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For a lot of people, the word "poetry" conjures images of angsty adolescents or finger-snapping, black-clad beatniks. It is an acquired taste, something that a certain type of person (boring?) with unoccupied hours to spare might pursue.
Regina Coll is trying to change that perception. Her Bathroom Poetry Project spreads the good word about poetry by putting it near the one place we are all compelled to visit: the toilet. This strategy not only ensures a varied audience for the poets involved, but on a more cerebral level is an exploration of poetry in nontraditional spaces.
Also, it gives you something to do while you're in there. Talk about multi-tasking . . .
Coll started the project in 2005 by placing poems in coffeehouse, bookstore and eatery bathrooms in Maryland, D.C. and Virginia. The poems are typed, then laminated, so they stand apart from your average bathroom fare. Business owners place works where they deem fit.
For those who care to experience the magic of bathroom poetry in the flesh, you'll have your chance tomorrow at a "progressive reading" event. You can meet Coll at the Big Bad Woof in Takoma Park, where she will hand out maps to five nearby locations. Inside each bathroom, you can hear a dramatic reading of the newly installed poetry by the writers themselves -- for one hour only.
Coll is also looking for participants to take her project to a global level, and why not? You know what they say: The bathroom is the great equalizer. (Or is it death? Whatever.)
Or, as put more articulately by Savana Moore in a poem hanging in a Takoma Park stall: "When it comes down to it, when we have to go/Our bodies teach us what our minds don't know/No matter what our creed or race/We are all the same inside this place."
Free. 1-2 p.m. tomorrow. Meet at Big Bad Woof, 117 Carroll St. NW. 202-291-2404 or visit http:/
The Week & Next
The District
Today
EXHIBIT: Check Out a Museum Off the Mall: The Kreeger With the Mall teeming with sweaty, slow-moving families dressed in "I {heart} D.C." shirts, perhaps it's time to try something new. The Kreeger, admittedly, is not new, but it is off the beaten path, on Foxhall Road in Georgetown. And the museum has a show celebrating the architecture/art of Philip Johnson (the late architect who designed the fabu Kreeger itself). The exhibition includes pieces from Johnson's own collection, including works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella and the like. The show is up through July 31. $10; students and seniors, $7. Open Saturdays 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and by reservation Tuesday-Friday. 2401 Foxhall Rd. NW. 202-338-3552.
Tomorrow
FILM : From Cannes to . . . 14th Street? In May, Style reporter William Booth discovered a pair of ambitious D.C. cousins at Cannes, of all places, trying to hawk a short film -- a comedy about terrorism featuring a terrorist/idiot named Nib Nedal. Tomorrow, you can see the 24-minute film, "A Free Radical," at Busboys and Poets when it's screened as part of the cousins' "D.C. Trilogy" (which includes the 15-minute "Classified," about a White House operative, and the 15-minute "Moment of Silence," a drama about a soldier's homecoming). Afterward, directors Dan Boylan and Guy Taylor stick around for a Q&A. Free. Doors open at 8 p.m. (Films start at 8:30). Busboys and Poets, 2021 14th St. NW. 202-387-7638.
