Last Friday the public collaboration phase of the BLACK RIVER exhibition I’ve been involved with was launched at Te Manawa.

In support of the exhibition, the poets and artists have their drafts/sketches on display in a cabinet. The idea of this was to share creative process with the public.

It is a little bit exposing to have my scrawling, messy poem draft on public display, however I believe in the reason behind it (sharing creative process). (It doesn’t help that the other poets seem to have basically ‘cheated’ (I say this jokingly) and submitted fairly polished, finished poems for display so mine looks all the more deranged. Ha ha!) Oh well, all I can say is I STUCK TO THE BRIEF.

Here is the cabinet with the sketches and poetry ‘drafts’. My mess is on bottom left – notice how much longer it is than the other ‘drafts’? Ahem.

On Friday, there were already quite a few public responses. Here are some of my favourites:

Whoever this person is, they have great handwriting…

River as hair + a great sentiment….

River is DEEP.

LOL, indeed.