100,000
POETS FOR CHANGE
In 2011 poets Michael Rothenberg and Terri Carrion came up
with an
idea of
having poets around the world meet to read about their visions of change. The
movement
spread (went viral) and as many as 700
events in 95 countries have
participated
in the late September event. It has
been described as the largest poetry event
in history.
In Buffalo poets gathered on the river front in Silo City surrounded by abandoned
grain silos
from Buffalo’s past In a stage set
against the background of those silos poets
read and
shared their views of change with the audience.
Poets were grouped in time
slots. My group consisted of Pat Hulsman, Rich Olson,
Jim Taylor,
Fred Whitehead, Jim Maurino, David Landry, and Robert Taylor. We decided
rather than
having poets come up one at a time and doing their thing that we would
coordinate
our readings. We spent some time online
getting it together. One person would
post a poem
and another would post a poem that pinged off the previous one and on it
went.
Pat Hulsman who is working on a
collection of poems called “Ghost Dancers”
offered
theme – poems that dealt with or reflected ideas expressed in the note below:
“Ghost Dancers” are taken from
the spiritual/cultural phenomena experienced and
driven by the indigenous plains people of the American west
in the 1880s.
They would dance themselves into trance to make contact with
the spirits of the
dead. These contacts
would be the catalyst of change to bring peace to the group.
Rich Olson suggested that we might serve as sort of a Greek
chorus in an American
play.
We read our poems accompanied by
guitar music provided by Dan Kolb (the
Umbrella
Man). David Landry complied the poems
into a booklet titled Ghost Dance which was
designed by Julia Kolb.
