Random Acts of Poetry

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October 3rd - 9th: A celebration of poetry and literacy in cities across Canada, the UK, and Ireland.

The second annual Random Acts of Poetry week is a Canadian initiative that promotes poetry, poets and literacy in a fresh way to everyday people in their everyday lives. This year, 27 poets from across Canada will be joined by 10 poets from England, Scotland and Ireland, making the event truly international after only one year. Watch for local poets from your community reading poems to people on the street, at bus stops, schools, libraries, hair salons and in local schools.

Sponsored by Abebooks.com in association with Victoria READ Society.

"What do I like about the notion of random acts of poetry? Its playfulness, its populism, its commitment to the notion that poetry is everywhere, not just in textbooks and English classes."

-- Jannie Edwards

"Poetry is pretty well invisible in the mass media and most people's lives. Random Acts will put poems and poetry books into people's hands - people who would normally not read a poem. Why poetry? Because it's the song of our species and right now, many songbirds are threatened, if not endangered."

-- Elizabeth Zetlin

Poet in the house: A handbook

A. Pest Control:

If you are infested with vermin, but know a poet, you’re in luck. Poetry will drive
rats and mice from a house. Rats, especially, have an aversion to rhyme. Jot a
poem on a piece of paper, place it beside cracks in the baseboards near openings
to the ground below, and the creatures will flee to the homes of neighbouring
curmudgeons. This never fails. Of course, you must be a friendly neighbour
yourself. What goes around, comes around, as you have heard.

B. Percussion:

Poets were once called beats for a reason. Ask a poet to join your garage band or
your Saturday blues jam. The vein of poetry, located at the back of the poet’s
head, begins to throb with the metre of the emerging poem. You can choose the
beat: iambic, dactylic, anapestic, elastic, iconoclastic, dipsomaniacal. Gaelic poets
worked in darkness, so ----

-- Lorri Neilsen Glenn

Mayor of Hamilton with Marilyn Gear Pilling

Random Acts of Poetry

“I love to promote poetry anywhere, will stop strangers to read them poems and otherwise commit random acts of poetry. I thought it would be a good idea for poets across Canada to do the same thing.”

-- Wendy Morton, Founder