the re-launch of the dream weapon

Join me and a few friends this Sunday
as we use Words and Music at the Casa to attempt the

RE-LAUNCH OF THE DREAM WEAPON

featuring

Vince Tinguely (launching two awesome new chapbooks)

John Stuart (spoken guitard, co-creator of Four Minutes to Midnight)

Kevin Yuen Kit Lo (fugue flow, co-creator of Four Minutes to Midnight)

MariJo St-Amour (film-maker, poet) et equipe Skandhal

Chris Masson (of the superenergized Throw Collective)

Anna Leventhal (writer / editor of the hit anthology The Art of Trespassing)

Sherwin Tjia (performer / graphic novelist / impressario)

Jane Gabriels (jazzy spoken songster and dancer too)

Scott Duncan (visual artist and performer)

with the musical stylings of Jon Noel

at Casa del Popolo
4873 St-Laurent
Sunday, December 21
9 p.m.

$3 / pay what you can

FRESH FROM THE NOTEBOOK

I just finished transcribing poems and stuff from a notebook I finished back in September. (Notebook number 34, in fact.) This is part of my writing practice – I keep a notebook by my bed, another one by the chair where I veg out watching DVDs or listening to stuff with headphones late at night stoned, and another little one I carry around in my knapsack … and I constantly jot down thoughts, streams of thought, blips of ideas, images, memories, dreams, and poems. It’s a well-worn rut of writing practice, dating back to my very first notebook, given to me as a gift by an artist back in 1983. In fact, my first notebook predates my first ’serious’ poetry (of course there was the ‘non-serious’ joke poetry before that, and school assignments), and just having it probably prompted me to start writing that form.

I generally wait until the notebook is full before I transcribe the poems. By then they’ve ‘cooled’; they’re not still coruscating and crepitating with the emotional / psychic energy that originally kicked them out into the textual universe. If they’ve ’set’ properly they’re already hard-edged, gemlike, even before I start knocking off the false starts and lame endings. However, I do occasionally transcribe a poem before I finish a notebook – if I’m particularly taken with it, and decide to use it in a poetry performance or post it on a blog right away. Several from this batch made it out that way, including ‘Wild Life,’ ‘Cottage Country’ and ‘My Icelandic Grandmother.’ A few others managed to get themselves published (or self-published).

Themes that crop up chronically in this batch of poems include Jack Kerouac and the Beats in general – because I was reading some heavy Kerouac stuff like Some of the Dharma and the scroll version of On The Road; old flames – because old flames are better than no flames; and the book store where I work part time.

Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to put a few of these ‘new’ (newly transcribed) poems out on a blog entry. Here they are. (Unfortunately WordPress and other blog programs seem to hate poetry – I cannot figure out how to format this so that a) it doesn’t wipe out my indentations, and b) most annoyingly, why it takes out the spaces between the poem entries. If you have any editing advice I’d appreciate it!)

I unroll a liminal blanket
Down the damp dark smelling
street slope to
Sand sparkling carpet of
crushed glass
Twinkling in velvet dawn shadow
at hill’s foot
I can pretend, in the muggy
old port summer morn
That it’s ice and snow sparkling
And it’s fifty below

- 7 Jun 07 -

INTERROGATION

Do you ask questions of others
In order to learn
Something about them
Or something about yourself?
What do other people
Mean to you?
To what degree are you curious
About other people
About their belongings
Their secrets, their treasures?
When you’re in their rooms
Can you read them by their
accoutrements?
Are they an open or a closed
book?
What do their gestures mean to
you?
Their habits, their tics,
Their nervous repetitive actions?
Is there something about
Their voices? Or their words,
The words they choose?
Are you more concerned with
This one over that one
So that this one and his things
Form a whole constellation of
fascinations
While that one
Leaves you indifferent?
So it seems to me
In this imperfectly perceived
world
Lit as if by guttering candles
The tiny flames
Of our distracted and
distraught
Consciousnesses.

- 29 Jun 07 -

POST-EXPOZINE THOTS

Much fun was had at this past weekend’s Expozine. Sitting to my left were intrepid hand-made book gurus Tammy and Fran, who taught me how to hand-bind my chapbooks with needle and thread. (I’d been having some difficulty with my long stapler, as the chapbooks were just a hair too thick for the staples to make it through!) We kept each other entertained with oranges, tea, much highbrow intellectual interchange and delicious Portugese bakery treats from across the park on St-Laurent. On my right was poet / writer / sick humour enthusiast Valerie, whom I hadn’t met before, although I’d seen her read on at least one occasion. She had something in her bag for any emergency, including tylenol for hangovers and a bandaid for me after I suffered a paper cut. (‘Work-related injury!’ I shouted, waving around my wounded hand, and after a dot of the red stuff showed, ‘Blood of the poet!!’) And parading before my little bit of table for two days were some of the most gorgeous members of the human species ever to walk this earth, up to and including poetry-of-film-maker Marijo (I just saw her sumptuous visual feast Sérénade – In Fragments at ImageNation this week) and Shawnda, who came by with her newest work, a chapbook of faithless proverbs called 2008-2009: The Year I Was A Burnt Marshmellow. This is the essence of the zine fair, the chance to meet tons of people, and maybe shift some home-made litero-musico units as well!

Speaking of which, Pistol Press and Invisible Publishing, who were both tabling at the fair, have launched a video-based online literary reading series, called The Kitchen Reading Series. I dragooned my videographer friend Victoria into doing a quickie with the iphotobooth program on her laptop, and the resulting video, ‘Tiny Kingdom’, is featured in the Kitchen Series’ first course. (The text was included in my Expozine freebie, 3 Poems (and a picture).) The rest of the line-up is Deanna Fong, Stacey May Fowles, Jp King, Anna Levanthal, Jeff Miller and Hillary Rexe.

Four Minutes to Midnight launched their tenth sumptuous feast of text, images, crazy collages and hyperdelic design savvy at Expozine. The Four Minutes posse were running a cosy table in one corner of the zine fair, where I also picked up a delightful hand-made mushroom card by Catherine, Under Control, a chapbook of confessions of a f(l)ailing radical educator, and John’s new CDR of poetry. Four Minutes to Midnight no. 10 is thick as a brick, and features a couple of pieces by myself, but don’t let that put you off! There’s also stuff by Hoda and Dima Adra, Emily Kai Bock, Ian Finch, Erica Ruth Kelly, Dita Kubin, Billy Mavreas, Maria Mavrig, F.A. Nettelbeck, Omen, Visualingual, and about a zillion more. Race out the door now, and run, run, run like a maniac all over town until you find a copy and then buy it!

Here are some pictures Tammy posted of her customers, and the general hurlyburly of Expozine.