Verse-atility of Buses Tested by Steven Beeber News Office staff March 3, 2000 Bus travel is becoming a poetic experience. With the help of the Poetry Society of America (PSA), MassLive, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA), and design companies Titanium and Impress Inc., graduate students in Creative Writing are bringing poems-on-posters to area buses. The project kicks off March 11 with a party and poetry reading at the Fine Arts Center. Among those invited to take part are acclaimed poets Derek Walcott, Donald Hall, Gerald Stern, Dara Wier, and James Tate. A reception featuring singer Anita Suhanin will immediately follow. A bus fitted with sample posters will be displayed. Poetry in Motion was inaugurated by the PSA in New York City in 1992. Since then the program has placed artfully designed posters on subways, railways, and buses in cities across America including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. This is the first time a university has hosted the program, which organizers hope to make an ongoing feature after this year. "I was living in New York when 'Poetry in Motion' first began there, and I remember looking up on the subway expecting to find the usual advertisements for podiatrists only to see a poem by Ezra Pound," says MFA student Lisa Olstein. Thrilled by the memory, Olstein readily responded when MFA professor Dara Wier suggested someone try to bring the program here. For the past 17 months, she and the other student coordinators have spent many hours waging a campaign to achieve that goal, she says. In all, 1,200 posters of 12 different poems will be posted on PVTA buses, with three groups of 400 posters appearing at four-month intervals. MFA students chose the poems with the assistance of program faculty and the approval of the PSA in New York. Local companies Titanium and Impress Inc. designed the posters pro bono, and the PVTA provided free ad space. In addition, MassLive offered monetary support and free use of its Website. The PVTA estimates that thousands of riders will see the posters by year's end.