Poetry Sticks

The poetry stick is the most intimate of collaborative projects. Participants may submit vital words and phrases pertaining to a central idea, such as life in transition, or respond to an abstraction, say, a particular color of rust red. They also may contribute a drawing, a reconfigured Chinese fortune, or a physical object to include in a predetermined display. In some projects, the citizen-poets are given specially-designed cards to embellish; in others, a Glowing Head inscribes the words and phrases onto card stock, ties a string to each strip, and attaches each string to a weathered and whittled stick of noble character. In a nonverbal and purely conceptual variant, a mélange of objects or fetishes is suspended from a seasoned willow branch—a visual analogue to channel the intended theme. One may discover a flicker feather, a pair of rusty scissors, a stopped pocket watch, a jawbone, or a seashell next to other related relics. A poetry stick can be mounted on a wall for play. An individual might while away a perfectly good morning creating free-form poems built from assorted words and phrases. Here's one now:

Consider the troubled dreamers / dreaming the delirious / forgotten songs of survival / appropriating images / weaving through tragedy / sculpting the sound / a beautiful noise / unmistakably real. / You have answers / students of the earth.