PREVENT MEDIOCRITY: BLANCHE NUIT

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Toronto is hosting it’s second BLANCHE NUIT, (Oct 4-5) the dusk to dawn art thingie, when imagination and originality go street-side or curb side. Last year, Wally Keeler, dressed up as a suicide martyr (from his poetry performance, The Wal-Martyr) and took a stroll along Queen Street West, which culminated in police intervention. The episode was documented by poet, Robert Priest, in this NOW story.

This is the Wal-Martyr hanging with some Beaver in Trinity-Bellwoods Park, before embarking on a stroll along Queen West. The stroll attracted an entourage of paparazzi, and eventually, the Toronto police, who assured themselves that the Wal-Martyr was carrying nothing more explosive than metaphors, and released his imagination back into the wild.

This year, Wally Keeler will be setting up a video camera in Trinity-Bellwoods Park (west end, facing Queen West, against wall of building) and inviting poets, poetasters, poetry lovers or sluts, to take a stand against mediocrity and pledge their allegiance to Poetry. Each unit of verse will be required to stand in front of the camera (head & shoulders only) and recite the following:

. . . . .. . .“I, (YOURNAME),
. . . .SWEAR TO SPEAK POETIC,
. . . .. . . WHOLLY POETIC,
. . . .AND NOTHING BUT POETIC,
. SO HELP ME (NAME OF FAV POET).”

Mr Keeler will also be requesting people pose with their FREE SPEECH cards and recite:

"I (YOUR NAME), HAVE FREE SPEECH BECAUSE ..."

Mr Keeler will be vacating the space from 9:45pm through to 11:00pm to attend a poetry show at the Bovine Sex Club, then returning to the Trinity-Bellwoods Park site to complete the project, until my equipment exhausts its power supplies, or until I exhaust my power supply, which ever comes first.