Poetry Activism: some ideas for local action

1. Street readings in groups: spontaneously read in bars, coffeeshops, galleries, libraries, restaurants, corporate offices, ATM & bank teller lines, book stores, churches, schools, parks, driving down the street.
   
2. Read poems that people will get, will enjoy, will get them thinking, laughing.
   
3. Also read stories, essays, testimonials.
   
4. Read your own and others' poetry.
   
5. Work in a group. Take turns reading, greeting and offering hospitality to passersby.
   
6. Go where the crowds are.
   
7. Be like jugglers, dancers, buskers in New York who draw crowds.
   
8. Don't ask for money or put out a hat, but graciously accept cash or gifts that others offer.
   
9. Get to know other local artists and writers, and collaborate on performances.
   
10. Poetry goes well with sax or guitar; it could even go with juggling. Experiment.
    
11. Encourage audience to think about their own creativity and how to live into it.
    
12. Invite people to "Find what you love and do it." That will be your advice and blessing to all. That is the message and purpose of poetry activism.
    
13. If you address politics or religion, keep it open ended, ask questions more than making blanket statements. Don't propagate.
    
14. Promote art and beauty and love. This isn't about promoting your work or making money. It's all for the uplift of the audience.
    
15. Thank and bless your detractors, "Find what you love and do it."
    
16. Experiment with poems and other pieces to find out what people respond to.
    
17. Smile, genuinely. People will pick up on when it's fake, especially the young.
    
18. Try call and response and other audience participation: rhythm, song.
    
19. Practice enough to get the feel of a piece, but no too much that it becomes rote. Allow yourself to be imperfect.
    
20. Improvise a poem on the spot.
    
21. Read a poem on the morning bus or subway, on your way to work.
    
22. Ask if anyone in the audience has a poem or story or skill to share.
    
23. Use visual guides and props for poems. Try using props from the environment, like a tree or bench.
    
24. Research permits, and figure out if you want to bother with one. If you need one but don't apply for or receive one and get fined, tell the newspapers and all your friends. Hold a press conference containing one brief statement and all the rest poetry.
    
25. Consider having an emcee for your performances.
    
26. If you're introverted, join with extroverts who can give encouragement, energy and boldness to the performance.
    
27. Invite collaborators who don't consider themselves poets and artists. Ask them to read a poem that they like.
    
28. Carry poetry books and anthologies for the audience to pick something to read from.
    
29. Feed the people...poems! (but not "Let them eat cake.")
    
30. Write openly in the streets, like painters. Let people watch. Answer their questions. Let them read what you write (But don't apologize for it being "bad" writing. They might like it anyway.)
    
31. Carry a sign that says "Free Poems," "Poetry Counselor," "Need a lift? Try poetry, " "Got poetry?" or "Find What You Love and Do It." Read a poem to anyone who asks.
    
32. Give a copy of your original writing to anyone who asks for free.
    
33. Make business cards and hand them out so people can contact you if they want a good poem or want to collaborate.
    
34. Start a website promoting poetry activism, post photos and videos of readings. Post poems, reflections, news releases, announcements.
    
35. Have a rally, protest style in the city square. "We are protesting the refusal within ourselves to listen to the voice that screams inside us...'Feed me poetry!' 'Write poetry!'" Hand out placards on sticks with slogans: "Poetry now!" "I'm a poet and don't know it!" "Poets know it!" Keep it up beat and don't attack people, just your own laziness and avoidance of poetry.
    
36. Read what people want to hear about in your town. Make it local. Research local happenings in the newspaper and on tv.
    
37. Hand out poems like fliers on the street.
    
38. Place poems in newspaper machines and free magazine boxes on the sidewalk. Stuff newspapers with poems.
    
39. Humor humor humor.
    
40. Can be serious, but leave audience feeling uplifted. Be a gentle intrusion. Don't give people a reason to resent you except their own dislike of poetry. When you meet people who don't like what you're doing, be nice and hand them a poem. Remind them: "Find what you love and do it."
    
41. Little milk cartons with a label that says "got poetry?" Print poems on the outside. Inside put cutout words from magazines and newspapers. Put instructions on the carton to make poems out of them. Give the cartons away for free to passersby, on the bus, to homeless people, to drivers in rush hour.
    
42. Leave a comment and add your own ideas for poetry activism.
    

Faith and/in Imagination

Here's the beginning of what could sometime become a longer essay.
Poetry and story are two of the most human endeavors towards understanding our place in the world. Not content to walk through life unaware of the people, places and events around us, we search for ways to express our varying and complex relationships to these realities in some way that holds meaning and lasts beyond the timespan of a series of events. Life does not merely happen to us; instead, we are woven into the fabric of the universe, one thread among trillions, and we want our thread to hold as tightly as the next. And so we seek language, our own and others', to plant ourselves firmly in the sil of existance. And what do we express of ourselves and experience from others in this language? Whatever we want to. Our yearning for language is wrapped up in our yearning to imagine: the world as it is with its joys and sorrows, its endless patterns and surprises; the world as we desre it, its triumphs, connectedness, compassion, justice and peace; or even the world we do not want, one of strife and angst, unfairness and imbalance, loneliness and death. Language gives us the power to imagine and express our strong faith in the world and in the powers that create and sustain it, because it is our world, and we alld esrie to shape it in our own unique way, even if it is in our unfulfilled dreams. Language canj create the world we imagine, or destroy it for another.

Christian Peacemaker refuses to testify against Iraqi kidnappers

Recent news from the Christian Peacmakers who were kidnapped in Iraq:

James Loney has refused to testify against his kidnapers, because he believes they will not receive a fair trial, according to a letter from him published in the May 23 issue of "The Toronto Star," a Canadian newspaper. Loney was one of four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) kidnapped in Iraq on Nov. 26, 2005, and held by Iraqi insurgents for four months. One of the four, Tom Fox, was killed, and the others were freed by British and American soldiers. Those alleged to be the kidnappers are in US custody, Loney wrote. "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Scotland Yard want us to testify in a trial to be conducted in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. An RCMP officer told us, 'The death penalty is on the table.'" Loney said he has learned everything he can about the court, quoting among other sources a UN report that the court "consistently failed to meet minimum fair trial standards." His letter said, "I cannot participate in a judicial process where the prospects of a fair trial are negligible, and more crucially, where the death penalty is a possibility."

from June 7, 2007 COB Newsline