Poetry Everywhere

One of 15 animated poem films by UWM film students and produced by docUWM and UWM's Creative Writing Program. They are on buses in Milwaukee, Chicago, LA, Orlando and Atlanta.

Not long after I moved to Milwaukee, I discovered that our local public transit system was one of the first in the country to be outfitted with onboard video displays. They display a variety of content--where the bus is going, what the weather's going to be, plus trivia, sports, and game shows.

I thought, some poetry would look great up there. I contacted Milwaukee Public Transit, TransitTV, filmmaker Brad Lichtenstein, docUWM productions, and the Poetry Foundation, and together, we put together a series of animated poetry films I'm very proud of. It's called Poetry Everywhere, and features poems from a variety of contemporary poets all animated by UWM students.

We now have more than 30 of these short films in circulation, featuring a wide variety of poetic and visual aesthetics.

The films now air around the country--and they may also be coming to your town (or cable channel) soon!

Eat Local::Read Local

Eat Local::Read Local is a community poetry program I founded in 2008 that distributes free poetry cards featuring local poets at local restaurants each April. With the early assistance of my colleague, Rebecca Dunham, and a series of enterprising doctoral candidates in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the program has grown from a single restaurant five blocks from campus to almost 100 restaurants from Milwaukee to Madison. For more information, visit the program's website.