April 25th, 2010

The Toronto Poetry Vendors

This is Toronto poet, and one of the Toronto Poetry Vendosr, Carey Toane (the other is Elisabeth de Mariaffi), giving me a sneak peak inside the city’s first (that I know of) poetry vending machine, now installed and activated inside This Ain’t the Rosedale Library.

Slip in a twoonie (wow, I never write that word–is that how you spell it?) and you’ll get a tiny brightly coloured broadside featuring a poem. The Toronto Poetry Vendors offer poems by 10 Toronto poets–here’s the gang, if you are curious:

Kevin Connolly
Dani Couture
Elisabeth de Mariaffi
Andrew Faulkner
Jacob McArthur Mooney
Stuart Ross
Jenny Sampirisi
Meaghan Strimas
Carey Toane
Paul Vermeersch

The neat things is that the poems are just stacked in there, and so when you turn the crank, you just get the next one in the queue, no picking and choosing. So after this afternoon’s lovely launch (excellent readings, excellent cookies), everyone in the audience bought a poem, and then milled around asking each other, “Who’d you get?” “Who’d you get?” It’s like baseball cards for the litsy set.

Seriously, funnest thing ever. Also, how often do my photographs turn out this cute? Like, seriously, almost never. It was the poetic buzz, I tell you!

2 Responses to “The Toronto Poetry Vendors”

Ransermo says:

I think that it is spelt they way you have it (loonie, twoonie)

How long is the vending machine going to be available? I should try and make it down to one of the locations.
April 25th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
Rebecca Rosenblum says:

Hey, Scott!

As far as I know, this is a permanent installation, but when they will sell out of the first installment…who can say?
April 26th, 2010 at 2:50 pm

The Toronto Poetry Vendors

2 Responses to “The Toronto Poetry Vendors”

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