Last Friday, I spent my evening writing poetry for a bunch of Dungeons & Dragons nerds. The NC Museum of Natural Sciences held an event called Magic & Monsters and they invited Living Poetry to participate, so Anna Weaver, Jessica Covil-Manset and I got all dressed up and spent three hours writing for our fellow geeks beneath the threatening gaze of a skeletal Acrocanthosaurs.
To make it more interesting, we brought our twenty-sided dice and made people roll to see if they got a poem. Depending upon what you rolled, you might get a haiku, a limerick, a ballad or an ode if you rolled a natural 20. There was also a 30% chance you wouldn’t get anything but we allowed them to pay money for a re-roll. Those that won a poem filled out a little questionnaire about their character and then we got to work.
The smartest thing we did was to get a couple of friends to be our managers. Sarah and Andrew handled the dice and questionnaires and generally made sure we could focus on the writing. If it wasn’t for them we’d have been overwhelmed.
We had no idea how popular we would be and could’ve used twice as many poets. We had to shut down new rolls about halfway through the evening because we were running so far behind and after briefly opening back up we had to close down completely because we ran out of questionnaires. Over those three hours, we three poets wrote over 60 poems. It was gratifying and exhausting.
I wrote a fair number of forgettable limericks that all started with “There once was a Druid named…” but there was one haiku that stood out in my memory because the character was a Necromancer.
The sun may shine
but death lurks in shadow
and night always falls
I strongly encourage all my fellow poets to do Poetry-on-Demand whenever they get the chance. It’s a great way to bring poetry to normal folk and excellent exercise for the poetic mind. I’ve written at street festivals, art galleries and one wedding. I’ve made one person cry, another nearly dry heave and I’ve been told that I have multiple poems stuck to refrigerators with magnets. For me, there’s no greater achievement in poetry.
Bartholomew Barker, Poet 
That’s a terrific haiku, Bart.
What a great idea for a community event.
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Thanks, DD! I encourage you to take up the Poetry-on-Demand banner in Oz now that summer’s nearly there.
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We have significant disruption from rough characters in our libraries and I wonder if this initiative could be given a safety spin? I mean, when did a D & D character do anyone any real harm!
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Never! Though I was among the first generation to play D&D and I remember the arch-christians thinking it was or would lead to satanism.
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OMG! I love everything about this post. How creative and fantastic to interact with people this way. You’ve got me thinking. Thank you so much for sharing.
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My pleasure, Ali. I hope you make something happen out there in your area.
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I checked out their websites. Anna looks so happy. I need to look into PA open mic stuff. For … the future when I’m not wrangling small children. She hasn’t been to PA yet I see.🤔
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Anna is a delight. I’m surprised she hasn’t done PA yet since it’s relatively close to NC.
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What a great idea and such a fantastic response – well done… perfect Haiku too.
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Thank you very much!
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That way of dressing suits you! All you need is a velvet hat with a big feather.
This isn’t Dungeons & Dragons – but, as you know, my policy tends to be – why not?…..
http://www.spanglefish.com/berniesblog/blog.asp?blogid=17065
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Thanks, Bernie! I’ll see what I can do to track down a suitable hat.
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That’s so awesome, Bart. I love how you all got dressed up. What a nice event. 60 poems is a lot, well done! 🤗
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Yeah, we were stunned but at least we looked good. Thanks, Kirsten!
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You’re most welcome 😊
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Wow Bart, this is awesome! I can imaging how awesome yet exhausting it must have been. Thanks for sharing it with us. Kudos to you!👏👏👏
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Thanks, Cindy! It is a lot of fun and challenging. I hope you’ll give Poetry on Demand a try soon.
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Love it …now where might I find something like this?
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Yeah, you might need to be more creative finding the gig than actually writing at it. If you have a favorite museum, I’d suggest showing up at an event, finding the person who’s running it and suggesting some way to include poetry. We got this museum gig by suggesting we write poetry during some of the evening lectures which we then read for the audience after the Q&A.
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This sounds amazing.
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It really was. It’s not often we get to write poetry for people who don’t usually read it.
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love it! I’m incredibly jealous too
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I was a lot of stressful fun. We could’ve used your pen!
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