Before I Forget...
The Svelte Ms. Spelt brought me back a pin from NPS 2011. It says "Fucking Apply Yourself". He told me Rachel McKibbens was handing these out. Wise words from the matriarch. I try to live by them every day. Here's how I applied myself in 2011:
- Launched Hullabaloo: The BC High School Slam Championships along with my festival co-director, RC Weslowski, (aka monkeypudding). We had 13 school teams directly involved and another 5 participated in a prelim bout in Victoria. We arranged collaborations and sponsorships with the Vancouver Art Gallery, DOXA, and The Cultch. These established players on the arts scene gave our upstart project credibility, which led to...
- Wrote applications that helped raise $35,000 for Hullabaloo and WordPlay, the poetry in schools program that I coordinate. Big ups to Lisa Slater (aka succulentpoet) for help with these, especially the big donation from Telus.
- Doubled WordPlay for the second straight year in terms of workshops conducted, revenue generated, and poets paid.
- Conducted dozens of interviews with past and present Van Slammers and collected boxes of archival materials in order to produce "Inkslingers & Linguaphiles: Celebrating 15 Years of Van Slam 1996-2001".
- Then kept interviewing and collecting ephemera, and after 18 months of total research (including part one), wrote the second part "Turning Vancouver on its Ear: Celebrating 15 Years of Van Slam 2002-2011".
- Worked on the organizing committee of the inaugural Vancouver International Poetry Festival.
- Won* the Vancouver Individual Slam Playoff for the first time. Repped Van Slam in Cleveland at IWPS.
- Published poems in PRISM international and CV2.
- Moderated the panel on Spoken Word at Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference.
- Performed eight poetry feature sets in Vancouver and Victoria, as well as countless variety / cabaret show type deals.
- Performed as a festival headliner and the only spoken word artist at the Kispiox Music Valley Festival, in large part due to the organizational awesomeness of magpieulysses.
- Participant in the panel discussion “The Experimental, Traditional and Spoken Word: What is the Future of Poetics?” at the Summer Dreams Festival, also did a feature set.
- Collaborated with Alla Shiskov, Chris Masson and Barbara Adler to form Turtleneck and staged a completely absurd piece of Spoken Weird in collaboration with Sweater Vest (which that night was composed of RC Weslowski solo).
- Facilitated the creation of 35 animated short films with school groups at the Museum of Vancouver as part of the Animating History program.