Each truck features two giant poems, measuring more than two metres wide and one metre high, with a total of 19 poems appearing in the series.
Lord Mayor Clover Moore says “From Shakespeare and Wordsworth to ancient Greek epics and celebrated Australian writers, poetry has delighted and inspired people for thousands of years.
The Lord Mayor wants to encourage Sydneysiders to look out for the poems as they roam the city streets in May "they might even be inspired to find their own favourite sonnet.”
The poems featured on the trucks have been selected by Luke Davies, the 2012 Prime Minister’s Literary Award-winning poet and 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival guest.
The poems include W. B. Yeats’ “Vacillation”, Judith Wright’s “Woman to Child”, Peter Porter’s “The Unicorn in Love” and Kay Ryan’s “Fool’s Errands”.
Mr Davies said he chose a series of poems “that stop one in one’s tracks, and are utterly unlike the advertising copy that litters the verbal landscape.
“If one single non-festival-going, non-poetry-reading citizen out there is led to look up one of these poems, I will feel wildly successful in my task as curator.”
The Sydney Writers’ Festival is one of the largest writers’ festivals in the world, attracting more than 80,000 attendances and featuring over 400 writers and authors each year.
The 2013 Sydney Writers’ Festival runs from 20-26 May.
For more information, visit: swf.org.au
Poets and their selected works featured on the trucks are:
Rainer Maria Rilke (from “Archaic Torso of Apollo”) (tr: Stephen Mitchell)
Gig Ryan (from “When I Consider”)
Peter Porter (from “The Unicorn in Love”)
Jessy Randall (“Why I had Children”)
Martin Harrison (from “Walking Back from the Dam”)
David Campbell (“Mothers and Daughters”)
John Berryman (from “Eleven Addresses to the Lord”)
W. B. Yeats (from “Vacillation”)
Kevin Hart (from “Dark Bird”)
Judith Wright (from “Sonnet”)
Kay Ryan (“Fool’s Errands”)
John Berryman (from “Op. posth. no. 13”)
Laurie Duggan (from “Letter to John Forbes”)
joanne burns (“revisionism”)
John Berryman (from “Overseas Prayer”)
Marilyn Hacker (“Villanelle for D.G.B.”)
L. K. Holt (from “From Inside the MRI Scanner”)
Judith Wright (from “Woman to Child”)
S. K. Kelen (from “Reality Check”)
