Michigan National Park Signs Sport Poetry

Detroit News reports that national park signs in Michigan are getting a bit of a facelift. In Michigan's three national parks, the National Park Service has posted nature poems by Moheb Soliman, an Egyptian-American poet and artist. More:

Visitors to Michigan’s three national parks this summer are in for a treat. In addition to the wonders of nature, they might also get an unexpected dose of literature.

In a highly unusual collaboration, the National Park Service posted nature poems by Egyptian-American poet and artist Moheb Soliman at various points in five Midwestern parks, including Sleeping Bear Dunes, Pictured Rocks and Isle Royale.

The poems are on standard-issue NPS brown signs and look official — until you start reading. That element of surprise or serendipity, says Soliman, 36, was half the point.

“That’s the great thing art can do,” he says, “when it just sort of sits there and doesn’t beat you over the head with its art-ness.”

That element most delights Linda Gregerson, a University of Michigan English professor and widely published poet.

“Poetry belongs in public spaces as well as in the privacy of lamp-lit rooms,” she writes from England, adding that Soliman’s approach “seems to me to be an ideal form of offering: poetry by way of gentle ambush.”

The poetry signs grew out of a 2015 project funded by the Joyce Foundation in which Soliman, who moved to this country at age 6 and grew up mostly in Columbus, Ohio, circled all five Great Lakes over four months, visiting “as many towns and wilderness areas as possible.”

Read more at the Detroit News.