APPLETON, WI (WTAQ) – Appleton officials are looking for the city’s best poets to take part in the 2016 sidewalk poetry program.
Now in its third year, the program will add 5 additional poems to the poems from 2014 and 2015 that have been stamped in more than 40 sidewalks around the city.
“The Sidewalk Poetry Program has been a big success in its first two years, we’ve really been pleased with the response from the community,” Department of Public Works Director Paula Vandehey said in a statement. “We as a city are making an effort to bring more public art to our community in a variety of ways and this program is a great compliment to that effort.”
Poems must be submitted by February 15 to this email address: paula.vandehey@appleton.org. Poems selected by the committee will be announced in mid-March and stamped in various locations throughout the city as crews replace sections of sidewalk throughout the summer.
It’s open to any Appleton resident or student enrolled with the Appleton Area School District. The poem can be previously published, but must be an original work. The poem must be appropriate for the general public, fit within 10, 40-character lines and be no longer than 250 characters total.
Vandehey says she came up with the idea after attending a Public Works conference in Minneapolis back in 2013. There she learned of a St. Paul artist who created a sidewalk poetry program in that community and she decided to bring it to Appleton.
