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23 Feb 2010

Diary of a Billsticker – Baltimore, USA

By Phantom Billstickers

This poster run happened on Waitangi Day weekend. The Phantom crew did the run on the Sunday morning in temperatures of 18 degrees Fahrenheit (32 is freezing). We carried posters by Jay Clarkson, Sandra Bell, Michele Leggott, Janet Frame and others. I always try to have a Janet Frame poetry poster nearby.

We attracted lots of good attention and made some strong contacts within the Baltimore poetry scene. Nothing seems to break the ice like putting up poetry posters. People always seem to relate to a poem. Discussion always opens up.

Baltimore, Maryland is a very creative city. It seems to be just bursting at the seams with artistic activity. To my mind, this is because the city is very nicely worn in and not completely taken over by shopping malls and franchise store operations. The city has a very bohemian feel (this feeling seems to have always been good for poetry) and this encourages people, young and old, to ‘have a go.’ It’s like the texture of the city gives people permission to move in creative ways. Shop rentals are probably quite reasonable in Baltimore and there is a great independent bookstore called Atomic Books. Atomic Books has a wide selection of fanzines that are put out by enthusiastic people from throughout the USA. They break the format of the publishing houses in exciting ways.

But everyone seems to know Baltimore these days because of the TV show “The Wire.” This show has captured attention spans throughout the world as being a true story of what can go wrong within cities. We have the same kind of thing happening within New Zealand cities. It is a cruel and vicious set-up full of hurt, hypocrisy and dismay. Alan Duff writes about it so well.

In time out of mind, H.L. Mencken lived and worked in ‘Charm City’ and worked for The Baltimore Sun. Here was another who saw what was going on in society and chose to write about it rather than turning away. The notion of “Not Turning Away” is a Buddhist concept.

But what I saw in Charm City that really knocked me out was a Presidential motorcade. Barack Obama was in the city on the Friday, talking to local business owners. Local business owners (not the banks) are the engine room of the economy, we all know this.

For Mr Obama’s splendid motorcade they had closed off one side of the I-95 which is the interstate into Baltimore. We were travelling the other way. The first thing we knew, here comes twenty motorcycle cops riding two abreast. A hundred yards back there are the first of twenty black Chevrolet Suburban vans carrying aides and secret service men, no doubt. It is all a very regal and disciplined scenario. Next comes five or ten black limousines, these are probably Cadillacs or Lincolns with extra sheets of steel built into their body shells. They are each flying the Stars and Stripes from the front guards. After that, we have more Chevy Suburbans and a fire truck and an ambulance. At the end are more motorcycle cops and there are a couple of helicopters (‘Marine One’ – the Presidential chopper) in the air.

It all reminded me of seeing Queen Elizabeth II in Stuart Street, Dunedin many years ago.

The last thing I wish to say about Baltimore is that the city features in a song by Bob Dylan. That’s enough of a recommendation to a place for me. In the song “Trying to Get to Heaven” he states that “Miss Mary-Jane has a place in Baltimore.”

When I first heard that song, I knew I had to go and I’m extremely glad I did.

Keep the Faith,

Jim Wilson
17d

18 Feb 2010

Diary of a Billsticker – Manhanttan, USA

By Phantom Billstickers

This small poster run of about fifty posters happened after a Phantom Billstickers delegation met with the good people from the Poetry Society of America. From memory, most of the posters were of Brian Turner’s fine poem “Keep it Up.” I just found it good fun to be out with a staple gun.

Manhattan, New York City, what do we know of it? Two members of “Bailter Space” live in Manhattan. Bailter Space is New Zealand’s finest band of its genre and I really don’t know if there is another band anywhere that fits into that genre. Bailter Space created it and did it so well.

Of course, many fine writers and artists of all types came from or lived in New York City. New York City is where artists gravitate to and it lifts them up. There are too many names to list. I think everyone knows that this is a very creative town. It gave us the Ramones, Delmore Schwarz, William Burroughs, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Andy Warhol. But if you really got into a list, then it would never stop.

There’s just something about the place. It is just so compelling.

Keep the Faith,
Jim Wilson

15a

15 Dec 2009

Diary of a Billsticker – New Hampshire and Vermont, USA

By Phantom Billstickers

I’m from New Zealand so it’s possible I’ll get some of the towns and city names wrong that were covered on this poster run for NZ poetry posters.

We stayed in Perkinsville, Vermont and travelled out to:

In Vermont:
– Chester (Where there is a great bookstore called Misty Valley Books, the owner of which put us on to a fine local poet called Michael Palma)
– Weston
– Ludlow
– Windsor (Where I came across a general store selling NZ Swanndri bush shirts and a bloke who had actually heard the names ‘Dan Carter’ and ‘Richie McCaw’ – Kiwis abroad speak those names often)
– Bellows Falls
– Andover
– Springfield

In New Hampshire:
– Cornish
– White River Junction
– Hanover
– Lebanon

It was my sheer and extreme pleasure to be carrying with me Ben Brown poetry posters (The Door). I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t think Ben of Lyttelton had spade-loads of raw talent. Every time I put a poem poster on a lamp-post or a notice board, I am aware that I have at least three effects: on the poet himself (I believe in him), on a potential audience (so nice to be reading a poem in the streets) and on myself (my blood flows).

The week following this poster run we had a great meeting with Alice Quinn from the Poetry Society of America. Whilst in Manhattan for that meeting, I managed to get a few Brian Turner and Sam Hunt poetry posters up. These are very fine NZ poets. Let’s take this to the world, eh? Or do what we can.

 

Keep the Faith,

 

Jim Wilson

15b

17 Nov 2009

Diary of a Billsticker – Chicago, USA

By Phantom Billstickers

There’s lots of things to think about with a head full of the Blues in the Windy City: The failed Volstead Act and how that applies in this day and age with drugs; ‘Hinky Dick’ Kenna; ‘Bathhouse’ John Coughlin and other crooked Politicians (“Vote early…and Vote often); Abbie Hoffman; Bobby Seale and the 1968 Democrat Party Convention along with its subsequent riots; Oprah and the failure of television; Nelson Algren; Saul Bellow; Robert Johnson; Tom Petty’s excellent album “Live in Chicago”; the Paul Butterfield Blues Band; John Belushi and the Blues Brothers; John Dillinger and the Biograph Theatre; Al Capone; Barack Obama; Eliot Ness; The Tommy Gun; Carl Sandburg (“Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders”); the Rolling Stones and 2120 South Michigan Avenue; the stock yards; the freight yards; the trains; the 1893 World’s Fair… To name just a few topics of thought.

These are all the images that come to me of Chicago. New Zealand television played the original series of the Untouchables in the early 60s as I was growing up in Dunedin. I was left with wonderful and wild imagery. That’s what television can do. For better or for worse.

Now with all of that it’s probably better to do a simple poster run. I did. A poster run always clears the head and gets the blood flowing. It was very wet and windy on both days as we went out to tape NZ poetry posters to lampposts around Chicago. It was kind of like postering in Wellington with the weather against you. Still, as I’ve often said, nothing beats a good, simple poster run and the knowledge that one is making a difference. I am enormously proud of NZ poets as I go about this. There seems to be a limited system of framed off poster sites in Chicago just as Phantom operates in New Zealand. But there are also lots of lamp-post posters in the Windy City. Going by the posters, Chicago has a lot of very creative people about. That’s how I judge creativity in a new city, by the style and number of street posters I see about. A creative city always has lots of street posters. What craven-hearted type of person would want to stamp this out? To stop people expressing themselves. That’s not good.

Chicago is an exciting city and does not disappoint. For all its crime and bad times, it is a wonderfully vital city. It is obviously very alive. Chicago (say the name over a few times… What a great name) is kind of like the McLaggan Street area of Dunedin in the 1950s and 1960s blown up and maximised to a 10,000% image. In McLaggan Street at the time, almost anything went and most of it twice: the crime, the violence, the Opium houses, the great music in the local pub, the Kiwis just doing their best and working every day. Some of those Kiwis were getting over the experience of the Second World War. They were all good blokes. I remember that. They had a dignity in bad times.

In Dunedin, the wind even came blowing in off the harbour and up the hill just like the wind blows in off the lake in Chicago. I don’t know if either wind actually cleanses, but a bit of bad weather always makes for an interesting city. It certainly did (and does) in Dunedin. Dunedin is a similarly creative city. Obviously, lots of great NZ music has come from Dunedin. It’s the atmosphere of the place. It’s a mixture.

I’ll finish this by saying there is a new Untouchables movie in the making called ‘Capone Rising’. I long for the day when someone makes a movie about McLaggan Street. Janet Frame touched on the area in some of her writing, but there’s more work to be done. New Zealand has just as rich a culture as Chicago and there’s more to be said. Lots more to be said.

 

Thank you, friends.

 

Jim Wilson

 

12g

10 Nov 2009

NZ & US Poetry Takes on the World!

By Phantom Billstickers

An initiative by Phantom Billstickers* to provoke some thought, while putting some beauty back into the world’s streets, has seen POETRY POSTERS featuring poems by New Zealand and American poets plastered all over New Zealand as well as Sydney, Paris and several American cities including Nashville, Knoxville, Portland, Seattle, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Jim Wilson, founder of Phantom Billstickers, says “Some of the most beautiful, striking and intuitive poetry in the world has been created by Kiwis. Phantom Billstickers feels a responsibility to help New Zealand artists of all types to be heard at home and abroad, so we came up with the idea of the Poetry Posters. A different set of posters is rolled-out nationally each 4-6 weeks, and each poster in the set features a different poet’s poem. Simultaneous to the poster roll-outs in New Zealand, we’re making our way around the world, plastering poem posters as we go and exposing the international community to New Zealand and American poetry.”

The first poster was pasted-up in Auckland on 2 June 2009 at an event compeered by New Zealand’s inaugural Poet Laureate, Michele Leggott. This launched the first roll-out of Poetry Posters by NZ poets Tusiata Avia and James Milne (aka Lawrence Arabia) and US poets J.D. McCaleb and Michael White. For just over a month these posters were seen on all Phantom Billstickers’ sites in Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, New Plymouth, Gisborne, Napier, Palmerston North, Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill.

A second roll-out, this time launching in Wellington, began on 22 July and featured poetry by NZ poets Bill Direen, David Eggleton, Michele Leggott, Otis Mace and Frankie McMillan and US poet Josie McQuail.

The third roll-out launched in Christchurch on Janet Frame’s birthday on 28 August and featured, as well as a poster of Frame’s poem “The End”, poems by an all NZ line-up: Ben Brown, Hilaire Campbell, Geoff Cochrane, Rhian Gallagher, Gary McCormick, Campbell McKay, Pablo Nova, Jackie Steincamp and Nicholas Thomas.

The fourth New Zealand roll-out launches in Dunedin at 12pm on Monday 16 November at 468 George Street (by Obelisk), with Michele Leggott officiating. The featured NZ poets are Sandra Bell, Jay Clarkson, Sam Hunt and Brian Turner, while the American poets are Robert Pinsky (Massachusetts), Marcie Sims (Washington), and Joe Treceno (New York City).

Wilson says he’s delighted to be launching the latest selection of poem posters in Dunedin, under the gaze of Robbie Burns’ statue. “Dunedin is a real hotbed of creativity,” he says, “and we’re certainly featuring an interesting selection of poets in this roll-out. Alongside some of New Zealand’s best, we’re honoured to have American poet Robert Pinsky submitting his poem “Samurai Song”. Pinsky is one of the foremost poets in the US – aside from being a prolific writer and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards and fellowships, from 1997 to 2000 he was the US Poet Laureate, and he currently teaches at Boston University and is poetry editor for Slate.”

* Phantom Billstickers has been giving New Zealand a good pasting for 27 years. Jim Wilson started the company in 1982 and has the rights to the leading poster sites in the country.

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