National Poetry Month Project: A Poem From Us
I’m excited, ecstatic and overly happy to announce the launch of A Poem From Us – a site featuring regular folks sharing their favorite poem with one another. It’s an attempt to mix poetry with YouTube and QR codes, creating what I hope will be an ever-growing archive of people, reading their favorite poems.
For those that remember, I received an Awesome Foundation grant last November to fund this project, receiving $1,000 from Awesome Foundation Chicago.
Ever since that time, I’ve been hard at work putting the site together. I enlisted the incredibly talented Justin Siddons to help out with the logo and stickers. I spent a lot of time plotting and planning out the various stages in the project: it was both energizing and, honestly, a little stressful. For the most part, I’ve always been the one overseeing my projects. While the Awesome Foundation grants don’t come with any strings or expectations, in the back of my head I wanted to do a good job. I was taking someone else’s money, and wanted to do right by them.
It’s been a long time since December, and I’ve spent a great deal of time getting things set up and ready. Right now, I’m elated to have a small collection of videos posted up on the site. I have some incredibly indulgent friends who took time out of their schedule to record some videos for me – and I think the site’s looking pretty great.
While the project is launching to coincide with National Poetry Month, my goal is to have this site up and running the whole year round. Take a look/listen, and if you feel so inspired… I’d love to have you submit a video.
And if not, maybe you’d be interested in getting some free stickers. Each sticker has the project logo, and also features a custom QR code. When scanned, the QR code will automatically load up a random video from the project site on your mobile device. I’ve been referring to this as a kind of “found poem” for the digital age.
With April finally here, I’ll be spending a lot of time trying to share the project URL with others. If you wouldn’t mind passing the URL along, I’d consider it a kindness. And if you’d go so far as to send in a video, well… I’d love to have you on the site as well.
Related:
I Won A $1,000 Grant From The Awesome Foundation!
Receiving $1,000 From Awesome Foundation Chicago
Felix! Everything looks great even the stickers, now I’ve got to submit a video myself :) Also thanks for the mention for the work!
JustinSid (April 2, 2012 at 11:00 am)Not at all. Thanks for helping make the project come alive!
avoision (April 7, 2012 at 3:39 pm)A Poem From Us is no more???
Deb (January 5, 2017 at 12:25 pm)Sadly, the project is no more. There wasn’t a ton of traffic to the site, and not a lot of additional contributors. I kept things running for a long while, but after an incredibly long period of inactivity… decided to turn off the lights.
avoision (January 5, 2017 at 2:17 pm)