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-Story

There’s always cross over… and here is a story I wrote and posted a few minutes ago at my blog, Buddy Breathing. Enjoy. I do believe Spring is poking its head out. Oh how I long for it to come and stay for awhile.

Beach blast @ Port Townsend

I want to know.

As much as I spend time alone, create alone, work and think and pour out alone, there’s part of me that wants to know… others, their thoughts, their responses to my words. I create to express, work to sharpen myself as an artist, but also to share. And when I share there’s absolutely nothing more catch-my-breath-in-my-throat, than to really really know I am become a small part in someones life, a link in a chain strung from here to eternity.

Pop-up-poetry may just be a small miracle. I remember reading Stephen Kings book “On Writing” years ago, and resonating with Kings thoughts (I must look at it again!) that writing somehow transcends time and space. He says, “Books are a uniquely portable magic.” To be a writer, to commit words to paper/internet, and then moments, days, years from now, someone reads those words, in a connection across time and space… is miraculous! And so I press on and pop up.

Thursday of last week I pinned poems on Cawston Ave. in Kelowna. I imagined how the words might impact… how God might take what I wrote and begin something or heal something or continue a thought process… with someone I didn’t yet know.

That my poem pinned to a gateway would be welcome home. That my poem pinned to a bench would be rest. That my poem pinned to a community garden would be food.

And I went home believing.

I received a comment here at the bottom of my “About” page that quickened my heart upon reading it. The joy… in knowing… just a glimpse.

Here are some photos of my pop-up-poems, scattered to the wind, looking to land.

All SDG,

Lesley-Anne