Twigs & Leaves: May Edition

Twigs & Leaves is a monthly series near Montreal. It gets locals, students and profs and sometimes people from far off like me. The group was friendly and the open mic exceptionally strong. Here’s the middle section of the room:

They structure their event with open mic and split the feature reader across two sets. That makes sense to me. They also have a voting box which you can see on the table there. Everyone who comes gets a free ballot to vote for the best of the open mic. If you want to buy more ballots, they’re $1 each. The money goes towards making a best of chapbook with CD each season.
That night, Vivianne shared a short story of a man from Guyana she met who once had a horse that impressed the Queen in a race.

r.m talked about the legions of lesions that cause neurological change, the complexities of navigating Lyme disease.
A later open mic reader talked about “mental illness” being the wrong term. Illness makes it sound terminal somehow, grave and medical. “Mood disorder” connotes something with an order that can be reestablished, like picking up a room.

I read from been shed bore, Thirsts, Mammals of Hoarfrost and In Air/Air Out, in my first set.

Claudia Morrison read this brilliant fable of Henny Penny at a modern schmoozefest where Foxy Loxy is a social climbing psychiatrist who derails concerns of global warning to talk about her underlying personal concerns, while pawing her thigh. The room was full of people “famous in a local way” who were insistantly oblivious to environmental issues.

11 of 12 performed a few of their own new songs.

Gary Townsend with his late night radio voice and soundboard was one of those sit up and attempt to not blame the universe for mentioning him before. How did I not know he was out there performing? What did he say was more dangerous than black holes, kidney stones or god? The connection jumps in a most interesting way. I also jotted him saying, “I often feel defeated when trying to help people. I feel like I’m flailing about in the water trying to throw a life preserver onto a deck.”

Jim Joyce has a Broken Rules Press chapbook Hang. His poem included the concept “snow falling like fingers over a guitar.” A show stopper line that made me feel the night out was worth it right there. I don’t even know how that would be but feel better equipped to understand guitars from it, and a mood of snow.
Louise Carson was there, her book on the table, Rope launched with Broken Rules Press last October. The two books aren’t as related as they seems with Joyce’s being about nuclear contamination and Rope being about the Montreal woman hung for burning it down.

In the second set I tried out the new poems of the last couple months.

Apparently I said something funny. Although I don’t recall now what.

Steeped Words is where each table gets a teapot of magnetic poetry and can read it at the end for the glory and comedy and prizes.

Here I am arranging some.

Ralph, the June feature reader, takes the mic to read his teacup creation. At the mic he gave us a quick whirlwind tour of the history France, Wedgewood, Napoleon, how Napoleon II died in his youth but his given name was “King of Rome”. Imagine that in school. King of Rome, will you read next starting from passage 11…
Quebec poetry has some lively things going on. There’s the The Atwater Poetry Project, The Yellow Door, Poetry Plus and Twigs & Leaves. There’s also LAPALABRAVA. The last one was May 21st. Une série trilingue de lectures de poésie et de musique (en espagnol, français et anglais) Poètes invités: Jobani Elías, Erika White, Czandra, Ihosvany Hernández, Aimée Dandois Paradis, Geneviève Manceaux. Nouvelle adresse: Bistro Araucaria 5607 Ave Du Parc. (I meant to mention that earlier but the window closed before the post got to air.)
Their next event is June 19th with R de Smit at 85 Rue Ste. Anne, Ste Anne de Bellevue.
The Café’s food was good too. I did a post on that here.