Several times in a few weeks I did not wish to rip my own ears off nor duck to the washroom and bolt from the building at a full run.
Perhaps that shouldn’t be a marked state, but these days any discomfort seems to cascade to whole body muscular-skeletal mass scream-in.
I’ve attended too much poetry so finding poetry sharing that I enjoy comes as a surprise.
For poetry and life to balance, the ratio of poetry in poetry: life has to come down.
Perhaps it’s like Marco said at the Haiku Canada Weekend. He’s been thru these poetry conferences enough time that a pattern is obvious. Day 1, haiku can save the world! He listens to every syllable attentively. By day 2, he’s getting enough poetry and wonders why we’re all inside. By day 3, he’d overdosed on it and wonders why anyone does this at all. By day 4 he’s skipping sessions.
But then, poets also need to push themselves more to bring up their game.
If you hold yourself in a starving state you’re grateful for morsels. That skews enjoyment. Appetite is the best seasoning. But if the diet is regular and you’re never truly hungry then you become a more picky eater, less tolerant of mush and raw and badly balanced flavours and just sloppy line-cook fare.
This problem of encouraging mediocrity with polite applause, is it a problem? It sure makes hands sore since my joints don’t take much impact to get bothered. But culturally does it make for sloppy thinking and poor work?
People don’t stomp and whistle for nothing. Pallid applause is pretty distinct. An acknowledgement that someone is leaving the stage. The problem is when people applaud and hear applause and think it is a positive evaluation of a good poem.
What would a positive evaluation of a poem look like? If it is internalized as something culturally useful perhaps, losing authorship but gaining currency. Or a palpable whallop from bodily reaction(s). It would make no sense to expect that quality all the time. It would flatten things.
Some crowds are harsh. It is a room of unhappy people getting more awkward and unhappy. Some are warm rooms where they don’t care what happens. Anything is cream on top of being out and about in hope of seeing people or poems they like.
Sometimes it seems like readings are full of internetz-weighted responses. Like rotfl to externalize something amusing, to distinguish it from lol of mildly amusing. Something that’s got legs to begin is called great and if it is not sucking as much? Give it an encouraging chuckle.
That’s different from a real chuckle the way a child cries differently when no one’s watching or a parent is near and will give attention. Maybe that means it isn’t disingenuous. We know it’s about one person encouraging another not about the work, but the community-building and reaching out to connect.

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.

At T.W.I.G.S. Café in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Qc., just west of Montreal, the penultimate Tuesday of the month, Sept-June, is the Twigs & Leaves Reading Series.
Doors open at 7:00 with an open mic sign-up, and readings are from 7:30-9:30. The feature last month was Ian Ferrier. The feature this month, er, tonight, is me. Next month, June 19, season 5 closes with the feature, R. de Smit.

A triple-launch at Tree: Terry Ann Carter’s Day Moon Rising (Black Moss, 2012), Catherine Owen‘s collection of 12 years of essays and reviews Catalysts: Confrontations with the Muse (Wolsak & Wynn, 2012) and Steve Kulash & other autopsies (AngelHouse Press, 2012)

Here with Jennifer and Rod Pederson.
Catherine read from her two newest books, and some of her travel haibun in light of the the occasion of Dead Poet Reading* on the first novelist, noblewoman, Murasaki Shikibu, and the presence of Mr. Toshi YoneharaJapanese Embassy.
*The Dead Poet Reading has found a new name. Now to honour the pillar poets, living or passed, the introduction piece will be called the Schrödinger’s Poet Reading.
Part of the reading’s objective, like much of Tree is to raise the dialogue on poetry, wider and deeper. Talks about poetry, workshops, retreats. This week’s Tree Seed Workshop invited people to consider their poetic direction thru guided contemplation and questions and yoga. The next session will continue to talk about body/spirit/creativity connections thru yoga under Robin Macdonald.

Tuesday’s Tree, between the double bill and another surprise, it was a full house. The surprise was a tribute to Terry Ann who is leaving us for Victoria this fall. Claudia joked it would be a roast, but people were kind.

Longtime friends and colleagues shared memories, thanks, her poems and poems that arose because of her influence or poems that seemed like her.

A few didn’t end up being able to make it and others stepped forward.
She’s been an organizer for haiku and Versefest, an encourager of talent. Planet Earth, Victoria gets a boost to their already great scene. They get Catherine Owen too, but only on the 25th this month, not for keeps.

Terry Ann set up a table of ikebana, and photos from Tabitha Foundation. Work with people in Cambodia post-Pol Pot was the impetus of some of the poems in her collection. Poems are dedicated to those who are seeking to shut down the childhood prostitution trade but also some light-hearted poems are in the collection.
The food angle’s here.

A Manuscript that’s ready to be read by others is…just getting started. It’s a bit tender.
As opposed to a Book that’s ready to be read by others, which is…chin up, bruised but strong.
A Manuscript should always…be double-spaced.
As opposed to a Book, which should always…be double-parked, on your shelf.

From the Questionless Interview with Alice Burdick
And elsewhere, Nelson Ball who started with newpaper writing.

He was good at writing précis and having to condense press releases for print. “It’s not all that different from poetry. There’s a parallel,” Ball said. “It all has to be short and concise.”