest. We hope to have drafts on view at the awards ceremony, May 10, 2012, and have the poems installed in Whatcom County’s buses sometime in July.
another poetry walk…
March 29, 2012
You may have noticed that this site ‘collects’ poetry walks. Since the Sue Boynton Poetry Walk, in front of the Bellingham Public Library, is such a central feature of our contest, it’s interesting to see where and how else poetry is exhibited ‘in the wild.’
We’ve happened across another: Oaken Transformations Sculpture and Poetry Walk in Brighton, Michigan. The half-mile trail features sculptures on one-year consignment and poems, by Michigan poets, permanently installed. Visit the project website to learn more or find Oaken Transformations on Facebook.
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John Ganiard poem
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Juneau jumps on the bus…
January 29, 2012
The appeal of poetry-on-the-bus continues to spread. We noticed that the Juneau, Alaska, Public Library is now inviting Juneau residents to submit poems for a new Poetry OmniBus project. Ride, poets, ride!
a poetry walk revisited…
January 25, 2012
Back in November, we mentioned a poetry walk in New York, Jon Cotner’s Poem Forest. Now, the BMW Guggenheim Lab has posted an audiovisual tour of Poem Forest that includes commentary by Cotner, photos of the walk and a brief audio clip “that features Poem Forest participants reading their favorite lines.”
If January has you feeling nostalgic for autumn, take a look and stroll along.
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word play…
January 20, 2012
Artist Anna Garforth uses simple materials — paper, moss, dough — to create her own kind of visual poetry. Of Grow, shown above, she says, “Moss typography adorns the wall of a secret spot I found in London behind locked gates, a disused plot awaiting the arrival of new flats. I thought I’d sneak in before the small wilderness got bull dozed.” See other photos of Grow and other works on Anna Garforth’s website and be sure to have a look at Edible Poster. Poetry is where you find it…or where you create it!
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photo: Anna Garforth — Grow
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on the bus down under…
January 12, 2012
Poems on the bus soothe and inspire. They offer respite from boredom and relief from ugly advertisements. Getting your poem on the bus is, of course, an important benefit of being a Sue Boynton Poetry Contest winner. Reading poems is also a perk for bus riders in Australia’s capital, Canberra, where Poetry in ACTION has commissioned and displayed a series of poems each year since 2007. Visit the Poetry in Action website to see larger (PDF) versions of the 2011 winning poems and find a link to previous-year winners.
another poetry walk…
January 2, 2012
Meandering a mile and a half through trees and meadows, the Scott and Hella McVay Poetry Trail in Princeton, New Jersey, provides scenic vistas along with the opportunity to contemplate 48 poems from an assortment of countries and eras. Dedicated in 2010, the trail is sited in Greenway Meadows Park, once the residence of Robert Wood Johnson and now part of the D&R Greenway Land Trust. Read more about the Poetry Trail here; take a video tour here.
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