leave poems/quotes in public

i don’t plan on quitting just because i started…

so for the tail end of my creative writing course, we’ve been assigned to do some ‘performance poetry’ which basically needs to involve the community in some way. i’m thinking about writing poems, then leaving one word of them on a sticky note and attaching the poems to the bindings of books in the library. Then, when people pick up books, they’ll have one word, and the remaining poem will be altered.

i’ve got two months to make the magic happen. i guess we shall see:0)

i left one in All that is Solid Melts into Air by Walter Berman at the Warwick University library. Not necessarily public, but it’s a first step:0)

The Little Things

Interesting stories
Nighttime Chat
Trying to keep track of time.
Exciting people
Reading their stories
Not fully awake. Looking through
Extraordinary photos;
The little things I love.

A while ago I wrote a poem on the door of this theatre cafe on my way home at night. I wrote it in chalk, but felt soooo guilty that a) someone would have to read my (quite possibly bad) poetry and b) someone would have to take the time out of whatever they were doing to wash it off. I jogged over at about 9am the next morning with a sponge and wiped it off. Then I was paranoid for a week that I was caught on CCTV and would get in to some type of trouble. Right. Because the central concern of the London Metropolitan Police is obviously the crack down on non offensive chalk vandalism.

Wow. Im such a loser.

There’s a brilliant little coffee shop not far from my home and it’s open 24 hours. One day at some ungodly hour myself, some friends and some strangers collaborated on a poem and them stuck it in one of the random books that lined the shelves. This became a custom for everytime I went in there. The secret is not to let anyone know you are hiding something.

I left quotes throughout the Brooklyn Public Library. I can’t believe I never thought of this one! I have left them on the train, in a gas station bathroom, bench in a diner…lots of places. How did I never think of that holy temple of words, the hallowed public library? I left one in the M section of mystery novels, left one in the reference section on the entry for synchronicity in a dictionary, and put one on the cover a Philip K. Dick novel. I felt conspicuous, so had to be covert. It was fun.

The Library has a lot of possibilities. Next time I am going to stash apt quotes in my favorite books. You have a quote you want me to place in a book?

When I lived in DC I used to leave poems on the metro. I’d write them on large post-it notes and affix them to the back of benches, or on the windows. Maybe I will create some site to track them…or maybe I should be alright with them floating out there…