And that's a wrap...thank you poetry month
It's been quite the month. The first week of April, I was in Banff at the Centre for the Arts leading a workshop on silliness in performance and doing one on one mentoring with the poets in the spoken word program. I also had a chance to do a performance which was a lot of fun. Sheri-D Wilson has really got something good running there. I was honoured to be a part of it.
When I got back from Banff, we were right into Hullabaloo, the BC Youth Poetry Slam Championships. This was our second year putting on the festival. Thanks to a generous grant from Telus we were able to jazz things up over last year. Bigger venues and nicer venues in particular. Chris Gilpin did a ton of work in coordinating with schools and keeping them on track for the festival. We also had a ton of help from, Jillian Christmas who I affectionately dubbed the "third stooge" in our little poetry club.
We had some challenges...there was a provincial teacher's strike/job action happening just before and during the festival which had a few of the school's drop out and put a kink in our plans to get schools out to the festival in groups. I also think one of our venues, while really quite nice, was problematic just for its location. We had our prelim bouts at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It's in the heart of downtown and the bouts were starting at 5pm, the heat of rush hour, so I think this might have turned people off from attending.
Hullabaloo had a ton of press this year but I don't know how that translated into attendance. We had close to 700 people come out to the festival throughout the week which is OK but off course, I would like it to be bigger. I think if we change some of our prelime venues it might build momentum for next year finals.
That being said, the performances were inspiring and the final4 teams earned the right to be there plus we had incredibly memorable performances from all of our headliners including Mary Pinkoski, Zaccheus Jackson, OS12, Buddy Wakefield and Khary Jackson.
And then this final week of the month we had the 2nd annual Vancouver International Poetry Festival which features the Canadian Individula Poetry Slam Championships and I WON the whole kit n kabodle.
It was a nerve wracking three days of performance for me. The whole thing is modelled after IWPS and going into the first bout which was definitely the bout of death, I was really worried of not making the cut and hoping to finish in the top 3 for a chance at finals. In the end I won both the 4 minute round and the 1 minute round and along with three other poets I had a rank of 2 after the first round.
The second night was even worse on my mental state. Most of my 2 minute poems are all pretty goofy and playful and not a lot of oomph for competitions sake. They are fun to do within a feature set but I'm not confident about them in a slam. So, I went scouring through my old stuff and came across a fairly heavy piece that I hadn't done in a long time. I was a bit scared to do it. The nerves of the show and the subject matter had me a little unfocused. Then when I got up to perform it some of the heckles through me and I didn't centre myself and I dropped some of the lines...although I doubt anyone noticed as they wouldn't have really known the piece. I was oblibious to the scores and felt I ruined any chance of moving on. I later found out that I took a 2 in that round and a 4 in the second round, the three minute round so I made finals.
Finals night I was really relaxed for most of it. It's where I wanted to be, a lot of the work had been done and I was excited to perform and hopefully win. I had my money on Winona Lin from Kingston or Loh'El from Ottawa and Colin Matty from Edmonton or Alessandra from Toronto. I felt like I had a good chance but I am so unsure of everthing when it comes to slam, all I could do was choose which three poems I wanted to use and cross my fingers that they would be good enough.
I was up 3rd in the first round and went with my curse laden poem about swearing called Floyd Jones. It scored respectably but it didn't impress as much as it usually does. I was worried. But through the round a few poets scored lowere than I did and so I was through. And while I waited how I realized how I was pleased with other poets low scores. I didn't wish anyone to do poorly with their performance and at the same time when scores lower than mine were read out, I was relieved. Grrrr...I hate it when I do that.
After the first round there was a 15-20 minute break which I wasn't into. I wanted to do the competition all the way through and keep the momentum going. But, alas, we took a break.
I drew the bullet in the second round and decided to do one of my heavy hitters about not letting incest/sexual abuse, stop you from living your life...but much more poetically than that. I scored decently and in retrospect only the last two poets in the round were able to catch up and so I was on to finals.
I was ready for this. I had a plan all along and now I had a chance to implement it. I drew the bullet once again but that was totally cool as I was about to have a lot of fun with a piece, I call, "Why Stephen Harper hates funding for the (f)arts aka FLATULENCE" It's a wild piece full of satirical and raunchy non sequitors insulting the Prime Minister. It's also part sound poem. It was also probably the first truly funny poem of the entire night. I could feel that the audience needed some release and this ended up being the perfect antidote to the seriousness of the night. It killed. It was one of those "in the zone" moments when everything feels so easy and no matter what you do the audience eats it up and is on your side. It felt great. When I was done there was this huge roar that came from the crowd and people rose to their feet cheering and screaming at the top of their lungs. I think I ended up with a 29.5. No one who came after me was able to catch up. While I wasn't taking anything for granted I felt good that I was more than likely going to end up winning.
And I did. Cool. I am now Canada's Individula Poetry Slam Champion. At least until next year. I'm quite happy about it for a few reasons...and I only thought about this last night...it's the 1st time in 6 years that Vancouver has laid claim to a Canadian poetry slam championship. In 2006 Vancouver won the Team Slam Championship but nothing since. The Eastern Poets and Ottawa in particular have raised the bar and we've had to play catch up a bit. I think this is a good thing.
I love the poets out of the Ottawa scene. They are so devoted and committed to this poetry thing and I find it both challenging and inspiring. They make me want to be better. Same goes for a lot of the other Ontario scenes. They are hungy for success and driven to kick down the doors of the Canadian scene. It's awesome stuff but we have to be ready out West to up our game as well.
I was also happy to dedicate this win to Mary Pinkoski from Edmonton. Her team won the national title last October and it was hoped she would compete at CIPS. Unfortunately some bad blood went down between the Canada's PSI which is called SPOCAN and she was really hurt by it. In the end it was miscommunication but I think things were handled so badly she didn't want to participate in another SPOCAN event like CIPS. (At least that's my take on it) And so I told her that if I won I would dedicate the win to her since, I was on the waiting list to compete and when she dropped out I got to take her slot. Yeah, I wasn't even supposed to be in this thing until last Saturday when a slot opened up.
This was also Sean McGarragle's last turn at running the festival and being the Vancouver Slam Master so I wanted to thank him as well for all the work he's done.
What a month.
When I got back from Banff, we were right into Hullabaloo, the BC Youth Poetry Slam Championships. This was our second year putting on the festival. Thanks to a generous grant from Telus we were able to jazz things up over last year. Bigger venues and nicer venues in particular. Chris Gilpin did a ton of work in coordinating with schools and keeping them on track for the festival. We also had a ton of help from, Jillian Christmas who I affectionately dubbed the "third stooge" in our little poetry club.
We had some challenges...there was a provincial teacher's strike/job action happening just before and during the festival which had a few of the school's drop out and put a kink in our plans to get schools out to the festival in groups. I also think one of our venues, while really quite nice, was problematic just for its location. We had our prelim bouts at the Vancouver Art Gallery. It's in the heart of downtown and the bouts were starting at 5pm, the heat of rush hour, so I think this might have turned people off from attending.
Hullabaloo had a ton of press this year but I don't know how that translated into attendance. We had close to 700 people come out to the festival throughout the week which is OK but off course, I would like it to be bigger. I think if we change some of our prelime venues it might build momentum for next year finals.
That being said, the performances were inspiring and the final4 teams earned the right to be there plus we had incredibly memorable performances from all of our headliners including Mary Pinkoski, Zaccheus Jackson, OS12, Buddy Wakefield and Khary Jackson.
And then this final week of the month we had the 2nd annual Vancouver International Poetry Festival which features the Canadian Individula Poetry Slam Championships and I WON the whole kit n kabodle.
It was a nerve wracking three days of performance for me. The whole thing is modelled after IWPS and going into the first bout which was definitely the bout of death, I was really worried of not making the cut and hoping to finish in the top 3 for a chance at finals. In the end I won both the 4 minute round and the 1 minute round and along with three other poets I had a rank of 2 after the first round.
The second night was even worse on my mental state. Most of my 2 minute poems are all pretty goofy and playful and not a lot of oomph for competitions sake. They are fun to do within a feature set but I'm not confident about them in a slam. So, I went scouring through my old stuff and came across a fairly heavy piece that I hadn't done in a long time. I was a bit scared to do it. The nerves of the show and the subject matter had me a little unfocused. Then when I got up to perform it some of the heckles through me and I didn't centre myself and I dropped some of the lines...although I doubt anyone noticed as they wouldn't have really known the piece. I was oblibious to the scores and felt I ruined any chance of moving on. I later found out that I took a 2 in that round and a 4 in the second round, the three minute round so I made finals.
Finals night I was really relaxed for most of it. It's where I wanted to be, a lot of the work had been done and I was excited to perform and hopefully win. I had my money on Winona Lin from Kingston or Loh'El from Ottawa and Colin Matty from Edmonton or Alessandra from Toronto. I felt like I had a good chance but I am so unsure of everthing when it comes to slam, all I could do was choose which three poems I wanted to use and cross my fingers that they would be good enough.
I was up 3rd in the first round and went with my curse laden poem about swearing called Floyd Jones. It scored respectably but it didn't impress as much as it usually does. I was worried. But through the round a few poets scored lowere than I did and so I was through. And while I waited how I realized how I was pleased with other poets low scores. I didn't wish anyone to do poorly with their performance and at the same time when scores lower than mine were read out, I was relieved. Grrrr...I hate it when I do that.
After the first round there was a 15-20 minute break which I wasn't into. I wanted to do the competition all the way through and keep the momentum going. But, alas, we took a break.
I drew the bullet in the second round and decided to do one of my heavy hitters about not letting incest/sexual abuse, stop you from living your life...but much more poetically than that. I scored decently and in retrospect only the last two poets in the round were able to catch up and so I was on to finals.
I was ready for this. I had a plan all along and now I had a chance to implement it. I drew the bullet once again but that was totally cool as I was about to have a lot of fun with a piece, I call, "Why Stephen Harper hates funding for the (f)arts aka FLATULENCE" It's a wild piece full of satirical and raunchy non sequitors insulting the Prime Minister. It's also part sound poem. It was also probably the first truly funny poem of the entire night. I could feel that the audience needed some release and this ended up being the perfect antidote to the seriousness of the night. It killed. It was one of those "in the zone" moments when everything feels so easy and no matter what you do the audience eats it up and is on your side. It felt great. When I was done there was this huge roar that came from the crowd and people rose to their feet cheering and screaming at the top of their lungs. I think I ended up with a 29.5. No one who came after me was able to catch up. While I wasn't taking anything for granted I felt good that I was more than likely going to end up winning.
And I did. Cool. I am now Canada's Individula Poetry Slam Champion. At least until next year. I'm quite happy about it for a few reasons...and I only thought about this last night...it's the 1st time in 6 years that Vancouver has laid claim to a Canadian poetry slam championship. In 2006 Vancouver won the Team Slam Championship but nothing since. The Eastern Poets and Ottawa in particular have raised the bar and we've had to play catch up a bit. I think this is a good thing.
I love the poets out of the Ottawa scene. They are so devoted and committed to this poetry thing and I find it both challenging and inspiring. They make me want to be better. Same goes for a lot of the other Ontario scenes. They are hungy for success and driven to kick down the doors of the Canadian scene. It's awesome stuff but we have to be ready out West to up our game as well.
I was also happy to dedicate this win to Mary Pinkoski from Edmonton. Her team won the national title last October and it was hoped she would compete at CIPS. Unfortunately some bad blood went down between the Canada's PSI which is called SPOCAN and she was really hurt by it. In the end it was miscommunication but I think things were handled so badly she didn't want to participate in another SPOCAN event like CIPS. (At least that's my take on it) And so I told her that if I won I would dedicate the win to her since, I was on the waiting list to compete and when she dropped out I got to take her slot. Yeah, I wasn't even supposed to be in this thing until last Saturday when a slot opened up.
This was also Sean McGarragle's last turn at running the festival and being the Vancouver Slam Master so I wanted to thank him as well for all the work he's done.
What a month.