You know you're hooked when...

The other night I had a fairly vivid dream about retelling Frederik Pohl's classic SF story 'The Day After The Day The Martians Came' at Once Upon a Slam. It's strange, because so far I haven't really been able to picture telling a literary story. I know that people do it, but somehow it just didn't seem like the kind of thing I could do. I couldn't really imagine doing anything but personal stories.

But then on Saturday night I was talking to my friend Simon - who wanted to be at the last story slam but couldn't - and somehow the subject came up of telling a Lovecraft story. I think it was because the last slam's Sacrificial Teller was Marie Bilodeau, and she did a story inspired by 'The Shunned House.' And it suddenly struck me that you could do some Lovecraft stories in five minutes... you'd just have to pick your story. Simon hadn't really realized that you could tell a literary story - someone else's work - and I told him yeah, sure, you could do any kind of story: folk tales, ghost stories, literary stories... you could even do 'The Statement of Randolph Carter' if you thought you could get it into five minutes...

And I think I'd been thinking along those lines. Anyway, I woke up the other morning out of a dream in which I was at the slam, ready to get up, and running the "Martian jokes" that are central to Pohl's story through in my head. Reminding myself that I didn't need to remember all of them as long as I remembered enough. Trying to figure out how to deliver the zinger of a last line.

Ruthanne, who runs the slam, will probably be pretty pleased about this.

She's created a monster.

VERSefest: Call for Poetry Submissions

I'm passing this along from rob mclennan's blog:  

Poetry for Human Rights

at VERSeFest 2011

THE EVENT

Poetry for Human Rights will be a showcase incorporating stage and/or page poetry that engages topics of human rights: women's rights, migration rights, democracy and self-determination, social justice, indigenous rights, and/or other topics related to oppression and resistance.

It takes place March 12, 2011 at 3pm, as a part of VERSeFest 2011.

THE FESTIVAL

VERSeFest is Ottawa’s new poetry festival, scheduled to take place from Tuesday, March 8 through March 13, 2011.  The festival is being staged by a collective of 14 Ottawa poetry groups that is known as VERSe Ottawa.  The total attendance at these groups’ events varies seasonally between about 750 and 1,000 people per month.  Audiences range in age from school and university students through to the retired. 

The poetic arts in Ottawa and, indeed, the country are rising in popularity and are becoming increasingly mainstream. VERSsFest is a collaborative project to leverage all the energy and capacity of these groups to build a critical mass for the poetry community as a whole, to share audiences, and to deliver a festival on a new scale. Ottawa deserves an annual festival of poetry, and VERSeFest will grow into an annual international poetry festival.

THE POETS

All poets, whether performance-based, page-based, or somewhere in between, are welcome to apply. The showcase is not limited to poets from the Ottawa region, but VERSeFest will not be able to cover any travel.

THE PROCESS

Please submit a brief statement (500 words maximum) explaining your work and its human rights resonance, along with at least three pieces of sample material.

We can evaluate printed poetry (Word, OpenOffice, or rtf files), performance video (in .mpg or youtube URLs), or audio (in .mp3 or CD audio) to ktmatthews@gmail.com by February 18, 2011.

While electronic submission is much preferred, hard-copy submissions (including printed paper, CDs, DVDs) may be mailed to: PFHR VERSeFest submissions, 243 Booth Street, Ottawa, K1R 7J5.

Deadline is February 18, 2011.

A selection committee will get to work and select three artists for the showcase. Results should be announced by February 26.

THE COMPENSATION

One poet will be selected to give a full reading/performance (of 30-35 minutes), and two others will each give a "half" reading/performance (less than 20 minutes). Artists will be compensated at Canada Council rates for readings.

Sorry, we will not be able to cover any travel costs.

Riddle me this:

Has anyone else noticed this illuminated sign over the Sussex/Rideau corner of the Rideau Mall? My parents and I spotted it while running from dinner to the NAC and Dad stopped long enough in the middle of the intersection (the little orange numbers counting down all the while) to snap this shot on his BlackBerry. I like the picture, actually. We're still confused and slightly charmed by the sign. Anyone know what it is? Will knowing what it is remove all the fun and mystery?

Surprised again by the Play Date

For the first time in what feels like months, I made it to the Creative Writing Play Date tonight! I think the cold had probably scared a lot of people into staying home, but frankly, after a couple of days below -30, something more in the -15 range felt practically balmy. Nevertheless, there were only a few of us braving the winter chill at Mother Tongue Books: four, in fact: Sean, the moderator, and three others including me.

I think that over the Christmas holidays, when I was inspired and creatively kicked in the pants by the poetry of my niece Rachael Wyatt (I got to read her portfolio while I was home, and it really made me want to write, which is one of the things good writing should do), and also over the last few months when I've been focusing so much on developing Chasing Boudicca that it felt like stealing energy from the show to work on new things, I just hadn't been doing that much creative writing. I think I walked back into the Play Date ready to surprise myself. Or at least ready to loosen up and let whatever came out, come out.

Which it did. Tonight's exercise involved randomly drawing an archetype, one of either "Poet," "Artist," or "Scribe," and then reaching into Sean's Crown Royal bag of plastic animals and pulling out an animal. You were then supposed to write a story where a person, who fit the archetype, was confronted with a countless number of the animal. In the story you were to explore the tone and mood suggested by the animal, and work out what the relationship was between the character (and his/her archetype) and the animals.

I got "poet" and a pink plastic pig.

This launched me off into a 45-minute visceral, visual and tactile dream-dive into the sheer physicality of pigs, their earthiness and bodily presence. I won't say it was good, but it was certainly weird, and unexpected and satisfying to write. Words I hadn't been expecting to use came burbling up, and I felt a whole lot less resistance than usual. Often my rational mind balks at just letting go and seeing what comes out. This time, as soon as I decided this was about dreams, I managed to release. Or maybe it was just that I'm ready to write some new stuff, and do some new things, and check out some other creative roads, now that Chasing Boudicca's a little more behind me. 

I like some of what I wrote, and will have to play with it more. A lot more, really. What I like about it has more to do with feelings and images than actual words. Once again, not something I would ever have chosen to write about, for which I have to thank Sean. The Play Date is really good for me. I've missed it.

The Creative Writing Play Date, by the way, meets every Tuesday from 8:00-10:00 at Mother Tongue Books. In the first hour you get a prompt and write about it: in the second hour you share what you've written and get feedback. It's on a drop-in basis, and newcomers are always welcome.

Chasing Boudicca, reviewed!

Pretty cool - how often does storytelling get reviewed? Here's Nichole McGill's review of the show in Ottawa Tonite.

More plans are underway for the show: but next up, we're planning for Fireborn 2011, in March...

Wicked typography animation

My dad just sent me a link to this poem, particularly because of the animation of the typography. I've seen this visual language more and more lately: think of those truck commercials, and I know I've seen another commercial that stole the same dropping, spinning, coincident with the voice-over style. But this one does it really well. And the typography geek in me smiles at it.



Incidentally, and having little to do with the above video except for the visualization of the spoken word (and the speaking of the visual word) are you going to Messagio Galore tonight at the OAG? It's going to be a mind bender!

Back down to earth?

Chasing Boudicca, on Thursday night, was a fantastic experience. After months of living with the warrior queen and working with Marie and Ruthanne, after the last couple of weeks in which I saw the others practically every other day for rehearsals and plans (we probably should have just moved in with each other for a couple of weeks), after a couple of sleepless nights on my part and a lot of racing pulses, we walked on stage at the NAC and started to share our Warrior Queen with a packed, and hushed, audience.

It was an incredible experience. Somehow the presence of the audience out there, who had never heard the poems or stories before, was galvanizing: I felt my own words coming alive in a way they hadn't before. And as we moved through the story, I slowly began to realize: we know this piece. We're living it. And ... have I seriously not dropped, or lost, or stumbled on, a single line?

Ruthanne and Marie were as good as I've ever seen them: at points I don't think the audience was breathing, and at points I know some were crying (that's good, we were going for that.) And Nathan Bishop was better than I could have expected, punctuating and propelling and participating with his bodhran, and the whistle that he'd brought along unbidden, and which he suggested we use at three points in the story where it turned out to be heartbreakingly perfect. At the intermission we stopped and looked at each other and said, "this is ... this is amazing!" while feeling a little as though we didn't want to jinx it.

I almost cried - but didn't quite - during the last poem: and when we got off stage and over to the side I did cry a bit, just overwhelmed by the high pitch of the emotions we'd been riding for the last few hours, and particularly the last two. It was a combination of relief and release and catharsis and happiness. We all hugged each other, and I tried not to collapse into tears entirely, because there were so many more people to hug and talk to. It was a really powerful experience for us, and I gather from people in the crowd that it was for them too.

There will be more pictures - there were a lot taken - but this is the one I've got at the moment, from Dad's Blackberry not long after the show. (My parents came up from NB for the show, which meant a hell of a lot to me: the show wouldn't exist were they not the wonderful people they are, and I'm happy and proud that they could be here!)

Marie's thoughts on the show, from her blog, are here. 

And then late last night I got sent a link to our Christmas present from Marie's Roomy! Kymeras fan art! It's so awesome I keep making 'squee' noises.

So I keep claiming I'm going back to "regular life" - although I sort of know that when you've got friends and co-creators as wonderful and strange as I do there's no such thing as "regular life." One project is finished, there are more ahead. I've got writing to do, and the Kymeras have a Fireborn show to put together for March. We want to tour Boudicca, and there have been rumours of theatre festivals and academic conferences that we just might want to bring it to: not to mention folks in Montreal and Toronto that want to see it. "Regular life"? Hah!