Guerrilla Poetry

[janradder]

1) Assemble a small group of guerrilla poets, preferably 4-5 of them.

2) Uniforms are a necessity. What else could they be but black turtlenecks, mod boots, black jeans and a red beret.

3) Choose a poem which is short enough that each member can select a line, phrase, or word.

4) The band of poets selects a choice spot, most likely in a downtown area and waits, watching for the right target.

5) When target is spotted and selected, poets rush out and surround him/her, each member shouting their line, phrase or word in turn. When the poem is finished, the guerrilla poets shall run like hell in different directions leaving the poetry target to ponder and reflect upon the words he/she has been left with.

Comments

[sacwentie.livejournal.com]

I love it.
Matt does this thing called "crowd control" where musicians stand on the edge of a busy walkway, and play music which has some relation to the passerby. Sometimes they follow people and such. This reminds me very much of that.
I would be THRILLED if I was guerilla-poeted.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I came up with the idea when I was at college in NYC but never carried it out. At the time, a friend and I had already done some performance art around Union Square but for some reason I never got it together enough to do this on even though I had a bunch of people tell me they'd love to do it.

[sacwentie.livejournal.com]

Can we do it next time I visit?
We could do Bukowski
Or maybe it would be funnier to be a Shakespeare sonnet or Dickinson...

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Sure. We just need to find a few more people and the right poem.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

. . . while s/he dials the police to report harassment and flagrant violation of fashion laws.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

Says Haddayr "Party-pooper" Copley-Woods.

[dryadjuna.livejournal.com]

I'm in!

[rebeccax.livejournal.com]

Cool! There was quite a bit of guerilla poetry in Albuquerque when I lived there. The slam team was excellent and they needed more people at poetry and beer. Worked like a charm. And it was all original material.

[janradder.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of anyone doing this before. I just got the idea as a college student in New York when a friend and I were into going out on the streets and seeing what kind of reaction we could get out of people (which in New York can sometimes be hard to get any reaction). We never got around to doing this one but we did a few others: pushing a found object sink strapped into a shopping cart while dressed like East LA gangsters wearing Suicidal Tendencies hats with American Flag toothpicks superglued to our wrists so that they looked like they'd gone through our wrists (best reaction: a construction worker, oddly with a southern drawl says to us, "Where's the spaceship?"); taking an old office chair turned into a Gilligan's Isle bamboo construction into Union Square Park and riding it down a crowded sidewalk (we got a homeless guy to ride with us -- he was absolutely thrilled we let him); strapping my friend into a wheelchair with Parsons' art students' discarded projects so that he looked somewhat like an art school cyborg then pushing him out onto the streets at night while he held a flashlight (connected to his machine body) that he shined into people's faces and we stared straight ahead silently, not acknowledging their presence (the only reaction we got was from a yuppie couple dressed up to do the town who leapt away from us with a look of sheer terror on their faces. I can't imagine why). I think we were just bored and like to shock/weird people out but in a somewhat humorous way.