From a haiku about Kanaka Creek and a playful verse about Nerf gun battles, the tweetable poem contest held in celebration of Maple Ridge’s 140th anniversary did not disappoint.
The city through the Public Art Steering Committee, Holy Wow Poets and Golden Ears Writers developed a call for current and past residents of Maple Ridge to submit short, original “tweetable” poems, elegant rhymes, playful limericks, bar napkin free verse or classroom haikus. The theme: what makes this City special to you? Each poem had to be up to 140 characters including spaces, the maximum length in a tweet.
Ten winners were chosen two weeks ago and their poems will be displayed temporarily in public spaces around the city centre as sidewalk poetry come spring.
It was a hard decision to select only 10 entries, said Yvonne Chui, the city’s arts and community connections manager.
The selection panel reviewed all the submissions through a blind selection process. The poems were judged by Andrea Lister, Joe Robinsmith and Katherine Wagner.
Chiu said the judges were very impressed with the creativity and passion for the community evident in all the submissions.
“Thanks to everyone who made a submission as the numbers in a short time indicate that there’s a poet in every one of us.”
The winning poems were submitted by: Beckett Evans, Marlowe Evans and Emily Tsui (kids and youth categories); Kieron Donovan, Shelley Evans, Michael Hanlon, Leanne Koehn, Sheila Nickols and Jaimen Shires (adult category).
The second stage of this project is to invite residents to vote for their top two choices by clicking “like” on the city’s Facebook page. The winners will be reserved for permanent installation in the future. You can only vote once for your choice of two out of the 10 poems. Voting closes on October 10.