Do Think

Monday morning. Devon is scraping away at his bowl, the last of his yoghurt gone. Clint is getting ready to take him to day camp. Julie has gone off to work. I volunteered to look after Devon tonight, so C & J can have a night off. Babysitting tips are welcome.

The West Coast Poetry Festival is over. Aside from the atrocious slam elements, it was pretty good -- excellent attendance at most events, the public got in free, the readers got paid. I think I went to about half the events. Tish night on Saturday featured Fred Wah, Jamie Reid, and George Bowering. Bowering devoted his entire set to reading Do Sink, which was amazing. Yesterday I read with Chrystalene, Mari-Lou Rowling, and Christian B-b-b-b-b-b-b-ök. Just before reading, Chrystalene, who apparently does some slam stuff heard me slamming slam to some slam fan man. I felt terrible. Anyway, the readings all went well -- I was going to read "I Am the King of Poetry" from Confessions Of A Small Press Racketeer, but on the bus to the venue, Clint had expressed his enthusiasm for challenging audiences, so I switched up at the last minute to "Platen Place," and generally avoided the easy-laugh poems, except for my Heidi Fleiss letter.

I enjoyed Mari-Lou's reading, especially when it veered away from performance stuff. And Chrsystalene was pretty good; if she lost the "spoken word" delivery, her stuff would be even stronger. I hate being directed how to respond to work through its delivery; I hate the obviousness of spoken word delivery. I was relieved that I could say good things to her afterwards. Christian gave his usual muscular performance, and his sound poetry delivery keeps getting better. He kicked off with Schwitters' Ursonata, as he often (always?) does, and said after it, "This is widely regarded as the most difficult poem to perform." OK, man, you've just done a masterful performance -- do you have to brag after it? He also did this all-sound, kinda techno-voice thing that I can't recall the title of, but it was pretty spectacular.

Nice post-show beer-consumption at the Hildon, a very Vancouver experience. Also nice to see Renee Rodin (Saturday afternoon for some Chinese food) after a couple years -- she has a chapbook coming out, which is an event, since she publishes so rarely.

The festival was only four days long, but it feels like about two weeks. That's what happens with these things.

Over and out.