Choosing words that convey the most feeling in the least amount of space is a task confronting all poets, but five students took that challenge to a new level when their lines of verse were selected to grace five electric carts on the Tempe campus. An unveiling of the carts took place May 3.

The poets chosen to have their work represented on the cart were Douglas Jones, Lindsey Gosma, Eva Valencia, Steve Price and Katie Cappello. Each wrote a single line regarding movement or the world surrounding the campus.

Dianne Cripe B.A.E. '72, M. A .E. '76, director of the Office of Public Art, said the project was two years in the making and involved a collaboration with English Professor Alberto Rios and his graduate students in the creative writing program, as well as the donated efforts of Thinking Caps, a local design firm that took the mini-poems and created a visual layout that featured innovative typography and photos of the poets along with their words. Funding was provided by the Herberger College of Fine Arts and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. Two of the carts selected to bear the poems are used by the Information Technology department, two are used by Residential Life and one is used by the Herberger College of Fine Arts.

Rios noted at the unveiling that the project had helped writers get at the “true essence of poetry” by distilling their images into a single sentence or thought. He praised the carts’ ability to bring verse to readers all over campus.

“ Poems shouldn’t be static, or stuck in a book,” he said. “Carts and poets are both in the process of moving people.”

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