University of Toronto's Poet in Community

On Wednesday the 27th, I will write you a poem for a dollar!  

The Spontaneous Poetry Booth will be at Mount Sinai Hospital

600 University Avenue, south of College

(in the cafeteria)

Noon to One-thirty PM  

Everybody welcome.

At 1:30pm today a group was gathered in College Park as I was walking past, and a frill of policemen in yellow stood around. I asked the story, and a tall one quipped: “an old real estate problem.” It took a flicker for me to say “is this an aboriginal protest?” I walked away, down to where they were pounding and singing, and I stood there.

But it made me so mad what he had said that I went back to tell him, who apologized, but only because he knew he should, not because he felt it. And I wish I’d asked: if the Nazis’ stealing gold from the teeth of Jews was an old dental problem; or the slave trade an old question of changing property values. I wish I could have reached up and punched him in his tall, white, handsome face so far removed from retribution that reproach was only a word from his boss. When he said he didn’t mean to be dismissive, I said it was to me, and if there were more like me perhaps he could consider. He was polite. Which he could afford to be. And so was I.

Ronna Bloom

What if you didn’t?

This collaborative poem emerged from the Hart House series “A Writer’s Process: The Inside Story” March 2012. Participants were asked to take a line or a phrase they’d written in the three week series and to write it on a flipchart on the last day. The poem was put together by Poet in Community and Hart House Writer in Residence, Ronna Bloom.

The Inside Story

More than just the weather has my spirit soaring.

I am at this poetry workshop. I have absolutely no idea what to expect.

The teller sees the marks on the walls and joins them into new constellations, takes the disorder, the unknowing, births stories.

Like the fake sand, synthetic; the fake coconut attempts to be alive,
attempts to let the white creamy paste bury it.

Growth can’t be achieved without risks.

Why does it feel like I am always putting out fires?

Did the same green grass meet them,
did the same blue skies mock them?

The blueprint email informed the meeting will take place in the Bickersteth Room. It was locked. I felt a sudden strange feeling of impending doom.

I really really think things are going to be Okay.

A breath between words

…an everlasting puncture/bruise…

A break is not to do anything at all.

Two lines I heard at the workshop:
“All that can happen is that I might feel something.”
“What did I survive for…to stand cowering?”

We don’t talk,
yet I see her.
she sees me
we talk that way.

I am still listening to the conversation below.

I’m not

I’m not the kind of person who writes letters in support of other
people’s causes. I may have been, once. But not now.

I’m not the kind of person who signs up for a zumba-yoga marathon
for charity. Perhaps I was, once. But not now.

I’m not the kind of person who plays the piano for three
hours each day until Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude
goes streaming through her blood. I’d never think of stretching

my fingers that way, spreading out and unfolding like a wire
coat hanger over the keys…even though I may have dreamed it, once.

I’m not the kind of person who goes to live
with an indigenous tribe in Colombia for three weeks

and actually believes that her presence might be positive…
even though, five years ago, it would have been.

I’m not the kind of person who breaks from routine.
I’m not the kind of person who changes the world.

I’m not the kind of person,
I’m not that kind of person…

Please, someone, please take me back, show me the
person I used to be, the one I thought I might become

before everyone told me
that I had grown up.

—-written by Jeannine Pitas, in “The Courage to Connect”   November 2, 2011

We Move Together

we move together
an amorphous mass
a buzzing body
breathing in steps
gained with each exam
each building,
each lab
we spill all over campus
cram in lecture halls,
cafeterias, our
bedrooms, we listen
to the same profs
we toil alone
avoid each other’s eyes
trace our steps
sweat the anxiety on tread mills
imagine beautiful shapes
of where we would like to go
not realizing we are there already.

— by Svetlana Lilova, written in “The Courage to Connect”.
For more on this workshop, or to participate, see Workshops.

“Poetry is news that stays news.”
— Ezra Pound

See Poet in Community in the news: newz4u.net

One more poem from The Spontaneous Poetry Booth. It was requested by a recent grad.

To Start Me Off

I am thirsty for something
but I don’t now what it is.
It has no numbers and I don’t think it costs a lot
but I could be wrong.
I want a flavor I am missing.
There is a parched place that needs a spring.
I need a bit of heart to feed my business self.
I need to speak in the language of my home.
I need to find the words, the sounds, the squawks to speak.
I need a poem to start me off,