Metro News Release
For immediate release: October 27, 2008
Read award-winning poetry while riding Metrobus
Metrobuses and Metro Website feature Write On! campaign poetry
Metro will showcase award-winning poetry by District of Columbia high school students this fall in a series of public service advertisements placed on Metrobuses throughout the region.
The Write On! Poetry in Public Transit Exhibition will get underway at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 29, at Metro headquarters, 600 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC. A bus featuring all 38 poems selected for the Write On! program will be parked in front of the building and open to the public, and the collection of poems is posted online.
The featured poems are selections from Write On!, an exhibition of original poems created by District of Columbia high school students. The poems will be seen on bus cards placed in approximately 200 Metrobuses.
The 38 poems from students at 12 District of Columbia public high schools were selected by DC Poet Laureate Delores Kendrick, who appears on the posters promoting Write On! Kendrick’s image also will be seen on ads on bus exteriors to give further publicity to the poetry project. All of the featured poems have received a DC Poet Laureate Award.
“These young people are champions – through their poetry, they’ve dared to share their hopes, their dreams and their love of family with all who ride Metro,” said Kendrick.
“When we encourage creativity in our young people, we make their future possible,” said Michael Mc Bride, Manager of Metro’s Art in Transit Program.
Metro’s Art in Transit Program created Write On! to promote the literary arts and to encourage reading.
In addition to being displayed on Metrobuses, the poems will be available on Metro’s website starting Wed., Oct. 29, 2008, and the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities website.
Metro’s Art in Transit program, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Office of the Poet Laureate and Inter-American Development Bank Cultural Center are sponsors of Write On! See Metro's Art in Transit program page for more information.
News release issued at 3:59 pm, October 27, 2008.