skonen_blades | Entries tagged with poetry slam

The other night, we had a night of improv and poetry at Cafe Deux Soleils. A poet spoke a poem, then an improv troupe did an improv based on that poem, then a poet did a poem based on that improv, then the improv troupe did and improv based on THAT poem, then another poem, then another improv, and so on. It was fascinating.

Here's an amalgamation of some of the poems I wrote into one poem. It's mostly about Vancouver as were most of the sketches and poems.

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Vancouver. This is about Vancouver.

If I could run five hundred miles, I wouldn't be the mayor of my own heart. Each newspaper headline would bicycle across my perfect ass every summer as I jogged in record time across each delivery ward. I am not running for office. I am running from office. The best Vancouver can say sometimes is that we're not Toronto. Green grizzly will tear apart this temporary campsite we call Vancouver while David Suzuki laughs and laughs. Each starving bear that can't eat meat wheezing across the finish line of horrifying sun runmarathons for survival.

Photo shoots makes us look as real as possible. Fashion is a better existence pushed on all of us like a drug we can't resist. We are fierce and perfect as long as we're adapted by photoshop. Every single one of us looks better with stirrups.

Fresh fish glow Fukushima in the dark. rave sushi. Soy sauce. Soy latte. Soy, el genda troy, I'm a loser baby, so why don't you move to yaletown. My girl friend has a purse dog. I am her purse man. Yoga prepares me for sex in a car to go. Lets get all bonded in a bonafide festival. We're all tied to each other. The rich, the poor. We're attached. And it's not always consensual.

Vancouver. We aim for the heart and miss.

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I spoke this poem on Monday at the Vancouver Poetry Slam. Here's the footage.

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Hey sweet! So I made it to Finals and after a crazy night (two people tied for 4th and I came in second place by .1 point), I made it onto the Vancouver Poetry Slam Team. So the team headed to Boston in August and Montreal in October will be Zaccheus Jackson, Myself, Jillian Christmas, Erin Kirsh and Floyd VB. Super stoked.

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I have some new Vancouver Poetry House Logo ideas. What do you think?

I like this one but I'm afraid the P might be too fancy to be legible to everyone. I love the little negative-space house outline created by putting the upside-down V on top of the H.

I don't like this one as well but the P is more legible.

Colourful and joyous. I added the exclamation point to help define the H on the end.

Black and white.

No exclamation point. Boring? Or more corporately friendly?

A nice non-threatening mint green.

An attempt at amalgamation. I sort of like but it also sort of looks like a real estate company.

Just an idea. The P could be a flag.

This is another idea. Put the text under the H. The house is on stilts and it has a roof. It's protecting poetry from high water and rain. It's a little too 'straight line' for a representation of poetry for me but I don't know.

What do you think? Any favourites?

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The Haiku Death Match last night was incredible. Really, really fun times. The new winner is Fernando Riguera who ended up facing off against last year's winner, Chris Gilpin, in a nail-biting tension-fueled finish with lots of laughs.

I made it to the third round, knocking out Johnny Macrae and Shannon Rayne, both of whom fought valiantly, before losing to last year's winner Chris Gilpin in the second-to-last round. Not too shabby. I should have done more comedy, though. It was mostly about the funny.

Here are the ten haiku poems I ended up reading:

You break my heart, love.
Every day. Because my
Dad would have liked you

My skin is too big
Like a child attempting to
wear his father’s suit

Love is blind because
I held the fucker down and
Cut out both its eyes

Come and get me, babe.
In the old days, witches were
Tested by dunkin’. (For those who don't know, my name is Duncan.)

I am so in love
The light from hate would take light
Years to reach me here.

When we first met, our
Seventy year old selves re
cognized each other

Pharmaceutical
Companies know cancer is
A growth industry

I am a downer
Sand paper on the bat pole
I apologize

What I learned on sum-
mer vacation: It’s hard to
fuck in a hammock.

You are Medusa
Every time you look at me
I become rock hard

So there you go. A great night. Already looking forward to the next one. Cheers!

Curae leves loquuntur ingentes stupent - Slight griefs talk, great ones are speechless. (minor losses can be talked away, profound ones strike us dumb) (Latin)

This is the major problem with confessional/tragedy poetry. Or, I should say, my major problem with writing poetry that explores the larger tragedies in my life. I’m down with listening to other people talk about their wounds.

I’m uncomfortable with speaking about the personally horrific mostly because I can’t find the words. I cannot find a poem to express how I feel about things like my dad’s passing, the problems that members of my family face every day or my own childhood land mines.

The playwright David Hare went to a concentration camp as a tourist a few years ago and was hit hardest by the unbroken ranks of documentation, the hundreds of thousands of photographs and files on each prisoner, that filled up one entire wing of the camp's main headquarters. The organization needed to perpetrate, willfully, this level of murder was awe-inspiring and chilling.

But for him, the parts of the tour that hit the falsest notes, ironically, were the art pieces at the end of the tour. He was struck by the feebleness of of their efforts to encapsulate something indefinable. The results were hollow and garish. “What is a painting of a starving man?” he asks. “What is a sculpture of a dying child?”

Annelyse Gelman down at the Berkeley Youth Slam two weeks ago mentioned that the real tragedies in her life were the ones she couldn’t speak about. The poem was a burn on facebook RIP messages mostly but I get the feeling that even if she could find a way to creep around the edges of definition for those personal tragedies, she herself would never in a million years bring them onto a stage and definitely wouldn't bring them onto a stage for points.

This is my viewpoint as well. I don’t say it as a damnation of people who exorcise their demons at poetry slams. I realize that they are up there saying what others in the audience wish they could say. Their poems are valuable because it lets people in the audience know that they’re not alone. I get that. I’m not critical of those poems.

I might be critical of, if anything, how often they appear on slam stages because it robs those poems of their power. After my sixth or seventh “I suffered abuse” poem, the words no longer hit me as hard as they should have. It’s not something I want to grow jaded to but I can feel it happening.

When I’m on stage, I feel a compulsion to entertain. I want to distract the audience from their own pains, not highlight them. I want to take them away from this horrible reality, not hold up a mirror. I feel like that's our job up there. But that’s just me. I realize that this isn't a new debate and there are many schools of thought on the matter.

What do you think?

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I came in fifth place in the Vancouver Poetry Slam on Monday night after making it to the second round. Mostly due to the fact that the vast majority of the poets went over time. It was really a strange anomaly of a night. Usually a couple of poets will cross that 3:10 mark but on Monday it seemed to me like there were maybe three or four that didn't.

I started with a love poem that I pieced together from the strongest bits from the love ramblings I've been musing about lately. Here it is.

( Click on this for the Love Poem )

And then I read the this re-visited version of Animalpractice. Probably not a good choice. The venue was hot, a lot of the people had left after the AWESOME feature poet Dwayne Morgan. Most of the poems were passionate odes to something or other and I got up and did this wordplay piece. It was met with a lot of confused silence. I think about half of the place started to clue into what was going on about halfway through my poem. Other poets seemed to love it but the judges didn't. Booo. Oh well. It was still fun to read out.

( Animalpractice Version 3 )

So there you go. Good times. Another fun poetry slam. I'm having a wonderful time with this community of poets. We've got a pretty good scene going here.

Just a quick note, Buddy Wakefield is the featured poet at Cafe Deux Soleils tonight and it's a Youth Slam as well. Fresh, young voice and one of the best poets in North America. Five bucks, door at seven, show's at 8. If you have even a passing interest in poetry, you really shouldn't miss this.

Hey everyone.

Don't forget that the Vancouver Poetry Slam Finals are on Monday night at the WISE hall. The show promises to be an amazing one. Cross post if you can. I know most of you will be there anyway. It's sure to be a good show. I saw the guest poet perform at the International World Poetry Slam back in the winter and he's really good.

It's almost sold out and there are only about fifty seats left at this time. I have seven tickets up for grabs if anyone wants one.

Vancouver Poetry Slam Finals Night

Doors at 7:30

WISE Hall

1882 Adanac Street, on the corner of Adanac and Victoria

Featured poet Anis Mojgani

Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door

Come on along.

I'd like to use up all of my tickets.

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