Category: Civic Activities

Today I wrote my 50th poem in my Poet­ry 4 Free project. It’s been great fun so far; despite the heavy mock­ing from my cowork­ers and the obvi­ous & unspo­ken doubt­ful­ness from cer­tain folks I know, it has ful­filled, at least in part, all of the goals I had in mind when I start­ed this back in April.

I’m def­i­nite­ly less afraid to write. I have become much bet­ter at tak­ing a top­ic and start­ing to write on it imme­di­ate­ly. I think the poems I pro­duce in 5–10 min­utes could be deemed fair for that time frame. I’ve got­ten into a few ruts though, and have been try­ing to change up my meth­ods in order to keep things fresh. I don’t want to be a poem fac­to­ry, so the rep­e­ti­tion is a bad from which I am attempt­ing to draw some good.

I received open-armed per­mis­sion from the won­der­ful folks at the Cleve­land Pub­lic Library to set up every Fri­day in the East­man Read­ing Gar­den, and post-fac­to bene­dic­tion from the lady who man­ages Star Plaza for Play­house Square Devel­op­ment. I did­n’t real­ize it was­n’t a pub­lic park.

Lots of peo­ple give the side-eye, few­er stop for a poem, and, it seems, a large major­i­ty of the folks that do stop are inter­est­ed in telling a sto­ry about the dude with the hand-paint­ed sign and a type­writer. The first was a post on Cap­tured Cleve­land. Dan Moulthrop from Civic Com­mons stopped by for a poem and tweet­ed about it. A fel­low writ­ing for Edi­ble Cleve­land want­ed to put a blurb about me in an arti­cle on Wal­nut Wednes­days. A col­lage artist asked to use my poem & pho­to in one of her works. My friend David Jur­ca even stopped by and took some video one day. Anoth­er day, anoth­er fel­low did so.

I’ve had sev­er­al folks ask for poems as gifts, and a few return to tell me how much the poem was appre­ci­at­ed. I’ve had sad and poignant requests from estranged hus­bands, sweet requests from lov­ing wives, sil­ly requests and chal­leng­ing ones. I’ve writ­ten about every­thing from mor­tal­i­ty to anal bleach­ing. I once accept­ed a sil­ver dime as a tip, and I still feel vague­ly guilty about that.

I’m hav­ing a blast, even on days when I get skunked. But I’m also start­ing to sense that the cur­rent sta­tus quo isn’t as ful­fill­ing as it once was. I may need fresh ground to cov­er (I plan on set­ting up shop in Lin­coln Park dur­ing the Arts in August events), or I may just be feel­ing too at ease with the par­a­digm. I’m open to sug­ges­tions about how to shuf­fle the project in dif­fer­ent ways, and I’m very inter­est­ed in fur­ther ways that I can make it less about me. One thing I need to do is write poet­ry out­side of this project. I’ve been very pro­lif­ic for me, but the prac­tice has result­ed in lit­tle actu­al poet­ry game time. Anoth­er change to be con­scious of.

You can fol­low this project on Twit­ter @Poetry4Free; find out where I’ll be and stop by for a poem. I hope you will.