On Tuesday I woke up
late for the last time. My phone alarm was set for 5:30 but it’s only there as
a backup since I’m almost always up by that time. There’s a flying saucer
shaped clock in the living room that crows like a rooster at 5:21 because it’s nine
minutes fast. It’s been running for more than a decade on two double-A
batteries and its alarm is quieter than my phone both because it’s in the other
room and because it’s quieter. I usually hear it though but this time I didn’t.
5:00 is when I like to get up but I don’t mind awfully waking up a little later
than that. 5:30 is way too late for the things I want to do every morning, so I
finally made the decision to change the time on my phone alarm. It took some
thinking though to decide exactly what time I wanted it to ring. I prefer to
wake up on my own either at 5:00 or before and I also prefer not being woken up
by outside influences, so I didn’t want to set the alarm for 5:00 because I
wanted to give myself a chance. I settled on 5:07 because it’s not a too tragic
time to lurch out of bed and still get my stuff done.
Around the middle of the day, my
classmate, Matt Wu, left me a comment on Facebook to let me know that our final
Marks for Aesthetics had been posted on the U of T student site. I found out
that I got an A minus for the course. I was still very interested though to
find out my mark on the final essay, but since the papers have only letter
grades it’s not possible to exactly figure out the percentage on each one. I
was pretty certain that my participation mark would be ten out of ten; my
lowest marks were 58% of 15% for the first quiz and 63% of the same for the
second; I got eight out of ten for the weekly writing assignments. That left me
with the two essays that were worth 25% each. I calculated the lowest
percentage I could have gotten on the first essay to have earned my A, but
working that into my overall mark gave me 90% on my second essay, which would
have placed me just inside the range of an A-plus, which is probably not
likely, since my TA, Melissa told me she didn’t give out A-pluses on papers
that didn’t break philosophical ground. Unless my idea that no novels can ever
be absolutely fine art was such a breakthrough, I doubt if I really kicked
things up a notch in my paper. I assumed then that my second paper was a solid
A like the first, which I’m pretty happy about.
I got an email telling me that I
wasn’t one of the fifteen poets chosen for the January workshop being run by
this year’s writer in residence, Murakami Sachiko. It made me a little angry,
not because I wanted to workshop my poems but because I wanted to win. I looked
up her poetry to see if I was missing anything. I found five but I only liked
one of them. Her imagery is not all that strong and she doesn’t really go to
new places with language.
That evening I printed up my poem
then bundled up my body and headed out to Shab-e She’r. The roads were still a
bit slushy so I couldn’t ride without getting a little splattered.
I didn’t remember exactly where on
College St. Stephen in the Fields Anglican Church was, though when I’d recently
looked it up I saw that it was west of Kensington Market. The gothic revival
edifice is hard not to notice once one gets past the clock tower of the
Bellevue Fire Hall. I parked my bike in the snow at the west corner of the
building and went to the nearest door, only o find it locked. Further east I
found the entrance.
Bänoo
Zan was just inside chatting with someone else near a greeting table. I walked
into the nave and took a seat in the front row by the right aisle. I’ve always
liked the simple and unpretentious Victorian Gothic design of the old church
from the outside and the dark look it has because of the old bricks and the
very low black roof. I don’t find the inside as nice to look at though. They
have sacrificed aesthetics for symbolism in this church. The nave area is
remarkably small while the sanctuary stretches far to the back and soars very
high and it frankly looks a little awkward. The little country Anglican Church
that I attended as a child had a larger portion for the congregation, as does
the Christ Church Cathedral in Montreal. But as for a space for Shab-e She’r to
have its readings, this church is certainly visually more interesting than what
they had before, which was a gallery, which is really just a room. But they’ve
gone from a place full of images of Palestine to one full of crosses, so I
wondered if they would attract the same crowd.
On the right side of the sanctuary,
multicoloured pipes that look like giant whistles take up more than half of the
wall. I figured that the organ must be on the other side of the brick wall and
since the wall also has tall, arched but darkened windows, I assumed that they
used to be just inside the back of the church but that an extension had been
built for the organ. The priest corrected me on my observation when I voiced it
at the end of the night. She told me that the church has always gone beyond
those walls.
At the southeast corner of the nave,
in front of the last chair on the right side of the front row, where Mind the
Gap was sitting, was a little old table holding an incomplete nativity scene,
with just a few animals lying in the straw. I got up to go and get a closer
look and Mind the Gap, with a chuckle, echoed my thoughts that it was, “a
little sparse”. I suggested that maybe the baby Jesus and his family had gone
to a Christmas party and would be back later.
Nick Micelli took the seat in the front row just across the
aisle from mine and proceeded to eat a double slice of pizza. For some reason I
found the odour of his dinner overwhelming. I’m sure it was just an ordinary
slice, so perhaps the room carried or contained the smell differently or maybe
it was how the odour mixed with the background smells of the old church, but I
found it almost sickening and was glad when he’d finally finished it.
When Bänoo kicked off the event, she
began with the usual introduction, that Shab-e She’r means “poetry night” in
Persian and that her event is the only Shab-e She’r in the world that is held
in a language other than Persian. She added that on the night after this would
be a solstice traditional celebration in Iran and that people stay up late, eat
Persian delicacies and read poetry to one another.
Bänoo told us that when she landed
in Canada and started going to poetry readings she noticed that there were many
that were separated along lines of ethnicity, sexual orientation and politics,
and so she started Shab-e She’r with the intention of introducing the poets of
Toronto to one another.
She stressed that Maggie Helwig, the
minister of St Stephen in the Fields, who is also a writer, has assured her
that we can feel comfortable any words we choose and that there would continue
to be no censorship at Shab-e She’r. I had intended to use any language I
wanted to anyway, but I guess it’s nice to know that it’s okay.
Bänoo introduced her team as the
people that help keep her crazy, and I think she meant that they help keep her
crazy dream alive.
She urged open stage readers to keep their time to three minutes or less
out of respect for the other readers, but added that she wasn’t going to
physically drag them from the stage if they went over. I suggested that maybe
the human sized cross that’s suspended from the ceiling and looming about ten
meters above the stage would fall on those that read too long.
The first reader on the open stage,
which is for the first time more like an actual stage, was Shaheen, who read a
poem entitled “Ashes of the Phoenix” – “Rise god damn it, rise! This is the day
of your atonement! The day of rage, the day of retribution … Pay your dues in
dust and debris … Mark your doorstep, this is the day of wrath …”
Next, Banoo invited
me to the stage. I read my recently written piece, “Parkdale Amazon” – “Out of my window I saw a woman busting out all over. Out on O’Hara
an Amazon wearing black all over. In greed I tried to read her ingredients.
From the curly hair and a certain air of body confidence she looked a little
Black, felt a little First Nation and had that not uncharming twitch of genetic
colonization …” The applause was polite, with no whoops of appreciation like I
got the last time I performed at Shab-e She’r back in the summer. I wondered if
some of the explicit language in my poem made listeners think on a subconscious
level, “Should I approve of this too loudly in a church?”
After me was Mama (it was pronounced more
like Momo), who was there for the first time – “I want to strip you … priest
habits … Aging delayed … Society reminds me scornfully my duties as a wife … I
remain with this aching pestilence … when I look at your beard.”
Then we heard from Luciano Iacobelli, who
Bänoo told
us will be a feature at Shab-e She’r in 2017. He expressed his fear as a
Catholic that if he were to share one of his poems with swear words that the
cross would fall down on him, so he read a piece called, “Language Abhors a
Vacuum” – “Empty virgin spaces are victims … Language fears for its
continuation … Fights the silence no matter what is said … It’s not necessary
for words to have matter … That’s why the voice in the head never stops … Voice
in the head abhors the vacuum in the head … Run on repetition language … How
language pacifies its anxieties … Vanquish the vacuum … Nature abhors silent
spaces.”
Megan Hutton followed Luciano, with a
poem that I remembered hearing her read before at Shab-e She’r. She explained
that it was inspired by a man she’d met at the St Michael’s Hospital emergency
room. She had watched him try to talk to two women there but they had blown him
off. She had initiated a long conversation with him and it inspired a poem
entitled, “Fast Eddy” – “My eyes dance on his words … A dishevelled stranger …
The risk of opening up to two unlikely participants with matching purses …
Loneliness … Lives everywhere … ‘My drinking, my downfall’ he confides to me … ‘I
blew the trumpet at Woodbine and played honky tonk piano in Yellowknife … His
eyes flicker with hope, believing for a time in a future he can still imagine.”
Bänoo returned to the stage to tell us, “When poets speak, people listen,
because poets listen well”. Then she asked if we were ready for the first
feature and I assume that everybody but me said yes, but Banoo wasn’t
satisfied. She asked again, “Are you ready?” and the response was, of course
louder and more enthusiastic, but still apparently not enough because Bänoo asked again, “Are
you ready?” They were so ready that they began to fight among themselves to
argue who was more ready than the other. Fistfights broke out and guns were
drawn. Four people were driven to such ferocious eagerness to hear the first
feature that they died of heart attacks right there in the church.
The first feature was Kate Sutherland,
reading entirely from her book, “How to Draw a Rhinoceros”. She told us that it
with a little 18th Century porcelain rhinoceros named Clara, which
inspired her to do research for the book. Kate began with the longest poem of
the book, which was called “Rhinoceros Odyssey” – “August 1738 – Raised in the
home of the director of the Dutch East India Company … An occasional puff of
tobacco … The horn stands upon the nasal, not on the forehead and provides no
evidence of the existence of unicorns … Set up a booth, admission price, six
sous … February 3rd, 1749 – She’s smaller than the poster claims …
The beautiful marquise had not seen a rhinoceros before … Death report number
one: Lonely and un-sated, she died of rage … Death report number two: Drowned …
Death report number three: Lost at sea, her captain went with her … Death
report number four: Killed by mysterious ailment … Death report number five:
Slipped into the lagoon. Efforts to keep her afloat failed … Startled to see in
the hands of its master the horn that fell off last year … 1754 – Warsaw. She
is the warm-up act for an Italian comedy … Thirty pounds of bread, wine … Six
feet high, twelve feet long … Death report number six: 1758. Died unexpectedly.
May or may not have been stuffed …”
Then Kate read some shorter poems about
her imagined Clara – “Favourite drink, a carafe al fresco, but she’s on the
wagon now …”
“Clara the Collector” – “The eggs of rare
birds … Odd toes clicking against tiles …”
“Clara delights in her status as muse …
She goes head to head with Dolly …”
“Clara is ready for her close-up … She
chafes at being upstaged … A ship rids low with a lovesick rhinoceros …”
“Her vision is poor … Grinds her teeth
nights like any beast in captivity …”
Kate’s last poem was “Clara in Space” –
“She skywrites a message: ‘Wander alone, like a rhinoceros’”
If Kate Sutherland’s “How To Draw A
Rhinoceros” were illustrated then it would probably work as reading for young
adults. The history she presents is interesting and people, especially
children, like rhinoceroses. But when the history and the subject matter
outweigh the writing it does not make for a good book of poetry. This is often
the problem with poems written based on research. I’m sure that Kate has a very
interesting life she could write about and which would inspire her to find
imagery with which to enrich our language.
The last time I was at Shab-e She’r they
had 104 people. This first night in the new space had a much smaller turn out.
Bänoo called a break and so I went looking for a washroom. I poked my
head through several doorways until I saw a woman that looked like she was on
the same search, so I followed her around a corner and down a corridor hoping
that there would be a men’s washroom nearby the one that she would find, but
the door she closed behind her had that image of the silhouettes of two genders
standing together in a police line-up. In the next room down the hall though I
found another unisex washroom.
I went back to my seat. Cy Strom came up
to the front and was approached by Norman Perrin, who began to tell him a long
travel story. Cy nodded with interest but made slight movements in my direction
and made some progress but then the break ended and he said he’d talk to me
later.
As has been her new tradition this year, Bänoo sandwiched one
open miker in between the two features. This time she invited John Portelli to
be the palate cleaner before the second feature. He read a poem on Palestine
entitled, “Tears of Gaza” – “I wait for wisdom and perception … for the rain of
bombs to end … A donkey brays into the void … How many more dead children?”
Our second feature was Scribe and in the
long introduction that he’d provided for Bänoo to read, we learned that he is one third
of a performing collective named “The Uncharted” and we also were told that he
would leave the place with more energy than there was before he started.
Scribe told us, “When I stepped in I knew
it would be a church but the last time I was in a church reading poetry it was
the worst experience. I haven’t written the same since then. I haven’t been
able to go to the same place. Who restricts my voice? It’s weird being in a
church reading poetry. It’s like now I’m coming home and now I’m not.”
He admitted that he’d intended to read a
different poem but had chosen a different piece after stepping into the church.
It was clear this night and in this space that not only Scribe was allowing
himself to be swayed by this symbolic “spiritual” environment. Some people on the open stage seemed to have
deliberately brought material that they felt was appropriate to the pretensions
of the location.
From his first poem – “We are the barely
audible apology … Fools return to their folly as dogs return to their vomit …
Secrets we stuffed away in our chambers … Stained glass mosaic windows …
Forcefully ignored … Condemn the woman we are too busy blaming … So absorbed in
the idea of being lost, we forget …”
From his second poem – “I wasted my
potential … I didn’t have the words … Bent read and dead … assassination … my
cardiovascular chambers … These bars are more like golden rods … come to those
who aren’t afraid to be god … waiting to penetrate wrists and feet … Satellites
as kites … The sky … my playground … I think it’s time to climb off the monkey
bars and press play.”
Scribe told us, “I write poetry that is
98% personal stories. I like to share elements of myself. Thank you for
listening to me talk about myself. It’s a weird kind of vanity. I can’t step in
front of the mirror without dancing.”
From his third piece – “I am cloaked in a
leather jacket … A man with a face pale as the full moon, his right hand
clutches a badge … tells me to have a good night …”
Introducing his fourth piece, Scribe
said, “This is an ode, to Lea Shy” – “This is for soul, beats and poetry … This
is for good cooked food … This is for inside jokes … This is for Black barber
shops … This is for barbers … Sounding like we are speaking in tongues … Heavy
duty run downs … We are mistaken for masochists … This is for every pair of
arms … This is for coco butter kisses from your grandmother …”
Scribe told us, “I don’t do love poems. I
like reading love poems … I fell in love … It’s impossible to read love poems
that aren’t clichéd …” From his love poem – “I am terrified of heights but I
love the sensation of falling … A sensation of surrender … I wonder if my body
has arms that are strong enough to hold my expectations … The rest of me lies
parallel to the sky … Drilling into my emotions … Smash the GPS called my
conscience … When I’ve forgotten where I am … When I was younger I never
hesitated from my feelings … I scraped the skin clean off my back … As the
water dropped … I drew a deep breath … Having lungs filled with lake … I trust
my lover … The weight of trying to be the first … Love is the ocean … We know
more about space than we do about the Atlantic … The lake sized love I had as a
boy … I think it’s time I leave the pool deck and head for the shore.”
Scribe informed us that he didn’t have
any merch with him but that he has an album available for downloading and that
he would give the code to anyone that wants it and if they wanted to give him
money that would be great.
Introducing his next poem he said that he
grew up in the hood but now his neighbourhood’s becoming gentrified.
From “Babylon” – “Blowing bricks of our
buildings with dynamite … How you gonna turn this place into paradise …”
From his next poem - “There is only one
person that can wake me up … Love would be a cheap way to describe how I feel
about his laugh … He says ‘Hi Josh! I love you!’ I try to go back to sleep and
then he tickles me … He calls me a princess … I told him I couldn’t be a
princess … Do you want to be a prince? He says, ‘I can’t … cause I’m brown’ …
This bullet of racial inferiority … Price, who told you that? He wouldn’t give
me an answer … I felt every ounce of that same bullet lodged in my skull …”
Scribe’s next piece was addressed to
Martin Luther King Jr. – “You and I are separated by three generations and the
borders of our nations … You are the dream … Rip tides … Black royalty …
Wearing a black suit … After centuries of violence … ‘protest peacefully’ …
Doctor King … Each molecule of your make-up is anti-violent … Did you ever feel
this tense … When I remember being called ‘nigger’ … Tell me to be like you …
They murdered you … My coronation or my crucifixion … I’m not sure I’m prepared
to die … Afraid to live and afraid to die at the exact same time …”
Scribe spoke very briefly into his phone,
saying, “I love you.” He explained that it was his partner. He told us that he
switched to the iphone but has regretted it ever since.
Introducing his final piece, Scribe told
us, “I like babies! But I don’t want one right now.” The poem, “My Joy” was to
his imagined someday in the future child – “My dear little one, at this moment
you are more fantasy than idea … I’m unsure whether I’ll be able to write
poetry for you … Let me teach you about your smile … I took a picture of your
great-great grandmother … her grin is
so many miles wide … When your mouth splits into two rows of crystal sunshine …
Our joy does not know how to die … When you are being spoken to about your
potential … ten thousand African war drums … Every time you doubt what you are
born for … It bothers me that I am terrified of greatness … Every bloodlust of
my body … Greatness isn’t always beautiful … I will set myself ablaze … His
fist over his heart, a thousand African war drums must excavate themselves from
the ashes … I already am greatness, ready to fly.”
Scribe’s writing has some very strong
poetic moments and he is sometimes quite good at putting words together with
the sound of their musical flow in mind. I think he has a lot of potential, but
would suggest that he rework pieces with both a literary and spoken word
mindset, and not be so sure that they can’t be improved.
After the feature, as usual, Bänoo immediately
continued with the open stage.
First up was Mind the Gap, who introduced
her poem by telling us; “My friend died this time last year. He needed the kind
of help that he was giving to others.” The poem was called, “The Solo Gangster”
– “He may not roar like a lion, but he will bite your head off … He could drive
you up the wall but he would also drive you anywhere you want, for a price … In
memory of Adam Zawaski.”
Before introducing Simon, Bänoo informed us that
the next Shab-e She’r would be on January 31st.
Simon read two poems.
The first was entitled, “The Dim Light is
for a Separate Truth” – “I obey the thing that I have been taught … There is so
much to remember … Joan Armstrong needs my constant attention … To truly love
an older woman you have to know them when they are young … Women from the
youngest age eat well … The chaos of wealth … The anger of acceptance …I render
it larger than life … It is not the damned end result of anything.”
The second was called, “The Boat Dying
Within Full View of the Shore” – “The villagers in their simple huts … The
unwillingness to die unseen … Something like a miracle occurred … The boat
appeared as if from nowhere … Mare Nostrum … The boat dying … Their fear of
what they ahead … They sow nothing overhead.”
Then we heard Nick Micelli, who informed
us that this was the neighbourhood that he grew up in and so coming there
brought back memories. The poem he read was his take on the solstice, entitled,
“The Longest Night” – “My soul goes down deep … The swirling emotions all
bubbling and bright … I’m enveloped in peace … A blessing, my shadow! As the gloom
fills with light there’ll be none left but me.”
Then, with great enthusiasm, Bänoo welcomed to the
stage my Canadian Poetry professor at U of T, sporting a new haircut, “George
Elliot Clarke! Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate!”
George informed us that he would be
reading from his new book, “Canticles Number One”, that he had one copy with
him for sale and that it was only twenty dollars. Then he held his hand to his
ear, palm out as several people shouted back the traditional response, “Only
twenty dollars?”
He announced that the poem he would be
reading was “Discourse On Pleasure, in the voice of Alexander Pushkin”. It’s
hard to describe in text the powerful reading style of George Elliot Clarke,
who could probably make a page from the telephone book sound epic and who even
sounds like he’s reading a poem when he calls out our names for roll call in
our class. George also sometimes spontaneously decides to repeat certain lines
a second time, louder and more dramatically as if he thought people hadn’t
heard them.
From the poem – “Her face less Nordic and
more Asian … Smoking salmon on white bread … Scores of iced vodka, pleasure
makes comfy my heart. Scores Of Iced Vodka! Pleasure Makes Comfy My Heart! Her
speech drips acid …She’s as fickle as a tyrant … Demeanour of a dead nun … her
mumbo jumbo, her incremental dementia … She goes violently violent … Looking
like eggplant I hate to eat. Looking Like Eggplant I Hate To Eat! Incoherent
and inexplicable … My luxuries become liabilities … I take my muse … happy in
the joggling tray … She’s atavistic, mirthful, a smouldering odour at her
breast … Her soft mildness … the kisses … the climax each night and then the
prize!”
When Bänoo returned to the stage, she declared that
George Elliot Clarke is the best poet laureate ever because he still goes on
open mics.
After George was Norman Perrin, who told
us, “I was listening to the poems but my thoughts keep churning. He said he was
going to tell us a story but that he had to tell us a story first. He said he
had gone to his place for telling stories but there was a drummer there who
insisted that it was his spot. Norman told us that he didn’t want to argue with
someone that hits things for a living. He went someplace where he made a circle
of stones with a space for an entrance and he sat inside. Children came but he
told them that they had to enter through the door, so they did and he had a
space for telling stories. He said, “Over the thousands of years we’ve been
telling stories, we tell stories in the light to remind u of the darkness and
we tell stories in the darkness to remind us of the light.”
From his story – “Once there was a hunter
… He shot the animals and terrorized the entire forest until one day he could
not find a single creature except for one little yellow bird that said, “Nya
nya nya clap clap clap!” He shot the bird but the bird was still there saying,
“Nya nya nya clap clap clap!” He broke the bird into a hundred little pieces,
but still heard, “Nya nya nya clap clap clap!” He buried every little piece of
the bird, but he could still hear the slightly muffled sound of “Nya nya nya
clap clap clap! “He dug it up and threw it on a bonfire then he scattered the
ashes to the four winds, but when he turned around he saw millions of little
yellow birds simultaneously saying, “Nya nya nya clap clap clap!” The hunter
smashed his gun and then ran to the Himalayas where he became a vegetarian.”
Following Norman was the minister of St
Stephen in the Fields Anglican Church, Maggie Helwig. She almost apologetically
confessed that she’d forgotten to take her collar off before the reading but
then thought, “What the hell!” She told us that what she had to read for us had
been written a while ago because she doesn’t have much time to write anymore.
Her first poem was written about her
involvement with Occupy Toronto and it was called, “St James Park, November
2011” – “The city imagines itself existing … The smoke and mud … The city
imagines that the desire for god is the knowledge of god … We live in the
sweetness of absence … Sound of a wave over shell and stone … Trust in his art
… Out of lake and dark valley the city … The small self whispers … The desire
is the knowledge … This the winter’s heart, a city out of time.”
In introducing her second poem she
reminded us that there are many lost rivers in Toronto. The one that ran
through the neighbourhood where the church was built was Russell Hill Creek.
Her poem was inspired by a dream she’d had that the river came back – “A thin
river curls behind Dundas Street … the air is falling sweet … In the dreams
there is always water … A waterfall clear as the air … The scent of smoke and
memory … The only and logical promise: ‘I will be accurate and uncertain’ … Night blooming jasmine …”
She asked Bänoo for permission to read one more and of
course Bänoo said it was okay.
Maggie told us that the poem was about
the thief that was crucified beside Jesus. She said that she grew up near the
Church of the Good Thief and that informed how she thought about god. From the
poem – “Knowing this, nailed to the side of god … Perhaps she learns it then
and near to another shore the trinity suffers … Pin us against god’s heart … Oh
holy three, dying at the curve of the skull … find us at the end loyal to our
stories.”
Next was Mizan, who told us that he
accidentally started writing poetry and that thanks to god he recites most of
them.
From his first poem – “There is someone.
We don’t know how great he is. Goes on and on. He’s the one who planned this
universe. Have to reach his destiny.”
From “Blessing” – “Human beings are the
blessing of god. Life is too short for those who realized.”
He finished with a song that he’d written
that reminded me in its melody and beat of many of the Hindu songs that I
learned when I was studying yoga in 1975. There were a lot of repeated phrases
in Mizan’s song – “World lured by so many systems … hypocrisy, domination, we
don’t care if climate change …”
Then came Chai, who said, “Merry
Christmas” but pointed out that we could see from his t-shirt that he’s not much
of a god-fearing type. I couldn’t read his t-shirt. He announced to cheers from
the audience that he’d just bought George Elliot Clarke’s book. He also told us
that he was in Buffalo recently, canvassing against the Drumpf. Chai, as usual, announced that he is the
poet of choice and gave us a choice of two poems, but unlike previous times he
made it clear that the choice was between which poem he would read first rather
than giving people the impression they were choosing the only poem he was going
to read and then reading the other anyway.
The poem chosen was, “iphone and I” – “I
phone anyone in the world but me … Why is knowing everyone’s business more
important than knowing myself … How much can one know … Who does not know
iphone … Why do you expect my response right away? I still want you as my
friend … Not the same as back slapping conversation … I long for my friends’
friendly touch and hugs … How do we get knowledge from data …”
Chai’s second poem was one I’d heard him
read before, called, “Skyline is Rising and Tree line is Falling” – “As my
village turns into town and town turns into city … long shadow in the city …
Help our mother by digging up our slow motion parking lots …”
The final open stage reader was Allen
Weiss, who read the opening to his story called “Making Light”, about a Jewish
wizard – “Eleazar’s brain fooled him into thinking he was a healthy man again …
he relieved himself … The constellations had hardly moved … Why is the sun
trying to rise at the same time … That was a theological question … Winter was
coming, Hanukkah was not far away … Melik kept his pace …” While Allen read but
people were starting to leave and I saw that George was packing up as well. I
was disappointed because I’d been hoping that he’d be around to chat at the
end. I was also hoping that he would leak to me the grade for my paper on
Confessionalism. I think that he and others might have stuck around if Allen
had read a poem, but there was no end in sight for what sounded like a novel.
Allen continued – “Where could the light be coming from … Eleazar climbed down
… On a low rise in the distance … What was a giant menorah doing in the middle
of the desert?”
Bänoo returned to the stage and reminded us of what she’d said before
about how Iranians celebrate this night by staying up, eating nice things and
reading poetry. Banoo read a translation of one of the traditional poems that
are read on Yalda night. I think it was by Hafez. I couldn’t make out the last
line of her translation so I’ll add one from another that I found – “With a jug
of wine in hand … last night at midnight came and sat by your bedside … Oh my
lunatic lover, are you sleeping … The loner is infidel …Go away hermit, don’t
fault the drunk … Whether heavenly wine or the drunk drink …” … this wine on the
face of the cup has broken many vows.
When we were done, I went looking for Cy,
but he was doing something in the kitchen, so I just started getting dressed.
When he came out we chatted about a French song by Serge Gainsbourg that I’d
asked him to transcribe as a favour to me. Then we talked about the new space
and he offered the view that Bänoo needs to colonize the church for Shab-e She’r and maybe put up a
banner so that people are not staring at the cross behind the poets when they
are reading or feeling it stare back at them. We had clearly had the same
observation during the readings that despite Maggie’s permissions about
language, poets were being swayed by the crosses, the icons and by the very
fact that they were reading in a church.
Luciano Iacobelli in particular, despite assurances that it was alright
to use any language, made it clear that because of his religious upbringing he
was not going to swear in a church. I think this is one of the worst attitudes
a poet can possibly have. If you wrote it you should read it to an audience.
The church has been offered not as a church but rather as a neutral space for
poetry readings. If a poet were invited
to a religious event that is being held at the church, then as with any themed
event, it would be appropriate to bring writing that fits the atmosphere that
the theme is trying to construct. This is why when Barack Obama, for instance,
gave secular speeches at churches he had the cross behind him covered and when
he spoke at religious services in churches the crosses were not covered. I
wondered if Maggie would go along with the covering of the cross. Cy felt
pretty sure that she’d be okay with it. He said that he’d be more comfortable
if the readings were just held in the gym area at the west end of the building.
Certainly if the readings are held in the worship area, even if the cross is
covered, people like Luciano would still censor themselves and that is a
problem. Maybe it’s their problem though. If a lot of poets think as Luciano
does, or change what poetry they would read based on the location, the church
is clearly a limitation. I’m glad that it doesn’t affect me. I’ll read whatever
I want wherever I want to read it.
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