Joie de vivre prompt #134 of OSI:

excursion takes unexpected turn
the late rental-rate
heaven-canoes
have hit a meteor field.
paddling while rafted-up
they were smacked,
are sinking, sinking.
buckets are bailing.
water thrown on us,
our heads pummelled
by wet. it’s that, rain,
or else gunnel-thwack,
& fainted angel-weights.
let’s deke this downpour
like lickey spitzes &
wed la yum of the run.

Sept 18th was the main Blink Gallery reading.

There were between 3 and 4 dozen people who came to the reading. Lovely to have a reading outside in the sun and warmth.

People could spread out on the grass

and chat before and after.



Sean Moreland (left) is part of the U of O reading series, 3rd Monday of the month at Royal Oak on Laurier, and (right) Sandra’ll be at Ottawa Writers Festival Oct 25 at the Poetry Cabaret with Peter Norman, George Murray and MT Kelly.

Laurie (left) and Alacrity Stone (right) added their poems. We had 9 planned readers and 3 people who stepped forward. I have an album of photos of each of them here.

A picture of Lise before she read.
All the poems circulated around identity shifts, memory and history shifts, some dipping into shifts of the way language has its peculiar vagaries.
I’ll let you know when the chapbook collecting poems comes to fruition so if you could come, or couldn’t you can see it all together.

Me sitting down after hosting it, with the flowers given. How sweet.

The three visual artists: Jean Jewer + Maureen Sandrock + Lynda Cronin

Sculpture alone. (photo by Lynda Cronin)

Luna Allison (Ottawa, Montreal), and Adeena Karasick (NYC) part of Vox Femina at Voices of Venus, Umi Cafe Ottawa, Sept. 23
Catch them next at the Kingston Writers Fest, one tonight, last event Page vs. Stage on the 25th.

catch them next at the Kingston Writers Fest: Sandra Alland (Edinburgh, Toronto) and Jill Battson (New Mexico, Toronto) part of Vox Femina

Amazon Syren hosting the Voices of Venus and this amazing set of accomplished ladies. They collectively do music, spoken word, opera.

Jill Battson, part of “Liminal Sisters”, poet’s refuge, past poetry editor for Insomniac Press, read from new and older work, already pressed to page or CD. Part that struck me was “truth smacks you like a romance novel […then…] the shift that makes it more real, more vulnerable”. Poems about all the things she lost when she lost a storage locker and a tribute to a jazz singer — “When Frank says, all I want to do is rehearse my craft, I understand selfishness”.

Adeena Karasick reading from a couple of her 7 poetry books and getting a laugh with her twisty sounds and performance including a poem for remixing the material of shopping channel to buy a writer’s block buster. She’s a fun reader. Another poem was using blogging and food to smooth you over to this fabulous “blog bourguignon”, and its “debauched syn-tax”.

Luna Allison has been performing spoken word since 2001 with her first album out in 2006. She’s a curator of poetry for Westfest and Ladyfest. She drops some wonderful turns of images and phrases such as, “the questions filled the white of your eye — you walk away” and a story of what it is to live in fear of the next attack by walking with a girl as the dandelion between her finger and thumb goes “twirl, twirl, like a private parasol” and “her slingshot heart drawn tight so her chest is tight”. She’s very good at spreading compassion and stepping into people’s shoes. Her next project is with Coco Riot.

The night closed with Sandra Alland who has done videos, plays, CDs, books, including Blissful Times (which is a homophonic translation) and Proof of a Tongue which also gets into the pool of language, comparing constraints of how you can say something in Bulgarian vs. English. She slips thru surreal as ably as thru languages. Great to finally hear her in person after years of page and report only.
The next reading in the series will be Thanksgiving Day, Oct 11th back at Umi Cafe with the Lanark Country Slam team.

The small press book fair fall 2010 edition, will be happening in a couple weeks — Saturday, October 16, 2010 upstairs in the Jack Purcell Community Centre (on Elgin St, at 320 Jack Purcell Lane across from Minto Park)
It’s from noon to 5pm (opens at 11:00 for exhibitors) admission free to the public. $20 for exhibitors, full tables, $10 for half-tables.
Here are some pics from the spring one.

Fall makes up for the laxer times of summer.
It’s good to have some more literary things to anticipate like Luna Allison (Ottawa, Montreal), Jill Battson (New Mexico, Toronto), Sandra Alland (Edinburgh, Toronto) and Adeena Karasick (NYC) tonight and the AB series with Penn Kemp and Nobuo Kubota next week, Geraldine Dodge Poetry Festival in a couple weeks, and Ottawa Writers Fest in a month, including the launch of John Lavery’s Sandra Beck and a poetry workshop weekend in November.
More material should be going up on my book site over the next couple weeks.