First leg of the journey...

We have our first two Poem Road submissions. Lynn's is here.

And this is Momster's. Her sons, Sean and Will, recited a poem in front of the Orsay Museum in Paris on July 2nd. The poem is:

"Mommy, you have planted "I love you's" in the garden of my heart,

and all the flowers of love, I give them to you today."

"Maman, tu as planté des Je t'aime dans le jardin de mon coeur,

et toutes les fleurs d'amour, je te les offre à mon tour."

Enjoy! :)

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a spark

Thank you for your comments and emails expressing an interesting in participating in the Poem Road project. I'm happy that you're excited about participating. And a big thank you to Liz and Lynn at Poetry Thursday for their generous support of this idea.

I had chosen June 30th as a tentative deadline for submitting poem photos for inclusion in a video collage that I offered to create. So I realize this post might seem a day early.

Several of you have expressed an interest in participating but needed more time, and that's perfectly okay. But two weeks after my original post, I've only received photos from one participant. What's become clear to me after reading your comments and emails is that Poem Road can be whatever YOU want it to be--it doesn't have to hinge on any involvement from me.

Here are some thoughts you've shared so far:

Laura: "I love the idea...of doing some stealth ninja poetry posting who knows where..."

Julie ZS: "I suggest people putting this blog website on the sign so others will be able to figure out the project."

Wandering-Woman: "I, too, love the idea of ninja poetry posting, and in any language...my ninja posting would have to be in Spain and therefore in Spanish. A collection of poetry road photos in all kinds of languages from all kinds of places."

January: "I love the idea of poetry as a movement."

Kaleidescope: "I wonder if the poem road has to be a video? Perhaps the poem road could be our own posts--a la poetry thursday, ie, we link our pieces of the road on a comment to a post on this site."

Aurora Fox: "What if we had a law that every newly cemented sidewalk had to have poetry in it?"

Irene: "I was thinking my boys could recite a poem in the city and I could videotape it."

Beloved Dreamer: "When I used to be a runner...I had a poem road. As the miles went by my mind was filled with words."

Liz: "I also keep having all these thoughts about how cool it would be to get regional Poetry Thursday participants together in the future and creating "poem roads" in bigger cities."

Lynn: "I really can see this being an ongoing project."

I would like to give Poem Road to YOU--to all of you. Take this idea and fly with it! Create your own Poem Roads in whatever form, shape or fashion you like. Place a poem in a favorite location and post photos of it...create a video using poetry (lots of possibilities there)...get together with other poetry-loving friends (a la Liz's suggestion) and create a group Poem Road...be a poetry guerrilla, secretly posting poetry in public places...BE a Poem Road.

And this site will be here for you to use a communal gathering place. Once you've created something for Poem Road and posted it on your blog, leave a comment here with the permalink--just like we do at Poetry Thursday. And I'll feature your Poem Road projects in the posts here.

Anyone who's been reading my regular blog for any length of time knows that I'm all about the "spark." I'm very pleased to have been able to provide a spark for Poem Road. Now go out there and make it sparkle. :)

lines

Thank you for your comments and emails. I've received the first photos for submission in the first Poem Road video. Thanks, Liz!

If you'd like to send photos of poems and locations for inclusion in the first video, please email them to me at blogfever at yahoo.com. (For details, see the original post below.) There doesn't have to be just one Poem Road video--this can be an ongoing project with periodic videos. Some of you have expressed an interest in doing your own videos, which is great! If you do, I hope you'll leave a comment on this site with the permalink so we can all check them out.

I'll leave the deadline for the first video flexible--it will depend on how many submissions there are. But shall we tentatively say Friday, June 30th, for the first one? Let's see what we have by then...and we'll play it by ear...

I really look forward to seeing what you want to share as part of this project. Thanks.

As for the image here, I've been in a clothesline sort of mood. I like to think of this Poem Road project as sort of a video clothesline.

A seed is planted...let's see how it grows...

The original idea is outlined here and in the post below. If you're here from Poetry Thursday (or anywhere), I'd love to hear your thoughts about creating a video 'poem road.' Please leave your comments here. Thanks.

How it began...

On Thursday, June 15th, I felt like doing something a bit different for Poetry Thursday. I posted a video that I found at YouTube. It was a video of a 'poem road' in Taiwan, and I found it to be quite inspirational. Here's my original post where you can watch the Taiwan video.

I thought, what a great idea--a road where one could read poetry along the way. Not with a book in hand, but because the poetry was part of the landscape. Then I had a thought: what if we created our own poem road? How would we go about doing that? It occurred to me that I could create a video using photos from all of us. We could each print out a poem we like, place it in a favorite public place, and photograph it. We could add additional photos of the location to add atmosphere. Participants could email the photos to me and I'd piece them together in Windows Movie Maker and add some music. We'd, in essence, be creating a video poetry road, incorporating many locations. I asked readers to email their photos to me within a week and that I'd post the video 'poem road' the following Thursday (June 22nd) in time for the next Poetry Thursday deadline.

Liz and Lynn, creators of Poetry Thursday, seemed to like the poem road idea and Lynn kindly mentioned it at the Poetry Thursday site. She asked if I'd be willing to extend the one-week deadline so that more people could participate, and of course I was happy to do that. Then I got a comment from Laura who asked if I'd be open to having this idea expand even further. Here's her comment in its entirety:

Love this idea. You may or may not want to do this but I saw at Poetry Thursday that you are extending this a week...does there have to be a time limit? Can this keep going? I want to participate but this week may be tough and this feels like something that could go on and on...is this something bigger...I mean really bigger...than a group project for a week or two? Could this be a movement? A wave?

So I did the next logical thing--I created this blog because it seems like the idea should have a place of its own. This project was never about me--I just offered to be a conduit for those who'd like to join me in creating a video poem road. But I'd like to hear your thoughts now.

What would you like the Poem Road project to look like? Would you like to (a la Poetry Thursday) create your own video poem road and post a permalink to it in the comments here? (No time deadline required--it could be an ongoing, open-ended project.) Would you like to stay with the idea of sending a few photos of your poem in a public place to me via email and have me create a composite video from participant entries (with a time deadline agreed to by consensus)? You tell me. I'd love to hear any and all thoughts, suggestions and ideas you have about Poem Road. Maybe we could really have some fun with this.