Eco-Jest-Us Event

Here’s a photo set of 35 pics from Eco-Jest-Us. It was 6 hours of performances in all. I can’t relate it all. But a few notes from the evening show portion:

David Chernushenko gave an optimistic look at people Being the Change around us. His hundred-mile film will play at the Mayfair April 27th. It’s easy to burn out and despair when we look at the distance to go and the resistance of habit to go against in making better choices for healthy air, water, land and lives, but by living lightly, thinking of the small stuff, and doing so with offbeat humour, we might just get somewhere.

Organizer, playwrite Sheila Forsyth making opening remarks and a short fiction at Eco-Jest-Us

In the dramatic space, Claudia Coutu Radmore read one from her chapbook Ode to a Rubber Duck including cloud-woman-duck poem on the unity of all things. And some new poems. She launches her next chapbook April 16th. It’s from Apt. 9 Press. Accidentals from Claudia will be co-launched with Site Conditions from Monty Reid and The Delicious Fields from Jeremy Hanson-Finger.

erica n white read some poems made for previous peace events and brought some of her chapbooks including Twigs & Leaves Hang and Bark and Griffintown anthologies. It’s good to get some cross-city cross-pollination. Griffintown, the former southwestern downtown part of Montreal, Quebec, is part of the Cultural Corridor and have their own Nuit Blanche.

Nathanael Larochette played classical guitar. He finds himself composing in natural spaces, in a headspace of landscapes. He feels that often we are sold on the gloom of environmental prospects but its is healthy and essential to remember the beauty that is there are well. He did a poem that was an acrostic for beautiful, each letter of the word beautiful prompting a word and the acrostic repeating cascades of reflections on the beauty of the world.

Arianne Dimond and part of her band played Rivers of Babylon, a song of plastic bottles, and a song about the Aliens who are the brain of her boyfriend.

LM Rochefort did a few poems including one of my favorites of hers of the suburban mom opening the freezer and finding a hole in time space in there.

You missed Carol Stephen’s poem about considering the cost of Hwy 7’s lane extensions to cut down driving time to Ottawa from 40 minutes to 20 minutes. Alligator Swamp is more of a symbolic hammock of lowlands now.

Alastair Larwill gave high-burst energy poems.
And for those who made it to the book table, they might have picked up his chapbooks, hello 18 or Short Stories About Gods. (When did he start doing short stories? If you want to read a tale of a hamster from his perspective, check it out. Its tilt reminded me of Amanda Earl’s Welcome to Earth: poem for alien(s).)

Host Sterling Lynch thought on his feet and was able to keep joining and linking acts. I hosted the poetry segment. Pics behind stage here.)

The improv comedy troupe under Phil Genest plays Yuk Yuks every second week and in this case performed for this venue. (I missed most of their show and picture is by Brian.)

Actress Jennifer Vallance did a theatrical reading of text asking what will it take to make people wake up?

Mike Buckthought also brought forward the politics at the root of some of the environmental issues.

Guest speaker Beatrice Olivastri has been fighting the good fight for good choices for 30 years. For the first 20 she said consensus and round tables was the way to go but over the last 20, top-down changes in governing seems necessary. Part of the problem stands with our need for the local. Common issues don’t travel. News wants a local hook. News of Halifax or Victoria don’t make the news of Toronto of Regina.

The finale was Glenn Nuotio with some humourous pieces including a Yoko Ono cover and one dedicated to a certain politician’s wife wanting to be Ordinary People again.