Imagine a pair of female poets riding a tandem bicycle and towing two typewriters more than 1,000 miles from Boulder, Colorado to Beloit, Wisconsin, promoting literacy, poetry, community, and the spirit of collaboration along the way. Two women we met this winter during The Start Something Challenge are doing just that!
This coming July, Maya Stein and Amy Tingle - founders of Food for the Soul Train, a creativity company that leads art and writing workshops for kids and adults in New Jersey and beyond - are teaming up with Little Free Library of Madison, WI, for Type Rider II: The Tandem Poetry Tour.
Type Rider II is the second installation of a traveling writing project begun by Maya in 2012. “Type Rider: Cycling the Great American Poem” was a 40-day, 1,200-mile trip from Amherst, Massachusetts to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, during which Maya towed a typewriter behind her and invited people she encountered at each stop to contribute to a collaborative collection of writing. Her journey was documented by several publications, including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, Rails-to-Trails Magazine, and The Writer.
Type Rider II builds on the experience of the first trip in several ways. First, we will be partnering with Little Free Library (www.littlefreelibrary.org) to help build new community-based book exchanges along our route. And they will be creating personalized poetry on their vintage typewriters for people they meet along the route.