Island poets read their work at the art museum

There is a rhyme, and a reason.

It’s Poetry Corners—a way for the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council to engage the community in the art of poetry  as well as acknowledge National Poetry Month during April. The council has run the poetry corner competition since 1999, and the next reading is 7 p.m. Saturday, April 28 at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art.

Before National Poetry Month arrived, poems were submitted to the council. The best were then selected to be presented around the city throughout the month.

The theme the council set for this year’s poems is “transformation.”

It has proven to be a popular topic.

When the council asked for poetry from the community this year, people were eager to respond. With 64 poets and 127 poems, the number of submissions has doubled from last year.

An anonymous jury considered each poem and discussed them at length. Poems were also kept anonymous, leaving any information about the authors a mystery.

The final result is 35 poems from poets with Bainbridge Island ties. The Arts & Humanities Council has compiled the poems into a chapbook.

“They decided what really rose to the top in terms of quality and reflecting our community,” said Lindsay Masters, of the Bainbridge Island Arts & Humanities Council.

The submissions have been on display across the island throughout April. The Poetry Corners event, however, will put a voice to the poems.

“Folks have had the chance all month to see Poetry Corners on display around town in a variety of spaces around Winslow and Rolling Bay and Bainbridge Gardens,” Masters said. “And what we would like to do is have a meeting with the poets and say, ‘Here are the voices behind these displays.’”

“There’s reading a poem and writing a poem, but there is a beauty in speaking a poem,” she said. “People can really experience bringing the poem to life.”

The complete collection of poems from this year’s Poetry Corner and a list of poem locations can be found at www.bainbridgeartshumanities.org.

Contact Bainbridge Island Review Staff Writer Richard D. Oxley at roxley@bainbridgereview.com or (206) 842-6613.

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