We try to be innovative in our approach to delivering the news of the city.

Sometimes we succeed. Sometimes we fail.

People are always looking for something fresh – something new. Gimme a reason to go to your newspaper, TV station, website, etc.

So I was disappointed to hear the resistance today (received through Calgary Arts Development) I got from some Calgary poet laureate candidates, over what we thought was an innovative way of promoting the six candidates short-listed for the position of poet laureate in Calgary.

Here’s the task – Provide a Haiku based on the following topic: Calgary, in your own words.  

That’s right… those 5-7-5 (syllables) poems… the ones that often appear for fun on Twitter. I think people get a kick out of those – even for fun.

On top of that we planned to have a quick bio of each poet so Calgarians could get to know each of them a little better. Deadline: end of this week, early next. So, about seven days.

Simple, to the point, and what we thought was a fun way to engage Calgarians in an otherwise muted process. Basically, we wanted to shed light on something that gets very little media play in this city.

That, apparently, didn’t go over so well.

Emiko Muraki, program and event coordinator for Calgary Arts Development, was kind to enough to offer an explanation.

First off, she admitted she thought we were after profile interviews of each candidate for a bigger write-up in the paper. No way – that’s OLD SCHOOL. We wanted something fresh, something fun for print. We were literally confined to the box.

But, further the poets have misgivings about our fun little way of giving their competition a little more exposure with mainstream Calgary.

Here are a handful of the reasons why the poets had concerns (paraphrased):

•    We don’t have enough time to produce something good
•    It’s not in our poetic area of expertise
•    We’re under a lot of pressure for the poet laureate competition
•    We do this for a living, we want to be paid.

OK, I admit, Haiku can be tough and is not really the forte of anyone but a ‘Haiku-et’ – but I felt it leveled the playing field, and offered an opportunity to show off a fun and enjoyable, and God forbid ‘creative’ side to the candidates vying for this cultural ambassador position.

Historically, artists in general are pushing the boundaries of thought, perspective and perception in order to find new ways of deciphering and interpreting and delivering that, which, to many of us, seems like the norm of life.

Now it’s us trying to come up with a different way of presenting the same sort of community news, so we can give people a different perspective, a different interpretation, and a different delivery, and it meets stiff resistance from the artists.

Now imagine a world where all innovation, all non-conformist thought was stonewalled. These artists – poets – might have to make their living doing something else.

Ironic isn’t it?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

 

D..