Random acts of poetry
Poetry started appearing on car windows in Colorado Springs. It’s grown into a movement.
When 22-year-old Alex Lewis started the movement Car Window Poetry out of a desire to help spread positivity in Colorado Springs, he had no idea that it would become an overnight sensation. But shortly after its launch in September of 2016, Car Window Poetry was featured on NBC Nightly News, CNN and multiple other local and national outlets.
The movement in its simplest form consists of strangers writing poems on cards and placing them on people’s windshields to encourage random acts of kindness, but it’s also growing in vision and scope since its inception. Lewis, who never considered himself a real poet, is now starting a blossoming movement around poetry and the power of words to change people’s lives locally, nationally, and globally — one short poem placed on a windshield at a time.
Lewis, originally from North Carolina, moved to Colorado Springs in May to work with a local nonprofit called YoungLife. He’s an unassuming guy with a quiet power to him. Lewis talked openly about the birth of Car Window Poetry, the importance of poetry in today’s social and political climate, and the impact positivity can have on our nation and the world.
How did Car Window Poetry came to be. How did you start this movement? It was born out of experiences you had in Colorado Springs, right?
I had just moved to Colorado Springs last May to take a job, and I was really feeling in an uncomfortable spot. I ended up connecting with a guy who told me about a poetry group in town.That poetry group was the first opportunity to share poetry and be in a spot where people were reading poetry. It was first time I’d read a poem of mine to people, and just hearing people read poems and share their work really resonated with me.
At that first poetry group, I heard about Hear Here, (a spoken word poetry organization in Colorado Springs), so I went and checked out their open mic nights. Getting to hear kids just pour out their deepest, darkest secrets in a room full of strangers was so inspiring. I shared a poem, too, that night. There was this point where I realized, “Wow, there are a lot of really cool and talented people in Colorado Springs.”
One night, I came home from work, and I was thinking, “I want to start something.” I knew I wanted it to be bigger than myself — not just me and my projects. So I grabbed this notebook, and I asked myself, “What do I want to start?” So my mind went to these poetry communities that I was a part of, and I wanted to make a platform where poets and writers could come together and share their inspiring words with the community.
Poems just couldn’t be thrown on the ground, so I was wondering, “Where could they go?” And I thought about how cars are this destination for messages — whether it’s parking tickets or annoying flyers people don’t want. But what would it be like to change that narrative and spread some kindness and cover local communities with beauty and hope using their cars? I knew I couldn’t sit on this idea. I knew it had to happen. So I designed the logo and cards, set up the website, and just started.
We threw our first event for Car Window Poetry in September 2016. We just got a bunch of people together, and we wrote poems and placed them on cars in downtown Colorado Springs. And it seemed to be a success — people were really responding to it. So people were then asking, “What’s next?” I had no idea at that point exactly where it was going to go.
How did you get on NBC Nightly News and see everything take off?
In October, I had a friend from college contact me and tell me, “I started working with NBC Nightly News. I’d love to do a story on Car Window Poetry.” So he put together a pitch, and they wanted to run it. On Halloween, a crew came to Colorado Springs, and they aired it right after the presidential election in November. Messages started pouring in as soon as it aired, and at the end of the night. Way more than I ever dreamed or anticipated. From there, it became sort of this whirlwind. More news outlets wanted to report on it and wrote stories — from CNN to a whole bunch of local outlets all across the country.
From there, I started making the cards downloadable for free on our website. We got over 700 hundred card downloads from nearly every US State and different countries all around the world like Malaysia, Kenya, South Africa, etc.
So do you think that some of the success of Car Window Poetry has to do with the election and people just wanting something hopeful and positive?
That was probably one of the most consistent responses after the NBC story aired. People were writing and commenting and saying, “This is so needed right now. This has been such a dark season.”
So why do you think this is message so important at this moment in time? Why is the power of encouraging other with words is so important right now?
It’s not hard to look around and get on Facebook and watch the news and see there’s a lot of division, a lot of darkness, a lot of cynicism right now. And that wears on you. For me personally as an African American, I’m very much in it with people feeling these heavy things. For me, it was not necessarily starting the project as a response to the social climate, but the deeper I dug into the project — just listening to people and hearing where they’re coming from — that’s when I realized, “There’s an opportunity here to enter into this darkness and spread some positivity and light.”
I knew I needed to move on this because there was a need. I’m asking myself every day, “How can I empower people to spread light?” I want to really create this tree, this web of being able to say, “I’m going to spread hope here, and you can also join in. You can do this on your classroom, your college campus, your community.”
You’re doing a lot of work now in elementary schools. How does that look like?
A typical workshop will start with me sharing the NBC Nightly News video. Then I’ll begin walking them through what the project’s about. And then I help them know that they have a role in this. And we’ll talk about what a poem is, what poetry is, really getting them to think through that. It’s not just something that has to rhyme or is super long or that has a bunch of metaphors in it. It’s really just a way to express what you’re feeling.
Do you have any stories of kids writing poems?
There was a kid at one of the elementary schools, a 4th grader, and I asked him, “What do you like to do?” And he said, “Well, playing with my dogs.” And so I asked, “What can grownups learn from dogs?” And after a while, he was like, “Well, if a 3-legged dog can be happy, you can, too.”
The fun part is getting to see kids process their own stories and helping them process how that helps someone else.
This idea plays into the events you’re holding for adults, too, right?
Yes. Our next series of events is called True Stories, which we started in January. These are partnered events with an organization based in Austin, Texas, called Live a Great Story. But really, the idea behind True Stories is about being able to bring people together who might not ever be in the same room around this idea of honesty. We’re letting everyday people who might not have accolades or achievements get up and share their stories. Typically, we’ll center the events around different themes. So we have people share about hope or words that have negatively impacted them or a situation they’ve overcome. Really, it just creates this intimate space of vulnerability and helping people connect.
Our next True Stories event will be the evening of March 7th at Welcome Fellow in Colorado Springs.
What are other ways to get involved? Or other ways Car Window Poetry is expanding?
We just launched our local chapter program, which empowers people in different states and countries to be able to bring Car Window Poetry into their local communities through leading local events and gatherings and really be the hands and feet of the project in their local communities. We have people as far out as Australia really want to be part of this project.
And you said you never considered yourself a poet. How has that changed?
No, I never did. For me, I spent pretty much a lot of time in middle school and high school growing up writing raps. I didn’t see a connection between the raps I was writing and poets like Langston Hughes or any of these guys. In college, I still loved writing rhymes, and I’d write on planes or getting up in the morning — just little lines that would come to my head. But I had no connection to the idea that I was a poet.
I was invited by UCCS to be a keynote poet at this event they were holding in November 2016. A professor there asked, “How would you feel about being a keynote poet?” That was the first time it really hit me.
So what is the importance of positive words? Let’s end this conversation with some thoughts on that.
Words are this powerful force. The nature of words isn’t necessarily good or bad, but you have that opportunity to use words for good or bad. There can be a negative effect, but all the more there has to be this positive effect. And it doesn’t take much. That’s one of my favorite things. Think about when you were in college, and you didn’t care about 90 percent of what you were reading, but a note from your mom could make your whole day. So that idea of small acts of love, small notes of love, small words of love can make such a big difference.
