A good friend of Phillip’s, Ashley Mae Christensen, a BYU grad student, came up with the idea while driving down the freeway a year ago, looking at billboards.
“My heart felt heavy and manipulated as we whizzed past billboards flaunting liposuction, plastic surgery, chain restaurants that offer little by way of local culture and talent. I am lucky to be surrounded by artists, writers, poets, thinkers, but on that drive, I saw no notion of their words or ideas. Instead, hollow advertisements telling me I need to be thinner, prettier, richer, more hungry, loomed down at me for as far as I could see.”
She resolved to put poetry on a billboard. And she asked Phillip if he would design the set of 3 billboards.
With the help of a professor and friends, she applied for and won a Laycock Grant from Brigham Young University. She solicited poetry entries from around the state, and on Wednesday announced the winner: Derek Henderson’s poem, “Small Prayer.” Henderson is completing his Ph.D. in poetry at the University of Utah.
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Phillip also entered a poem and was a finalist in the contest. Of course, I think his would have been awesome on the billboards!
