Pearl Pirie’s lists, reviews, interviews, etc. since 2005

Dusty Owl 2013 Season of Song and Word

Cathy Luna
Cathy (left) hosts, and has since 1996-99 and 2003-now. That’s 13 years, folks, at once or twice a month.
The Dusty Owl has flown to a new roost in Mugshots at 75 Nicholas Street Old Jail, now a youth hostel. It is in the space that used to be the prisoner’s chapel, now serving beer and grilled cheese. And poetry as well as music on occasion. And waggly arm welcome woo to everyone from everyone.
Luna
It’s a good space acoustically. The vaulted ceiling distributes sound well.
Luna Allison was one of the two featured there yesterday.

Luna Allison is by turns a page poet, spoken word artist, playwright, journalist, singer and an actor. She has been featured in numerous literary and spoken word series, festivals and venues across North America and heard on CBC Radio. Her award winning first play, Falling Open, has been featured at the Ottawa Fringe, Montreal Fringe and GCTC’s undercurrents festival. Luna is currently working on a new play about sin and friendship, along with a collection of poems about patience called The Waiting Room.

I first met Luna at a Dusty Owl writing circle (in I think, 2007) and was knocked back on my heels by the piece she wrote. Presence of greatness. Hand in my writer’s pen sort of moment.
She did a set of new work, older, poems, relationship stories interlaced with song. Fabulous. I’ve heard her piece “Buttercup” at another series and it was no less powerful for another time. It is about a female walking while smarmy dude checks her out in detail and the anxiety of that feeling of powerlessness under someone else’s intent, how it “pulled back the slingshot of my heart, chest tight”.
Erin Erin
I like the motion shot of Erin even if they aren’t recognizable as her exactly.

Erin Saoirse Adair is an Ottawa vocalist and multi-instrumentalist who is a member of the feminist folk trio Three Little Birds as well as having her own outstanding career. Her sweet, bluesy and longing voice can trace the influence of poets and composers. From Walt Whitman and Sylvia Plath to Joni Mitchell to Yann Tiersen, all can be found flowing through the startling water of her words. This past October she released her first, self-titled solo recording.

I heard of Three Little Birds from a couple directions with a message not to miss them if you can help it.
Her voice has a range and her guitar could heat my palms. There’s a brain and body to the music. She has a way with a guitar, kazoo, ukelele and waltz to lullaby and a bunch of kinds of music I don’t have words for. But I do have the CD for it.
A lullaby for Lemonade and The Ugly Song about the absurdity of beauty industry and other things. Songs with thick lyrics. Poem, er, song, of a thunderstorm stopped me warm. Lovely.
Dusty Owl is also open with open mic. Sometimes there aren’t many that sign up. This time there was 2 or 3 to start. Including a first timer who riffed about the connection between chess and porn and how life is lived generally with great enthusiasm to start something new before all the complexities rush in.
Festrell did 3 pieces of Steve Sauvé who died 4 years ago and 3 days before. I remember him doing those pieces at Dusty Owl. As I quoted Kunitz in the previous post” Every time we read a poem from the past we resurrect the poet.” The poem on the true church being sex and orgasm is fabulous. And it chimed wonderfully with Luna’s short story of a dom helping her older afternoon lover discover that maybe she isn’t straight.
Then there’s the Object of Desire portion too where some common, dollarshop, or generally odd household object is offered as an inspiration…a plunger, a pillow, a ceramic knickknack, or in this case a welcome sign.
Only Festrell and I signed up for the object at first but then 3 more piled on to do instant performances (poem, story, dance number, whatever) inspired by the Object of Desire.
Talia gave a piece on how we define our welcome and boundaries of inclusiveness from wheelchair accessible to anti-immigrant exclusions. Another sang some version of Sign, Signs. that was fun. It was all very classically Owly.
Eventually it came down to a clap-off between Festrell and me and I was sure I was beat. I’ve admired hir poems for years. Ze performed at versefest a poem of being rebuked for not honoring hir heritage and for giving a moment’s notice to those who don’t, knocked the wind out of me.
Ze can punch power into words in a way that I can’t. Hirs was like an anthem and moving. Mine was kinda soft and billowy as poems go.
the object of desire
By the clap-o-(stompa-hoota)-meter which is Cathy I took home the prize. All the object of desire pieces that have won, apart from the ephemerals of dance numbers and some songs, will eventually get collected up into a Dusty Collection.
dusty owl poster
Feb 15th will be the Dusty Owl Versefest Fundraiser with Senior Citizen Love Poetry with a contest for best, sexiest, saddest and funniest lamest. There’ll be prizes and an artist doing a painting on stage at the time.
Feb 17 they’re back already with a fundraiser for the Black Youth Conference featuring the poetry team for the Youth Poetry Slam.
March 12-17 they’re at Versefest at Knox Prebyterian on Elgin.
March 24th Raconteur Win ten Holder and Singer-Songwriter Dynamite Motel who apparently is mind-blowing.
Sun April 21 Poets Sonia Saikaley and Alexis Kienlen take the stage.

Transferring your Katra into Serifs

Stanley Kunitz said,

“The poem is not just language, it is itself an incarnation. The poem is more alive than anything except the body itself, and it’s less perishable., one hopes, than the body.
When I’m reading Hopkins aloud, I feel I am actually occupying his selfhood and speaking out of it, not simply reciting the words, but somehow merging into his bloodstream and nervous stem.
We forget that the human spirit is poured into the art form, and becomes the electric centre of that spirit among future populations. You can pick up a poem by Keats or Coleridge and sense the living vibration in the poem. That vibration cannot be removed from the poem. It’s a remarkable thing, absolutely remarkable. Every time we read a poem from the past we resurrect the poet.”

p. 100, The Wild Braid.
P.S. Katra is Vulcan

My reasonable expectations for buying books

When I buy a book, or anything, online I expect:

  1. To get an automatically generated response within the day that the order has entered the system
  2. To get a response within 3 days with the name of the item and estimated time of delivery.
  3. To get the item within 7-10 days
  4. To get a response to my inquiry if none of the above has occurred but money has been removed from my account.
  5. To get the item within a month at outside even if somehow none of the above arrives.

If none of these happen, this is the short answer to why Amazon, while making its money from the stock market to undercut the competition, still ends up being able to outsell its competition.
BookThug, Coach House and Anansi also manage to do the acknowledge, stick product in envelope and mail, hassle-free buying experience.

A Value in Chapbooks

rob mclennan reflects on 20 years of his above/ground press publishing over 500 chapbooks and says in part,

Part of the role of publishing, at least what I’ve worked at, has been in being able to provide a step for those willing and wanting to take advantage of it.
A community is made, recognized and encouraged in part through these small publications, and there so many conversations happening that are worth being part of, even if in no other way than through fly-on-the-wall, disseminator.
How can one engage but through participation?