Poetry and the Polis...

Didn't know the City of Toronto has a poet laureate...

Pier Giorgio Di Cicco - Toronto Poet Laureate

This is from one of Pier Giorgio Di Cicco's addresses - Toronto's Love Affair with Creativity - available at the link below.

Alliances are negotiated. Being in love with a town means that you don't have time to negotiate. When you are in love, you don't negotiate; you don't put up buildings that don't speak to other buildings; you don't break the town up into communities each with its own loyalties. We have to come together, with a common ideal and a common enthusiasm. Creativity is the language of ideals and enthusiasm.

If Toronto wants to cohere it has to go all the way with what the creative craze suggests. Commerce and culture must be seen as one. Perhaps we should advertise publicly, again and again, with funded dollars, that "Creativity Means Business"; we must hear that again and again until we live by it. Otherwise we will retain our silos and happy ghettos of diversity with their local nationalisms, with no common zeitgeist. The city, both in the metropolis and the “sprawl” must share one ethic of creativity.

Read more about Pier Giorgio Di Cicco. Couple dozen addresses and lectures regarding the nexus of creativity and urban issues. Less than 100 miles from City Hall to City Hall. One of my favorite pix, so close and yet so far away.

Ok, ok...it's just that Wednesday is the 100th anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite poets, W. H. Auden...same guy who wrote September 1, 1939. Yes, I sometimes think about things besides blighted buildings.

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