Poets are coming though town March 24-30th. Ottawa’s VERSeFest has lectures, readings, workshops, and a slam at various venues around the city.
A bunch of subgenres are represented from Sanita Fejzic to Robyn Sarah on opening night. Gwen Aube with a first chapbook to Daniel Lockhart with his heaps of books Wednesday. An invitational slam and an open mic happen Thursday.
The new Common House university magazine gets a showcase Friday along with a VF feature night with Hajer Mirwal, Jérôme Melançon and Paul Vermeersch. Paul also offers a workshop the next day. Another workshop is offered Saturday by Sheri-D in hybridity. Plan 99 brings in some big names that day as well.
Sunday has a lion’s share of events with a haiku event starting at 1:30, then Factory Lectures Series, one my my fav events each year. The Hall of Honour returns to unveil an honorary award to a poet. Early show has Jumoke Verissimo, Lydia Unsworth from the UK and Nada Gordon. Late show has the much lauded Karen Solie, French poet, Alexandre Yergeau and Polish poet, Kacper Bartczak. Past the closing ceremony is a special Q&A on Monday at Carleton University with Karen Solie.
There’s been a shift at night. Used to be I’d forget to attend class until exam time. Sometimes my primary school or secondary school or university graduations were rescinded because I missed a class. Pretty common dream among people I understand.
Or I searched a toilet and all would be out of service. I’d show up for meals and it was all eaten. I’d be lost, disoriented. I hid, evaded, be pursued, shot at. I’d run through cities forests in primeval fear. I’d stash myself under furniture, in heating ducts. I’d almost always escape. Sometimes I was a disembodied observer of other people and did nothing in my own dreams but watch chaos unfold.
There were non-stress dreams of course. But the shift is this: on waking, say, that was stupid, I should have this or that. I broke into my own dreams lucidly.
In dreams I started asking for other student’s notes, asking the front desk to confirm my schedule, chatting with professors, being in lectures, graduating.
I started asking directions to a working washroom, pee anyway even if the only one was a urinal in a crowded hallway. I started showing up at buffets before the crowd or before opening. Being lost in another souk, I said in my dream, no not this again, so bored, walked past the vendor, threw up the flap of the tent and hailed a cab.
Being lost and locked in a museum or store at night I started stealing stuff. Or exploring, finding new underground tunnels, and new rooftops to observe from.
My run in the forest became a joy of running and watching the neighbourhood sprout houses and businesses and I started talking with these familiar fictional neighbours, each dream a next time lapse.
Being held hostage, I started to huff, disgusted with fellow prisoners, getting up, telling off the gunmen until he reddened. I demanded cash for damages, or snatched his gun, taking him out and the marksmen.
The shifts have mostly happened over the last year, some spreading back a decade.
The roots started slow, perhaps end of 1990s when walking in Joshua Tree park realizing I scrambled to make room for a boy and his dog to pass. I counted myself lower than a child or a dog, giving way and in the process, slipping, ripping my pants, abrading my hand. This grovelling stops now I thought. That was a pivot point.
I had bullies before in the 70s and 80s who didn’t respect my space and smirked to make me walk backwards. In the early 2000s, I nailed my feet to the floor, feeling Christlike, but refused to cede ground, even if my torso leaned back as I flinched.
In that era I felt my axis tilt from death wish to life wish. That took the better part of thirty years.
It’s a bit murky. I was familiar with panic attacks and anxiety disorder by age 10. I was bullied at school from at least age 9 (until I left that godforsaken wasteland to go to university.) It’s safe to assume I was probably was sexually abused as a toddler as were many of my cousins and neighbours.
In the year 2000 a pivot came when the freeze response melted in a blaze of rage and I chose not flight, but fight. I picked up overstepping men by their shirts and threw them bodily. I tried deflect, indirect non-verbal, redirect, extended verbal, direct verbal, and louder, and still wasn’t heard.
I didn’t know seeing red was so literal. Was it the sun in my face and eyes shut? It happened twice that year and nobody died. One of my manuscripts is pinpointing the key pivot points in life where I created myself.
Learning how dismissed seniors are to doctors and having to learn to advocate for my mother taught me self-advocacy. This is percolating into unconscious. If I float along others will not get for me what I want.
After studying Gandhi first reading his biography in grade 6 or 7, again in grade 10, again in university it was clear: Non-violence, collaboration or avoidance. Anything else was bestial war.
I was in a constant state of turmoil, fear and anger and needing to perform calm. What did that look like? I don’t know. I can only speculate. I wasn’t there, on the outside.
I spent a first lifetime curating peace in my childhood, defusing others. I was very committed to turning the other cheek, the soft reply, creating amicable laughter, being the comedian, clown, distracting, explaining, playing the go-between, reassuring, forgiving, educating by example, deescalating. Or maybe suppressing because expression wasn’t safe.
In a way that path is agency, has choice, but the focus is agency for others, and not a full set for self.
It was defensive, not setting terms. It presumes a transactional respect of equals. It is more a Ginger Rogers dancing backwards in high heels. Yet even she only did that for a few films and ended up making 73 movies and playing professional tennis. She was shrewd. She worked with and around power structures.
I have often rather played opossum than oppose, assumed I will be refused, rejected, ridiculed, so am free to bullheadedly do as I like, ignored, but also without help. Praise is greeted with suspicion as transactional script to get something or to trick. It’s a lot of data to synthesize.
I do realize self-reliant instead of helpless isn’t enough. Helper isn’t enough. It is a task assigned to me, perhaps not even a good fit.
The dreams are starting to echo being a member of community, taking roles as protector, saviour, competent, self-serving. I move from inaction and reaction to action.
Twenty years pass and I don’t feel cringe for existing. I ask what I want and instead of writing down goals and sub-steps, on some deep level I give permission instead of self-flogging. I don’t try to manage others or bow to others. There’s some equality. There’s some interdependence. There is something opening. Out of the forest, into the plain. New options.
This will naturally have fallout as all tectonic shifts in worldview do. I’m overdue for such a quake. They used to happen every 5-7 years. Is it finally something going slower as I age? Such an earth-tilt changes implications of what matters, therefore the use of time, attention, speech, social writing, publishing.
The next edition of Ottawa’s Versefest is coming…the schedule is still to be announced but so far we know…March 24-29, Misha Solomon! Karen Solie! Isabella Wang! Sheri-D Wilson! Jérôme Melançon! Kacper Bartczak! Paul Vermeersch! Alexandre Yergeau! Jumoke Verissimo! With readings, performances and workshops.
