The City of Sydney’s cleansing trucks are bringing poetry to life in unexpected locations, thanks to a project curated by the 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival.
Eleven trucks decorated with verses by famous poets including W.B. Yeats and Australian activist Judith Wright hit the streets in May.
Each truck features two giant poems, measuring more than two metres wide and one metre high. A total of 19 poems appear in the series.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the trucks celebrated one of Sydney’s most iconic cultural events by displaying much-loved poetry in a different way.
“From Shakespeare and Wordsworth to ancient Greek epics and celebrated Australian writers, poetry has delighted and inspired people for thousands of years.” she said.
Councillor Moore encouraged Sydneysiders to look out for poems as they roamed the city streets.
“They might even be inspired to find their own favourite sonnet,” she said.
2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival artistic director Jemma Birrell said she wanted the joint project with the City of Sydney to inspire people with unexpected literary experiences in every day situations.
“[We want to] showcase poems that make people think and consider the world or themselves differently.”
Luke Davies, the 2012 Prime Minister’s Literary Award-winning poet and 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival guest, selected the poems featured on the trucks.
The poems include W.B. Yeats’ ‘Vacillation’, Judith Wright’s ‘Woman to Child’, Peter Porter’s ‘The Unicorn in Love’ and Kay Ryan’s ‘Fool’s Errands’.
Mr Davies said he chose a series of poems that would stop people in their tracks.
“If one single non-festival-going, non-poetry-reading citizen out there is led to look up at one of these poems, I will feel wildly successful in my task as a curator.”
The Sydney Writers’ Festival attracts more than 80,000 attendances and features over 400 writers and authors each year, making it one of the largest writers’ festivals in the world.
The City of Sydney has been a major sponsor of the event since its launch and in 2012 announced a significant funding boost for the 2013 and 2014 festivals, worth $330,000 each year.
