Good week
A week ago yesterday kicked off a fun and fruitful week of poetry for me. It began for me as a fill in feature at the Vancouver Poetry Slam. Graham Clark had to pull out due to a double booking and so I gladly stepped in. It was a lot of fun. I did some revampled older pieces, some newer stuff and tweaked a couple of things in honour of Sean's birthday. Garggle-bunny is now 36.
Then on Friday I was part of the Tongue n Cheek burlesque, music and spoken word show at the RIO theatre. It's a show like that which shows the real nead for the RIO to be around. I don't know where else in East Van let alone in the city where that could have been pulled off with such aplomb. I was part of the dirty haiku battle that kicked things off and lo and behold I ended up winning. Nice. The only downside was that we didn't have Duncan Shields as part of the show due to illness. Which meant I could not use my Duncan Shields dirty haiku on him in case we went toe to toe. Here it is for you...
Let's go play Star Trek
I'll put my dink in Duncan
Phaser set to cum
On Sunday I was invited to the 4th annual Slam Love show as put on by Urban Ink Productions. They're primarily a theatre group in town but they do spoken word events in the city as well. It was a fundraiser for them although we all got $25 and a gift basket with some nice wine and some gift certificates. The theme was "love" but they kept that pretty broad as a subject heading. There would be a female and male champion, a prince and princess as it were of love. In the end I tied with Erich Haygun...each of us with perfect 30s. Jillian Christmas and Sasha Wiley were in the finals for the ladies. Jillian had the higher score but we all got prizes as I mentioned earlier. It was quite the over the top night with Omari Newton as the host. I thought he did a brilliant job. It was even nicer that my sweethear, Kyla was there too and we got to go home together afterwards for some quality lovey dovey time.
And while things have been going well for me it seems like things are at a fractious point in the local poetry scene. I won't go too deep into specifics because I am only hearing things second hand from different sources.
A lot of it has to do with politics it seems and differences of goals within certain organizations. Some poets who want to contribute are feeling cast aside in public ways and feeling humiliated because of it. I hear of insensitive behaviour on behalf of both parties with this most recent event and other incidences. All from different sources. I don't know who to trust really anymore. It seems like self interest is trumping the greater good. Or perhaps everyone is caught up in it emotionally and are having difficulty looking at the larger picture. I feel the objective should always be what is best for the slam first and foremost and not who gets to recieve the accolades or look good and so on. Those things can be nice as a result of things but the slam and the show itself should be the priority.
Now, I'm thinking that's probably an unfair statement on my part. I don't know anyone's intentions. I don't know what anyone's thinking. And I really don't think anything nefarious or diabolical is going on. We're just all so damn awkward in these seemingly pressure soaked situations that we're not always at our best.
And then in a different instance I learn that my name is being used as a reason to mistreat another poet. I am told they were told that I called up a certain organizer and told them to cancel a show because no one was going to go to it due to another show happening the same night. I never made any such call. I haven't even spoken to the person in question or seen them in about three weeks and when I did it had nothing to do with the cancelled show. The poet affected asked me what was going on and I told them what I just said, I didn't contact them or tell them to cancel. I would never do that. The only thing I did do was post on the facebook event page that I wouldn't be able to make it since I was going to be at this other show.
It seems like the more I focus on my own things chaos swirls around me trying to drag me back into it. I work at keeping a positive attitude and at the same time some of the things I hear about saddens me. I don't know how much of it is true but there seems to be enough shit hitting the fan that some of it has got to stick.
We will see what happens.
Then on Friday I was part of the Tongue n Cheek burlesque, music and spoken word show at the RIO theatre. It's a show like that which shows the real nead for the RIO to be around. I don't know where else in East Van let alone in the city where that could have been pulled off with such aplomb. I was part of the dirty haiku battle that kicked things off and lo and behold I ended up winning. Nice. The only downside was that we didn't have Duncan Shields as part of the show due to illness. Which meant I could not use my Duncan Shields dirty haiku on him in case we went toe to toe. Here it is for you...
Let's go play Star Trek
I'll put my dink in Duncan
Phaser set to cum
On Sunday I was invited to the 4th annual Slam Love show as put on by Urban Ink Productions. They're primarily a theatre group in town but they do spoken word events in the city as well. It was a fundraiser for them although we all got $25 and a gift basket with some nice wine and some gift certificates. The theme was "love" but they kept that pretty broad as a subject heading. There would be a female and male champion, a prince and princess as it were of love. In the end I tied with Erich Haygun...each of us with perfect 30s. Jillian Christmas and Sasha Wiley were in the finals for the ladies. Jillian had the higher score but we all got prizes as I mentioned earlier. It was quite the over the top night with Omari Newton as the host. I thought he did a brilliant job. It was even nicer that my sweethear, Kyla was there too and we got to go home together afterwards for some quality lovey dovey time.
And while things have been going well for me it seems like things are at a fractious point in the local poetry scene. I won't go too deep into specifics because I am only hearing things second hand from different sources.
A lot of it has to do with politics it seems and differences of goals within certain organizations. Some poets who want to contribute are feeling cast aside in public ways and feeling humiliated because of it. I hear of insensitive behaviour on behalf of both parties with this most recent event and other incidences. All from different sources. I don't know who to trust really anymore. It seems like self interest is trumping the greater good. Or perhaps everyone is caught up in it emotionally and are having difficulty looking at the larger picture. I feel the objective should always be what is best for the slam first and foremost and not who gets to recieve the accolades or look good and so on. Those things can be nice as a result of things but the slam and the show itself should be the priority.
Now, I'm thinking that's probably an unfair statement on my part. I don't know anyone's intentions. I don't know what anyone's thinking. And I really don't think anything nefarious or diabolical is going on. We're just all so damn awkward in these seemingly pressure soaked situations that we're not always at our best.
And then in a different instance I learn that my name is being used as a reason to mistreat another poet. I am told they were told that I called up a certain organizer and told them to cancel a show because no one was going to go to it due to another show happening the same night. I never made any such call. I haven't even spoken to the person in question or seen them in about three weeks and when I did it had nothing to do with the cancelled show. The poet affected asked me what was going on and I told them what I just said, I didn't contact them or tell them to cancel. I would never do that. The only thing I did do was post on the facebook event page that I wouldn't be able to make it since I was going to be at this other show.
It seems like the more I focus on my own things chaos swirls around me trying to drag me back into it. I work at keeping a positive attitude and at the same time some of the things I hear about saddens me. I don't know how much of it is true but there seems to be enough shit hitting the fan that some of it has got to stick.
We will see what happens.