Poetry turned a lot of angry frowns to smiles today on Columbia’s Main Street as One Columbia for Arts and History and our Columbia city poet laureate Ed Madden played a big April Fools' joke on folks parking their cars downtown.
According to Madden, “I was brainstorming with my intern Luke Hodges about gorilla poetry projects—projects that would put poetry in places people would not expect it, projects that would put poetry in daily life. We came up with a lot of ideas, but this seemed the perfect one for this year since April 1st falls on a Saturday when the city does not ticket downtown.”
Along with the help of “a nice mob of folks” windshields throughout the area were slapped with pretty realistic looking parking poetry tickets, like those pictured below.
“It has been great,” Madden says. “Some folks were angry at first, and then laughed very hard.” He continues, “When I was going back into one of the parking garages a woman pulled over and stopped me and told me how mad she was when she first saw it but, then, what a great idea it was. She loved it!”
Lee Snelgrove, executive director of One Columbia agrees. “The project caught people off guard and made them take a moment to consider poetry as part of their daily experience. It was a fun project to be a part of.”
