A city bus trip may be an awfully mundane moment. You’re just biding your time, staring out the window or staring at your phone, before getting out and getting on with things.
A few years ago, nonprofit arts booster Artstra wanted to burnish that dull experience with bits of contemplative magic. “Let’s give them a little gift. Let’s take the realm of poetry and give it to people who are captives on the bus,” said Artstra chairwoman Karen Madsen.
“Public art doesn’t have to be a statue in the park. Sometimes, just the shortest little bit of poetry can touch you, right in the heart,” Madsen said.
Taking a page from urban-transit poetry programs such as New York City’s Poetry in Motion, Artstra (formerly called Arts of Clark County) turned to transit agency C-Tran and proposed posting the works of local poets in Clark County’s buses. C-Tran loved the idea, so Artstra engaged Christopher Luna, then the county’s poet laureate, to get the word out and judge the results for a new program, called Poetry Moves.
Starting in January 2016, Poetry Moves has printed and posted poem placards in C-Tran buses twice annually. Adult poets take their turn in the first half of the year, and student poets take over in the second half.
Those student poets have been drawn mostly from Luna’s outreach in local public school classrooms, Madsen said, but now Poetry Moves is casting a wider net. For the upcoming round, all student poets — from public schools, private schools and home schools — are invited to submit their work via the website PoetryMoves.org. “We really want to be all-inclusive,” Madsen said.
“Everybody’s voice matters,” local poet, businesswoman and Poetry Moves organizer Morgan Hutchinson has said. “You never know who you are going to touch with your words.”
Short poems, 60 poets
The deadline to submit is May 1. Students enrolled in public, private or home schools in grades K through 12 may submit up to two original, very short poems (a maximum of seven lines each). Ten poems will be selected, by a poet who’s yet to be named, for display in C-Tran buses from July through December. Parental permission is required and the winning poets’ parents will be consulted.
“We’re hoping a lot of students send us their work. This could be their very first publication,” Madsen said. Publication on the wall of a C-Tran bus really is publication, she emphasized. “A lot of people will see this work. Being published is a big deal.”
Sixty different poems have been posted in C-Tran buses since Poetry Moves began in 2016, Madsen said, and the reactions she overhears in places such as grocery stores are always appreciative. The guy who does her landscaping loves reading poetry on the bus, she said, and has even rescued and reposted fallen placards so riders can keep appreciating them.
A combined Poetry Moves and National Poetry Month reading and celebration is set for 2 p.m. April 28 at the Vancouver Community Library, Madsen said. All poets, students and adults, whose works have entertained C-Tran riders are invited to participate.
“We want to put on a big, fun poetry celebration,” Madsen said.
