Words At Large

I felt so much delight doing this that I thought that poets all over Canada could do the same.

It happened. In October 2004, we had the first Random Acts of Poetry Week. Twenty-seven poets went out into 17 cities across Canada to read their words to total strangers, and hand out books to appreciative listeners.

AbeBooks was our first sponsor, along with the Victoria READ Society, a non-profit literacy group. In our third year, the Canada Council for the Arts picked up the baton and began funding us, and Victoria READ Society stayed on board.

Along the way, the poets started going into ESL and Adult Literacy Classes. We were all convinced that poetry is a way into reading for those who have language barriers. Random Acts of Poetry became a national celebration of literacy, as well as a delightful way to share poems.

Fast forward to October 1, 2007. All this week, 37 Canadian poets will roam their cities’ streets, books in hand, on the lookout for people who are ready to meet a poem. They’ll also travel to nearby towns and enter classrooms, all in order to share poetic moments.

We open ourselves to people, I think, by reading them a poem, and they, in turn, open themselves to us. I believe that a poem is the shortest distance between two hearts.

Over the years, Canadian poets have read to cabdrivers, engineers, bakers, actors, lawyers, stockbrokers, pathologists, health inspectors, truck drivers, sky divers, tap dancers, yoga students, plumbers, hitchhikers, politicians, grandmothers with their grandchildren…the list goes on.

In return, some people have broken into song or recited a memorized poem. Often there are tears. Or laughter.
Random Acts of Poetry has taken us to many unexpected places and surprising encounters. Here are some memorable moments…

My very first official Random Acts of Poetry happened at Bean Around the World Café in Victoria in 2004. Sitting at a table was a man reading The Globe and Mail. He had a face filled with lines and light. I asked if I could read him a poem, and he said he’d be glad to hear one. And suddenly we were in the special landscape of reader and listener, where the rest of the world stops for a moment and connection begins. When I was through, he thanked me and touched my hand. And so the week began.

Billeh Nickerson, who was then poetry editor of Event, went to the Vancouver Curling Club. He ran onto the ice just as two teams finished an end and read a poem while both teams huddled around him. The poem warmed them all up, he told me.

Jannie Edwards and Wendy McGrath of Edmonton were part of Random Acts the first two years. They read poems in the snow to the Ross Shepard High School football team, and recorded this conversation between two of the players:

“Man, I could write poetry. I’m good at rhyming.”

“Man, poetry doesn’t have to rhyme!”

“Dude, it does so.”

“What are you talking about, dude?”

At Odell Park in Fredericton, Kathy Mac saw a woman who was walking her two Yorkies. They sat down on a bench, and she read the woman and her dogs a poem. The woman asked for her card. The next morning, there was a bouquet of flowers waiting for Kathy at her desk with a card saying: “Thank you so much for your Random Act of Poetry—I’m still smiling!!!”

In Poverino’s, a pasta restaurant in Saskatoon, Glen Sorestad, then Saskatchewan’s Poet Laureate, read a poem to the young waitress. She ran into the kitchen screaming delightedly to the staff: “I’ve been poemed by the Poet Laureate!”

The verb “to poem” was born then. Now we print out labels and give them to people. They say, simply, “I’ve been poemed.”

One final, random moment…

At Grey Gables nursing home in Markdale, Ontario, the residents had dressed up for Halloween. Liz Zetlin, now Owen Sound’s Poet Laureate, read to an angel in white satin and large paper wings, who grabbed her hand, and whispered, “Bless you.”

When I came home from my final day of Random Acts of Poetry last year, someone had e-mailed me this quote: “ Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.”

This year, more than 1,500 people will be poemed across Canada, on street corners, in cafes, in line-ups at the bank or supermarket. At any moment, it could happen to you. A small moment of quiet in the busy day. A small moment.

Wendy Morton is the creator of Random Acts of Poetry and author of the poetry collections Private Eye, Undercover and Shadowcatcher (Ekstasis Editions) Gumshoe (Black Moss Press), as well as a memoir, Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast (emdash publishers). She once escaped a speeding ticket by reading the police officer one of her poems. She lives in Sooke, B.C.