Bicyclists wrote 322 poems in six hours—nearly a poem a minute—at Milwaukee’s first Poetry Factory checkpoint this summer during the Riverwest24 bicycle race.

 

We sorted through the poems and compiled our final selections into a digital chapbook. Forty-eight poems—two for each hour of the bicycle race—are divided into three sections: Beauty, Bikes, and The Neighborhood.

 

Each poet wrote either a limerick, haiku, ghazal, tanka, free verse, erasure, or the special 53212 form (a five-line poem with syllables matching Riverwest’s 53212 zip code).

 

Check out the original RelevantMilwaukee article to learn more about Milwaukee’s only 24-hour bicycle race and the Poetron checkpoint.