4Culture is proud to share several exciting updates about our poetry program. With a renewed vision, we will be implementing a new identity, broadened scope, and captivating theme for the 2023-2025 iteration.

The 4Culture poetry program began as Poetry on Buses, a partnership with King County Metro in 1992. For a deep dive into the program’s history, we recommend checking out our archives.

This year, the program has a new name, Poetry in Public, to reflect an expansion beyond buses to different forms of transit and places accessed by King County Metro. This new identity builds on past iterations of the beloved poetry program and advances the partnership among 4Culture and King County Metro. Poetry in Public recognizes local voices in one of our community’s most vital shared spaces—transit.

As Poet Planner Laura Da’ expresses the theme “Places of Landing,” she encourages us to embrace the importance of landing spaces in relation to community, transportation, and home. Poetry in Public welcomes everyone in honoring the movements, places, and feelings that tell the stories of our days. This approach to public poetry will offer writing and thinking prompts created to engage with place, water, and season. We invite you to find sources of inspiration in the theme, prompts, or to join us in our free workshops to write and share your poem

Following the precedents set by Poet Planners Jourdan Keith (“Your Body of Water”) and Roberto Ascalon (“Writing Home”), our current program aims to amplify diverse poetic traditions and local voices. Da’ and Community Liaisons will facilitate workshops that honor the many ways that people engage with the concept of landings and poetry in their daily lives. Communities of Focus for the 2023-2025 Poetry in Public program include: African American, Chinese, Filipino, Indigenous, Spanish-Speaking, and Youth.

Visit our new Poetry in Public webpage to learn more about upcoming events and submit your poem starting early August!