A poem embedded in the cobblestones of the Oude Gracht, growing by one letter every Saturday. The project began in 2012 and will, in theory, never end — each week a new stainless steel letter is set into the pavement, continuing a poem that has no planned final verse. The letters run along the lower wharf level of the canal, and following them is a quiet, meditative walk.
The text is written by a succession of Utrecht poets, each contributing a stanza before handing off to the next. By now the poem stretches for several hundred metres along the canal. The individual letters are easy to miss — they are set flush into the stone — but once you start reading, the cumulative effect is striking: a city writing itself into its own streets, one letter at a time, forever. Look for the letters along the Oudegracht between the Bakkerbrug and the Gaardbrug.