Lawrence Transit launches Ride and Write workshop with Megan Kaminski

Lawrence Transit is using poetry to sell the bus as more than a ride, and the agency capped its Ride and Write workshop at 20 people as it launched the fourth annual Poet Laureate program with Megan Kaminski.

The workshop was scheduled for May 22, 2026, with Kaminski, a poet and University of Kansas professor, leading the event. Lawrence Transit said the program is meant to connect riders, writers and the public library through a trip that turns everyday transit into a place for reflection and community building.

That strategy has become a recurring part of the agency’s public identity. Lawrence Transit launched the Poet Laureate program in 2023, when the first Summer Ride and Write workshop invited riders onto Route 10 aboard a new electric bus. Participants wrote together during the ride and left with a poem and prompts, a format that tied the transit experience directly to creative output.

The agency has kept building on that model. In 2024, its inaugural Poet Laureates were featured on the system’s electric buses for the full year. The 2025 workshop returned as the kickoff for the third annual Poet Laureate program and moved to Route 8, showing that the event is not a one-off performance but a repeated attempt to make transit part of local culture.

For riders, the payoff is concrete: a guided bus trip, time to write, and a chance to see local poetry circulating on the same vehicles they use to get across town. Lawrence Transit says the Poet Laureate program lets local poets of any age have their work displayed on electric buses, turning the fleet into a rolling public gallery that reaches students, commuters and families across Lawrence.

The agency has also made community programming a regular part of its outreach. In a 2025 year-in-review post, Lawrence Transit said it had partnered for 10 years with Lawrence Public Library on Books & Buses, and said many young riders take their first bus trip through those events. That connection matters in a city where transit is a partnership between the City of Lawrence and the University of Kansas and where the system now lists 382 bus stops.

Lawrence Transit’s latest 2026 contest selected five poets whose work will appear on the agency’s electric buses for the year. In that context, the Ride and Write workshop served as both a creative gathering and a visibility campaign, a way for the transit system to show that it is trying to be part of Lawrence life, not just a network of routes and schedules.