Interactive Art Activity: The Whitty Wily Poetry Connection

The Whitty Wily Poetry Connection is a live, interactive performance installation where poetry is generated, performed, and playfully disrupted in real time. Audiences encounter Whitty Typo-Write (a mobile typewriter), Clairty the head Poetichanic, and the Wily Soapbox 2000, an animated speakers’ box equipped with bells, cranky contraptions, and theatrical mischief. Poetry becomes tactile, and slightly unhinged in this participatory performance that is part clown ritual, part public experiment wrapped in enduring charm. Audiences are invited to participate in spontaneous acts of writing, composing poems from unexpected objects, co-creating absurd or sincere texts, and amplifying their voices through analogue spectacle. The work operates as an open flow installation with live performance sets that draw audiences into a shared, evolving environment. This work aims to enhance the accessibility of poetry by making it whimsical, vulnerable, communal and joyfully unpredictable.

Free. Family-friendly. All are welcome to drop in between 12 and 2 PM – No ticket required!

🎨 Led by artist Claire Davis

Claire Davis is a Vancouver based multidisciplinary artist working across live performance installation, immersive theatre, and poetic arts. Their work blends clown, improvisation, and participatory writing and immersive elements to create playful, open-flow encounters where audiences become collaborators.

They are a part of Dreamqueen Immersive Theatre, performing as the Star in The Last Resort (2024-2026) and as Bat Clown in Mr. Nowhere’s Disappearing and Reappearing Starlight Carnival (Fringe Festival Vancouver, 2025), while also serving as Prop master and Creative Producer. Their performance installation practice includes creating and producing This is Not a Protest, presented as part of the Democratic Set at PuSh Festival (2020) with Big Pond Arts Collective.

Claire’s broader work spans poetic installation and community-engaged projects, including Letters to the Lake (Deer Lake Artist Residency) and the Community Chronicles Zine Project: Stories of Home (CREATE! Arts Festival, 2024), as well as the eco-art installation RECIPROCITEA (Burnaby Blooms Festival Eco Artist Walk 2023). Their work has been recognized with the Poet’s Corner Reading Series Open Mic Listener’s Choice Award and the Royal City Literary Arts Society Poetry in the Park winner.

Claire approaches their work with the lure of possibility, imagination, and the enduring alchemy of the moment.

A BIG thank you to the East Village BIA for generously letting us use the plaza! We’re so grateful for your support in making this event possible.