Intimacy and Poetry of Place
A Community of Voices and Collaborations
In September we wrote poems in Leg-in-Boot Square.
All who attended walked away with many piece they wrote in the wind, amidst crows, and seagulls and other visitors to the round square.
Check out our display at Convivial Cafe. Some of the poems in the display are collages of lines that were written and spoken in the square on that day and arranged by Daniela Elza. A few are circle poems where we passed paper around and each person contributed lines they wrote on that day. Also a few individual poems by people who participated.
We hope you enjoy this collage poem below and it inspires you to write your own poem about the place you live in, and what belonging or displacement mean to you.
What Towers?
Collage Poem from the September 7th Writing Group
What is it to live here sitting on the edge of the water
Unhinged.
I have no sense of place where the creak on the stair
and the cracks are familiar.
I walk into the city from cafe to cafe writing silent poems
The train window of my life
I have come here from many turns
wrong turns
missed turns
Conversations —locked like a jewellery box
waiting to be opened.
The wind whistles on the friendly side of howl
The water comes and goes
The herring spawn utter their billion silent odes
the masts play the marimbas to an invisible conductor
I was nearly born on the taxi floor
My mind a blur of applesauce
I needed the sea, and stayed for the boy.
Under the Granville bridge his sense of humour moved me to tears
But the city tidied his home away.
——————
This project was organised and ran by local writer Daniela Elza who is also a founding member of the Place Mattering Matters Collective.
Daniela gratefully acknowledges the support from the Neighbourhood Small Grants, Convivial Cafe, and the False Creek South Neighbourhood Association.
