Tweetspeak Poetry

It Was So Random: Random Acts of Poetry Day

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Random Acts of Poetry Day 2015 Wrapup
Nearly every week, I take a morning and go away to write. By “go away, ” I mean go away, as in leave my office and my little town in search of somewhere else, usually a certain coffee shop in the next big town where I write over a ristretto shot with steamed milk and under the curiously repetitive sounds of acoustic hipster background music.

After one recent such morning away, a few miles down Interstate 29 while I was listening to Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me on Minnesota Public Radio,  I noticed a small white card under my windshield wiper. My mind traveled through all manner of wondrous ideas that visions of grandeur have to offer as I pulled off the highway and turned onto an approach so I could investigate. Perhaps it was an invitation to an exciting event. Or maybe the girl who works at the coffee shop really is reading my serial novel like she says and left me a note to tell me what a brilliant author I am. It could have been a parking ticket, I suppose. By the time I got out of the car, I’d have been happy with a 25-cents-off coupon for the frozen yogurt shop down the street from the coffee shop.

As things turned out, it was a little note from someone named Millie, who began by saying “I don’t know you.” Millie, who found herself and her car door compelled by the wind, banged up my passenger door, I discovered. And while she pointed out that she couldn’t control it, she thought she should offer to pay for part of the repairs. Oh, Millie. I am a claim adjuster. You should pay for all of the repairs.

But I won’t ask her to. It’s a small scuff and not worth trying to explain how the wind has no funds to pay the other half.

While the world was celebrating Random Acts of Poetry Day, leaving poems on mirrors and blackboards and car windshields, I was thinking about Millie. On a day when people wanted to brighten other people’s days, surprise them with the whimsy or wonder of a simple poem, I wished that Millie had left something thoughtful from Tony Hoagland or Pablo Neruda or Adrienne Rich on the back of her chiropractor’s appointment card. I wished that I had seen the card before I left the parking lot, so I could have left her a little haiku about wind and car doors and the ways we hold on tight in return.

When we created our little Random Acts ideas ebooklet, we had 10 things you could do to celebrate with a poem. And we left those ideas open to your random interpretation. Of course there were more than 10 things you could do. And many of you found a way to do them. Here, dropped randomly into our fun little categories, are some of our favorite Random Acts of Poetry sightings from the day yesterday.

Type a poem on a computer in a computer store

It’s not a computer, or a computer store. But a murder mystery is a great random place for poetry.

Put a poem in your voicemail

Or, run up to a teacher and share your random poem.

Leave a poem under the wiper on a car windshield

I like to imagine that this wall is a windshield, and smile at the look on someone’s face when they come out of the grocery store to find their car plastered with poems on Post-It Notes.

If you made enough poems to share with everyone, you could leave them on all the cars in the shopping mall.

And maybe not the windshield, but a poem about the whole car.

We’re betting these made their way onto a few windshields.

And look, a real poem on a real windshield!

Braid a poem into your hair

Or, you know, weave one into a spindly plant.

And if you happen to share a hair poem with your hairdresser, do mind the ceramic acorn.

Write a poem on a blackboard

Or in the case of the modern teacher, a whiteboard:

Or paper on your whiteboard.

A photo posted by Kellyn Sirach (@ksirach) on



I love these 7th graders’ haikus:

Tape a poem to a bathroom mirror

Some people have their laundry in the bathroom. That works. 🙂

And sure. It’s not a bathroom mirror, but has a little of that reflective action going on.

I think this is near the bathroom.



This is the way selfies ought to be.

Bluejay 8th Grade doing Random Acts of Poetry #tspoetry #raopoetey

A photo posted by Evi Wusk (@eviwusk) on

Chalk a poem onto the sidewalk

If Glynn had chalk, he could have written this poem on the sidewalk in London.

And when you find fall leaves on the sidewalk, write a poem on them.

Send a poem to your email contact list

That’s one way to have a poem go viral.

Slip a poem under a door

Especially if you have very small neighbors with a very small door.

These were not quite “slipped under a door” but the idea of being deposited in secret around Darlene’s town has that same sort of feel.

Become a poem

When one forgets the handprinted leaves, one must become the poem.

Or really, one becomes the poem:

The word made flesh // the flesh will be made word #tspoetry #raopoetry #poetry #postmodernthot #pmthots

A photo posted by natalie/ postmodernthot (@scattered_stanza) on

Maybe we could make a habit of Random Acts of Poetry. Maybe Millie will join in.

Featured photo by L.L. Barkat. Post by LW Lindquist.

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Will Willingham
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About Will Willingham

I used to be a claims adjuster, helping people and insurance companies make sense of loss. Now, I train other folks with ladders and tape measures to go and do likewise. Sometimes, when I’m not scaling small buildings or crunching numbers with my bare hands, I read Keats upside down. My first novel is Adjustments.

Comments

  2. L. L. Barkat says

    Oh, I love the Millie story (though I’m sorry you had to sacrifice your paint job to get it 😉 ).

    All the commentary along the way here totally made me smile.

    And something about the end really struck me. This is what we are trying to do at Tweetspeak… we sponsor a public day in hopes that it somehow changes life as we know it, more than just one day a year. How nice it would be if, occasionally, you found a poem instead of a “sell” or a “sorry”—on your windshield, in your mailbox, or even on your lawn. How nice it would be, not only for you, but for Millie.

    Reply

  4. SimplyDarlene says

    What a bunch of great ideas for such a fun day!

    And I have to tell you – my son and I also slipped one of the poetry boards into the library’s sidewalk book return receptacle. 😉

    Reply

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