Through September ART buses in Arlington are displaying juried poems, 10 lines or less, by Metro-D.C. area poets. It was a program that started in 1999 after Kim Roberts, then an employee with the Cultural Affairs Division of Arlington County, had a conversation with a coworker in what was then the Department of Transportation. The transportation department had funds for a community project, and the Cultural Affairs office had staff ready to make an impact on Arlington residents.
“Poetry on metro projects has existed for a very long time,” says Roberts, who is now a consultant with the program. The first city to do it was London, and many cities have followed suit, but Arlington County is the first program to be funded and run by the government.
After a hiatus Arlington’s Moving Words program is back. We spoke with Roberts about the significance of poems in daily life and its impact on residents.
What is the draw of the bus? Is it because you have their attention since they can’t get off the bus?
[Laughs] It is a captive audience. Thousands of people take those buses every day. It was an alternative [to advertisements] that we thought people would like and enjoy. It does give a distinctly different flavor to a commute.
What feedback have you heard?
The commuters who like the program are very enthusiastic; the ones who don’t can just ignore it—it’s just a poster. From the commuters themselves we’ve never heard negative. For the poets, it is quite amazing to know thousands of people have seen your poem. For most poets this is a higher degree of exposure than anything else they’ve done. It does exactly what we hoped it would do: to make poetry available in a nonthreatening way as part of peoples’ daily life.
