Floppy Tongue
I set up a blog last month with the intention of joining Calgary's big blog club - imagine my irritation when my password was shut out. I don't know what happened there, because I'm absolutely postively convinced I was using the proper password. So I emailed the blogger people, reset my password, and the whole thing happened all over again. So I've set up another blog, reasoning that this one will work just fine because I've, like, paid my dues. I hope it keeps working. I have blog envy.
A few nights ago (Jan 12) I got to participate in the Flywheel Experiment. I tried to get on board last year (the Jocelyn Grosse/James Dangerous musical interpretation of Christian Bok year - so good) but was too late, the poets in this town being a vigorous and eager bunch. I haven't been so nervous about a reading for a long time. Well, I've been nervous about audience reaction at readings very recently, but I haven't just been plain scared of reading the words out loud before. Ryan Fitzpatrick, lord of the flywheel experiment, cunningly gave me Colin Martin's work to read. Colin does a lot of restrictive writing, for example a bunch of his poems are written either with the left or right hand side of the keyboard. This is something I found out after the reading, and of course I felt like a tit for not having noticed. Using this technique, you get a lot of "lumpy pumpkin pump" and "loop" and "loll" and a bit of "moon moujik mukluk"... you get the idea. It's serious fun to read. A few things happened at various times:
- I sounded like a gibberish-spouting cat lady.
- I sounded like an anchorwoman.
- My face twisted all over the place and a little spit came out.
It's fair to say it was a challenge for me. I think that's what Ryan had in mind (he's always trying to spank down my lyricism). I'm not sure what Colin thought about it. He pointed out after the reading that one of his poems, which I suggested sounded like babytalk when read aloud, was in fact about a murder scene. I think he may have thought I was a bit of a tit too. But I thought the experience was excellent. It made me think about the physical act of pronunciation and how easily it can prompt emotional states. While I guess this wasn't a revelation, it gained a far more tangible understanding of this phenomenon than I had previously had. Now I keep thinking about Jordon Scott's blert poems. And I have that nasty feeling of being overly aware that my tongue is just an organ that sort of flops around in my mouth. Eee.
Also, I tried to convince Colin Martin that NOD should join the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association (the fine organization for which I work). Everyone with a good arts & lit magazine should join AMPA. We're having a big joint launch party for all our arts & lit publications on March 2 - just today Christian Bok agreed to perform. Despite Calgary's new status as poetry central, I've noticed that the literary community is still divided into factions. Some are deliberate, I guess, because of bad blood or other such nonsense, but others exist simply because certain people haven't been introduced yet. For example, there's an extraordinary publisher called Karen Neudorf who puts together a terrific magazine called Beyond. I wonder to myself, why has she not been introduced to everyone I know? Anyway, that's what I'm hoping will happen with this launch party, that the filling Station/dANDelion tag team will interbreed with the Beyond folks, who will adopt FreeFall (did you know they're looking for a new editorial collective?), who will bond with old school mags like Prairie Journal and have drinks with the Alberta Views lefties and the sweet-natured Legacy folks, and all will unite to suck NOD into the AMPA community...aw heck, I shouldn't bring my work home with me.
I'm going to post something else tomorrow, just to see if it works.
A few nights ago (Jan 12) I got to participate in the Flywheel Experiment. I tried to get on board last year (the Jocelyn Grosse/James Dangerous musical interpretation of Christian Bok year - so good) but was too late, the poets in this town being a vigorous and eager bunch. I haven't been so nervous about a reading for a long time. Well, I've been nervous about audience reaction at readings very recently, but I haven't just been plain scared of reading the words out loud before. Ryan Fitzpatrick, lord of the flywheel experiment, cunningly gave me Colin Martin's work to read. Colin does a lot of restrictive writing, for example a bunch of his poems are written either with the left or right hand side of the keyboard. This is something I found out after the reading, and of course I felt like a tit for not having noticed. Using this technique, you get a lot of "lumpy pumpkin pump" and "loop" and "loll" and a bit of "moon moujik mukluk"... you get the idea. It's serious fun to read. A few things happened at various times:
- I sounded like a gibberish-spouting cat lady.
- I sounded like an anchorwoman.
- My face twisted all over the place and a little spit came out.
It's fair to say it was a challenge for me. I think that's what Ryan had in mind (he's always trying to spank down my lyricism). I'm not sure what Colin thought about it. He pointed out after the reading that one of his poems, which I suggested sounded like babytalk when read aloud, was in fact about a murder scene. I think he may have thought I was a bit of a tit too. But I thought the experience was excellent. It made me think about the physical act of pronunciation and how easily it can prompt emotional states. While I guess this wasn't a revelation, it gained a far more tangible understanding of this phenomenon than I had previously had. Now I keep thinking about Jordon Scott's blert poems. And I have that nasty feeling of being overly aware that my tongue is just an organ that sort of flops around in my mouth. Eee.
Also, I tried to convince Colin Martin that NOD should join the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association (the fine organization for which I work). Everyone with a good arts & lit magazine should join AMPA. We're having a big joint launch party for all our arts & lit publications on March 2 - just today Christian Bok agreed to perform. Despite Calgary's new status as poetry central, I've noticed that the literary community is still divided into factions. Some are deliberate, I guess, because of bad blood or other such nonsense, but others exist simply because certain people haven't been introduced yet. For example, there's an extraordinary publisher called Karen Neudorf who puts together a terrific magazine called Beyond. I wonder to myself, why has she not been introduced to everyone I know? Anyway, that's what I'm hoping will happen with this launch party, that the filling Station/dANDelion tag team will interbreed with the Beyond folks, who will adopt FreeFall (did you know they're looking for a new editorial collective?), who will bond with old school mags like Prairie Journal and have drinks with the Alberta Views lefties and the sweet-natured Legacy folks, and all will unite to suck NOD into the AMPA community...aw heck, I shouldn't bring my work home with me.
I'm going to post something else tomorrow, just to see if it works.
posted by Julia Williams | 5:44 PM
1 Comments:
Awesome! Though the reason you read Colin was so I could have Chris read you and Colin read derek, meaning that you reading Colin and derek reading Chris sort of fell into place. I was pleasantly surprised then that derek's reading and your reading were my faves of the night.
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