Typing on the sidewalk
December 9th 2007 08:30
In case you thought poetry wasn’t important to people, think on this. A poet called William Chrome sits outside a Manhatten supermarket with his typewriter most mornings, and writes on-the-spot poetry for anyone who cares to pay him some money. If they haven’t a theme in mind he’ll sell them a ready-made poem. Otherwise, in about ten minutes, he’ll write a poem based on any ideas you come up with. They’re not poems with metre, or rhyme – call them abstract mostly – but they’re poems.
Chrome makes between $15 and $20 an hour and produces between seven and fifteen poems in a four hour stretch. There must be a distinct pleasure for the recipients in receiving a poem that’s unique to them.
I have a friend in London who, when I was there back in the late sixties, rushed me into a bookshop one day and excitedly scanned the poetry shelves. She pulled out a slim volume of poems and told me with great enthusiasm that a poem in the book was dedicated to her. It was by John Heath-Stubbs – he’d been her neighbour at some point – and the poem was entitled, In Return for the Gift of a Pomander.
Back to Mr Chrome. He isn’t the first to perform street poetry in this fashion. A trio of women calling themselves the Typing Explosion wrote poems as a group for passers-by from around 1998 till 2004, and still give occasional ‘performances’ of their art.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find an example of Chrome’s poems anywhere on the Net, but the Typing Explosion have a number of theirs – in original condition – on a site called Read a poem by the Typing Explosion.
Chrome makes between $15 and $20 an hour and produces between seven and fifteen poems in a four hour stretch. There must be a distinct pleasure for the recipients in receiving a poem that’s unique to them.
I have a friend in London who, when I was there back in the late sixties, rushed me into a bookshop one day and excitedly scanned the poetry shelves. She pulled out a slim volume of poems and told me with great enthusiasm that a poem in the book was dedicated to her. It was by John Heath-Stubbs – he’d been her neighbour at some point – and the poem was entitled, In Return for the Gift of a Pomander.
Back to Mr Chrome. He isn’t the first to perform street poetry in this fashion. A trio of women calling themselves the Typing Explosion wrote poems as a group for passers-by from around 1998 till 2004, and still give occasional ‘performances’ of their art.
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find an example of Chrome’s poems anywhere on the Net, but the Typing Explosion have a number of theirs – in original condition – on a site called Read a poem by the Typing Explosion.
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