The Stanza Project (Vancouver: Otter Press, 2013) is a DTES book of poems and writings, drawings and sketches. It is a collaboration of architecture and words. Edited by Elee Kraljii Gardiner, the book combines the work of the Thursdays Writing Collective at the Carnegie Community Centre and MLPProosten/Architecture of the Netherlands. The book uses tactics of “wordsquatting” where writers in one instance “played with the names of local SROs and text from realtor websites,” according to Elee’s introduction. Work was then pinned to bulletin boards “as an archive of the process.”
This piece, “How to Discourage the Homeless,” is by Phoenix, with architectural drawings by Bartholomew & Associates. It was developed during an evening of writing about buildings during last year’s Heart of the City Festival. It sprang out of a need to see the homeless and low-income people in a well-manicured neighbourhood plan.
The Stanza Project can be bought at Pulp Fiction, the Paper Hound, the People’s Co-op, or from any member of the Writing Collective. See more about the Stanza Project here.