My First Paid Gig

This might sound a bit superficial to you, and it is in some ways. And, it’s also exciting. Those of you who are artists and writers know what I mean. To receive an honourarium is an honour that lifts the spirits and says our creative work has found place and purpose. It feels wonderful.

A couple of months ago I see a call for installation poetry, and my heart leaps. It seems a perfect alignment, I think to myself, so I write a letter of proposal and send it off on a wing and a prayer. And wait. I don’t have to wait long. They say YES!

So, here I am preparing for the UNBOUND Poetry Festival in Delta, BC., and all the pieces I’m creating will head off without me to be installed by the welcoming and energetic, Angela Rebrec, President of the Delta Literary Arts Society. The DLAS is putting on this festival to celebrate National Poetry Month. This will be the festival’s second year, and Angela and her team put a tonne of effort and love into this event. If you are local to Vancouver, BC., consider taking in and interacting with some of the wide and wonderful experiences that are poetry. Including PUP!

DID I MENTION I’M GETTING PAID!!!

I’m sharing a picture of my current PUP process below, which involves words and images. It’s been a lot of fun considering the vernacular of Delta, South Surrey, Tsawwassen and how to express that in art. My husband and I brainstormed images on Saturday morning with lots of coffee. I chose 7. It’s amazing what you can do with meat trays and a poking object! Expressions of the simple beauty of rock, tree, flower, sun, ocean, river, field are expressed in the simple “block cuts” which are printed in two colours: copper and turquoise, to honour earth, sea, and sky.

There will be a sign with my work. Here’s what it will say:

POP-UP POETRY INSTALLATION

Scattered across the grounds of the UNBOUND Poetry Festival you will discover POP-UP POETRY: small slips of paper with words and colourful artwork. As their name suggests, these wee poetic bites will pop up where and when you least expect them to. So, be on the lookout!

POP-UP POETRY (PUP) is a public word-art installation of poet Lesley-Anne Evans, from Kelowna, B.C.. Over a decade ago, Lesley-Anne instigated PUP in “the thick of things.” Inspired by National Poetry Month 2012, and a desire to bring poetry to the people, Lesley-Anne became Kelowna’s first downtown poetry busker, and began to install PUP and handmade luminaires in public places.

PUP is intended to be accessible and a discovery for people as they go about their daily lives. Most PUP is a line or two from a longer work of poetry. PUP is embellished with simple, colourful block prints of everyday objects: a tree, a flower, a bird, a rock, a field. Lesley-Anne’s mother Evelyn, who passed away in June, 2022, used to say “Beauty is everywhere, even in a freshly plowed field.” The artwork of PUP reminds us of that.

Lesley-Anne’s PUP installations include Belfast, New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Edinburgh and the Isle of Skye. Finders of PUP write to her at https://popuppoetry.ca/ to express their responses to the poetry they find. You can learn more about Lesley-Anne at https://laevans.ca/

May your discovery of POP-UP Poetry meet you where you are, with what you need.

Lesley-Anne

Practicing play

A day ago I was having a chat within a poet/editor group on LinkedIn. I was sharing my current state of angst over an inability to land a theme or structure for a new collection of poetry. The wise woman I was chatting to said “don’t forget to play” or something like that. Which took me by surprise, her suggestion that the opposite of work, productivity, achievement, might be what I needed.

So, I listened. Only three days before the end of National Poetry Month I “remembered” playing. I prepared some little poem bits, this time from a collection of fridge magnet poems I wrote a few years back in another dry spell, and out I went. Here’s how it looked.

In a couple of days time I’ll go out and collect the poems that are left, but I’m hoping they have been found and taken. There is sometimes an uncanny alignment with what is written and what is required. In the past some people have shared their meaning with me. Some have said nothing. Some poems have no doubt been thrown away, or gone soggy in rain, or hung on for weeks. If you read some of my other posts you can share the stories I’m aware of.

And I felt a little lighter in spirit when I came back home, which is a sign of playfulness, I hope. I wish the same for those who find the Pop-Up Poems.

Happy NaPoMo, my friends,

Lesley-Anne

Je me souviens

Dearest daughter,

I remember our time away fondly, so many great conversations, meals, and experiences of a new part of Canada for both of us. The Eastern Townships at Easter is very quiet, and so was Quebec City, but we still managed to find patisseries and good cheese and epic grand cathedrals and one day we even found time for an installation of PUP.

So thank you for documenting our process. It isn’t often that I have a kind and willing accomplice alongside me, but you were so patient. Here’s some proof of where we were, and what we did. I wonder who found those little poems?

Saint Roch was a perfect neighbourhood to be a flaneur.

Love,

Mom

NaPoMo 2019

It’s a perfect spring day here in Kelowna, B.C. and it put me in the mood for an installation. I headed out with a giddy feeling in my stomach, and with my supplies…poems, bull clips, a couple of promo postcards, my camera. I chose a S.E. Kelowna location for PUP today, just down the road from where we live now.

As I was walking through the stillness of the forest, I became suddenly aware that I was alone in a somewhat wild place, and I admit I began listening more intently for wild things. I recalled that it was in April 2012 that I began my Pop-Up Poetry initiative which has taken me to scatter poems and bits of poems wherever I travel, and many times at home . Sometimes I forget about PUP, and then it comes back to mind, or someone will mention it to me, and then I’ll follow the prompt and do it again. It is just one more way for me to share my poetry with the world, and in April that means in celebration of National Poetry Month (NaPoMo).

Hope you find one from today’s install! If you do, feel free to take it home.

Next week PUP will be in Quebec! I’ll share pictures!

Be brave

Inside, your voice speaks: You know you can do it. You know you have something to say. You’ve dedicated years of time, talent, and treasure to this, and seen the ripple effects as others receive the gifts. Yes, there is that fine line that you walk between true humility and feeling…joyful and proud to share your poetry…that it is even yours to give. You know the excitement you feel when you get out there, that freaky, wonderful, guerrilla prickling under your skin feeling as you imagine someone finding something you left behind. You know it’s a good thing. Be brave.

So I do it. I am brave. I install my “Pop-up” poems in a lavish sprinkling all over the woods. I watch from a distance. I wonder is it good enough, will it touch someone, will someone find it and like it, will someone say something, or will it all remain a mystery to me of what happens next?

Last day at the retreat, one of my new circle of creative sisters says to the gathered group: “so what I want to remember most of all is this…how magical it felt to find this little poem bit in the woods, and so I’m writing it here on my expressive art piece, so I never forget that feeling, and my prayer captured in those beautiful words.”

“Fill me with God scent, Spirit favour, something good.”

Yes, God, yes, yes.

Be of good courage. Be brave.

LAE

pop-up-poetry

…in the thick of things

Art

My First Paid Gig

Practicing play

NaPoMo 2019

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