Mehr Licht! Why publish poetry in unexpected places?

Abstract

On a recent trip to the Shetland Islands, I happened to see Heather Reid’s poem ‘Three Ways to Imitate a Great Spotted Woodpecker’ published above the urinals of a public toilet in Lerwick. The short poem was set in an aluminium frame and formed part of a project called ‘Bards in the Bog’. Launched in 2009, the project invited poets to submit pieces that they would not mind being displayed in public toilets around Shetland. In the project’s first year, a selection of the best poems was also published as a book by Shetland Library. Part of the initiative was meant to raise awareness of the poor sanitation conditions afflicting more than two billion people around the world. In fact, the book was launched on World Toilet Day and its proceeds were donated to WaterAid, which campaigns for worldwide sanitation. Besides the charitable dimension, the project has probably also managed to orchestrate an encounter with poetry for those people who might have long been detached from it. This was very much the intention of a similar project in Australia called ‘Toilet Doors Poetry’, which in 2006 published in six poems and accompanying illustrations in the public toilets of airport terminals and cinemas across the country. Publishing poems in such unexpected places as toilets provides people with better access to the valuable experience of reading poetry, which is sometimes only encountered at school in unappealing circumstances that lead to long-lasting negative attitudes.