Bri Funte | Staff Writer

In celebration of National Poetry Month and last week’s National Library Week, the Buena Vista University (BVU) Library is hosting a book spine poetry contest to encourage students to use their creativity and find their own unique poem. This fun and simple activity was a collaboration of ideas from reference librarians Jodie Morin and Jackie AlSaffar, although, this isn’t the first time such contest has been held.

Book spine poetry is a type of found poetry inspired by a project hosted by Nina Katchadourian in 1993. Katchadourian’s “sorted books” project included compiling interesting book titles and arranging them so that the spines created sentences. This idea was then adapted to create poetry rather than sentences. The poem is created by combining words, phrases, or passages from other sources and rearranging them to create a new meaning. If a person is not good at crafting original poems, this might be the perfect activity!

“Book spine poetry is exactly what it sounds like,” Morin said. “You arrange books on top of each other with the spine and titles aligned. Then when you read the titles together, they’ve formed a poem. Often times people are discouraged to create poetry because they’re worried about it rhyming. There are other ways in which poems can be constructed.”

Morin advises not to worry about getting caught up in making your poem rhyme. Making a book spine poem that rhymes may be difficult, but bonus points are given if one can make it work.

Students, faculty, and staff of BVU are encouraged to participate in this month’s library celebrations by challenging themselves to create their own book spine poem. Stop in to the campus library, grab a minimum of three books, and arrange them to create a unique verse. Students can even work together, compiling books they already have in their dorm rooms.

To enter the contest, participants upload a picture of the book spine poem they create to the library’s Facebook page: BVU Library. The pieces created by other BVU poets can be seen on this site. At the end of National Poetry Month, the library staff will determine whether any of the poems uploaded warrant a prize.

Updates about the contest can be found on Facebook as well as the library homepage found on BVU’s website.

Photo courtesy of Bri Funte