The Voices of Venus part of the evening was the 4 slam winners. If you expected it a repetition of the last, nope. They were given a bigger canvas, about 20 minutes each to stretch over more stories, exploring compelling monologues.
Sepideh made for literal chills. I got goosebumps so often, I got cold. She’s the second performer in two days to do that.
She told stories from time in South Africa with a woman everyone called Mama. Told of the Indian people who when brought to South Africa kept their culture from India due to apartheid separation yet had never seen the sub-continent. She contrasted the land and life there where she’d stayed with the sights and sites she saw when she stayed by the Ganges.
More stories came from the time she spent last year in the biggest city in Bangladesh. More stories from rebuilding of Tehran. She packs an amazing wallop with the way she weaves. She told of the ladies in the black-cloaked attire with the pure hearts, told me of his smile..
She’s done a lot of living. Somehow, pegging her for her mid-30s I considered, that’s wonderful insights and dexterity of metaphors and stage presence, theatrical skill. But, apparently, she’s only 21. Oy. So much living already.
Festrell also gave her powerful stories. Some I’d heard, some I hadn’t. One was of being brought up short by mom for criticizing the Filipino look. Anyone who criticized that is ignorance that the flat round face was the sign of royalty. She went thru, feature by feature and the lineage of honor. There’s a whole other system of equally valid and long-historied notions of beauty.
Missed her? You had crummy luck. She was lively.
She minced no words for those who waste not just her time but her body and mind: “He’s the Delilah to my Sampson. He’s the male version of Jezebel. I’m ad…dicted… to a dickhead.”
She expressed gratitude to be there, clarifying that it’s not a humblebrag that she doesn’t deserve it because that would be trying to complain about the gift God gave of talent. She’s not proud and not ashamed. She just is going to get on with the next poem for everyone.
Check at D-Lightfull’s blog.
Elle P talked her way quietly. The sound guy was on the ball and cranked for her of very small voice. She did most “off script” and some from the book, new material and older.
Allison thanks all the readers of the first event (first pic). Bardia Sinaee (middle) is the second host. He introduced Christian McPherson (third pic), one of 4 authors they brought to the evening.
It is the 11th year of In/Words, a Carleton University student run literary magazine. It was the issue launch of vol. 11, issue 1 and the launch of Moose & Pussy’s first CD: Oral. It has 17 tracks, including one of a poem of mine and ones from Jeff Blackman, Jenna Jarvis and Diane Seuss.
Bardia brought out of the archives all kinds of shapes the magazine has taken over the years, including one issue which had a centrefold of Irving Layton.
Rachael Simpson was one of the editors of Vagina Dentata, an in/words special erotica magazine. She’s in the Pith & Wry anthology but I haven’t read it all. Still was not on my radar. Until her poems last night.
In a poem about god’s love of beetles, among other things she asks “when our foot goes through rotting wood, do we think we are rotting?”
She has an attention to details, such as the economy of words for gestures, describing someone packing away the things of a dead or otherwise out of the picture husband, getting rid of his things with haste, packing away jars as if they were already broken. What a wonderful nod to zen’s glass that breaks, was always broken. The world as Schrödinger’s paradox. And it gets to the kind of movement, the nervousness and sureness mixed.
Ben Ladouceur said of Rachael Simpson’s reading: “Her work and her reading voice both brim with an unadorned kind of insightfulness. Never mind that her name is probably the least-known of the four.”
Gregory Scofield was also one of the invited readers of the In/Words hosted part of the evening. He apologized for yanking us along thru Metis history at such a clip, skipping decades as if it were history class on fast forward. He described his process of discovering the man behind the legend of Louis Riel, who sometimes signed his name Louis “David” Riel. The David portion was from feeling a connection to the biblical David, a man 1/8 of one blood, from a huge family, from a struggle against an oppressive Goliath.
His book Louis: Heretic Poems, 40-odd years in the germination, goes thru the life of the Metis leader, who also was a poet. He rolls in some of Louis’ poems. He reminds that the “Rebellion” is a misnomer. It was a “Resistance” because John A. was not the given leader of land he had no claim over.
Helen Humphreys has many novels and poetry collections. I feel like someone should have told me long ago. But then I don’t “do” novels as a rule.
What a comic point of view she has in her latest novel, The Reinvention of Love, which sold out all copies after she read from it last night.
Often you’re on thin ice when writing about a neurotic writer writing a novel but she pulls it off. An irate young man comes into the poetry office because his love poems were rejected. Internal monologue and external dialogue and finally the young man demands a duel with the weapon on the editor’s choice. “Fine,” the editor says, “I choose spelling. You’re dead.”
I’m thinking I also want to hunt down her series of connected short stories The Frozen Thames.