The Hilton Head Poetry Trail — A Presentation by Poet Elizabeth Robin

Let’s talk about the Hilton Head Poetry Trail

Have you heard? Hilton Head Island has a poetry trail! Want to visit but can’t get there now? Know what’s in store before you go? Learn how to create a trail in your own town? Join us for a special presentation by award-winning poet Elizabeth Robin, all about the Hilton Head Poetry Trail.

A marriage of technology, creative writing, public art, and arts-minded businesses, the Hilton Head Poetry Trail offers a new way to see Hilton Head Island: through the eyes of the poets who live there. Grabbing extra copies of Local Life Magazine? Scan the sign placed inside the front door and read a Pop-up Poets collaboration. Contemplating the landscape as you rest on Toni Morrison’s bench at Mitchelville Freedom Park? Read James Mallory’s poem “The Beautiful Couple.” Confused, asking “What is it?” as you stare at Caracol in Shelter Cove Park? Scan the trail sign and Jacque Markham gives you one interpretation.

It’s the kind of collaboration that makes the arts an experience. A unique approach to a public arts project, this trail brings poetry into public spaces in a permanent-yet-flexible medium. Because it uses QR codes, the trail can track its visits and regularly switch out trail content to include more poets and poems at each site. Monthly visits have averaged over 300 readings from 20-plus states and 4 or more foreign countries in its first year. Some poems have been read over 1,000 times!

The project is a partnership between the town of Hilton Head Island’s Office of Cultural Affairs and the Island Writers Network. The technology guru and idea man on the project is Bill Schmitt, who developed the logo, the sign design and Facebook page. Natalie Harvey, the Director of Cultural Affairs, oversees the sculptures approved for the project and the affixing of signs near the public art and park installations. Poet Elizabeth Robin recruited the poets and the businesses that are participating, and pairs poems to locations.

Elizabeth Robin, retired teacher and award-winning poet, is the author of three collections of poems published by Finishing Line Press: To My Dreamcatcher (2022), Where Green Meets Blue (2018) and Silk Purses and Lemonade (2017). She partnered with the Office of Cultural Affairs to establish the Hilton Head Poetry Trail, a 25-station route of local poets. A Piccolo Spoleto Sundown Poet (2023), she won the 2021 Carrie McCray Nickens Fellowship, was an Island Writers Network open mic emcee for eight years, and creates literary programs on Hilton Head Island. Recent work appears in Tall Women, The Jasper Project: Poetry of the People, Poetry Society (SC) Yearbook, Catfish Stew, Ukweli, Drunk Monkeys and others.

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