Roadside Poetry is made possible by support from the Fergus Area College Foundation.
The mission of The Roadside Poetry Project is to celebrate the personal pulse of poetry in the public landscape.
"A good poem takes something you probably already know as a human being and somehow raises your capacity to feel it to a higher degree."
Poet Jane Hirshfield
What is Roadside Poetry?
Recall the old Burma Shave signs posted along the highway during the 1950's? Now imagine driving along a rural road in Minnesota. As your car winds around the slight curve, you see a line of poetic verse on a sign posted along the roadside. You continue driving and 25 yards later you read the second line of the poem. After driving 50 more yards, you’ve read two more signs, a total of four lines of poetic imagery describing the landscape, the season, or a personal reflection. You’ve just experienced Roadside Poetry!
The mission of The Roadside Poetry Project is to celebrate the personal pulse of poetry in the public landscape. The project invites students - kindergarten through college - and residents of the region to submit four lines of original verse for consideration and posting on upcoming Roadside Poetry signs. The first Roadside Poem will be posted along the boulevard of Tower Road just north of the College Way intersection in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. We hope to expand the project to rural roads throughout Otter Tail County. Scott Gunvaldson, a local artist and sign painter, has been commissioned to design the logo, template, and lettering for each sign panel.
Why Roadside Poetry?
As a literary genre, poetry is not readily accessible to our students or to the general public. Poetry collections rarely make the best-seller list, and poetry readings typically attract small audiences comprised primarily of writers and academics. As the liberal arts branch of Minnesota State Community and Technical College, the Fergus Falls campus has a proud tradition of cultivating and celebrating the arts. Roadside Poetry exposes our students and the passing public to the wonderment of poetry in a unique visual format embedded into the natural landscape.
