GUERILLA WORD ARMY & THE AUSTRALIAN POETRY FESTIVAL

Sydney’s Central Business District will be the site of one thousand acts of temporary graffiti this August as part of the Australian Poetry Festival’s Guerrilla poetry event. Founder Jess Cook from the Sydney creative team, Token Imagination,  said the event is all about bringing spontaneous colour into people’s lives.

“This had been done overseas but never really in Australia,” she said. “The idea is to have something like an ambush, but rather than it being cutting and bang in your face, this is something that tries to be a little more fun and lighthearted.”

“We are more than happy to have people pick the works up and move them, take them home, modify them, whatever.”

The installations consist of six different colored gorilla magnets attached to large speech bubbles bearing poetry and word-art from ten different contributors in random locations around the CBD.

“There will be 100 bubbles per poet, a thousand bubbles total and we’ll be planting them all over the CBD, in true guerrilla style,” Cook said.

Announced at the event’s launch at the Stanley Street Station last Tuesday the contributing poets include an 80-year-old woman from Melbourne, a first-time poet and a Villawood Detention detainee as well as a range of graphic designers, poets and illustrators.

Cook said she was interested to see how the event was received by the conservative crowd from Sydney’s business district. “The last time we did something like this we were in Newtown,” she said. “I’m keen to see how it goes at the CBD when we’re not preaching to the converted so to speak.”

From late Aug, in the lead up to the Australian Poetry Festival, Sept 3-4, The Rex Centre, 58A Macleay St, Kings Cross, poetsunion.com/apf/2010