“4 years on this train
Reading, sitting next to you
Too shy to converse”

—Karen Munro, 56, Wallaceburg, Ontario

Last year for National Poetry Month by The New York Times’ City Room brought New Yorkers together throughout the five boroughs for “A Call for Haiku About New York City“, expressing their experience with the city and its surroundings in haiku form when given five subjects to revolve their poems around: the island, strangers, solitude, commuting, 6 a.m. and kindness.

There were over 2,800 submissions before a group was chosen to be published, and now the City Room haiku project will be made into a book by Rizzoli New York in 2016 (they are the ones publishing the BOB’S BURGERS COOK BOOK!); it’s no wonder they would want to pick up such a creative project that really gave insight to the funnier, sadder, and more terrible things about being a New Yorker, amidst all of the craziness the city people live in, not to mention in only a mere 17 syllables.

Not all of the haikus will make it in the final publication, but it is expected that the deepest and most depicting of NYC will be featured, perhaps alongside art or photography of some sort. The end result will definitely be a great surprise, and expect to see this wonderful collaboration hopefully in the earlier part of 2016.

(via The New York Times; photo by Kaitlin Duffy)