The Poems on the Bus Go Round and Round

New York City subway riders may be seeing a litte less poetry these days—thanks to a recent decision by the Metropolitan Transit Authority to discontinue the Poetry Society of America's Poetry in Motion program—but commuters on buses in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Orlando are seeing more. Poetry Everywhere, a joint project of the Poetry Foundation; WGBH, the PBS affiliate in Boston; David Grubin Productions; and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (UWM), was recently launched to expose the public to the work of poets such as Agha Shahid Ali, John Ashbery, Robert Creeley, Matthea Harvey, and Richard Wilbur.

As part of the program, fifteen animated films created by students at docUWM, a documentary media center at UWM, and the the university's creative writing program, are shown on television screens on buses in six cities every Thursday. Seventeen additional films featuring poets reading their work were produced by WGBH and appear at unexpected moments on local public television stations. All the films can be seen on the WGBH Web site.