One public-domain poem at a time, set as large as it can be while still fitting the glass, changed quietly every couple of minutes. Twelve hundred poems by thirty poets, all long out of copyright, all inside the image — Passage never makes an outbound request while it is running.
PoetryDB, which draws on Project Gutenberg. Every poet died long enough ago that their work is in the public domain, and the selection is an explicit list rather than whatever an API returns.
Self-hosted, read-only container, no database and no network. The whole collection is a file inside the image — nothing upstream can disappear or start charging.
A screen you read rather than watch. Each poem is measured and set at the largest size that still fits, so a couplet is set huge and a long ode smaller; nothing is ever cut off.
Setup
A browser is genuinely enough — the Mac app and Fully Kiosk below are conveniences, not requirements.
F11 on Windows and Linux, ⌃⌘F on macOS.chrome --kiosk <url> — on macOS, open -a "Google Chrome" --args --kiosk <url>.Displays are ordinary web pages, so anything that can hold one open works: a Raspberry Pi on a monitor, a retired iPad, a Fire tablet, the browser built into a TV.
Configuration
Everything below, plus a live preview and a URL builder that writes the link for you, is at passage.livingkiosk.com/setup.
| Parameter | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
dwell | 120 | Seconds each poem stays up (15–3600). |
theme | paper | ink or dusk. |
align | left | centre instead — left keeps a hanging indent on wrapped lines. |
length | any | short (6–16 lines) or long (17–40). |
poets | all | Comma-separated surnames. |
placard | on | The title and poet beneath the poem. |
seed | — | Pins the walk, so two screens stay in step. |
dim | 0 | Black scrim over everything, 0 to 0.8 (fleet-wide convention). |
Passage is open source under the MIT licence. Run it yourself with one command. The source opens to the public soon.