too much blue, too much red

[from The Love Lettering Project V]

a single backporch kiss

There is clover where the grass should be

and stairs where we used to launch ourselves

out the screen door,

I love you in a single backporch kiss,

September threading itself

through the edge of summer.

[from The Love Lettering Project V]

in process...

It's a love letter explosion!

between peeling labels and lipsticked bottles

[from The Love Lettering Project V]

ice cream love

I say I love ice cream and you are offended,

ask how I can love you and love ice cream

but it just is how I love,

double scoops,

sugar cones and you.

[From The Love Lettering Project II]

when the season turns...

[from The Love Lettering Project V]

wallpaper and gasoline

Last night, I wrote the word love hundreds of times over and over. And debated plastering the airmail envelopes up in my home like wallpaper...

~


I love you tastes like gasoline,
a rainbow puddle
against the asphalt.

[from The Love Lettering Project: V]

ps: today, i'm in love with this art project: Take Picture Don't Steal

a-z and z-a

I will love you in alphabetical order,

and then miss you from Z

back to A

pausing on elbow’s envelopes

and knee’s careful commas.





(Crossing my fingers 


that you will be back 


by the time I reach your

arms).

[from The Love Lettering Project: II]

a november love letter

I love you
three steps up from the sidewalk,
where leftover Hallowe’en cobwebs
collect the beginnings
of a long winter.

The railing peels and I love you,
the porch light long since burnt out,
the streetlamp questioning the screen door
as you reach across the clutch of bikes.

[from The Love Lettering Project: V]

The Love Lettering Project V

The Love Lettering Project V: December 2009

[first kisses]

This year’s Love Letter project is just underway…I have asked people I love to send me the locations of their first kisses, along with the season of this kiss. And ooooh, the stories I’ve been getting! It’s amazing. Goose-bump-ingly amazing!

Sooo, I’m writing poems about these moments that took place in driveways and school yards, next to rivers, on porch steps and the backseats of best friends’ Toyota Corrolas – then I’ll whip ‘em into small pieces of art and slip them into envelopes.

In December, I’m going to deliver these love letters to places similar to these original kisses.

Keep your eyes peeled…there might just be a love letter for you*

The Love Lettering Project IV

The Love Lettering Project IV: July 27, 2008

[Bike love]

In 2008, people I love sent me a word of something they love and I then wrote love poems to these objects: magnolia trees, wheat beer, old Penguin edition books, May and so many other lovely bits...

Then, after a fortifying brunch and too many cups of coffee, my partner-in-crime, Rhya Tamasauskas and I, proceeded to tie these love letters to bikes all over the west end of Toronto.

And somehow, over the last year, I’ve met one friend, one acquaintance and one stranger who came across these letters…xo

~

[a love poem to a dictionary]

I love that you are as wide as you are tall

two hands full.

And I love that you line up your

Ps and Qs when I'm not looking,

Ms careful next to your Ns,

ears before eyes

and hands before hearts.

The Love Lettering Project III

The Love Lettering Project III: May 19, 2007

[Odes on brambles and elegies on hawthorns]

"Odes on brambles and elegies on hawthorns," wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It.

I was working on a writing project that involved a lot of Shakespeare and this image from As You Like It, of Orlando filling trees with love letters for his beloved stuck with me.

So…after creating one-of-a-kind paper-based art pieces, I filled a tree in Trinity Bellwoods Park in Toronto with these envelopes marked ‘love’.

It was lovely to see these love-inscribed envelopes hanging between the leaves that were that brilliant green that only new leaves have.

I have no idea who came across these letters, but I biked by the tree later that day and they were all gone…

The Love Lettering Project II

The Love Lettering Project II: April 18, 2006

[Library love]

I can’t remember why there wasn’t a love lettering project in 2005, but the second installment in 2006 made up for it. I was in grad school for creative writing and knew far too many people who were spending far too much time in the library. Thus, the Library Love Lettering Project was born.

Instead of casting these one-of-a-kind paper-based love letters all over the city, this round was for the library...Robarts at the University of Toronto (which, if you’ve never seen it, is one of the most horrible, uninspiring concrete buildings in Toronto ).

I asked some of my very favourite people to send me the titles of books they thought needed a love letter... books they loved most of all, books they thought needed a smidge of love, books that inspired love, books they read while in love, books they wish they could love....and on this sunshining afternoon, I tucked a wee envelope of loving goodness inside each one.

From Irving Layton to Baudelaire, first editions to brand new books, Nabokov in Russian, plays, poetry, fiction and everything in between...became full of love.

Blushing scholars abound!

The Love Lettering Project I

The Love Lettering Project I: July 29, 2004

The very first Love Lettering Project was a collaborative affair with the ever-inspiring poet, creator and monster-maker, Rhya Tamasauskas.

During one of the weekly meetings of our writing collective, Tuesday, Rhya and I wrote love poems, then turned them into small one-of-a-kind collage art pieces and slipped them into envelopes.

During that July afternoon, we put them everywhere – in phone booths, in bins of cherries at fruit markets, in gardens, on park benches, under windshield wipers on parked cars.

I remember feeling elated and giddy with the goodness of it all. That was an exceptionally good afternoon.

~

She sends her love west,
enveloped and stamped,
licked with remembering, with wishing.

welcome!

Hello, hello! Welcome to The Love Lettering Project...

I'll admit it, I'm a big fan of the love letter. In fact, I may have even written a few love letters TO love letters...it's true...

There's something so special about about receiving words of love folded up inside an envelope, and so few of us receive enough of them. There's often such a small window in which we write them, and with so much of our communication occurring over email or on Facebook or phones, good ol' fashioned love letters are going the way of the dodo.

So, I write love letters. Love poems, really. And once a year, I turn these love poems into 200+ one-of-a-kind hand-made art pieces and tuck them inside envelopes. No tos or froms, just 100% love.

I love the idea of people coming across an envelope with the word "love" written on it. I love wondering how people might react. I love not knowing what happens to these small bits of papery love. Guerilla love letters abound...

Keep an eye out for a love letter. It may just be addressed to you...xo

~

I love you leaning across
a long Tuesday afternoon.