Bicycle Poems or "Spoke and Word"

I listen to this podcast called the BikeShow from London. One episode this creativity counselor (Rosie Walford of Big Stretch) spoke about how cycling elevates your mind into an alpha state of creativity.

So I wanted to design a poster to celebrate my love of bicycles. So, I through a leg over my saddle and as I rode I wrote a poem/prose.

After I wrote this short prose, I typeset it in antique wood type. I also hand carved two linoleum block illustrations to tie the bicycle art piece all-together.

I letterpressed the final poster on Rives BFK paper, using gold and silver inks on an old 1927 Vandercook press in Cincinnati, Ohio.

If you would like to purchase a copy, here is the link.

early drafts:

Oh Bicycle,
How you set me free,
Your wheels like wings,
All the things I see.

Oh Bicycle,
your wheels like wings set me free,

your wheels are my wings,
and I take flight with liberty.

I see the world,
all creation unfurled,
[forgot the rest, did I get buzzed by a car?]

My final:

Bicycles

OH! How we take to the roads

Climb mountains high

Soar through valleys below

We find ourselves on lost lanes

Bicycles give us freedom

—off we go!





Pablo NerudaOde to bicycles
I was walking
down
a sizzling road:
the sun popped like
a field of blazing maize,
the
earth
was hot,
an infinite circle
with an empty
blue sky overhead.

A few bicycles
passed
me by,
the only
insects
in
that dry
moment of summer,
silent,
swift,
translucent;
they
barely stirred
the air.

Workers and girls
were riding to their
factories,
giving
their eyes
to summer,
their heads to the sky,
sitting on the
hard
beetle backs
of the whirling
bicycles
that whirred
as they rode by
bridges, rosebushes, brambles
and midday.

I thought about evening when
the boys
wash up,
sing, eat, raise
a cup
of wine
in honor
of love
and life,
and waiting
at the door,
the bicycle,
stilled,
because
only moving
does it have a soul,
and fallen there
it isn't
a translucent insect
humming
through summer
but
a cold
skeleton
that will return to
life
only
when it's needed,
when it's light,
that is,
with
the
resurrection
of each day.