Writing ‘On the Spot’ Poems for People in the Street

Writing ‘On the Spot’ Poems for People in the Street

(Photo © Susie Clevenger 2013.)



What is the poem 

you would like to write,

if you wanted to write 

a poem? Tell me,

and I’ll write it for you.

What’s it about?

Should it rhyme

or don’t you mind?

Do you want it funny? 
Sad? Political? Romantic?

Is it for someone special,

or to keep for yourself?

Do you want it to tell

a story? OK – now you

tell me the story please.

Questions I used to ask.

Then I’d listen hard,

so as to reflect them back

to themselves; so that always 

they knew it as their poem.

Theirs … and mine. 
One copy for them,
one for me. Their joy,
seizing them unexpectedly,

I shared too. 

               ******

My friend Jennie Fraine,
who started this and taught me,

had it as her business.

Never really stopped,

just varied it.

Valentines Day poems

in a big department store.

(She had to dress posh.)

Stalls at Sunday markets
all over the State.

A social history, collected

from the little towns

along a railway line

in a region she grew up in,

making a poetry map.

Taking it to kids.

A book of poems created 

for teenage schoolgirls,

with a shiny red cover:

called ‘Sexy Guys Kissing’.

And sometimes at festivals

a whole gang of us

each labelled ‘Poet’,

actually accosting people,

offering our wares.

               ******

I see this young woman

now, at her booth in the street,

industriously writing poems.

She loves her work, I know,

and her customers love it too.

Sexy Guys Kissing, and all that stuff.© Jennie Fraine 1989-92.

Written in response to Susie Clevenger's prompt for April 2020 ~ Day 2: Taking it to the Streets at 'imaginary garden with real toads'.

Jennie's in Victoria, I'm in far northern NSW, about 1,700 km away – and while I was in the middle of writing this, suddenly she phoned out of the blue. Don't you love those 'coincidences'?