Continuous Hiccup

Looks as though I officially will be weighing in on the "is spoken word really poetry?" debate. I posted an impassioned rebuttal to (yet another) baby boomer whining about how the poetry scene was so much more vital during the '60s in the comments section of a Geist blog. I ended with "Poetry is not dead. It's passing you by. Join us, or get out of the way," which was a tad melodramatic, but I had been drinking wine, and feeling especially fed up with whiny page poets stewing in hippie nostalgia. It seems my rant touched a chord, as the editor of the blog is starting a magazine and, he liked the comment so much, he's asked me to write a longer response for the first issue. His magazine, appropriately enough, is called Poetry is Dead.

Non-Poetry Kicks Ass

In the first poem of this collection, David Day asserts that his work is "non-poetry", an accident that happened when he was trying to understand something else, a bi-product of some other quest. These rambling reflections could be traditionally considered prose poems, I suppose, not that finding a snug category matters; what matters is that David Day, by not caring anymore, shucks aside the conventional modes of poetry and brings us writing that is candid, urgent, and charming: about the betrayal of 1960s idealism by baby boomers themselves, about the tyranny of the dewey decimal system, about how LSD battled Richard Nixon and lost, about the significance of Anglo-Saxons having far more words for drunk than Eskimos do for snow and more. It's a plea for life to be less predictable, and more true to its fantastical nature, written by Day in the most straight-forward way possible.

my youth has passed. phew!
done pretending I'm having
the time of my life

Are you bored of conversational poetry where the poet tries to act like the best friend you never had? Are you sick and tired of confessional poetry where the poet drones on about their personal life? If you are, good news, surrealism is back. Jeramy Dodds' "Crabwise to the Hounds", his first book-length publication, spurns both of these trends in contemporary poetry with exciting, but mixed, results.

As the title suggests, the overall tone of these poems is grim. Dodds paints scenes of dying deer, horses eaten by wolves, riders attacked by werewolves, and people chased by hounds. But I always get the sense that it is the language not the subject matter that is in the foreground, so no matter how odd or obscure the subject gets – such as Carl Linnaeus or Ho Chi Minh or the discoverer of Machu Picchu – Dodds' revelry in word play links the poems together.

It's when the grim mood is dropped and this love of word play comes to fore that Dodds is at his best. "The Epileptic Acupuncturist" (seen in the YouTube video below) where he twists together common sayings and "The Easiest Way to Empty a Seashell is to Place it on an Anthill" where he rhapsodizes about Glenn Gould's piano work are two shining moments in the book.

Dodds has been highly praised for his technical prowess with image, rhythm and metaphor. I'd agree with two out of three. Through the association of seemingly disjointed images, Dodds crafts a relentless series of mind-tingling metaphors, but the rhythm is often clunky and abrupt. His penchant for compound adjectives puts too many speed bumps in the cadence.

Dodds' work with language garnered him a nomination to the short list for the prestigious Griffin Poetry Prize this year. That's high praise for a poet's first book. But is Dodds' technical handiwork enough to justify all the acclaim? I'm not sure. His poems are emotionally opaque, which can make for a rather dry and intellectual reading experience, and there are times when Dodds' metaphorical density makes it feel as through he is a miniaturist more interested in the intricacy of his own handiwork than with communicating anything to the reader.

That said, this book rewards those who stick with it and navigate through Dodds' erudite diction and intellectual word games. It will be interesting to see where Dodds goes in his next book. Will it be more accessible, more playful, or will the language become even more baroque and the meaning more cryptic? I, for one, am excited to find out.

This is what the next couple of months looks like:

September 19th: Best of Van Slam CD Release Party at the Rhizome Café (my fundraiser as being part of the Van Slam team)
September 24th: Mashed Poetics, Sean and I debut as Seven Dollar Bill doing our poetic riff on Cobain's "Something in the Way"
September 26th: Awesome Face Finds a Gun, Brendan, RC and I show off our muscles and get silly (Possum Face, our cover band, is the opener)
October 5th & 6th: Van Slam goes to Berkeley for our Battle of the Bay Win 2 bout (Zac reps Vancouver at IWPS, he will slay!)
October 14th - 25th: Seven Dollar Bill tours through Ontario and Montreal, we're almost completely booked.
October 26th: Seven Dollar Bill performs at Bellingham's Poetry Night
Novemver 9th: I defend my crown at the Vancouver Haiku head-to-head death match. Bring it on!
November 10th - 15th: CFSW, Van Slam competes at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Victoria, BC. This will be crazy.

I'm exhausted just thinking about it.

Play the moon drunk like a percussion instrument until the Internet begins to bleed a bit

http://wms.selene.jaxa.jp/selene_sok/moonbell/moonbell_en.html

from today's online Globe article on Canada's unraveling social cohesion:

"The demographic bloat of baby boomers, more pronounced in Canada than anywhere except Australia, has dragged the country from Yuppiedom to Grumpydom – from young urban professionals to grown-up mature professionals – shifting the public-policy agenda along the way from social equality, human rights and statism to crime worries, security and fiscal retrenchment.

The Canadian median age in 1967 was 26, when Pierre Trudeau was getting ready to lead the country. It is now 43. Thus, not surprisingly, for the first time since Ekos began asking Canadians 15 years ago how they self-identify, a slightly larger number label themselves small-c conservative rather than small-l liberal, reinforcing policy indicators such as declining support for pacifism and a single-payer public health-care system"

As Canadians get older, they become more crotchety and less idealistic in their politics. It's so obvious, but I'd never really thought about it before. I suppose this means Canada would be less prone to flights of political fancy or fiscal imprudence, and more pragmatic, a senior nation clutching its purse strings tight.

Interestingly, the article also mentions Canada has the highest proportion of postsecondary grads, that women generally don't like Ignatieff (except for magpieulysses  who thinks he's the bomb), and that Isaiah Berlin said: “To feel at home is to feel that people understand not only what you say, but also what you mean.”

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

D'accord, Flaubert!

Fernando Raguero’s dry wit has been sharpened and refined even further in his latest poetry chapbook “Uncle Lawrence Has a Dewy Bum.” Raguero takes commonplace situations and turns them into ribald adventures, filled with zinging one-liners and imaginative twists into the absurd, such as when he imagines how Leonard Cohen would react after getting beat (by Raguero himself) at a poetry slam, or what the real ingredients are in Tim Horton’s “special” sauce, or how he would run a shop called “Damn Muffins” just so he could hear people say “I’ll have a damn muffin.” Raguero has moved past his biggest influence, Charles Bukowski, and has developed a style that is both more scatalogical and more human. To get hold of these bizarre and compelling poems, you’ll have to track down Fernando himself, as he’s not selling his chapbooks in stores, but he often has a few copies with him at the Vancouver Poetry Slam, where he’s a regular—every Monday at Café Deux Soleils.

This review was part of a writing exercise at Patty Osborne's "Art of the Short Review" class.

I found this exercise posted online by accident, while Googling myself. But now that I see it, I really like what I've written. There needs to be more evaluation of spoken word  and underground poetry. So I think I'll try to post more reviews of poetry chapbooks that catch my attention.

Sweet...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/video/2009/aug/11/air-guitar-championship

Like everything else, the crop art is more advanced in Japan.

1

patio drinking

air thick with insect traffic

wasp hiding in Coors Light

2

exit doors open

after big action movie

what will explode next?

3

young girl at the mall

bending to pick gum from shoe

leggings are not pants!

4

we love the hopeless

we chase after the alphas

whatcha gonna do?

5

walking holding hands

our forearms brush together

like sparrow bellies

6

clown smash-crashes gong

the ol’ shock and awe treatment

don’t you fall for it

7

rain finger taps roof

two lovers, one drained bottle

rain finger taps roof

http://chrisgilpin.com/2009/07/04/haiku-bouquet-709/

I'm first up. They were selected from the 2007-08 Van Slam Playoffs CD. Big ups to Mongo for all the hard work.

This will be the shiniest, awesomest Awesome Face show EVER (with special guest Mighty Mike McGee!):



When: Saturday, May 23rd, doors at 8pm, show starts at 9pm
Where: Café Deux Soleils (2096 Commercial Drive)
How much: $7 if you're in futuristic garb (tinfoil on your head will do), $10 otherwise

Ok, time to sharpen up your voting skills for the upcoming BC election, and even if you're not in BC, it's important to flex your democratic muscles regularly.

Today, April 30th, is the one and only day you can vote for the People's Choice Award of CBC's Poetry Face-off. So go to:

http://www.cbc.ca/poetryfaceoff/vote.html

And vote! NOW! Do it now!

Again, thanks for all your support. I'll send a message tomorrow, letting everyone know the results.

Cheers,
Chris

(Bonus democracy points for contacting friends and family and getting them to do the same!)

Every year, the CBC commissions poets from all over Canada to write a poem on a certain theme and then perform their work in regional competitions. The theme for this year's CBC Poetry Face-off was "Flight". I wrote about the Dodo bird and the Hindenberg in a poem called "The Dodo Bird Lives", and won the Vancouver bout.

This means that now I'm competing against the nine other winners for the People's Choice Award, which is determined by voting through the CBC website. You can only vote tomorrow, April 30th, from noon until midnight at...

http://www.cbc.ca/poetryfaceoff/vote.html

So go to the site, check out the recordings of all the poets, and then vote for me, I mean, your favourite poet, I mean, me.