The Winnipeg Public Library is adding a touch of poetry to the playoffs. Library staff are once again using book spine poetry to show support for the Winnipeg Jets.
Book spine poetry is a social media trend where people use book titles to create poems. The books are stacked on top of each other to visually showcase the poem using the book spines. Photos of the poems are then shared on social media.
During sporting events, the creative trend turns into book wars. The poems are used as a friendly form of trash talk between libraries of the opposing teams.
Winnipeg Public Library staff first got into the fun when the Winnipeg Jets made the playoffs in 2018. Since then, they’ve kept the tradition alive for every playoff run.
"The public loves it and they get really into it,” said Patricia Bal, Marketing and Communications Specialist with the Winnipeg Public Library. “Depending on who Winnipeg is playing against, we will have different levels of engagement from their city’s library.”
Bal said her team began brainstorming ideas as soon as they knew Winnipeg was going to be in the playoffs.
“We’ll start by searching our catalogue for titles related to Winnipeg, ice, hockey, cold, and storm” she said, “Then we will look up keywords related to who we are potentially playing.”
Staff will also scour the collections on the fourth floor of the Millennium Library for inspiration. They’ve found the non-fiction and biography genres work well for this trend. The tricky part is finding titles that work to connect phrases.
“Sometimes we will find the perfect title but we can’t use it because there’s a label across the spine or the font is not right,” Bal said.
Just like a win on the ice, it takes a team effort to come up with the poems.
“We have a lot of fun with this,” said Bal. “We did a call out to all library staff for recommendations and now we’re getting books sent to us from other branches.”
You can check out the Winnipeg Public Library’s Facebook and Instagram accounts for the book spine poems. They’re posted on home game days during the playoffs. If you have a suggestion for a book they can use, leave them a comment on their posts.