PLIX Spatial Poetry: Reflections from the Beta-Testing Process 🌎

I love your uphill poem! I just read it out loud to my family and they were all impressed. It’s wonderful!

3 Likes

Finished piece…

5 Likes

For the prompt this week I decided to focus on a street in Springfield, MO called Division. I chose this street because it is the former city limit between the now combined North Springfield (or Moon City) and South Springfield (or Old Springfield). North Springfield was incorporated in 1871 after the San Fransisco Railway built a railroad through the area. The town’s mainstreet or downtown area was Commercial Street. North Springfield and South Springfield combined into what is now Springfield in 1887, but Division Street and Commercial Street still remain.

I was inspired to write a Haiku by the Haiku generator that Avery shared. First, I wrote down words that related to the history of North Springfield, such as “moon”, “commercial”, “main”, and “frisco”. Then I wrote a poem using those words. The first image you see is my final product on a historical map of North Springfield from 1886. In this image, you cannot see where Division and Commercial intersect, but I did darken those streets as well as the SanFran railway. The second image is my original draft where you can see the highlighted roads better. Division intersects with Commercial, as well as a side street called Frisco Ave.

The third and fourth images are the products of the teen volunteers that I work with. I gave them the prompt and a brief explanation of what we have been doing during the beta-testing process, as well as some maps of Springfield and let them be creative with it. We had an initial conversation about what I was doing with my project this week and the possibilities for their projects, as well as some different types of poetry they could write. Elizabeth wrote an acrostic of the word Kearney, which is what Route 66 is called in Springfield. She used the names of businesses that are located on Kearney. Hannah had a similar process to me. She also used Kearney street and noticed that Kearney has a lot of car dealerships, so she wrote a poem about used car dealerships (hehe!). After they finished I asked them how they liked the prompt and what they would change. They said it was fun and that anyone who is already into poetry would love this program, but that it would be helpful for poetry newbies to present them with some kinds of poems and examples to get them started.

Finally, the last image is an idea that I had that sort of branches off of the prompt for this week. As I was initially studying the shape of the streets in Springfield, I noticed that they’re all in a grid shape and there aren’t many interestingly shaped streets. So, I decided to look at the streets I grew up on in Republic, MO. I had the idea to cut out sections of streets I live on, paste them together to create one long route, and write a poem about the streets I experienced my childhood on. For this project I wrote a longer poem with four stanzas and experimented with some slant rhyming. I’m not the most practiced poet, but I had a lot of fun with this one! I think this could potentially be a very fun project for young adults and teens to reflect on their childhood experiences.





6 Likes

I also wanted to share the haiku for the library I work at! I really loved the haiku generator Ave shared with us!

3 Likes

What a joy to see everyone’s street shape poems emerging!

As I mentioned during open hours, I decided to focus on the only major diagonal street (that I’m aware of) in the Phoenix area, which is called Grand Avenue. Piercing its way through our car-minded grid and running parallel to the train tracks as it heads northwest, Grand Ave forms part of US-60, which used to be the primary route out of town toward Los Angeles before the I-10 was built. To my knowledge, it was originally created/funded by real estate speculators who were hoping to establish agricultural communities to the northwest of downtown in what is now Glendale, Peoria, etc. That said, I’ve been unable to find information about the origin of the name from that time.

In addition to its strange angle and former stature as the “Western Gateway to Phoenix,” Grand Avenue feels important because it highlights the non-neutrality of urban space. For instance, in 1942, when Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 ushering in Japanese-American internment, the dividing line for the exclusion zone ran along Grand Ave and then continued east through downtown Phoenix along Van Buren. Now, the area of Grand Ave near its 5-point intersection with Van Buren is a new type of contested zone as long-time residents & community-rooted artists/business owners hope to stave off unfettered development mirroring the rapid gentrification of nearby Roosevelt Row. Like so many parts of our city, it is a place of layered history … a street in flux.

Here is a photo of the first draft I made during open hours. The idea was to include several memories of the same stretch of road (from about 27th ave and Grand until about 7th ave and Grand, where it ends in the intersection with Van Buren).

After this initial draft, I was interested interested in playing around in Twine (a platform designed for interactive fiction and narrative based games) to create a fluxing memory of Grand Ave [you can download my fluxypoem here – after downloading the html file, you should be able to click on it and have it open in any browser]. Initially, you can see the full first draft, and then as you click on the “you are here” portion, a random reading of the street is created using segments from the original draft. This felt in conversation with the open street map haiku project and also with the notion of layered, place-based history. I also like the idea of being able to have an ever growing collection of “street reads” that can be incorporated into the “word bank” for the poem. In a library context, this could mean gathering many people’s poems about a single place and then aggregating them to create a wider pool of possibilities to draw from when selecting individual pieces of text randomly for a collective poem about that place.

Anyway, thank you again for this prompt and for the chance to see everyone else’s incredible poems!

8 Likes

I’ve never heard of Twine before! It seems like such a cool platform! I’ll have to give it a try.

3 Likes






I had fun playing around with different types of Google Maps and removed the street names. The image I chose was of “Punchbowl” Crater in Nu’uanu on Oahu. It is an extinct volcano nearly 100,000 years old with a somewhat morbid background. The name Puowaina roughly translates to hill of sacrifice (much like Chichen Itza). It has been turned into a National Cemetary. The road reminded me of an outline of a dog’s head and my Haiku (5-7-5) is:

me and my best friend
exploring the city night
through the streets we roam

I printed different types (terrai,etc.) on buff colored cardstock, and I’m in the process of using watersoluble color pencils and wax pastels to color. It reminds me of a quilt. I’ve started hand embroidering it. Hmmm, still debating on the embroidery.

8 Likes

Hey Everyone! Warning: I am behind on posting my intro as well as week 1& 2 beta testing, so this post contains all of that! The good news is that I have spent quality time beta testing this weekend and I am loving Spatial Poetry! I see from other beta testers some overlap of approach. So happy to be in a welcoming, safe place to create, connect, & grow.

I’m Tara Thomas, aka dclibrarian, and I am a children’s librarian (ages 0-12) at the MLK Jr Memorial Centerial Library in Washington DC (1 of 26 locations). MLK is in the Penn Quarter, very near Chinatown, across from the NPG, and walking distance to the seats of governement and the Nat’l Mall. Here’s some pics of my library.

It’s a Mies design & the citizens of DC came to the Library Board and requested their new central library be named after MLK.
The redesign features roof space.
The children’s room has a slide which had to be re-engineered because kids were going way too fast.
One of the grand staircases which are our logo.

Some of the neighborhood highlights:




Okay, let’s get to the beta testing. I decided to put all my work, thoughts, and reflections into two Canva presentations. I want to encourage other librarians at DCPL to join me in using spatial poetry as a means to create a system-wide celebration for National Poetry Month in April. The Canva presentations can easily become videos and will help me promote this at meetings to make the project happen.

You can view the Week #1 Spatial Poetry Beta Testing here. I found some historical research on WMATA Metro place names after I wrapped up my beta testing for that assignment. But, I thought I would share it as it’s super cool: Historical DC Metro Map & Historical D.C. Metro Map Sources | Boundary Stones: WETA's Washington DC History Blog

You can find the Week #2 Spatial Poetry Best Testing here (slides 1-5 are the same as week 1, so go ahead & skip).

Now, I’m going to catch up on everyone’s beta testing (from a cursory glance, looks like a gold mine of inspiration). Hope this helps Avery & Michelle and thanks for your patience!
.

6 Likes


Stephanie here,
I was newly inspired while thinking about one of the very first streets I lived on - the name, the history behind its name, and the memories built there.
More to come on my process- I am severely behind and hope to catch up here this week!
Cheers everyone! I am blown away with the different approaches taken with maps and the prompts. It’s inspiring to learn about so many resources out there that are being shared and to see how everyone is applying their ideas.

5 Likes

beautifully rendered, Jean!

2 Likes

Hi, @Carine! These are beautiful!

I’m loving the embroidery; what’s your idea to incorporate it? I think it could be a cool way to incorporate theoretical boundaries or future/past paths taken. Can’t wait to see this idea develop!

3 Likes

@savannahhartje! Loving this thoughtful and rich contribution; so interesting to see how you incorporated local history into your poems.

I love that you were able to share the work of your teen volunteers! Thanks, also, for sharing their feedback. I agree that one of the hardest parts for this activity is getting started; “poetry” can be an intimidating label, and it definitely helps to have some primers or examples to get you jump-started in the writing or creative process. We’ll definitely think of a facilitation tip around this idea; maybe bringing a few books or printed poems to show the different ways that you can take your idea. I also liked your process of using the haiku generator to help plant some seeds for key words or phrases that you might use as a nucleus for your own poem. We’ll definitely incorporate this into the activity writeup!

2 Likes

By the way, all, sharing a poetry recommendation from one of our Creative Learning ambassadors @Renate_Elliott: Owed by Joshua Bennett, to display or read while putting on Spatial Poetry programming. Thanks, Renaté, for the tip! Also, everyone feel free to share additional ideas for books to bring or display for SpaPo on this thread; we can add them to our resources list that we’re putting together!

4 Likes

This is gorgeous!

2 Likes

Super fun idea! I do embroidery as a hobby but didn’t think of incorporating it into this project! I think it’s a great idea and a natural extension of the project to include other types of art.

2 Likes

Today I have reviewed the Spatial Poetry Zine. I really enjoy the content of this zine. I think it does a great job of explaining the essence of the project. I also really like the motifs that are used. I did find that it is a little hard to figure out which part to read first. There isn’t a lot of distinction between the main chunk of text and the examples or supplementary text. Maybe highlighting the main text in some way (bold type, more distinct background or outline) would be helpful. I think it would also be helpful to include more examples of the project itself, along with other poetry examples.

4 Likes

Don’t you love this haiku generator?! It is fascinating to me how it manages to capture something of the place. But I wonder if it is like a horoscope, in that we read into it what we are thinking instead of it being true prognostication. The way we look at our places and understand them is an anthropological process. I like the second line of your poem bespecially because it seems like British phrasing, “On the cashpoint screen.”

3 Likes

I agree. Although I love how it looks, sometimes a little hard to discern what to read.

2 Likes

A walk from my house to the Bridge

3 Likes

For this week’s “walk poem” I was curious to try “walking” down a stretch of Grand Ave (from 15th ave to 7th ave) using street view on Google Maps. As I went, I wrote down words that I could see on the screen – snippets from shop signs, flyers, the sides of cars, etc. – with the hopes that these might capture something of what it feels like to physically walk down this series of blocks.

After gathering my words, I made a slanted version of the list in Word as a way to honor the street’s diagonality. Next I went back to google maps and took a series of screenshots moving along the same portion of the street. Using EZGif I assembled these into a gif, applied a filter called “monochrome”, and cropped it so that you could only see the street view (rather than my full browser window which had been captured by the screenshots). In order to overlay the text onto the gif, I exported my Word document as a pdf. Then I used SmallPDF to convert that pdf to a jpg. Next I used Photopea to delete the white background leaving only the black text, which I exported as a png (with transparent background). I also used Photopea to create a semitransparent blue shape to go behind the text. Using EZGif again, I used the overlay tool to add three copies of the blue shape so that they were nearly overlapping. Finally, I used the overlay tool to place the png of my text on the blue shapes.

My hope with this particular approach was to point toward how quickly it feels like many streets are changing here in Phoenix – a disorienting blur. The text taken from the landscape felt like a collaged snapshot – one that would already be impossible to reproduce by actually walking down Grand, given the changes in the time since the Google Maps photos were originally taken. Placing the text on a semitransparent “sign” felt like a way to nod toward the “public visual poems” by Heriberto Yépez that I referenced in my introduction post.

PLIX walk poem
(whoops … I realize at this scale the text is illegible… here’s a link to an image of just the text)

While working on this “walk poem,” I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had in open hours about providing some “poetry tools” to help people feel comfortable writing their poems – as Michelle said, sometimes it can feel big and intimidating! One possible resource that might be helpful for thinking of accessible entry points into poetry (and writing more generally) is a pamphlet called “How to write (more)” by Jen/Eleana Hofer and JD Pluecker at Antena Aire, a “language justice and language experimentation collaborative” that operated from 2010 to 2020. The pamphlet is available in English, Spanish, and Bilingually. You can also check out their other awesome pamphlets/chapbooks here (all available for free digitally).

Excited to see what everyone else has been up to!

7 Likes