BRATTLEBORO — Poetry around Town (PAT) is back. For a third year running, the pandemic-spawned project has posted close to 100 poems in nearly 50 businesses' windows around Brattleboro.
With poems from throughout Vermont, nearby Massachusetts, and New Hampshire by both published and well-known poets, as well as by those who are fairly new to the art, the collection was curated by a small group of collaborators, then prepared for hanging in 14-point type.
A collaboration among Write Action, the Brattleboro Literary Festival, and Time to Write, PAT launched in response to isolation necessitated by the spread of Covid.
As Write Action co-founder Arlene Distler, a journalist, visual artist, and participating poet, explains: “Yes, the need to connect was more urgent during Covid, but the desire to see and hear each other is still with us. The town has been through rough times lately ... [Thus offering this means of expression] is at least as important now as it was during Covid.”
Inviting people writing poetry to submit to this event, Distler says, “encourages those who have perhaps been too shy about their poetry writing to come forward in this very public, but not scary, way."
Participating poet, writer, educator, and publisher Arthur “Andy” Burrows adds: “What fascinates me with being involved in the literary community is the variety of voices and interests heard: many of us are concerned about problems in our community ... there's a lot going on. In reviewing [the 2023 PAT poems] it's clear people are very concerned.”
The poems, Burrows explains, manifest strong feelings about the environment, about peace and violence, about social challenges faced.
“It's wonderful to give poets a chance to share vision and feelings.... Many of the poems around town are very personal, emerging from the poets' lives, loves, loneliness, excitement.”
Readers witness a range of voices from keen observation of the world to what's happening in one person's life here and now.
Participating poet Barbara Morrison, writer and teacher of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, adds that poetry can address “how we can bear witness to what's happening to us, how we reach others now and leave a record for the future.”
Morrison adds that the hope is that PAT will bring more people downtown to patronize the many participating businesses.
In the first year of Poetry around Town, the response from the business community was outstandingly positive and that reaction has grown ever more so.
“Store owners love people stopping in front of their windows to read the poems posted there, to have conversations about them, to engage,” said Distler.
As an art form, Distler said “poetry is just too invisible in our culture ... so we see this as a way to bring poetry to the fore. It's well-suited to this project because of its compactness, its expressiveness, and its imagery.”
PAT has an impact not only on Brattleboro shoppers, residents, and visitors, but also, naturally, on the poets themselves.
As participating poet Lindsey Marie Stormo wrote to PAT: “After two and a half decades of writing the words, keeping my work privately quiet and only sharing closely with the ears of horses, wind, a few shy human kin and of course rivers, this is the first time I've ever chosen to unleash my writing to set foot in the human public eye.
“That's a lot of time building until now, and I chose your event to step into sharing my work. Thank you so much, for all the careful tending you all have done in this incredible community event. Poems save lives, I learned as a young child - and sometimes, literally. This is no small thing, this action of words - gathering poets in these ways and offering your time and energy is quite a labor of love.”