Keep an eye out on your commute home tonight, as you may be surprised with some award-winning poetry. Each year a number of talented high school seniors from D.C. Public Schools are honored with Poet Laureate Poetry Awards, a program supported by the Office of the D.C. Poet Laureate, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Inter-American Development Bank and the Duke Ellington School of the Arts.

The winning poems from the last eight years have been compiled into the “Write On!” Initiative. Thirty-eight poems from students at 12 local schools will appear on posters in Metrobuses and a few Metro stops in the area for one month, as part of WMATA’s Metro Arts in Transit Program (which also brings you MetroPerforms!). They kicked off the program this morning, so we should be seeing them displayed around the city starting today.

D.C. Poet Laureate Dolores Kendrick has worked closely with these kids through the many programs run through her office. Kendrick was appointed in 1999, the second poet to receive the distinction after Sterling Brown (1984). Among the native Washingtonian’s many books of poetry and awards, she helped design the School Without Walls, and her poems can be seen on Barbara Grygutis’ sculpture Journeys, outside the New York Avenue Metro station, and on Albert Paley’s sculpture EPOCH on the corner of 9th and G Streets NW, outside the PEPCO Edison Gallery.

You can find the 38 WriteOn! poems online here.

Photo by a nameless yeast