Colonization Lost In Translation: a review of the Shab-e She'r reading Series for Tuesday April 26th

           

            I headed through the crisp, grey evening of April 26^th to go to the Shab-e she’r reading series. I was wearing a tank shirt, a sweatshirt, a button shirt and a scarf with my hoody on over all that and my unzipped motorcycle jacket on top of everything. On Brock, south of Bloor I passed a school athletic field where a bunch of guys were playing soccer in short pants and sleeves. Show offs!

            I was the first guest to arrive at the Beit Zetoun Gallery that evening and found Bänoo Zan sitting at the reception table with one of the Shab-e She’r volunteers. Since I had not been there since they closed down for the summer the year before, Banoo got up and gave me a hug. I should stay away for nine months more often!

            We chatted for a while about my university studies and how, at one and a half credits a year, it will be a long time before I get a BA, let alone the MA in Creative Writing I plan to go for after that.

            I went to take my regular seat in the back-right side of the aisle. Someone else came in and started walking around with a camera. I was tuning my guitar and he asked if I was going to play guitar. I answered that that would require that I be a musician. I told him that I’d be accompanying myself. I asked if he was the photographer for the night and he told me that he was, but he wasn’t really a photographer. I observed that we were in the same boat then, and he agreed. It occurred to me that he was the first male photographer that Banoo has had for her event, and thinking about it later, Banoo has always had a photographer at these readings, unlike, as far as I’ve observed, everybody else running a series in Toronto. That’s pretty media savvy of her, I think, because people like to have a visual reference when considering whether or not to attend an event.

            Sidney White arrived and we discussed our university experiences. She told me that she studied Sociology after already having been a journalist and spoke proudly of writing her research essays without setting foot in the library. She said that she wrote an essay about ambulance drivers after riding all night in an ambulance with them.

            Tom Smarda came in, who I hadn’t seen since the summer before. Again, I discussed my courses with him and then we talked of other things. I was glad to find out that he’s once again the host of the Yellow Door Open stage at 6 St Joseph, the second Saturday of every month.

            Then entered Cy Strom, with who I again talked about my recent studies in Continental Philosophy. I recall that he and I have a similar conversation at least once a year, and though the subject changes based on which course I’ve taken, whether it be Philosophy or Literature, he has something to say about almost every author I’ve just finished being tested on.

            Bänoo started the event at 19:15 with the words, “Happy Poetry Month!” Then she went through her regular spiel of telling people about Shab-e She’r and declaring that it’s the most diverse reading series in Toronto. This is true, but this time I looked around and noticed that I’d never seen so many white people at this event.

            She told us that Shab-e She’r survives by donations and that any contribution under one thousand dollars would be accepted.

            Bänoo informed us that when she selects featured readers, she always picks people that have never heard of one another and that in the four years the series has been running, through over seventy poets, she’s never had to repeat one of them.

            She stressed that there would be no censorship and that though we are welcome to voice our disagreement with a writer after their reading, she urged us not to do so during their time on stage because poets need encouragement. I don’t know if the last part is true but I agree with her policy of no censorship and no interruptions in the middle of poems.

            Bänoo announced that the last Shab-e She’r at the Beit Zatoun gallery would be in October. I assume that’s because of the reconstruction on Markham Street that will be beginning when Honest Ed’s closes at the end of the year.

            The first reader on the open stage was the event’s photographer, Yecid Ortega. “I was white in Columbia … I lost my whiteness when I came north … I wanted to be Axl Rose … I wanted to hook up with white chicks … I’m not white anymore, but I still want to hook up with white chicks.”

Next was Sidney White, who read two poems. From the first, “The offended can get instant attention … The offended can accuse and walk away … The offended always announces the end of the debate.” Her second was entitled “No Thank You” – “I’ve seen stampedes … arguments … wars … all declaring exclusive rights to heaven … I have no interest in going to heaven … I know it’s empty.”

Then came Shafiq, reading a piece called “Sun Cried” – “ … Human was seen around the Earth, uprooting trees, promising peace, delivering pieces, killing humanity in the name of god and Jesus …”

Following Shafiq was Dina, with a poem named “The Jasmines” – “ … They are not touched by the poison … From the roots they have taught themselves to rise eternally … No jasmine dies … This picked beauty will split once again and give itself to another …”

Baran Sajjadi was the fifth reader, and she began with a poem in Farsi. Her second offering was in English – “I died when I was eight years old … a child from Afghanistan.”

Edward Nixon was next – “ … Say what you mean … plain alphabet accident … falsify old growth … talent regret manifest … pick up ritual trek … upstream strip mall … fur for clothes … thirty miles, fifty-two kliks … oysters gone bad … a bad translation of yes.”

The final reader of the first open mic segment was Ali Ibrahimi, who began by telling us that in his culture poetry is used to tell fortunes. One makes a wish and the answer comes from a randomly selected poem. From his poem – “ … foremost promising fruit … You are pregnant permanence … The name of the poet forever unrecognizable … goddesses of lost simplicity … What of us … seeking our reflections in counterfeits … Hundreds of wars, dozens of languages … fingering, handing us our paginated destinies.”

Before introducing the first invited reader, Banoo explained, “We sandwich our features between two sets of open mic because we don’t want them to escape.”
            Hazrat Wahriz began by telling us, “It’s such a pleasure to be here with you! I would say I’m speechless, but that won’t get me out of this!”

He said that he would be reading his poems that have been translated into English by someone else.

Well, there’s an act of trust, I thought to myself.

Hazrat began with a biography – “Student … with no season … The dream of making Mars habitable … Bridges of solidarity … thick walls of loneliness … Suddenly you arrive … Do you see my cowardice … You and those lips, the joy of kissing … Continuation of the Big Bang … I am a continuation of a journey … end in your arms.”

His second poem was written twenty-six years ago – “ … The curtain is obediently standing by the window like a loyal doorman … I sit in front of him … He is silent … I already said everything … As if an ocean wounded in the hands of a typhoon … I gratelessly shake hands with moments.”

Hazrat’s next piece spoke of the time when the “so called communist government collapsed in Afghanistan.” From the poem – “A flower bath that fell into the hands of fools … In this land, spring is an unknown season.”

Moving chronologically forward, he shared a poem addressing the Taliban’s destruction of the ancient statue of the Buddha – “Once again, the enemy raises its flag … I wear a comforting smile, like Buddha.”

Hazrat told us that 46 countries came to help Afghanistan. “We were hoping they would rebuild.” From the poem on this topic – “The weather is not changing, you are not the moon or the clouds … the air is misting with blood …”

He then moved on to shorter pieces, suggesting that they would be less tortuous for us than the longer ones. Some of them were so short that couldn’t catch them all.

“It is impossible to smoke wind, It is impossible to drink cigarettes, It is impossible to love someone else.” This is reminiscent of the Armando Manzanero song, “Somos Novios” as anglicized into “It’s Impossible” by Sid Wayne.

Next - “Everything is okay, it’s just that today isn’t the tomorrow I was hoping for yesterday.”

“Chirp chirp chirp, the only familiar sound in an unfamiliar land.”

“At night, loneliness crosses the borders, beyond the galaxy of the Milky Way.”

Hazrat told us that he thinks of himself as a student of Basho, before reading a haiku – “The leaf falls, sound asleep, me too.”

“He too is light, the snail with the broken shell.”

“Kabul, Helmand, Kandahar, names of provinces, or an outbound elegy?”

Hazrat set up the next poem by first explaining that after the Taliban fell he returned to Afghanistan to visit his family. When his sisters went to pray, the dogs started barking. Hence the poem – “Four hours / still rehearsing / that same word.”

More short poems –

“A loveless relationship / a course farewell / where does sorrow come from?”

“A thousand keys for the house to which I will never return.’

“I keep gazing at you after all the words have been spoken, until I can memorize every curve on your body.”

“She did not say I will come back soon the last time mom left …”

“It is hard to be an orphan, little puppy …”

“My work was easy and my load was light, if only your memories had not come …”

“No flower in the world is you, No poem ever written is you, If Beethoven plays the Midnight Sonata, it is not you.”

Hazrat told us that his last poem was written for his son – “ … and now I don’t even know from where on Earth you orbit the sun … I wish they would appoint an angel to guard your smile …”

I’m looking forward to the day when Hazrat Wahriz has the confidence to translate his own poetry into English. As it is, except for the haiku and some of the short poems, which capture some powerful emotional moments, a lot of his poetry, in the translations presented on this evening, came across as conventional.

Bänoo called a ten-minute break, which she added, in the poetry world probably translates into fifteen.

At the end of the break, Bänoo approached me and, perhaps because she knew I’d brought my guitar with me this time, asked if I would do a song as a bridge from the break to the second feature.

I performed “Alcohol”, which is my English version of Serge Gainsbourg’s “L’alcool” – “ … When evening comes I then return to my courtyard, my body is a mass of aches from working so hard, my face is sunken in a frown, my hands are a mess, inciting dirty looks from all the beauties I pass, of course there are the joy girls on the boulevard, the ones who even chew gum while they’re making love, but what could I find against their worn out bodies, other than indifference and melancholy …”

After Bänoo introduced her, Sue Reynolds began her set by first paying compliment to Hazrat Wahriz’s poetry, by saying that it was, “Amazing, spare, pure and tender.” I’m not so sure if “spare” is necessarily a compliment. Although spareness is one of the many qualities that one can use to communicate one’s writing, saying that someone’s work is “spare” is often the literary equivalent of saying that it is “quaint”, “charmingly simple” or even “cute”.

Sue then confessed that she didn’t write political poetry, as if she’d thought it had been a requirement for reading at Shab-e She’r. Although Banoo’s event has a reputation for having a larger proportion of political poets than most reading series, I’ve never noticed there being any pressure to fit into the status quo.

Anyway, Sue said she would be dealing in her reading with themes of privilege. She then mentioned Shakespeare’s 400^th anniversary and somehow segued into talking about Freud’s colonization of women’s bodies. I’ve observed that to be a very common belief amongst some feminists, but others recognize that Freud and the science that he created, in liberating human sexuality, brought women and the male attitude towards them out of the dark ages.

From Sue’s first poem – “Let you not admit resistance … you dream of umbrellas and guns … these male organs …”

I don’t think that Freud would say that these dream images are absolutely in all cases male organs, but that it depended on the contexts in which they were dreamt.

Sue continued with her theme of colonization in a poem that spoke of the medical system colonizing us through language – “ … we can perform a dilation and curettage to remove the cells … What they mean is, the sudden appearance of blood from your vagina … a bigger version of your monthly fertility failure …”

Sue’s next poem was entitled, “It Would Have Been a Girl” – “ … She told herself the comforting stories … she carried on making potato salad … children scampered …”

She told us that colonization happens on many levels, through cultures, countries and parents. Then she read “Notes to a Younger Self” – “The sense of not belonging will never change … Your bending your square pegness into a round a holeness will never work … You’ve got some growing up to do.”

Then a poem about summer camp – “ … The juniors breathed in any smoke … She knew he was puckered for her … His first alphabet arrived … She forgot to alphabet him back.”

Another poem – “ … the naked branches, black as blight … out beyond that Canada … They’re Irish, you know … Her stiff-toothed comb yanked my … a garden sized square of living grass … famine … abandoned … This green stem licked by the North Sea … I turn my pony to head home.”

Sue set up her next poem with the declaration that “consumerism colonizes”. The poem was called, “Why No One Speaks to Her at Family Events” – “Because the married couple’s social circle had been the family … Because they loved the ex … Because he was supposed to fail … Because he writes poetry … Because she’s not grateful enough … Because she hasn’t been punished enough.”

From a poem named “What Came Before” – “ Our first trip to New York after the divorces … Everything is built on ruin …”

Sue’s last poem was entitled, “The Engineer Goes Out” – “My mother says so often, he doesn’t know where he is now … He’s always asking where we are … What’s holding us up … dad lie in the living room. Half the furniture removed to make room for the walker, the oxygen tent … Why don’t we turn him around … What’s that dog doing with her … Has Shadow returned … Last night he asked my mom, does everyone have a stick? What kind of stick? A measuring stick … I wonder if Shadow has a stick too.”

As is so often the case with poets, Sue Reynolds, when trying to write thematically, shows herself to be a good writer rather than a good poet. Her most outstanding poem was the one about the father that I assume was hers. This is something I’ve noticed quite often over my years of attending poetry readings. People’s best poems tend to be beautiful but sad pieces about either their fathers or mothers.

After Sue Reynolds’s set, Bänoo immediately continued on with the remainder of the open stage.

he first reader was Heather Wood, who said she was working on a series of poems based on Marilyn Monroe quotes. I’d be very surprised if someone hasn’t done this before. Don’t people write poems about their own lives anymore? From the poem – “I like to feel blonde all over … If you can make a girl laugh you can conquer the world …”

Next was Chai, who always claims to be “the poet of choice”. His shtick is to describe two poems that he could potentially read and to ask the audience to choose between them. The only thing is, he almost always reads both of them anyway. He asked us if we knew what else was special about this month besides it being Poetry Month. None us seemed to know until Tom Smarda spoke up and said that it was the thirtieth anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Chai read a poem about the skyline rising while the tree line is falling. “Where is the food for the millions? Don’t worry, they are turning forests into farms … Who is the serial killer of the species? You, me and us!” When Chai was finished, as I expected he wanted to read his second poem anyway, even though Bänoo shook her head. Chai argued that it was important because of the commemoration. Norman Allan said, “I thought you were the poet of choice!” but Chai kept on going. Norman declared, “False choice!” From Chai’s second poem – “ … Problems of nuclear age are beyond our crystal ball … “

Following Chai was Kate Marshall Flaherty, who read a poem called, “Sel” while the guy I assume was her husband checked his email. I guess he figured he’d done enough just by coming with Kate. He didn’t have to listen while his wife read. From her poem – “ … Lysosomes are healing enzymes … Tears are the same saline … they dissolve the borders … Let us not wait for another boy washed up on the shore.”

Then came Sami Hashimi – “ … My face wants the caress of a hand … I want a body to gratify my soul.

The fourth reader was Simona – “Allow yourself to be … allow your soul to soar … to hear the music of the clouds … allow yourself to be … light of the blind eyes.”

Next, Roman read a poem called “Twisted Sensitive” – “ … I did things for her … She pronounced the letter ‘N’ … She cheated and she lied … Once kind and generous, I am now this menace … A cosmic balance does exist … There will be a sharp needle prick in the heart of she who must be obeyed.”

Before introducing the next reader, Bänoo commented that it makes the features feel so good that so many people want to share the stage with them. I feel the same way about rush hour traffic when I’m riding my bike, because so many people want to share the road with me.

After Roman came Marketa – “I went to look for the word you said you’d found … one day when cherry scent comes to linger … the border closely watched … I scout the neighbourhood and watch it from the bridge … Dixie Road … headlands burnt out … cold mouths …”

Then was Norman Allan, who began with an apology to Chai, “for being rude”. From his poem – “ … spiralling ecstatically … nimbly in their imagined bodies … stop ten thousand stars but not one heartbeat of this child …”

Next was Cate Laurier with a poem about writers block – “Resistance grasps me with its dirty fingers … a log jam of confusing thoughts … their strangling stories loop round and round …”

The final poet of the night was Tom Smarda, who set his song up by telling us about how Stéphane Dion had signed the deal to send tanks to Saudi Arabia. He commented that most Canadians wouldn’t care because they won’t be dodging Canadian bullets in Saudi Arabia.

Actually, I can’t recall hearing about anybody dodging any bullets in Saudi Arabia. I assume the tanks are to protect them from being taken over by ISIS, which, if that happened, would send the world into a new circle of hell. Obviously Saudi Arabia is an oppressive regime, but they’re like Disneyland compared to what ISIS would do with the power that Saudi oil would give them.

Tom’s song was called “Trade Deals” – “If trade deals were so great for us then why do we face lawsuits … If trade deals were so great for us, why are they signed in secret … Trade deals are no good for us. They lock us into contracts that future governments are obligated to fill … Foreign un-elected bodies impose binding decisions… Work to stop ecocide.”

Bänoo closed down the event with a reading of her own “In the Poet’s Harem” – “Language cheated on the poet … Jealousy is good in a triangle, but not in a circle of orgies … She couldn’t take her eyes off politics though. He was so sexy … The poet lost the battle. That’s what poetry is: a failure.

The next Shab-e She’r will be on may 31^st, with featured performers Robert Priest and Cassandra Ayers.

After helping put the chairs away, I chatted with Cy Strom for a while. Of my performance of “Alcohol”, he didn’t tell me it was good, but that it “worked”. That actually sounds like a better compliment to me. I told him that in the modern tradition of giving couples a single name based on their individual names, as in “Branjelina”, I’d come up with a name for him and Bänoo. He said he didn’t want to hear it because it would turn into an earworm, so I didn’t tell him. I’ll say it here though. It’s “Banzy”, but meant to be pronounced like “Banzai”.

On the way out, I told Bänoo that I’d probably be coming more often after the Plastiscene reading Series dies in June. She hadn’t known. She said that the Art Bar Reading Series would also be finished at the end of June. Now there’s a well-deserved death. We discussed potential future venues for Shab-e She’r. I advised her that bars are problematic because most owners would be disappointed with how much money they would make from poets, because poets don’t really drink that much. A woman who had performed on the open stage asked, “What? Poets don’t drink anymore?” I explained that it’s because of the nature of poetry readings that not as many drinks are ordered because one wants to keep things quiet during readings. I’d say that if she could get a space like the Art bar at the Gladstone Hotel, that won’t pick up as much noise because it is somewhat isolated from the main bar, that would be good. The only problem is that she wouldn’t be able to fit a large crowd into such a small room. Maybe they could fit her in at the Trinity Church on Bloor Street.

I rode west and when I got to Ossington, my lungs were assaulted by choking smoke that definitely smelled like a house fire. The smoke was flowing thickly through the neighbourhood like a fog. I turned south and when I looked down the first alley running west off of Ossington I could see white smoke streaming rapidly out of the side of a house. Maybe I should have called 911, since I didn’t hear any sirens, but it seemed so obvious there was a fire that I figured someone must have called already. I guess if everybody had had that same thought then it would be the Kitty Genovese syndrome all over again.