Bonnie Jean Flom has a blog post on Northfield.org:
The Arts and Culture Commission of Northfield, in partnership with the Friends of the Northfield Public Library and the Northfield Public Library, has announced a Sidewalk Public Poetry competition to mark National Poetry Month in April.
See the Friends of the Northfield Public Library blog post: 2011 Northfield Sidewalk Public Poetry Contest
All residents of Northfield, and all students enrolled in Northfield schools, are eligible and encouraged to submit short poems (10 lines, 240 characters maximum) that are appropriate for the public sphere.
Up to 10 winning poems will be stamped into Northfield sidewalk pavements and will be considered for other public purposes including publication and readings.
The Locally Grown Triumvirate has requested that one of the winning poems be used to replace the sidewalk graffiti that one of our fans scrawled into the cement in front of the HideAway Coffeehouse & Winebar last summer.
Okay, Billy Collins I’m not but here’s my submission:
Why submit these to a committee for review?
Why not just invite college students, kids, families, whoever, to come downtown and write their own sidewalk poetry in chalk all at the same time (for an hour?) some Saturday morning? It seems to me that this would be a great Crowdsource project.
I suppose I’d have some fears of children being exposed to some vulgarity. But, my guess is that we’d have an amazing scene downtown with a mostly wonderful outcome.
Dave Machacek and ArtOrg, how about it?
Great idea, David.
And if some vulgarity did emerge, that wouldn’t necessarily be all bad. Northfield got great publicity from the Carleton ‘Save the Penis’ campaign, as did Bemidji from the Gaia beaver sculpture controversy.
An anonymous bloggerAdam Gurno on Northfield.org has a post titled: Sidewalk Poetry Contest Winners Announced