Poet Tree Town infuses public places with poems in windows around town as well as online. The poems are ephemeral, just up from April 1 to 30, during National Poetry Month.

The third rendition of Poet Tree Town is expanding to Ypsilanti, continuing in Ann Arbor, and launching with a kick-off event on April 1, 6-9 pm, at Dzanc House. The event includes an open mic, book swap, a community-written poem, desserts by local baker Fragola Forno, and a meet-and-greet with your local poets.

“Welcome to all, whether you are a poet yourself or a poetry appreciator!” said Poet Tree Town founder and organizer, Cameron (Cam) Finch, about the event.

The poems, written by community members, number 157 on display at 66 locations for 2025—up from 87 poets/poems at 38 locations in 2024. Ypsi will host 30 of the poems for the first time this year.

“The expansion to Ypsilanti felt like a very natural next step for this project,” Finch told Pulp. “At the same time, it was important for me to maintain the name Poet Tree Town, as a nod to where this project was born, and where it is growing out and up from.”

The inspiration for Poet Tree Town is from an event in Montpelier, Vermont, called PoemCity. Another inspiration was Finch’s interest in “finding people and finding community,” they said. When Finch moved back to Ann Arbor after attending grad school on the East Coast, the post-pandemic changes were apparent and significant to them. A goal of theirs for the Poet Tree Town project was to cultivate connections with the community and businesses in the area. Finch first launched Poet Tree Town in April 2023, and according to Finch, it forged such connections:

“We really do live in a special place where many of the small local business owners are so giving and community-minded, and Poet Tree Town exists to nourish this cycle of reciprocity—where poems bring people’s attention to storefronts and community resources, and storefronts provide window space and free community access to local art.”

Poet Tree Town has since grown. Here in Ypsi and Ann Arbor, people may engage with Poet Tree Town in a number of ways. One way is to spot poems in the windows around town. Readers can also take finding these poems to the next level by going on a self-guided scavenger hunt with the help of a map of the 66 locations.

“The concept of the ‘poetry scavenger hunt’ came about in our first year in 2023,” said Finch. “A community member had posted a collaged photo of all 76 poems she had found around town, captioning: ‘It was sunny outside today, so I set a goal to walk around town and document every poem in the Poet Tree Town project.’ I loved that—the ‘gotta find them all’ mentality, especially because it may get folks to places in town that they otherwise may not explore. I’ve adopted the ‘scavenger hunt’ phrasing now, because it lends itself to the curiosity, playfulness, wonder, and exploration that I hope this project stokes in all people.”

There are more ways to engage, too. People do not have to go in person to read the poems at their locations, and can even join in from out of town. The poems will be posted online daily on Poet Tree Town’s Instagram and Facebook during the month. Additionally, recordings of the poems will be available online via SoundCloud and linked by QR code on the posters around town so that followers may listen when they pass by a poem or from anywhere.

About the audio of the poems, Finch said, “One important piece of the Poet Tree Town project, in addition to hanging community poets’ works up in public spaces to be read, is the element of sound and voice. The experience of hearing poetry is so different from simply reading poetry in your own head.”

Even though the poems will be gone from windows at the conclusion of April, the sound recordings will remain up after the end of the month. Also, a goal of Poet Tree Town is to create a printed anthology of the poems.

The poets who have written and read their poems are a varied group with ties to this area, including Russell Brakefield, Shutta Crum, Katie Hartsock, Stephanie Heit, Kelly Hoffer, A.H. Kim, Petra Kuppers, Caroline Harper New, Monica Rico, Alison Swan, and Keith Taylor.

“Many people who respond to the submission call have literary leanings," Finch said, "including English majors and teachers of English or creative writing. But poems also come in from therapists, ministers, scientists, and 12 young folks, including Anthony’s [age 12] poem in the window of the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum titled ‘Sleeping is Weird.’ We’re also really grateful to feature poems this year by Ruth Mella, who is the 2024 Ypsi Youth Poet Laureate, as well as Marge Piercy, who has roots in Ann Arbor and is the author of anarcho-feminist classic novels such as Woman on the Edge of Time.”

Readers and listeners may encounter a range of voices and subject matters whether they discover the poems while out and about or catch a social media post.

Even though the opportunity to enter a poem in this year’s event has closed, poets may consider putting a poem forward in a future year. For those interested in next year’s call, submissions are typically open from January to mid-February. Another option for participating is the ongoing submission call for the weekly series in the Ann Arbor Observer featuring “poems specifically inspired by the people and places in Washtenaw County all year long,” Finch said. Poets may reach out to PoetTreeTownA2@gmail.com to share a poem for consideration.

Finch, who is a writer and editor, possesses a dedication to bringing poetry into people’s lives, and their view of poetry aligns with this dedication. For Finch, poetry has an expansive definition: “I’ve been writing poetry, fiction, essays, stories, lists, sounds, dreams for as long as I can remember. I think of it all as poetry. This is because my relationship to poetry and my definition of poetry has shifted and expanded as I’ve grown older.”

The Poet Tree Town project reflects Finch’s view of poetry as more than just written word:

Instead of thinking of poetry as a formal piece of writing, I believe that poetry is less about writing and more about attention, emotional truth, imagination, transcendent love, the practice of being and noticing yourself being and contributing in a shared ecosystem with others. A gathering of people can be poetry, a meal made and shared can be poetry, a bodily movement or bodily stillness can be poetry, planting or burying something or someone in the dirt can be poetry, intertwining voices in a collective song or yell or chant can be poetry. There are so many ways for us to attempt articulation, compassion, and connection. Words can certainly be a medium for poetry-making, but so can art, so can touch, so can gesture, so can earth, so can voice and instrumentation, so can laughter and tears, so can food, so can collective resistance and people power, so can deep listening. I think, in this way, everyone has the capacity to be a poet.

Poet Tree Town enriches the area with such poetry and gives poets a chance to impart their work, both during April and throughout the year with its various initiatives.    

Martha Stuit is a former reporter and current librarian.  

In addition to the poems exhibited around town and online, Poet Tree Town offers events alongside community-hosted poetry events in the month of April:

➥ Poet Tree Town event – Poet Tree Town Kick-off, April 1, 6-9 pm, Dzanc House, Ypsilanti
Kick off the month with an open mic, book swap, a community-written poem, desserts by local baker Fragola Forno, and a meet-and-greet with your local poets
➥ Community Event – Let's Celebrate – Poetry Month Writing Workshops, various dates, Ypsilanti District Library
➥ Community Event – LGBTQ Night: Queer Open Mic Night, April 3, 7 pm, North Star Lounge
➥ Community Event – Ellen Stone with Monica Rico and Ashwini Bhasi, April 9, 6:30 pm, AADL Downtown Library
➥ Community Event – Ilya Kaminsky, April 10, 5:30 pm, University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) as part of the Zell Visiting Writers series
➥ Community Event – Monthly Open Mic, April 10, 6 pm, Dzanc House
➥ Community Event – Earth Month Celebration with poets Alison Swan, Lynn Domina, Caroline Harper New, and Patricia Clark, April 11, 6:30 pm, Literati Bookstore
➥ Community Event – Monthly Open Mic, April 12, 8 pm, Third Mind Books
➥ Community Event – M. Bartley Seigel with Keith Taylor and Nandi Comer, April 17, 6:30 pm, Literati Bookstore
➥ Poet Tree Town event – Pizza and Poetry in the Park, April 18, 7 pm, location TBA
A collaboration between Poet Tree Town and Groundcover News
➥ Community Event – Linda Nemec Foster and Anne-Marie Oomen, April 22, 6:30 pm, Literati Bookstore
➥ Poet Tree Town event –Poet Tree Town on WCBN 88.3FM as part of the Living Writers radio show, April 23, 5-6 pm
➥ Community Event – Celebration of Jewish Poetry, April 26, 2-6 pm, Temple Beth Emeth, Ann Arbor
Including keynote speaker, poet Jehanne Dubrow, and readings by Michigan poets Pia Borsheim, Ellen Stone, Simone Yehuda, and Claire Weiner
➥ Community Event – Poetry Workshop: A Quest for Innocence in a Troubled World with poet Carmen Bugan, April 29, 5:30-7:30 pm, AADL Downtown Library
➥ Community Event – Open Mic Night with Annie Bacon and Forrest Hejkal, April 30, 7-10 pm, North Star Lounge