For National Poetry Month, the Academy of American Poets has organized a very cool contest. Here's the announcement from their site:
project. Write lines on
a sandy beach, assemble twigs on a hillside, or chalk the sidewalk. Take a
photo before it disappears and post it in the Free Verse group page on Flickr, on the Academy's
Fan Page on Facebook, or email your photo to freeverse@poets.org. Include the
source of your lines in the photo caption.
And here is a great example:
ashberry2
Originally uploaded by findeerror
The Irene Hixson Whitney bridge in downtown Minneapolis. As you walk
across the bridge, you can read John Ashbery's poem, commissioned for
the bridge.
And now I cannot remember how I would
have had it. It is not a conduit (confluence?) but a place.
The place, of movement and an order.
The place of old order.
But the tail end of the movement is new.
Driving us to say what we are thinking.
It is so much like a beach after all, where you stand
and think of going no further.
And it is good when you get to no further.
It is like a reason that picks you up and
places you where you always wanted to be.
This far, it is fair to be crossing, to have crossed.
Then there is no promise in the other.
Here it is. Steel and air, a mottled presence,
small panacea
and lucky for us.
And then it got very cool.
Robin Reagler 