I have a suggestion for you: A Spontaneous Poetry Booth. Just set up a few poets in a well-trafficked area and charge a small fee (we charged 50 cents per poem over a three day period). We raised quite a sum, around $100 - with maybe three or four poets writing. We were in the university campus centre a week before Christmas and asked only for a subject, theme, dedication - or leave it to us.
There were some bloody good poems. Scary to think some of my best stuff came in 10 to 15 minutes. It is a valuable poetic exercise and people are so thrilled to receive a poem for a mother or child or girl/boyfriend or cat.
Our set-up was very casual, very little work went into it: regulars (one professor, myself and a student), and the odd two or three other students who showed up staffed a long table where we sat behind an urn which looked disconcertingly (to some) like a receptacle for the ashes of a loved one. We unceremoniously hailed those we knew and those we didn't, requesting that they buy a poem as a Christmas gift. Because we were in the campus centre, sandwiched between the lunch crowd and a Red Cross blood drive, we had lots of foot traffic.
Some people had us write three or four poems. We wrote them long-hand, but if someone didn't want to wait, we offered to put them in his/her mail-box. I usually went back to the office and typed mine on the computer if this were the case, because my script is so abysmal. We were at our table for three consecutive days (the week before Christmas) from 11.30am to 1.30pm. This is Northern Maine; we were indoors.
- Karen McCosker, RR1, Box 59, Westfield, ME 04787, USA.
- The London Poetry Marathon may well try similar experiments. It takes place, as mentioned earlier, on Sunday October 8th '95, and is primarily seeking people prepared to recite poems learnt by heart for charity - please phone 0181 208 2853 for details.
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