Curbside Haiku
CURBSIDE HAIKU
November, 2011 New York
Following John Morse’s 2010 Atlanta installation Roadside Haiku, the New York City Department of Transportation commissioned “Curbside Haiku,” which launched in late November 2011.
Via image, text and qr code, NYC’s DOT installed over 200 signs throughout the city’s five boroughs. The signs, attached to light poles and at the entrance to public parking lots, employed higly-stylized designs alongside 17-syllable haiku to engage pedestrians and cyclists on the need for safely on the city’s streets.
To kick off the project, NewYork Commissioner of Transportation Janette Sadik-Khan hosted a “Curbside Haiku” fundraiser to benefit the city’s non-profit Safe Streets Fund at New York’s Center for Architecture on November 28.
Press for “Curbside Haiku” included a 3/4 page feature, including five photographs, in section A of the New York Times (written entirely in haiku) with a followup article containing haiku submitted by readers in response to the project, an article in the New York Post (best headline: “City’s Going Haiku-Koo!”) and the highest rating in New York magazine’s weekly “Approval Matrix.”
Rachel Maddow named “Curbside Haiku” as the day’s “Best New Thing” on her November 30th show and did the entire segment in haiku.
John taped radio interviews with Scott Simon for NPR’s “Weekend Edition – Saturday” and the BBC World Service’s “Newshour” with Claire Bolderson (broadcast to 120 countries around the world), as well as a segment for the “CBS Early Show.”
By early December 2011, a Google Search of “Curbside Haiku” yielded 24,000 results. Links for some of the major press items include:
The New York Times, November 29, 2011
The New York Post, November 30, 2011
DesignBloom.com, November 30, 2011
SmartSign Blog, December 9, 2011
NPR Interview with “Weekend Edition Saturday”‘s Scott Simon, December 3, 2011
BBC World Service interview (at the 48 minute mark), December 3, 2011
New York Magazine, “Approval Matrix”, week of December 12, 2011
CBS Early Show Segment, December 16, 2011
Here are each of the “Curbside Haiku” images along with their corresponding haiku.
Cars crossing sidewalk:
Worst New York City hotspot
To run into friends
Too averse to risk
To chance the lottery, yet
Steps into traffic
Imagine a world
Where your every move matters.
Welcome to that world.
Aggressive driver.
Aggressive pedestrian.
Two crash test dummies.
8 million swimming,
The traffic rolling like waves
Watch for undertow.
Cyclist writes screenplay
Plot features bike lane drama
How pedestrian
Puerta del coche
Se abre al ciclista
Un freno duro
A sudden car door,
Cyclist’s story rewritten.
Fractured narrative
Car stops near bike lane
Cyclist entering raffle
Unwanted door prize
She walks in beauty
Like the night. Maybe that’s why
Drivers can’t see her.
Oncoming cars rush
Each a 3-ton bullet.
And you, flesh and bone.
Coches ciegos
Comunicarse en Braille.
Remate brutal.
John Morse Awarded the 2011 Brendan Gill Prize for Curbside Haiku
Presented by the Municipal Art Society of New York