Police are not generally associated with poetry. It is not often you get to hear the police officers of your city pouring out their souls in poetry they wrote, but on Thursday March 5 at the Portland Public Library the citizens of Portland got a chance to hear the members of the Portland Police Department read poetry they had written about what it is like to be a police officer.
The poetry reading, “Thin Blue Lines,” was part of the Arts & Equity Initiative, which is a targeted arts project in which public officials improve their city through the arts.
Another part of the project was to make a calendar of the Portland Police Department, which they were selling at the poetry reading and contained all the poems read at the poetry reading. Proceeds from the calendar benefited the fund of Sgt. Robert Johnsey who died last May of an accidental gunshot wound.
The officers collaborated on the poems with local poets, and either one or both of them wrote the final poem. The poems covered a wide range of topics, from how it feels to come face-to-face with a drug dealer shooting at you, to the mask and uniform that police officers feel they are always physically and metaphorically wearing. But all the poems had a common thread: describing the world of a Portland Police Officer through poetry.
Marty Pottenger, from the Department of Multi-Cultural Affairs in Portland and one of the organizers of the event did an introduction in which she stated that this is unlike anything that has ever been done before. She said it was a chance for Portland to see the police department through the “lens of a poem.”
Officer James Davison worked with local poet Annie Finch on a poem, which they both read out loud together, called “Ride-along Haiku.” It was based on a ride she took with him in his cruiser to get an idea of what the job is like. It talked about how the police are here to deal with the stuff no one else wants to deal with.
Some of the poems dealt with some pretty heavy material; one that was read by local poet Michael Macklin who worked with an officer was about the difficult situations police officers find themselves in and how it affects them.
One line read, “One crack bust, a suicide, then silence.”
Later the poem asked the question, “How do you protect your heart?”
A couple of the poems incorporated real questions and comments kids of the police officers had asked.
One of the lines from the poem read by Michael Macklin was, “Who are the bad guys, Dad? How do you know? Who do you trust?”
In a particularly moving poem Don Hayden put together a series of questions his son had asked him and used it as his poem, all of them perfectly capturing that balance of childhood curiosity and fear toward police officers.
“Hey dad, put any bad guys in jail today?”
“Hey dad, are you going to put me in jail?”
One extremely tough poem titled “Making sense” dealt with chasing a drug dealer who had called to say he had killed a couple of police officers. It talked about how one of the hardest things about these situations is filling out the paperwork after it’s over, because then you have to try to make sense of a situation that makes no sense whatsoever.
Still some of the poems were more calm and peaceful, such as one written by local poet Martin Steingesser based on a ride-along with a police officer one night. It was a quiet night for this particular police cruiser, and the poem was a description of the stillness and beauty of Portland at dusk on an autumn night.
One of the most moving poems was perhaps the one written by Sgt. Rob Johnsey who had written a couple of poems before he died. The poem was read by his fellow Officer Alissa Poisson, and described a beautiful lake scene that was projected on the wall behind Poisson while she read.
One of the lines read, “I visit as a stranger but want to belong, to a world that makes sense, not one that is wrong.”