Phantom Billstickers Poster Run - Denver and Boulder, Colorado, May 2010
6 May, 2010
Article by Raven Garland
One day this past winter I was down on Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado. It was windy and cold. A man in a tattered coat approached me and offered to recite a poem for spare change. I had no money with me so I offered to exchange a poem for a poem. He said his first - Emily Dickinson "a narrow fellow in the grass" and I answered him with Wilfred Owen "Move Him into the Sun." Warmth was there between us though the ice still clung all around. This is what poetry can do any day; warming our coolness or cooling our heat. When I was asked to be part of this postering project, I said yes because of this power that poetry has shown to have on people in all sorts of circumstances.
I returned to Pearl street on the first mild day in April armed with posters, hammer, nail, tape and pushpins. This lovely day I found street performers on every corner. There was a harp player that sang in gaelic while he played beautifully, an artist by the name of Bruce Campbell who paints on "Found Steel", and a performing acrobat in dog costume. Besides all that fun, the tulips were blooming and the breeze was delightful. You can see in the photos how colorful this all was. Mind you this was a day sandwiched between days of hail and snow. The poems that I had with me were “Keep It Up” by Brian Turner, “The Great Repression” by Stephen Oliver & 'Distraction' by Marcie Sims
The next week I found myself at the historic Denver Union Station as my husband was arriving on the California Zephyr. While there I posted a couple of poems in the train station. This was quite gratifying as I got to witness a passerby stop and take the time to read the poem. This is why I agreed to this project. My passion is to put poetry out into the world in any way that it might possibly touch someone. Seeing this man stop to read this poem made it worth all the trouble that the whole crew involved here at phantom-billstickers has gone to keeping this project going.
Raven Garland is a eurythmist. She has recently founded offthepagepoetry.com , a website dedicated to audible and visible recitation of poetry.
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well that was a good read.. and HUZZAH for mariana, poet extraordinaire!
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