As part of our spring book selection, the Vancouver Book Club is running a poetry-inspired photo contest. Each week we'll post one of Rob Taylor's poems from his book, The Other Side of Ourselves, and we're asking you to create and send us a photo influenced by the poem. Maybe it's just one line that inspires you to create your image, or maybe it's the poem as a whole that gets your creative juices going. The following week we'll post all of the entries we receive, and at our event in April we'll choose the winner.
Here's this week's poem:
The Wailing Machines
I wanted to say: look, this intersection, this place
where we have come together and stopped traffic,
is the only place we ever could have met, you and I –
pistons that never before aligned, even when the engine
was at rest, that had to wait until the whole contraption
burst and we were spilled out onto the pavement to see that yes,
all those hints – those darting noises, glints of steam and light –
held truth, that there are others as startled and ragged as ourselves,
and somehow gaining that knowledge seems worth all this blood
and bother and traffic lined up over the crest of the hill.
I wanted to say all of this, but my throat sputtered
which is why I merely waved as we were lifted away
and placed inside the wailing machines
we were only beginning to know to imagine.
- - - - -
To enter:
1) email the photo to us at [email protected]. Put "TOSOO Photo Week 1" in the subject line.
OR
2) post the photo on the web and send us a tweet @VIA_Reads with the link and #TOSOO
The deadline to enter photos for this week's poem is next Wednesday, March 7, 2012, at 6 pm. We'll post the photos the next day.
