You know how, when you go out for drinks with writer friends, the conversation always devolves into a lament about the state of literary culture in America, and someone makes a zealous fist and says we need to go further than lit mags, we need to bring poetry to the people! and someone else says wouldn't it be great to just get in a van and, you know, just go DO that?
Well, six poets are.
This summer, Adam Atkinson, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, Zachary Harris, Ben Pelhan, S.E. Smith, and Anne-Marie Rooney (a TIR alum!) are climbing into a van and driving across the midwest, mid-atlantic, and northeast U.S. to give readings, performances, and free poetry and literary arts workshops at libraries and community spaces.
They call the project Line Assembly, and in April it became the most funded poetry Kickstarter campaign ever. Their goal is to engage with the country's network of grassroots literary arts efforts and to prove that poetry, contrary to a recent Washington Post op-ed, is not, in fact, dead.
Are they coming to a town near you? Here's the map.
