Library walkway poetry winners named

Those asphalt patches in the new walkway to the Evanston Public Library will soon be replaced with poetry.

The Human Services Committee Monday approved five poems that won a competition among Evanston poets to be stamped in wet concrete on the walk.

Those asphalt patches in the new walkway to the Evanston Public Library will soon be replaced with poetry.

The Human Services Committee Monday approved five poems that won a competition among Evanston poets to be stamped in wet concrete on the walk.

Assuming the full City Council approves at its meeting next week, the poems will be installed using a method that Parks Director Doug Gaynor says has been used for over a century and has proved to stand the test of time.

Last fall the council approved a $252,000 contract with Schroeder & Schroeder Inc. of Skokie to replace the decaying ramp and sidewalks around the library. The plan set aside $10,000 to install the poetry panels.

Gaynor says a total of 328 poems were submitted in response to a call for entries in the competition and a six-person panel of poetry and literature experts selected by the city’s Public Arts Committee and library and cultural arts division staff selected the poems late last month.

Here are the winning poems:

“Research” by Ethan Plaut

My poems
Are research
Into how
The perfect
Conversation
Would sound
Just in case
I should find
The person
With whom to
Have it

“Clark Street Beach” by Charlotte Hart

Lake Michigan smooth
sunrise barefoot wedding
kissing laughing
tux pants rolled up
gown held above sand.
We were the old couple walking by
holding hands.

“Poem 3” by Toby Sachs

[image of two foot prints]

You may step where I step
But you may not walk in my shoes
Unless you try

“Snowflakes” by Susan Gundlach

Flitting spots of white
Lighting on dead flower stalks:
Winter’s butterflies

“The Poetic Foot” by Alicia Berneche

Your feet scan these words
And you feel the vibration of meaning
through their soles.
Poetry is motion
And the rhythm of bodies
That pound their stories
Into the earth.