Went to two different events in the last few days. The first one on
Friday Evening (June 26 2009) was the normal poetry slam held at the
Front Cafe. Compared to last months infamous, woman's only, reading the joint was packed out, indeed I felt claustrophobic and had to step outside into the early winter evening to get some space.
The usual gang of poets descended like locusts devouring and
spewing out all manner of words. I hung about for about half of the
evening, chatting with assorted people, drinking a few beers, before
the discomfort of the large crowd in the small venue got the
better of me, and I left. Sad to say that the crowd was so large that it became difficult to hear some of the readers.
A friend from my work came along and we both enjoyed the
evening. As the rhymes and riddims spread across the room, special
attention was drawn to Anthony's declamation of the bus voucher.
Leading to (or following from), discussions of the Platonic ideal and the language of object oriented programming OOP, and the naming and ordering of found poetry.
Which for no obvious reason raises an interesting question. Compared to last month's relatively poor turnout, what gives? Knowing Julian fairly well, at least in his guise as a poetry Svengali, I can vouch for his commitment to being inclusive in who is allowed to read. Is this even a problem, an issue? Are we all to blame, are we blameless? Are we thrown and lost in the maelstrom? Do we lack the understanding to crawl ourselves unto the earthly paradise?
Paradise bower bird males gathering shiny Moriarty blue objects,
building preening dancing stages. Is this biology, simple chemistry and little else? Are poets only looking for the pleasure that matter brings? Of course (everyone says) there is more to the creation of art than Werther's sturm und sorrow drang. Confronting naked lunch at the end of the fork? If not now when?
One does not have to look very long or hard (pun intended??) to find many instances and discussions of the unifying of sexual and creative energy.
My love talks of the intimidating stance and speech of the men
poets, I can not fault her argument. As part of the problem...
On Monday I went to Smith's Books for a book launch of local poet, Fiona McIlory. The book was launched by Green Party member Ms Caroline
Le Couteur MLA. Praise was given to small business as being members of the community, and how money spent at small business stayed in the community. This is all very true, but also is the fact that giant oaks grow from tiny acorns. There is an intelligence within the exploitive relationship which wishes to unfold itself.
Touching accessible poems of life and love and loss.
One tiny bit stuck a sore point with me. In a poem, which I did
not catch the title of, comment was made of using Vista to access the internet, facebook, GetUp et al. Surely in this day and age of solid, easy (relatively) to install GUN/Linux distributions, no right thinking progressive person or organinsation can justify using Micr$oft products.
- Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
- Freedom 1: The freedom to study and modify the program.
- Freedom 2: The freedom to copy the program so you can help your neighbor.
- Freedom 3: The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
And then some songs were sung by the poet. And then I had to dash off into the night. The bookends of my weekend. Friday and Monday night.
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