April is designated as National Poetry Month so we have created a book display in celebration.
Poetry is very diverse and includes things from haiku’s to sonnets. Poetry lets people speak from the heart in an artistic way generally with a sense of rhythm, but not every poem rhymes.
This year we did a Book Spine Poetry Display for the first time. Book Spine Poetry allows a person to take the titles of books on the spines and put them together to create a poem, short sentence or story. Some of these may be more comprehensible than others and some may be a bit more abstract. Regardless with as many book titles that are out there it can be a fun way for someone to read what is int he collection and get creative. It may even spark interest and a person may want to read a book they chose to create a poem because of the interesting and possibly fun title.
When we first started this display we wanted to make it interactive so we chose books from the collection for people to choose from as well as formed poems and displayed them. Our hope was that people would read them and interact, change our poems or make their own.
With other competing displays needing space we ended up just having a few of the book spine poems displayed in a case instead after the first two weeks and sadly very little interaction. We wanted to try something new and some of the library staff had fun with it, while others struggled to comprehend some of the abstract poetry
Besides our Book Spine Poetry we also have a display of poetry books, many of which are award winners. One of the books highlighted is Citizen: an American lyric by Claudia Rankine, covering mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media a National Book Award for Poetry winner.
Where Are All The Books 