On Sunday evening I rode through a light drizzle to get to my first
Plastiscene Reading Series event in three months. I had been too busy with
school to go in either October or November; and I’m still occupied with
studying for my exam but it seemed ridiculous to not go one more time this
year.
I hadn’t been to
the Victory Café since the end of the century when I went there to talk with
the owner about moving my reading series, The Orgasmic Alphabet Orgy, there
when we lost the Gladstone Hotel after being there for six years. I’d brought
newspaper reviews and told him about our history but it didn’t sell him on us.
Perhaps it was the name that threw him off and he didn’t want the word “orgy”
in any public listings beside his club’s fine name. Shortly after that, the Art
Bar reading series moved there though from the Imperial Pub. I don’t know if it
was because I’d mentioned to Allan Briesmaster that I’d been looking into the
place.
It took me a few
minutes to find the joint because I hadn’t remembered that it was all the way
down at the south end of the block, and because they don’t have a very visible
sign. Once I’d found the address, I went to lock my bike and when I came back,
Cad Gold Junior was waiting for me at the front door. He said, “It’s cancelled!
It’s all locked upstairs!” I went in and found Goldie, then gave her a birthday
hug before going to talk to the Plastiscene hostess, Nicki Ward. She gave me a
little hug when she saw me. I guess because of my friend, Paul Valliere’s
death, and offered her condolences. It turned out that the event wasn’t
cancelled and Cad hadn’t even asked anyone about it. When I chastised him about
that he just argued that he couldn’t see well enough to recognize anyone to ask
them. I suspect that there’s more to it than that but I won’t go into it right
now.
We followed Nicki
up the front stairs while someone from the Victory was climbing the back to
open the door for us. The physical space of the room is the best that
Plastiscene’s had in its history. They started at the long and narrow Central,
up the street and then moved to Paupers, which was extremely unconducive to
poetry readings. The new space has a stage, good seating, good acoustics and a
good atmosphere. Plastiscene should probably start putting the truth to their
claim that they start at 18:00 though, because things get noisy on the other
side of the second floor at around 20:00.
Cad told Nicki,
“I’m gonna read tonight!” but she teased, “I think I’m the one who decides
that, but I think you’re okay.”
We sat one table
back from the stage on the left, but nobody took the table in front of us. Cad
and Goldie on a cushioned bench against the wall and I took one of the many
sturdy old style barrel back wooden library chairs.
Cad had gotten
Goldie a small pendant for a birthday present and she asked me if I could see
what it was despite its tinyness. I had to look for a minute before I saw that
it was the planet Saturn. I think that the smallness of the gift was a small
disappointment for Goldie.
It didn’t take long
for Cad to start onto one of his favourite topics of conversation, that being
naming which ethnic groups dislike Jews. He said that his rabbi, who he says
looks like Tony Soprano with a beard, informed him that Scandinavians hate Jews
now. I think that Cad has a nutjob for a rabbi.
Nicki had brought a
portable sound system to create a pre-poetry atmosphere. She played some
Brazilian hip-hop and Cad told me he didn’t like it because it sounded too left
wing. He added that communists don’t like women. I pointed out to him that I’ve
looked at his favourite book list on Facebook and a good number of the authors
he likes are left wing. There’s a good chance, I told him, that Arthur Miller,
for example, was a communist. Cad protested that, arguing that he couldn’t have
been communist because he’d been married to Marilyn Monroe. Then he said
dismissively that communism in the Fifties was different.
Cad said that his
rabbi told him that he’s one of the most intelligent people he’s ever met. His
rabbi, who is from Cincinnati, is also, like Cad, a bug fan of Donald Trump. This
of course led to Cad’s favourite topic of all, which is the romantic notion
that Muslim immigration will destroy all the left wing countries that let the
refugees in.
Cad showed me a
picture of the latest collage he’s been working on, which is on the subject of
the Jewish mafia. Cad’s collages tend to be just a jumble of photographs that
follow a nostalgic theme but there tends not to be any kind of aesthetic flow
to the pieces. One of the images is a photograph of Bugsy Siegel, who Cad
proudly informed me killed more people than did any Italian gangsters.
Fortunately, at that point, at 18:35, Nicki stepped up to the microphone to
kick off the evening.
She introduced
herself as the hostess with the mostest and introduced Susie Berg as the
“curator with the …” and invited us to find a rhyme for that. I could only
think of “roller skater” at the time, but maybe “the curator with none greater”
works as well as “hostess with the mostest”.
She pointed out to us the fact that above
centre stage is a designed depression in the ceiling about a meter and a half
square and about a meter higher than the rest of the ceiling, which serves as a
great echo chamber. She concluded then that if we want to go a cappella we can
go outside. Then she paused and told us that it’s going to be a long night if
we don’t laugh when we’re supposed to. Then she repeated, “If you want to go a
cappella you can go outside!” and people laughed. I didn’t get it.
Nicki then started gathering volunteers
to read the poems by other authors that the featured readers put into the hat.
I got the feeling that Goldie might enjoy reading one and so I asked her and
she put up her hand to Nicki.
Nicki invited me to perform on the open
stage first but asked me to take a little time, adding “not too much”, to say a
few words about Paul Valliere.
I took the stage and reminded everyone
that Paul had been coming to Plastiscene almost every month for at least the
last couple of years and performed on the open stage every time he came. I said
that his approach to writing was kind of a shotgun method whereby he’d just
write poem after poem and considered each one finished in its first draft. I
told them that he was an annoyingly positive person who was a good father to
some people who turned out to be good young adults. I added that I don’t really
get it when people say things like, “I’m sorry for your loss”. When a friend
dies, especially if they’re a writer, you don’t lose anything because it gives
you the rest of your life to catch up with them. I finished by saying, “If you
didn’t know him, I’m sorry for YOUR loss”.
What I didn’t say, because Nicki had
stressed, “Not too much time” was that on the day before Paul died, I spoke to
him on the phone and he told me about what a disappointing time he’d had the last
time he went to Plastiscene. I wasn’t there, but Nicki had apparently open
stagers that night to only read one poem. There’s usually a three-minute time
limit and Paul had told Nicki that the two poems he’d brought were way under
that time. He told me that Nicki had been testy with him when she acquiesced,
saying, “Make it quick!”
I also didn’t mention that when the
October Plastiscene was approaching, Paul had emailed me excitedly to give me
the news that Michael Fraser was taking over Plastiscene again. He’d
misunderstood at first the email promoting Michael’s feature that night.
When I spoke to Paul that last time he told me that he
wasn’t interested in going to Plastiscene again unless I was going, so we
agreed we’d see each other there in December.
For my open stage
set, I read an excerpt from my non-fiction short story, “Death by Alcatraz”-
“One night three days later, Stadig removed his mattress and pushed the bed to
block the door of his cell. From the springs of his bed he twisted off a ten-centimetre
piece of wire and tried to use it to slash his wrists. When this didn’t work he
broke one of the lenses from his eyeglasses and used the biggest piece to slash
his left wrist in two places. Blood began to flow but not quickly enough, so he
drove the broken lens deep into the muscles of his throat, successfully slicing
and severing his jugular vein.
When the guards managed to force their way
through the blocked door they found prisoner number 49536 in extreme shock, and
minutes later he was dead. Hands that had invented so many things in his
cousin’s workshop back in St. Francis, Maine had finally invented a way to die.
The escape artist had finally cut himself free of both Alcatraz and Leavenworth
in a few days. It may have appeared that he’d taken his own life in
Leavenworth, but John Stadig was without a doubt murdered by Alcatraz.”
Cad
said when I sat down that I should have mentioned that Stadig was my second
cousin, but I didn’t see that as relevant.
Next came the
first poem from the hat, which was a seasonal piece by Robert Southwell, called
“The Burning Babe” – “As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow,
surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow; and lifting up a
fearful eye to view what fire was near, a pretty Babe all burning bright did in
the air appear; who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did
shed as though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were
fed. “Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, yet none approach
to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I! My faultless breast the furnace is,
the fuel wounding thorns, love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes
shame and scorns; the fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, the
metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls, for which, as now on
fire I am to work them to their good, so will I melt into a bath to wash them
in my blood.” With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, and
straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.”
This was followed
by an open stage set from Sophie, who said that she had three poems and wanted
to know how many she could read. Nicki looked at them and said, “Either that
one or those two.” Sophie started with a poem called “These New Places” that
had the phrase, “a soft invasion of letters”. Her second piece was entitled
“Leaving Worlds” – “These storms … such a swell of little fish … the moon
descends like a great white owl …”
Cad was invited to
the open mic next and this was his first time of reading at Plastiscene in
years because he has often concluded that people would be offended by his
writing. His offering was called “Handbook for Boudoir Pranksters” – “I met her
down in Michigan … She was a Spanish-Hungarian … She was always laughing out
loud … She wrote a cookbook called ‘Eat My Fuck and Beat My Meat’” Everybody
laughed and clapped. Nicki said, “Damn! That was my working title!” Later when
I reminded Cad that everyone liked what he read, he argued, “No they didn’t!”
A young man whose name I didn’t catch was
the second volunteer to read a poem from the hat, but he snuck in a poem of his
own first, called “Pocket Billiards”- “ … the four’s the ball that I adore …
its purple shade the handmaid wore …” The poem from the hat, he said, was
Robert Service’s “My Picture”, but I think the correct title is “My Madonna” -
“I haled me a woman from the street, shameless, but, oh, so fair! I bade her
sit in the model’s seat and I painted her sitting there … I painted a halo
round her hair, and I sold her and took my fee, and she hangs in the church of
Saint Hillaire, where you and all may see.”
Nickie,
responding fondly to the use of rhyme in the poem, wondered why so many poets
avoid using rhyme these days. I called out, “Because they don’t have enough
talent for it!”
It
was then Goldie’s turn to read her poem from the hat, which was Kate Rogers’s
“Your Horse in the Field” – “Like your horse I wait by the fence … I wait
wondering if I am broken … As long as I've been running I've been afraid of
freedom.”
After
Goldie came Richard, who read a poem for his brother entitled “Brother of
Mercy” – “The doors open automatically as I go into the building where my
brother lives … upstairs I sit by Victor's bed … his hands tremble … code
orange … I can smell the shit in his pants … Mercy? What does mercy mean to
these brothers of the church? When I needed mercy my brother gave it freely
…Where’s the TV remote, his roommate shouts … My big brother falls asleep. I
walk past the manger and cry.”
The
last open stage poet was Margaret Code, who read her own “Temps Perdu”, which
mentions the Café on St Clair called “Pain Perdu”. Margaret explained that
perdu means “left-over”, but I’ve always understood it as meaning “lost”. When
I asked her about it she confirmed that the general meaning for the word is
“lost” but that the owner of Pain Perdu told her it meant “left-over”. On
looking it up later, I see that “pain perdu” is the name the French sometimes
use for what we call French toast. So I would interpret it like this French
toast is what we make when the bread is lost or wasted for normal use as bread.
Margaret uses perdu in the same sense in relation to time, and I may be wrong
but I think that maybe she can’t properly use it that way.
The
final poem from the hat was called “Snow”. I caught that the author’s first
name was Orson and the surname sounded like “Shear” – “My father was a drunk …
he married my mother the night after he came from Russia … He showed her from
her own body the colour of snow.”
Nicki
then told us that the next Plastiscene would be on January 16, 2016 but asked
rhetorically, “How is that possible?” Then she called a break.
Cad’s
ex-wife and our long-time acquaintance, Anna arrived.
Near the end of
the break I went to chat with Albert Moritz and Allan Briesmaster but our
conversation was cut off when Nicki began to introduce the first featured
reader.
James Wood began
with “Tool Box”, which I’d heard him read the last time he featured at
Plastiscene in August of 2014. The poem is about the
toolbox that he inherited from his father and how it keeps them connected. He
concludes by describing his son also using the toolbox and how when he inherits
it, it will keep him connected to his grandfather – “ … He lives on, spirit
level with my son …”
James’s second poem was entitled “Odysseus’s Return to Ithaca” – “Oh
Penelope, the arch we trace is halcyon …”
James then told us that he believes that poetry readings should be
like talent night at the Apollo: three songs and you’re off!
His third piece was one I’d also heard him do before, called “Vinyl
Nights”. In it he extols the pleasures of listening to music on vinyl, as
opposed to any of the post record album technologies. He declares that it is
“real music” and even praises the romance of the crackling and popping sounds
the needle makes as it lightly trips over dust and scratches. Near the end he
says, “Take your smart phone and drop it!” in response to which Anna shouted
out “Yes!”
I must say that while I find the sentiment over the sound of record
albums to be as charming as that over any love of antiques, the argument that
the sound is superior to digital recordings is highly debateable. To a trained
ear there may be a discernibly warmer sound to vinyl but that doesn’t
necessarily make it better. I’ve also read that on records, the way that the
grooves spiral outwards stretches out the sound of the recording as it
approaches the end. I would argue that most people probably couldn’t pass a
blind listening test that compares digital sound to analog.
James’s fourth offering was a poem
about his native Scotland – “ … this is a thistle crowned nation … see the
tyrants hands set farms alight … guns and dogs stripped this place of men …
nothing left but seaweed and stone … far from hatred forged by coin or cross …”
His final
composition was called “Departures” – “Then one time point your car towards the
shore to where the ocean grey swells skyward … each
journey ends in remembering how we excuse our failures …”
James Wood is a
formally good writer in that he knows how to put words together. His poems that
convey more personal sentiments tend to hold together better than the more
contrived pieces, which tend to be just long-winded life support for one killer
poetic punch line.
Perhaps because James
did a shorter set than was offered, Nicki read another of his poems. I thought
she said the title was “Plug” but judging from the poem it might have been
“Plum” – “ …Its sweetness deepened all summer long … I reached up … I wiped the
juice from my mouth … and kept eating the fruit until September had gone.”
At this point
Nicki called another break.
Anna ordered some
food and offered to buy Goldie a drink. As she prefers mixed drinks to wine or
beer, she said she would like to have a pina colada, but they don’t make them
there. It took her some time to decide what to order instead. She settled on
something called Prim. When I looked up their menu later though I saw that what
she’d gotten was Pimm’s.
Cad told me that
he has accessed the akashic records and found out that he was a slave master in
his past life that enjoyed his work immensely.
Before introducing
the second feature reader, Donna Langevin, Nicki read Donna’s “The Stone Angel”
– “ …the stone angel moved … softly, sorrow trailed behind her.”
When Donna came to
the stage she said that it’s every writer’s dream to have Nicki Ward read one
of their poems.
Donna said that
she was going to follow the traditional pattern of bridal gift giving and read
something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue.
She started with
“The Best Way to Eat a Snowflake” – “Say grace, taste your way round and around
its divine pattern …”
She told us that
the next piece represented “something new”. It had the line; “There are many
holes in snowflakes …”
Her next was
“Arachne” – “The snowflake on my window challenged me.”
At this point the
batteries on the microphone started dying and so Nicki came and took it, but
urged Donna to continue without it.
She said she would
read some pieces on the theme of risk taking, and told us that the first, “The
Hand”, was for Charles G. Stephens – “I am the hand reaching out of a barrel …
the hand of the demon barber from Bristol … the hand that fishes the sky … the
drowning hands so desperate they will grasp you and pull you under …”
When she was done
with that piece Donna commented that she loved having no microphone. “I can
move!” she exclaimed.
Then she asked,
“What would you sacrifice to get your work published?” George A. Stathakis went
over Niagara Falls in a barrel in hopes that the revenue he gained would help
him publish his writing on metaphysical experiences – “ … Your hand, a brave
flower, stems from the hole in the barrel and waves ... You are extracted
still-born.”
Continuing with
the theme, Donna then did a poem about a woman who chose to live dangerously.
This was about Dinah Nuthead, who, after her husband died, fought for and won
the right to take over her husband’s printing business, thus becoming the first
licensed female printer in the thirteen colonies that later became the United
States of America – “ …why must a woman who teaches herself to read be accused
of witchery?” I couldn’t find any reference to Nuthead being accused of
witchery but Donna must have dug a lot deeper than I did. Chances are though,
there was just an accusation and no trial.
Around this time
there was a lot of loud stomping coming from outside the room as people were
climbing the stairs and talking loudly as they came up to perhaps watch the
hockey game in the other second floor bar.
Donna then told us
that she was now going to begin the “borrowed” section of her set – “ … Take me
to the Mardi Gras … wear a penis on your nose … laugh at the grim reaper …
before it's too damn late.”
Next came a poem
called “Dandy” – “ … clouds … disappear like people we once knew … after
bearding the moon … eclipsed in flying sun shot days.”
From Donna’s final
poem - “Dear Madonna in blue, I entreat you to open your cerulean cave … guide
his soul to a harbour leave his cargo of shadows… Ho ho ho ho Santa … a star
zings and zaps the heavens ... she growls and grunts for hours … she nurses him
and whispers … while outside this world bumps off virgins, as babies die in the
dark …”
There is a sense
of play and innocence to Donna Langevin’s poetry that lightly turns even the
darker subject matter over and examines it with a childlike curiosity,
describing it playfully but without making fun. As is often the case with poets
though, she loses touch with her muse when she tries to write about things that
she has to research, like historical figures, no matter how interesting they
are.
By this time the
noise on the other side had gotten a lot louder. Nicki made reference to our
contending with “the natives to the north of us” before introducing Ian Keteku. She asked Ian for some help with the pronunciation and he
said to say it as though there is peanut butter on the roof of your mouth.
Around
then the waiter come up on the stage and started gathering up some cables that
were being stored on stage left. Nicki seemed a bit annoyed and told Ian that
she wouldn’t invite him to the stage until he had it to himself.
Around
this time a young woman with blonde hair and a sparkly tan sweater and came up
to Nicki and introduced herself as the bartender who’d just come on duty for
the second floor. Although I couldn’t hear the conversation, she seemed to be
asking when we were going to be wrapping things up because she had a group
coming in to use the space. Despite that, Nicki told Ian to take his full,
allotted time without worries.
Ian
Keteku unhooked the microphone, moved the stand out of the way and began
without introducing his first piece – “If I leave this planet before you, if my
last breath retires without pension … less phobia and more magnolia … dried
limestone forged from the alchemy of plankton … scrawl my name and tell them
this is how you write what you love.”
Ian
told us that Calgary is a weird place to be from and that its fucked up
philosophy of life produces many stories – “ … June 4, 2014, I found out
through YouTube … I never thought you would be the bomb … when you demoted god
from an idea … idolized to adolescence … disappointment into this appointment …
nothing nice will be said about you … pounding like the wings of an anxious …
Islam is a religion of peace, god doesn't negotiate with terrorists.”
His next piece was
called “Kay”– “Her father was a soldier with the USSR army … when they held her she was reminded of the
Moscow ballet … she visited men in the trenches … stealing United Nations food
provisions …. Kalashnikov …”
Ian said that what
he hears most when he tells people he’s a poet is, “So you’re a poet? How do
you make a living?” and “Where’s your love poems at?”
So he wrote
“Laptop Love” – “I wanna open you up, and turn you on, push all the right
buttons to get you going … I’m caressing your backspace … but sometimes you freeze … You see you’re
getting old Ms. Vista, I miss the old Ms. Vista … you used to stay up all night
when I had a paper due … and my friends would come over and say, Hey, Ian,
yo...buddy, you’re computer really sucks man (Ian paused to tell us that
everyone in Calgary talks like that) … What? No, no, no, Mac? Mac… is just a
girl I do video editing on … ok baby, lemme tell you the truth, I do video
editing on her, but I do poetry on you, you know, I mean, I’m sorry I cheated
on you … I’m sorry I dropped you on the ground, I’m sorry I banged you around,
I’m sorry I spilt hot chocolate on you even though you don’t drink … I tried to
enter my home, but your keys were stuck (He paused again because he either
didn’t think or he was pretending that he didn’t think that we got it. He
explained, “What I did was a double entendre … It took me four years to write
that line!” So he repeated it and got the reaction he wanted.) … But you
haven’t been that great to me either, you see you, shut down whenever you want
to, you fall asleep too often, you pause too much, you should get an
a-pause-trophe, and I know you don’t want me to talk about it but you've got
those viruses, I don’t care who, what where happened, I’m just saying I’m glad
Norton was able to help us out, y’know? Remember the days, when I wanted to …
put my USB in your hard drive … So, wherever you are I hope you sleep well, Ms
Vista. I hope he treats you right, Ms Vista, and if you ever plan on coming
back to me, come back as the old Ms.Vista …”
Before he began
his final piece, Ian said that Nicki Ward is one of the greatest hosts he had
ever seen.
“ … No matter the
method all my words still come out dark … Jesus still painted his nails red …
were all once the size of a period … now only happens once in a lifetime.”
Ian Keteku is a
great spoken word artist and his poetry has good rhythm and some clever plays
on words. Writing about things as people is something that a lot of poets do as
part of early experimentation, whether they are speaking of their car or their
guitar or whatever, but it seems a bit much to read two long pieces about
anthropomorphized objects. Many of his choices of things to write about follow
the slam subject formula. As I’ve said before, writing about oneself brings one
closer to one’s muse, but Ian only writes about himself from a distance. A lot
of the phrases Ian uses have been said before and while he dances well with the
rhythm of words he doesn’t find new ways to dance with the language itself. In
that sense, he is really not a very good poet.
Nicki closed off
with her usual quotes about poets being the unofficial legislators of the
world. She added that it’s only OCD if you don’t have talent.
Around this time a
group flooded in while we were getting ready to leave. They set themselves up
at the back tables. Banoo Zan was sitting at a table halfway back, then the
sparkly sweatered bartender approached her and I think she asked her to leave.
One of the new group in the back who was standing, began to sing something a
cappella and the rest of them began to accompany her in perfect harmony. It was
some sort of Christmas song, I think. I assume then that this was some sort of
private Christmas party of a glee club or choir. They sounded nice, but it was
annoying for us to get the bum’s rush like that. I suspect though that it will
happen a lot more if Plastiscene stays at the Victory Café.
I headed off to buy
Goldie a birthday dinner.
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