A load of people were involved to write the poems, to pass the word, and do the work and share the event merry-making.
Brian was able to shoot the gorgeous pics that became the front and back covers and the posters, shoot photos of the event and generally be his sweet support. Keven at Allegra Downtown was wonderful and chipper to work with. Omar of A Thing for Chocolate hosted us, fed us and made room in the house so it felt more like a living room.
People on twitter spread the links Thanks: Allison, BookThug, Hazel Poets.ca Chaudiere, and Shery. And thanks to Susan who prompted me to plug the radish. And Kitchissippi Times for spreading the word in the newspaper, and the people who shared the event at FB and told friends and colleagues.
And thanks those who came. Sweet to see friendly faces. Lovely to see half a dozen unfamiliar faces in the crowd.
Chocolate was had. (That death by chocolate brownie has impressed but not caused any mortalities.)
And given the crescendo of conversations, applause, and the queue for cocoa, people had a ball. It turned out to be every seat filled plus the ones from the back room, so about 30 people packed in there. A mic was hooked up. Air conditioning was turned on as the snow fell outside the window.
Bri took this photo from the back. People kept drifting in so we started on “poet time”.
Grant started us off with some soundiness of Epicurus and Krishna.
Catina who read two poems, one in the chapbook and one on food, of ricotta pasta, “to comfort and please” just to whet the room’s hunger. Her blog reviews books and watch it for news of her upcoming art show. There’s Natalie:
Natalie read the one from the chapbook on the risqué chocolatier, and one ode to alcohol. Maybe I’ll get a sample from the reading up on Literary Landscape next week.
Roland reading from a range of food-poems over the last decade, including ones from Arc and his book.
Here I am gesturing wildly. I scraped back into the mid-90s for a range of food, one from Cocoa Cabin, one from the pet radish, shrunken, one from Filling Station, ending with the fly poem, because eating isn’t wholly human activity. (That got a good chuckle.)
This state of many-hatness seems to nod towards Seuss— what with doing the call, the editing, layout, design, publishing, posters, promoting, organizing the reading and then doing the report but writer, blogger and photographer hats are my regular things so I’m back on terra firma here.
Steven Artelle closed the night in high style. Hopped on chocolate, too bad I don’t have the footage to photoshop his diagonal mid-air.
If you missed him, he’s back at the AB Series April 30 with Cameron Anstee.
There are still some copies directly from me, from etsy, at A Thing for Chocolate.
They can be had at June’s small press fair, maybe at Writers Festival too where on the 26th there’ll be a BookThug Let’s Do Launch of a bunch of us. (Pssst, the radish swag of tattoos should be there.)
P.S. Chapbook includes more poems byMarie Andrée Auclair, Amanda Earl, Susan Glickman, Anna Mioduchowska, Brenda Schmidt, and Lisa Timpf.
P.P.S. Anyone try the chocolate recipe in it yet?
radishing
49thShelf, Apt613, Maisonneuve, and now Quill & Quire reviews. Wow. Neat. Some I put at press.
The radish is understood as curiosity about ” the deeper meanings we ascribe to words, and by extension, the world”, yay. And other good stuff thanks to Safa JinJe who took the time to read and review it. It’s always neat when people you don’t know you read something you said.
Another set of eyes are always interesting in how meaning is stitched across gaps. There’s no wrong reading. One person sees a lot of food content where another sees a disproportional amount of car content. For some the humour is the stand-out. For others the density of language. It reminds that for every perception in life we are all blind finding the relevant interesting part of any elephant.It’s interesting to see what people see as salient.
I jump around and leave gaps. “Poetic disjuncture” seems an overly academic way of saying it.
In the case of seeing the “never read the comments” poem as critical of military interventions isn’t a reading I expected. Sure enough, I would prefer peace missions of aid, over more armed soldiers, tanks ad bombs. I can see it now that she says. What I was going for was narrower.
Along the adage of don’t bend over backwards where there’s no even slight lean forward was more advising to be skeptical and calm, not be suckered by news that is there to make money off of made-you-look. To look instead at a lake for a while is only a step, not the end goal of deny conflict by peek-a-boo of thinking of nice things instead.
After we are informed and out of the troll wars of misinformation, the one-on-one conflicts of comment streams, we can decide our position on global conflicts which start at home, since we are selling in the arms trade.
That would be with our “investment” in banks in some cases.
The problem is in part awareness at an individual level globally. It is not made or solved by petitions. Maybe talk to your government rep to say your priority but finances are apt to make wars and can break wars.
Here is a list of Canadian institutions listed in the “Hall of Shame” and the amounts they have invested in, or available for, nuclear weapons producers (all amounts in U.S. dollars):
Bank of Montreal, $209.70 million
Burgundy Asset Management, $44.09 million
Gryphon International Investment Corporation, $55.71 million
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, $54.80 million
Power Corporation of Canada, $888.54 million
Royal Bank of Canada, $941.25 million
Scotia Bond Co, $33.30 million
Scotiabank, $1,176.70 million
TD Bank, $928.34 million
Chocolating Poems
Tonight the launch of the chocolate poems as part of National Poetry Month with the food theme. Thanks to poets.ca and the Canada Council for the Arts for funding as part of National Poetry Month.
Wed, April 8, 2015, 7:30pm
Launching the Chocolate chapbook, Ottawa
At A Thing for Chocolate, 1262 Wellington Ave W.
Readings by Steven Artelle, Pearl Pirie Roland Prevost, Grant Wilkins, Natalie Hanna and Catina Noble.
The chapbook of cocoa’s rhapsodic delights is called Cocoa Cabin with poems by Steven Artlle, Marie Andrée Auclair, Amanda Earl, Susan Glickman, Natalie Hanna, Anna Mioduchowska, Catina Noble, Pearl Pirie, Roland Prevost, Brenda Schmidt, Lisa Timpf and Grant Wilkins.
Free admission. Cocoa on site. FB Event Page
All roads lead to radish
Look what’s the header photo at the Kitchissippi Times twitter feed this week.
Now my book’s on Kindle. That’s a first for me. $10 from the evil empire, or $13 as ePub or ePdf from the publishers in superhero spandex. Or from them, $21 bundled with the paperbound radish.
And reviews are starting.
Sound Poetry Alert
The Quatuor-Gualuor sound poetry group is having another gig as part of the April 30 vernissage of abstract art at Platform Gallery and Studios, 51 A Young Street (beside Gallery 101). Art by Dan Sharp, Ted Willis and Georgia Mathewson.