The Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry hosted a Tellabration on Nov. 10, 2012, at the museum. Thanks to everyone who turned out. We explored poetry, ate some smores, and told stories around the campfire. Some pictures from the evening can be seen in the following slideshow:
At the recent Oklahoma Museum Association conference, I listened to a speaker talking about how museums needed to be interactive in order to capture the attention of today’s audience. I have always thought that museums needed to be more interactive. There is a place for what the speaker called, “Stop, Stand, Stare” exhibits, but they should also be mixed with exhibits that let people experience what the museum values and is supposed to be sharing.
If you showed up at the museum today, you would see all the leftover writing that people did on Saturday–the lines of poetry that were perhaps not considered poetry in the secret corner, the block poetry, poker poetry hands left on the table, items from people’s pockets that they made poetry from and left in the Pocket Poetry display case, metaphors about cats, paper bracelets with lines on them like “wild to be wreckage forever.”
I know I’m a nut about poetry, and I also know that most people aren’t. But it truly offers something for everyone. We all need the freedom of saying what fills our hearts and minds . . . even if it’s just written on a slip of aged paper and stuffed in a wooden box or if it’s a phrase left in magnets on the bottom of a table that no one sees. We are human beings and need to express ourselves . . . and oddly enough, when we are open and honest about it, what comes out is almost always poetry.
If you do not believe me, you need to come to this museum. (And if you do believe me, you need to, also.)
–Shaun Perkins
Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry 
Jeanne–Thanks so much. You inspire me, also. I would love to tour the countryside visiting poetry museums…you know there’s only one other one that I know of–and it’s the biggee in DC.
well.. then I just have to ride myself to your place and lounge and write and rite with you awild…
I sure wish I could have been there. and I sure hope I can make a road trip there. YOu are So incredibly inspiring to me. You know how important poetry is to me. Maybe I’ll have myself a poetry museum here in Ann Arbor, one of these days. We could have them dotted all over the country and make them part of a poetry blue highway trip. Wouldn’t that be awesome? I would be interesting in the ‘formate’ of your Tellabration. I’d like to do something like that at my salon. I have a large space and I could make an event like that happen.
Thanks Shaun… Love and light to you. xo