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NewsJun 13, 2016

Raining Poetry

Professor Danielle Legros Georges is behind poems hidden on Boston’s sidewalks

If you’re walking in Boston on a rainy day, look down: you may see a poem magically appear on the sidewalk.

Danielle Georges
Professor Danielle Legros Georges
is Boston’s poet laureate.

Titled “Raining Poetry,” this innovative public art and literature installation features poems painted in a water-repellant spray that vanishes when it dries. As the area around the poems darkens with rain, pedestrians are treated to a surprise poem.

Lesley Professor Danielle Legros Georges, who is Boston’s poet laureate, selected the poems and identified installation sites across Boston. The poems and poem excerpts were made into stencils by local artists including W. Miles Donovan, and Lesley College of Art and Design students Morgan French and Marco Kienle. The artistic stencils were then applied in the installations.

“I think this is a wonderful way to bring poetry to the people,” said Georges, a professor who works with teachers and educators on how to use poetry and the arts as learning tools.

Georges selected written works by artists including Langston Hughes, Gary Duehr, Barbara Helfgott Hyett and Elizabeth McKim.

She selected the authors based on general themes of water and rain found in some poems, as well as their relationships to Boston.

Raining Poetry
Hidden poems appear on Boston sidewalks when it rains. Raining Poetry
images courtesy of Mass Poetry

“I thought it was important to have the first poems for this project be somehow connected to Boston—so I chose poems from writers with Boston ties,” said Georges. “I wanted to draw work from poets who have been influential in the Boston-area educational or literary realms.

“The next round of poems to be installed will include poems written in several of the many languages spoken in Boston including Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, and Spanish—and reflect our city’s international nature.” 

The “Raining Poetry” project is a collaboration between the nonprofit Mass Poetry and the city of Boston.

Learn more at masspoetry.org/raining-poetry.