Tuesday, August 04, 2009

some history


Paula Green started the idea of poetry on the pavement in 2005, along
with some students, by painting poetry onto the pavement. Being paint
this was of course removed soon after, although for some reason Paula
Greens own poem has never been removed. There seems to be no other
explanation for this other than that the people told to remove the
poems either knew who organised the event and saved Paulas poem , or
just liked it and decided to leave it there. Michelle Leggot carried
on the idea in early 2006, using chalk instead of paint. As a student
of english 347 I was part of this group chalking poems around Albert
park and around the art gallery. The chalk, much more than the paint,
was a true expression of Transient art for me. The idea of creating
something that is not expected to last for much longer than the moment
of activity was inspiring. Unlike bombings and taggings or paint on
the street we are not making stains on the city environment, rather we
are creating a moment of poetry which you can pay attention to or walk
right over.

The second event was organised by myself , which involved mostly
students and poets from Poetry Live. The idea was to raise poetic
awareness at Uni , on university ground. This was conveniently done
on market day and on the same day as a STRATA reading. Inspite of the
rain we managed to fill up most dry surface of ground at uni.

The third event was the one on Poetry day, where Renee offered to
organise it with me. We took guerilla poetry to the streets, starting
off in Aotea Square and moved on to Albert Park. The group of
guerilla poets that showed up was now three times the size from when
it started. We decked out the square with poetry before the
protesters made it there and did some recitals as they were warming up
before moving on as they got louder.

intend for this
to be a regular event to protest the drone of slogans and
advertisement and bring poetry to people walking the streets ..rather
than this notion of the precious , untouchable and exclusive poem
hidden away in books.

much transience
Christian

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