Guerrilla Poetry

Ah, spring has (almost) returned to Michigan. The NewPages CEO and second-in-command have enjoyed our first “porch beer” – albeit wearing layered sweatshirts. Still, the sun is shining, the spring rains and the hurricane winds are reduced to intermittent. Time to get back to postering poetry around the city. A staple gun and a backpack filled with a variety of poems, my dog as cover (just a lady out walking her dog…), I staple up poems to utility poles along my route.

Of course, poems can come from any source, but I try to keep them short enough to be read quickly, one page with large font, or if it’s longer, eye-catching helps (like the Broadsided Press monthly vector poems). I also try to maintain some sensibility for the fact that kids may be reading these, so try to make them “safe” as well as appealing. Can’t hit every audience, but when postering near the schools or parks, I tend more for those kid-friendly poems.

One year, on Memorial Day, I noticed youthful handwriting on a posting and saw that some neighborhood kids had written their own poems honoring local troops and tacked them up where I had been posting poems. Pretty darn cool. Guerrilla poetry works. Try it yourself! Staple gun. Poems. Go!

[Pictured: “The Second Fallacy.” Poem by C. Dale Young; Art by Amy Meissner; Design by Debbie Nadolney. Broadsided April 1, 2014.]