Poetry in Transit 2018

April is National Poetry Month, which means that once again there's a call for submissions for the annual Poetry in Transit program! The deadline for submissions is Friday, April 27. Here's the official press release, from https://www.kings.edu/news/poetry-in-transit:

For immediate release
Further information: Contact Joseph Giomboni
Public Relations Office, (570) 208-5957

March 29, 2018 – The award-winning community program “Poetry In Transit” is sponsoring their annual poetry competition for creative artists. Winning poems will be selected from a panel of judges representing the local colleges in Northeastern Pennsylvania and will then be featured on advertising displays inside Luzerne County Transportation Authority (LCTA) buses.

This year’s competition theme is “Unbreakable.” When everything around us seems broken, what remains unbreakable? When everything falls apart, what will still stand?  Poems must be 6 lines or less. Please avoid profanity, outright political screeds, or religious statements. Any language, if accompanied by an English translation, will be accepted. The competition is limited to a maximum of three submissions per author.  Selected poems will be showcased for one year (September – August) on a monthly rotation with the entire 2018 collection.

The competition submission deadline is Friday, April 27.  To submit your poetry, please email your work to Jennifer Yonkoski, assistant technical professor of English at King’s College, at jenniferyonkoski@kings.edu, or by mail to Poetry in Transit, c/o Jennifer Yonkoski, English Department, King’s College, 133 N. River Street, Wilkes-Barre, PA 18711.  If you have questions, contact Jennifer Yonkoski via email or call (570) 826-5900, ext. 5487.

Winners will be selected by an advisory board of faculty from five area colleges: King's College, Misericordia University, Pennsylvania State University - Wilkes-Barre campus, Luzerne County Community College, and Wilkes University.

Poetry In Transit is patterned after the “Poetry In Motion” program on New York's Transit System, and London’s “Poems on the Underground.”

National Poetry Month: Poetry in Transit Call for Submissions!

Poetry in Transit is an amazing program that puts short works of poetry in the advertising space of the buses of the Luzerne County Transportation Authority. They have just put out their annual call for submissions! I have had the honor of having my work featured in this program for the last three years, but I look forward to seeing all of the works that are selected each year.

The theme for this year is "Migration." Can you come up with a six-line (maximum) poem on that theme? If you can, submit it, and maybe your poem will be featured for the coming year!

Call For Poems

~ Poetry In Transit 2017 ~

Let us put your poem on the bus!

Poetry In Transit, an award-winning community program, invites your participation. Patterned after the Poetry In Motion program on New York's Transit System, along with London’s Poems on the Underground, Poetry In Transit displays poetry in advertising space inside Luzerne County Transportation Authority (LCTA) buses. The poems stay up for one year (September – August), with a monthly rotation so that riders can see the entire 2017 collection.

Winners are chosen by an advisory board of faculty from five area colleges: King's College, Misericordia University, Pennsylvania State University - Wilkes-Barre campus, Luzerne County Community College, and Wilkes University.

Here are the specs:

* Length: 6 lines or less (excerpts from longer works are fine, but you must choose the 6 lines to send)
* Limit: 1-3 poems per author.
* Theme: Migration. We are a nation of immigrants. Immigration can also be understood in a broader sense, not just between nations. We invite poems that examine the concept of migration in any of its definitions.
* Please avoid profanity, outright political screeds, or religious statements
* Languages: Any language, if accompanied by an English translation

Submit your poems by Friday, April 28th, 2017:

* Email your poetry to: mischelleb.half@gmail.com

--or--

* Mail your poetry to:
Poetry In Transit
c/o Mischelle Anthony
Chair, English Department
Wilkes University
84 W. South St.
Wilkes-Barre, PA 18766

National Poetry Month: Harold Jenkins, Hands

Yeah, I did that. I went there.

In the Netherlands right now, men are holding hands in public to show solidarity with a gay couple that was brutally attacked. Which is a nice response to an utterly horrible situation. But you have to take your wins where you get them.

This poem was inspired by something a friend told me when I took her grocery shopping, how her mom always told her to hold her hand in the supermarket and in the parking lot so she wouldn't wander off and get lost. Later I managed to get us lost while driving back from Wilkes-Barre to Scranton, which is quite an accomplishment, even for me. "It's a small planet," I said, as I tried desperately to get my bearings.

An excerpt of this poem was my first piece featured in the Poetry in Transit series.

Hands

You should hold hands, they say,
whenever you cross the street
or walk through a parking lot
or when you're in the supermarket
so you don't get lost

We should hold hands all the time
when we're sad
when we're scared
when we feel alone

It's a small planet
but a big universe
and it's easy to get lost
So it's good to have someone by your side
to hold hands with
as you try to find your way
together

Poetry in Transit: After the flood

I almost didn't submit for Poetry in Transit this year.

The theme of Poetry in Transit for 2015-2016 was "River," and for my submission I asked myself what I most thought of when I thought about the Susquehanna. I remembered sunrises and sunsets spent on the Nanticoke-West Nanticoke bridge. I remembered blue shadows of the bridge on the ice. But most of all I remembered the haunting images of stains left by book covers on the ceiling of an aunt's house in Wilkes-Barre after the 1972 flood, and the piles of accumulated treasures, trinkets, and mementos, waterlogged and left at the curb in West Pittston for weeks following the 2011 flood.

Susquehanna 

Books  pressed against the ceiling
a lifetime of memories at the curb
Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at sunset
unseen fish breaking the surface of morning
girder shadows blue on the ice
thus will I remember you

The theme for Poetry in Transit 2016-2017 was "Flood." But I felt like I had already said what I wanted to say about floods. Anything else might feel forced, even redundant.

Besides, I wasn't feeling very poetic around the time the call for submissions came out. I had recently lost my muse, and I was in a pretty bleak mood.

For the past few years I have had a muse in my life. She was young, beautiful, and an amazing poet and writer. I was infatuated with her from the first time I had read her writing. I met her in person nearly a year later, completely accidentally, almost but not quite completely at random. We had a story together that was long and complicated or painfully simple and trite, depending on your point of view. We were never really a couple, but we did a lot of things together, and I got a lot of poetry (and several short stories) out of the deal.

Everything came to an abrupt end earlier this year. My muse was out of my life.

The aftermath hurt like hell. The past few years I had spent catering first to her needs, then her wants, then her whims. I had prioritized her above everyone and everything else in my life. When it was over I looked back at the wreckage of my life and realized what a mess I had made of my relationships with my friends and my family. I remembered the happy, fun things she and I had done together, places we had gone together, and now those memories all seemed tainted, ruined. I remembered how I had felt about her, and wondered if I would ever allow myself to feel that way again about anyone else.

As I tried to think of something to say with the theme of "Flood," nothing came to mind. I was blocked. I kept coming back to what an idiot I had been for imagining things might turn out differently than they had.  Any damn fool could have seen from the beginning that this was how things would end. It killed me to realize that everyone else had been right and I had been wrong. The worst part was how inevitable it now seemed. How predictable.

As predictable and inevitable as a flood coming to a community built on a river.

I knew then that - perhaps not for the last time - she had once again served as my muse.

I jotted down some lines. Revised them. Revised them again. Agonized over one word. Changed it. Changed it back. Erased the whole thing and started over.

Eventually I was done. I submitted it. Then I contacted a friend and told her I had found my poem.

This is dedicated to everyone who has been through a flood and survived, looked at the destruction it left, picked up the pieces, and got on with their life. It's especially dedicated to every person who sees it while riding the bus and thinks, "Yep. I knew someone like that."

After the flood

She tore through our world
turned homes into rubble
covered memories in muck
ruined all that we loved
But we have survived
We have rebuilt

Poetry in Transit Rollout, August 19, 2016

The Poetry in Transit 2016-2017 Rollout will be Friday, August 19 at 5:00 PM at the downtown Wilkes-Barre Barnes & Noble on the Square (near Boscov's.)  This will be the third year that one of my poems will be featured as part of the project, which posts short pieces by local and regional poets in the advertising space of LCTA (Luzerne County Transit Authority) buses. This is a tremendous honor, and it's very exciting to know that someone may look at my poem and be touched by it, or be inspired by it - especially if that inspiration is in the form of "Hey! I can write something better than that! Next time they do one of these things, maybe I'll submit something!"

Here's an article about the event, which surprisingly features me pretty heavily:

Wilkes University, LCTA launch Poetry in Transit at Wilkes-Barre Barnes & Noble (Gene Axton, Wilkes-Barre Times Leader)

Homes turned to rubble, memories landed in muck and beloved locations ruined — rather than addressing the events of a flood directly with his contribution to this year’s Poetry in Transit collection, Nanticoke resident Harold Jenkins’ “After the Flood” aimed a spotlight at the corners of life that encroaching waters run into and disrupt. 

The 48-year-old writes from experience, letting memories of the 1972 and 2011 floods break through to his six-line poem. “After the Flood” is one of 15 works by local writers chosen for the flood-themed 2016 Poetry in Transit collection... (read more here, including a sneak preview of my poem for this year!)

UPDATE, August 18, 2016: The Citizens' Voice published an article today. I'm not mentioned in it, but my poem is used as the photo for the article! Mischelle Anthony, Sara Pisak, and Maddy Brozusky (aka Maddy Blake) are all interviewed:

Another local poet is Crestwood High School senior Maddy Blake, 17. Despite her age, Blake is an accomplished poet in her own right — a two-time “Poetry in Transit” veteran and long-time creative writer. 

“With this year’s theme being ‘flood,’ I was far too young to remember Agnes, so I chose to attack it from a much broader topic, bringing hope,” she said. 

Blake, who plans on enlisting in the Army after her final high school year, loves the uniqueness brought by the project that she believes “is missing from many other art endeavors.” 

“With ‘Poetry in Transit,’ you’re reaching an audience you never would’ve normally gotten,” she said. “Typically, with art-related things, you have the same crowd attending and patronizing ... With this, it’s exposing a brand new group of people each and every day to the writing, and it’s awesome that it’s in public spaces like this.”

A look back at my pieces from previous years:

My 2014 submission was an excerpt from "Hands," a poem I had written in November 2013. At the time Mischelle Anthony, who runs the program, knew me from my association with the Northeastern Pennsylvania Writers Collective and our readings at The Vintage in Scranton, so she assumed I was from Scranton. (I didn't notice the error until it was too late to correct.)

My 2015 submission was custom-written for the project, which that year had the theme of "River." I made a list of all of my most pressing memories of the Susquehanna River, and then recast them as a poem.  (I expanded the piece and read the longer version at the 2015 Rollout. You can see it here.) Two of those memories have to do with floods - the flood caused by Agnes in 1972, and the damage of the flood of 2011 - which made things difficult when it turned out the theme for 2016 was "Flood." But I found a way to deal with that.

To see how, you'll have to wait for the post that will appear after the Rollout!

Susquehanna (poem)

The theme for this year's Poetry in Transit was "River." For those who don't know, Poetry in Transit is a project led by Mischelle Anthony from Wilkes University to have short poems by local poets displayed in the advertising spaces of Luzerne County Transit Authority buses. The project has been going on for a few years, though I only became aware of it two years ago. I submitted an excerpt of an already-written poem last year, and it was chosen as one of the poems for display.

I didn't have a suitable poem to submit this year, so I realized I would have to create one. I mused on it while mowing the lawn - this is actually an excellent time to compose poetry or plot out stories - and tried to think of the images that came to mind when I thought of the Susquehanna river. ("Susquehanna" wasn't a requirement: the theme could just as easily have been used to compose a poem about River Tam, or River Song, or the River Styx.) The most pressing memory was one that was idiosyncratic and personal, and, I realized, would be understood by no one but me. The others were also personal, but wouldn't need the same level of explanation.

Books  pressed against the ceiling
a lifetime of memories at the curb
Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at sunset
unseen fish breaking the surface of morning
girder shadows blue on the ice
thus will I remember you

I hate poetry that needs explanation to be understood. I have heard some excellent poems that made no sense without prefatory comments - and would future readers have access to these comments? So how could I explain the "Books pressed against the ceiling" line without doing this very thing?

And then it hit me: I could explain it in a poem - which I presented at the Poetry in Transit rollout event.

Susquehanna

Agnes came through when I was four and a half
young, but not too young to remember a time before then
it wandered up from the Gulf on a drunkard's walk
came ashore through New York City
and hit Pennsylvania

the rain came down and the winds blew for days
our basement flooded, but that was about it,
and then the storm moved further north and stalled out
dumping its load of rain into the headwaters of the Susquehanna

My uncle was getting married the day the flood came
the river carried away his wedding cake
A few days later he drove us to the edge of town, where Main Street in Nanticoke becomes the San Souci parkway, drops down to head for Wilkes-Barre
It dropped down into water. There was no more road after that
And the lights of Wilkes-Barre were dark

My father took us into the flood zone a few weeks later, after the river had receded and the cleanup had begun
the streets were brown, like the grass and the trees, yellow-brown and dusty
we found a glass decanter, probably from Avon, in the shape of an old Volkswagen
it had belonged to somebody, and now it was garbage
we kept it, heedless of the toxins that coated it

We went to his aunt's house
she had stayed there, had planned to ride out the storm,
and had to be rescued by boat from her second floor window
Her front room had held a library, hundreds of books, maybe more
the Susquehanna's waters had floated them out of their shelves, floated them to the plaster ceiling
held them there and kept on rising
when the water receded the books were ruined things, dead, destroyed,
but they had left imprints on the ceiling,
colored stains on the white plaster,
faint images of the covers of hundreds of books, jumbled and arrayed where no books should ever be
ghosts of the books they had once been

Books  pressed against the ceiling
a lifetime of memories at the curb
Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at sunset
unseen fish breaking the surface of morning
girder shadows blue on the ice
thus will I remember you, Susquehanna

Poetry in Transit 2014

This past Monday I received this email:

Poetry In Transit 2014 Launch

Calling all poets--

Friday, December 19th
5-6pm

The Launch of Poetry In Transit 2014

at

Barnes & Noble Wilkes-Kings Bookstore
Public Square, Wilkes-Barre, PA  18702

Hope to see you there!

Bring your poem that's on the bus to read along with up to two others poems you'd like to share. We'll have a podium and microphone.

Everyone welcome--bring family, friends, and colleagues.

See you then, and thanks for being part of the poetry community.

Mischelle

I found out about this program pretty randomly last year. It's the local version of a national movement to get poetry displayed on public transportation - in this case, pieces by local poets displayed on buses  throughout the Luzerne County Transportation Authority (LCTA) system. I found out about it shortly before the 2013 launch. I attended that, mixed and mingled and expressed interest in participating in the next year's event. I even had a poem in mind, one that I had written a few weeks earlier - coincidentally, based in part on events that took place the evening that first I met the person who runs the program, in the aftermath of an unrelated poetry reading.*

The thing is, the poem, while quite short, was still too long to fit the submission guidelines. So I submitted the last stanza only, with the line structure subtly modified. Here's the poem in its entirety:

Hands

You should hold hands, they say,
whenever you cross the street
or walk through a parking lot
or when you're in the supermarket
so you don't get lost

We should hold hands all the time
when we're sad
when we're scared
when we feel alone

It's a small planet
but a big universe
and it's easy to get lost
So it's good to have someone by your side
to hold hands with
as you try to find your way
together

I submitted this back when the call for submissions came out - in April, I think. I publicized it to my fellow writers. I don't know if any of them submitted as well.

I wondered from time to time if this had gone anywhere, but I never heard anything about it until last Monday - or so I thought. A search of my email revealed another message from the person running the program, dated October 24, advising me that my poem had been accepted, and asking for information on where I resided so it could be added to the placard with the poem. By this past Monday it was too late to supply that information; based on my past associations, the assumption was made that I lived in Scranton. (I do not.) But that's fine. It allows me to preserve some shred of anonymity, and serves as a reminder that I should always remember to check my InBox!

So: Friday, December 19 at 5:00 at the Barnes & Noble in downtown Wilkes-Barre (next to Boscov's) there will be a rollout event for the 2014/2015 Poetry in Transit series. I've seen what my placard will look like and it's pretty nifty. I will be reading the complete version of "Hands" as well as two other poems. I'd love to see you there!


*Due to some horrible and traumatic events,  a friend and I were unable to make it to that reading until after it was over, twenty minutes after it started. I tried to strike up a conversation with the person who had invited us there, a person I thought of as a friend, but he deliberately snubbed me in the most overt way possible - his way of expressing contempt for anyone who would be so uncouth as to show up at a reading late. I wanted to think that if he had known the reason for our lateness he might have felt horrible and wanted to crawl under a rock to hide in shame. Later I realized that he was - and is - incapable of feeling empathy for others or remorse for his own bad behavior. Fortunately I cut him out of my life long ago, though we still move in some of the same circles.