THE POETRY PLAYGROUND, Weekly Classes (Tuesdays 7-9pm)

From the crazies who brought you THE POETRY POLAR BEAR CLUB, now offering ongoing, weekly, drop-in classes at The Fremont Abbey Art Center, Tuesday nights from 7-9pm, starting Tuesday, 24 March, 2009. THE POETRY PLAYGROUND is facilitated by A. K. “Mimi” Allin.

THE POETRY PLAYGROUND
A place to stretch your poet and play with words. A place to practice physical poetry. A place to test your tools. This is not a poetry reading, critiquing circle, performance or acting class. This is a playground. We’ll use games, exercises and prompts to free our poet. Intended for artists of all genders, genres and levels, who work (or wish to work) from poetry. Be prepared to move, talk and play, alone and in groups, to create on the page and in the round. We will not sit in seats at tables.

EXERCISE YOUR POET $10
Ongoing, drop-in, weekly sessions, 7-9 pm, Tuesdays. Classes meet at The Fremont Abbey starting on Tuesday, 24 March, 2009. 2 hrs on the playground, pay-as-you-go, $10/session. No stress. Generative play. Just show up. Pay in person, cash or check.

INSTRUCTOR
A. K. “Mimi” Allin, The Poetess at Green Lake, spends her time developing interactive poetry performances. An instigator of social dialog, Allin teaches poetry guerilla poetry to youth and adults. She has been performing, projecting, installing and instigating poetry since 1997. Allin, who earned her MA in Poetry from City University of New York and founded the monthly poetry & performance series Untitled [Intersection], will moderate all playground sessions and performances. Special guest co-instructors will be announced.

INQUIRE
mimiallin@gmail.com

aka readings| performances

SOUL FOOD POETRY
A. K. Allin & Vanessa Dewolf perform/read together on Thursday 19 March, 7pm, at Soul Food Books in Redmond. This will be Allin's first long reading since "Soviet Poetry" at Soho20 in NYC, a slide show of epigrammatic poems over Modern Soviet Art with percussion by Greg Stare of Rare Bird Rumba Ranch. Expect the off kilter.

FREMONT PLACE BOOKS
The very next night, Friday 20 March, 7pm, Allin will perform at Fremont Place Books with the dapper Aaron Silverberg and the therapeutic Laurie Scullin. In typical Allin fashion, this will not be a reading so much as a happening so bring your witness.

The Onion Years

In February 2009, I placed 12 ceramic onions around Lake Union in Seattle. The onions came from the Goodwill. They were part of a kitchen decoration meant to look like a strand of garlic. I cut off the twine that held them together and put corks into the holes that remained. Then they looked like onions, white onions. They led me to this project.

I walked six miles around Lake Union on 7 February 2009, placing onions here and there in hidden places by garden gates, above rock walls, under trees, beside bridges. I put them in places where they might be noticed by some wandering soul. The various paths around Lake Union do not connect. There are little parks and public waterway access points. There are old railroad ties and bouncing sailboats. There are piers and community gardens. The Fremont Bridge closes the circle to the west.

Little laminated signs, placed near each onion, instruct the public what to do. Write, on a bit of paper, something that made or makes you cry tears of joy or sorrow. Put it into the onion and gently replace the cork. If you break an onion, you will wear the sorrows it contains for a year. Gasp!

The onions sat outside for a month collecting tears. Some of them disappeared. Most of them stayed. Some collected a great number of notes. Some collected only a few. I am beginning now to collect them. Yes, spring is upon us!

Soon I will break them open and their tears will be released. It will rain for a week. Those drops that fall as tears will bring forth flowers with a so beautiful a fragrance, those who inhale it deeply will be affected with amorous feeling for the next person they see.

For those who want to witness the Onion Breaking, I will post details here soon, on the when and the where. I suspect it will be in the next few weeks.

Thank you to all who contributed. You are beautiful. Because of you, this spring is already filled with magic!