pano image supplied by Marjory Wunsch

 Your Sidewalk Speaks by Marjory Wunsch on Scrim along Lafayette Square, Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA

Your Sidewalk Speaks:

Cemented here beneath your feet

I brave the frost-heaves, summer’s heat,

Delighting in those good vibrations

Sent from your perambulations.

                                   – Marjory Wunsch

“To celebrate five years of Sidewalk Poetry, Cambridge Arts worked with designer Rick Rawlins and his Community Design students at Lesley Art and Design to print entries from each year across a giant scrim that wraps a construction site around Lafayette Square and Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square. It was installed in April 2019 and is expected to be on view through fall 2019.” ( quote from  Cambridge Arts Poetry Programs) 

As I tried to track the banner with this cogent poem, I had to note some challenges for public art. Our own traffic interferes with reading, absorbing or even recognizing poetry.  That made me more determined to speak for a poem that speaks for our sidewalks and the poetry we add to them each year.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Author, illustrator, painter Marjory Wunsch lives and works in Cambridge. One of her books is Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (with Glenna Lang). For more about her books, click here.

For more about Cambridge Arts Poetry Programs click here.

 Background about Lafayette Square.