The Poetic Grid Maps the Lyrics of Place

There's only one requirement to qualify for Seattle's Poetic Grid project: write a poem about a specific place.

1 minute read

July 16, 2017, 7:00 AM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Seattle Center

A line from "Variation on a Theme by Rilke," by Denise Levertov, and written in stone at the Seattle Center. | Julie Jordan Scott / Flickr

Josh Cohen shares news of the Poetic Grid, a recently completed project by planner-turned-poet Castro Luna, who is wrapping up a two-year term as Seattle’s first civic poet.

The Poetic Grid, an interactive map of Seattle plotted with place-based poetry, gathers poems by Luna, Seattle luminaries like Denise Levertov, Theodore Roethke, and Richard Hugo, as well as amateurs and first-time writers. The bulk of the poems, in fact, come from that latter source, according to Cohen.

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