The theme for this year is Your Body of Water. Submissions open up on May 15 and will close in September, so get crackin on a new poem about water.
The theme for this year is "Your Body of Water," which was selected by poet Jourdan Keith. Submissions open up on May 15 and will close on September 30, so get crackin' on a new poem about water. Poetry on Buses

If you're looking for a neutral place to rest your eyes on a crowded bus, you only have a few options. You can stare at some reading material, your phone, the slice of the outside world you can see out the window between the heads of passengers, or the array of bus ads overhead.

Back in 1992, in partnership with 4Culture and King County Metro Transit, Poetry on Buses spiced up the commute with a little bit of poem action. Instead of looking at ads for DUI lawyers and community colleges (no offense to either, and, in fact, bless you all), a rider could drop into a poem written by anyone—an established poet, an eight-year-old, or the tortured teen from the coffee shop (bless you most of all).

The program was rebooted and considerably expanded in 2014. The org took 365 poems, which they put on the buses and published online at a rate of one per day. For the 2016/17 season, they plan to take the same number of poems.

This year, Poetry on Buses partnered with Seattle Public Utilities and the King County Department of Natural Resources and Parks (hence the water theme), and also with Sound Transit, so there will be poems on the light rail.

The program welcomes poems from all languages, and throughout the year they'll be hosting generative workshops designed to collect more of that work. Last year they focused on Korean, Russian, and Somali communities. This year they're focusing on Punjabi, Spanish, Tlingit, Chinese, Ethiopian, and English/African American communities.

You can find out more info about those workshops and submit your poems when they're ready at the Poetry on Buses website. Anyone who lives in King County is welcome to send in a poem. They’ll choose the poem using a panel review process, and there will be a huge community party once the poems are chosen. Last year, Poetry on Buses had the community party at the Moore. 900 people showed up. Expect about the same next April.

Until then, here's a little syllabus to get some inspiration:

Matsuo Bashō: "Frog Poem"
Jack Spicer: "Any fool can get into an ocean..."
Reina MarĂ­a Rodriguez: "memory of water"
Robert Frost: "Spring Pools"
Mary Ruefle: "Snow"
Emily Dickinson: "Water Makes Many Beds"
Kamau Brathwaite: "Bermudas"
Wallace Stevens: "The Idea of Order at Key West"