State of the Arts Blog

Sidewalk Poetry winners announced

Poetry is alive and well on the streets of St. Paul.

The Sidewalk Poetry Project, now in its third year, invites community members to submit their poetry. Those poems selected by a judging panel are then stamped into new sidewalks around the city.

This year more than 800 poems were submitted. St. Paul City Artist in Residence Marcus Young said they included "poems about the weather, baseball, memories, love of Saint Paul, squirrels and dogs, family, everything under the sun it seems, intrigued, stirred, amused, and charmed us."

This year's winning poems were penned by: Dallas Crow, Rachel Kowarski, Pat Owen, Jeri Reilly, and Kevin Walker. Honorable mentions include: Jefforee Davis, Sharon DeMark, Collin Dobie and William Reichard.

Here are a couple of the winning poems:

A dog on a walk

is like a person in love −

You can't tell them

it's the same old world.

by Pat Owen

A puddle,

where a moth

can shake the sky.

by Kevin Walker

To date 26 different poems have been embedded in 260 different locations.