The POWERTRY Collective
The POWERTRY Collective was formed in March of this year. It is an arts initiative that is dedicated to developing and fostering a strong, thriving and supportive creative community (locally, nationally and inter-galactically).
There’s three main areas that the organization will focus on:
1. SHOWS and PERFORMANCES- Sticks and Stanzas, slams, theatrical productions, book readings/launches, Estrogen(ius) Showcase, festivals, etc.
2. COMMUNITY EVENTS- Dearest You Street Campaign, Christmas Basket, Annual Fundraiser/Gala, Terry Fox Run, etc.
3. WORKSHOPS- writing and performing, grant writing, DIY projects, touring, the business of art/the art of business, etc.
TPC is currently seeking like-minded individuals to join the crew, as workshop facilitators, volunteers, stage managers and features/performers. The team will be comprised of both arts workers as well as art lovers, from a variety of artistic and professional backgrounds.
If you are interested in learning more about The POWERTRY Collective and how you can get involved, there will be a meeting of minds on:
1. Saturday, January 2, 2010
My Thai Kitchen
3080 Bloor Street West
Etobicoke, ON
1 pm
RSVP by Monday, December 28, 2009
2. Sunday, January 10, 2010
Kelsey’s
84 Lynden Road
Brantford, ON
3 pm
RSVP by Monday, January 4, 2010
*Please note that times and locations may change due to group numbers and availability*
*For those living outside of the 416-905-519 area code that are unable to attend either meeting, TPC would love to hear from you! Please contact Kiki at thepowertrycollective@gmail.com to arrange a gathering in your area.
News From The Road: Nov 15, 2009
Finals Night!
***note: i’ve included websites/myspaces for artists where possible. i also highly encourage you to youtube all of these artists, as that may be the only way to actually watch/hear some of their spoken word.***
Saturday night we moved to Alix Goolden Hall, a mesmerizingly beautiful church-turned-performance hall. Opening the evening was Female Poet of Honour Andrea Thompson, with some beautiful new poems and some favourite old ones. Following Andrea was C. R. Avery, whose ability to beatbox through a harmonica still manages to send tingles up my spine every time I hear it. C. R. closed his set with a rousing tribute to Pierre Trudeau that could have raised a feeling of nostalgic patriotism in even the most cynical Canadian. After a short break, we were treated to three of the festival’s favourite poems: one from Saskatoon’s Megan Lane, one from the incredible Emily of Lanark County, and a team piece from Team Toronto.
Then, the most awe-inspiring, foot-stomping, finger-snapping night of poetry I have ever witnessed in my entire life began. The 800-seat venue was almost full, and the crowd was treated to a level of poetry many of us had never seen. I wish I had time to go through every poem, but I’ll just stick with the highlights: Rachna Vohra from Montreal had us all snapping for her imploring poem about natural beauty; Magpie Ulysses with her fiery call for hot winter love; and Chris Gilpin’s beloved open letter to Sasquatch. But the real superstars of the night were Team Ottawa, who brought the house down with every single piece, in particular a team piece by Emcee E and Poetic Speed that was so tight, so well-written, and so captivating, it was easily one of my favourite pieces of the festival. Ottawa took home their first ever CFSW championship, and the grin on team member Brandon Wint’s face was worth a thousand words of poetry.
It was a long week of intensity and beauty, intimate connections and side-splitting laughter. As we come home after staying up all night to bid adieu to our new and old poetry friends, I am first and foremost full of gratitude for the friends I have made in this amazing community, for my lovely and talented team members, and for the support of one of the most loving spoken word scenes in the country, the London Slam. We’re hoping that we can bring a contingent to the festival next year in Ottawa, but in the meantime, we’ll see you at the next slam, this Friday, Nov 20!
Showin’ the love,
Elyse
News From The Road: Nov 14, 2009
The second night of bouts had the London team facing off against “teams to watch” Ottawa and Vancouver, and against the surprise superstars from Saskatoon. It was a tough bout, to be sure: Vancouver brought their usual share of hilarious envelope-pushing antics, including a team piece about poetry on bathroom walls; Ottawa brought their usual hard-hitting and lyrical poetry, as well as a hilarious ode to his laptop by Ian ‘Emcee E’ Keteku called “Laptop Love”, and Saskatoon continued to bring their best. London sent Sly up on stage first to perform our beloved “Starfish”; I went up second with my piece about the heternormative white-picket fantasy; Jeff performed his piece about his dad with amazing passion; and Kyra (“Pebbles”), accompanied by Jeff and Elyse brought up the rear repping the forest city with Chiaroscuro (“Damn baby girl, you’s a cutie…”). We were really proud of the quality and passion of poetry we brought the stage, regardless of the points.
After the bout, Kyra and I stuck around to participate in our first ever Poetry Decathlon, which included rounds such as a haiku death match (head-to-head haiku face-off), an interpretive dance round, a Scrabble match (which I lost soundly to Vancouver’s Scruffmouth, in which another team member then had to write a poem using only the words I played (hint: it ended with the phrase “tit pie”), and the infamous cupcake round. The cupcake round involves a member of each team eating 10 cupcakes, then proving they’d finished (as opposed to just cramming) by reciting a haiku. For my team, Festival Director Steven J. Thompson managed to beat Spillious from Vancouver to the 10th cupcake, only to end up on his knees with his insides all over the stage, one of the more legendary moments of the festival.
With our bouts behind us and the pressure off, we went into Friday’s bouts with excitement and anticipation to just sit back and enjoy the poetry. Up that night were team Victoria, whose highlight poems included Dave Morris’s “If This Were a Crappy Love Song”, a love poem to his partner Missie Peters (also on myspace), whose “Dear Plastic” was a hilarious and cutting ode to plastic. Team Winnipeg sent up second-time team member Leif Norman who performed a 7:47-long orchestral satire that brought the audience (at least the poets) to its feet and gave the festival another legendary moment. In a week when a lot of folks get caught up in the competition, it was beautiful to see Team Winnipeg reinforce the notion that the “poetry is the point”. Montreal had many memorable poems, but foremost among them was team piece from the three female members of the team, written by Alessandra Naccarato. It was a gut-wrenching piece that was quite possibly my favourite of the festival (and one that we’ll be playing on the next radio show!).
To round off the night, the crowd (which by that point was mostly poets) was treated to a foot-stomping, mind-blowing show with opener C. R. Avery (this year’s Male Poet of Honour) and feature perfomers The Fugitives (also on myspace). As weird as it may have been for Barbara, Brendan (who will be featuring in London in January), and Adrian to have the crowd know almost every word to every song (even the new ones!), they clearly enjoyed every minute as much as the crowd did.
After three nights of intense and amazing poetry, the finals bout was decided: it would be Ottawa, Vancouver, Slaughterhouse Four (the Wild Card Team), and Montreal.
News From The Road: Nov 12, 2009
So the London Team drew the second bout of the first night, which meant we got to sit back and watch the crazy-amazing first bout between the VanSlam, Wild Card, Capital Slam (Ottawa), and Calgary teams. It was an interesting and intense match, and real reminder of how much the audience matters in terms of how the poetry is received (I know it sounds funny, but it becomes very apparent when you see poems that would score completely differently in front of a different crowd.) Highlight poems of the night include Zaccheus Jackson from the Wild Card Team, and almost all of the Ottawa team (we’ll bring home their CD and play their stuff on the radio show for you, and we’re also planning on inviting them up some time).
The second bout was ours, and we were up against newcomers to the festival Saskatoon, Lanark County, and Montreal. We sent Jeff up first with his piece “It Is What It Isn’t” (“None of those actual wonderful magical hugs from those happy-go-lucky-types feel nice…”). He performed it the most passionately he ever has, and we were so proud! In the next round, Kyra performed “Mamma Says” flawlessly, showering the crowd with the London love. Sly threw the crowd to their feet with “Digging to China” in the third round, and we finished off the night with Kyra and I performing “providers’ grace,” my poem about Dr. Tiller. We ended up finishing third in the round by 0.2 points, behind Saskatoon and winners Montreal. There were many, many highlight moments, but for now, we’ve got to rehearse and get ready for tonight’s bout. More coming tomorrow!
Peace,
Elyse
News From The Road: Nov 10, 2009
The first day of the festival saw dozens of poets pouring into Victoria. We started our morning with some coffees and tea in the amazing local cafe Habitat, where we took over a large table that one local was sitting at, causing him to be highly entertained but to fail to get any significant work done.
We then moved on to the Victoria Event Centre, the venue for most of the festival, where we helped a couple members of the Victoria team do an interview and a mock slam for the local A channel. Still haven’t seen the spot on TV, but we’ll let you know if we do!
After an afternoon full of rehearsal, we registered and sat down at the VEC for the Last Chance Slam (for those of you who don’t know, this is where any poet in the country can slam off to be a member of the Wild Card Team that competes against all the city teams in the National Slam). It was a mind-blowing evening of amazing poetry, including notables Mary Pinkoski (www.reverbnation.com/marypinkoski) and Jeremy Loveday (www.jeremyloveday.blogspot.com). In the end, the Wild Card team came down to tfour poets, almost all of whom have all been on the national stage before: Toronto’s Truth Is… (http://www.myspace.com/truthisellipsis) and Made Wade (http://www.myspace.com/madewade), and Vancouver’s Magpie Ulysses (http://www.myspace.com/magpieulysses) and Zaccheus Jackson Nyce (http://www.myspace.com/perfectlyincomplete). Highlights also included the group of local Victorians sitting at the table in front of us, none of whom had ever been to a slam before. Needless to say, they were absolutely blown away by the talent and the power of the spoken word they saw, and are full converts to the amazingness of spoken word poetry!
A couple of us rounded out the evening with a round of poetry tag in one of the Halifax team’s rooms (for those who don’t know, poetry tag is exactly what it sounds like–one performer starts, then when they’re done, they tag someone else they want to hear a poem from, and so on). Many phenomenal poems were heard, but our favourite was definitely from Ottawa team member Ian (whose info we’ll get to you as soon as we can find it!).
Gotta go get ready for our first bout tonight…we’re showing the love all over the place and thinking of you all.
Peace,
Elyse
News From The Road: Nov 9, 2009
After very little sleep and an early morning, the whole London Poetry Slam team arrived at the London Airport excited to embark on this crazy adventure. We got a late start because of the fog, but arrived in Calgary in plenty of time for our second flight. The day was filled with lots of naps on Kyra’s part and lots of hilarious antics, excitement, and inappropriate public conversation topics.
We settled into our awesome suite at the Best Western Carlton Plaza in the heart beautiful downtown Victoria and set out to explore the city and get some groceries. While Char and Sly got a tour of the city from Victoria hometowner Kristy Westendorp, Kyra and I went on our own “homemade” tour armed with the handy map from the front desk and eventually ended up at the Big Rock Showdown at the Victoria Event Centre, where most of the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word events will be happening.
The Showdown included 7 Victoria artists who got 7 minutes each to show us their stuff, with a $100 audience-voted prize. We got treated to some miming, some stand-up, some improv, some improv audience-included rap, some indie music, and some very creepy but sort of funny improv from a baby lamb. It was an almost equally entertaining and creepy evening, but lovely to see/sit with friends Missie Peters and Skawt Jonzz, members of the Vic slam team, Steven Thompson, CFSW Festival Director, and Sasha Prynn, Artist Liaison for the festival.
Highlights for Sunday include: arriving to our hotel room to a vase of flowers from Moira, a friend from London who made the trip out here to support the team (and see Victoria); Kyra deciding that she will no longer be referring to any of us by our given names, but instead by our stage/nicknames for the rest of the week; the absolutely hilarious comedic singer/songwriter who closed the show (whose name I’ve forgotten, but I’ll find it) with a song about how she wants to marry George Stromboulopoulos; Kyra’s dance moves; and winning a hoodie at the show last night for suggesting “milking a cow” to the improv performer on stage.
More updates to come (hopefully daily-ish) with photos to boot! Stay tuned!
POETRY LONDON
CALL FOR POETRY SUBMISSIONS
towards a limited-edition 2010 chapbook
In celebration of the 175th anniversary of Eldon House—a major historic and heritage site located in London, Ontario— Poetry London invites poetry submissions about Eldon House.
Virtually unchanged since the last century, Eldon House was built for Captain John and Amelia Harris in 1894. Set on a piece of high ground overlooking the forks of the Thames, Eldon House was an important social and cultural centre of activity during the 19th century. As London’s oldest residence, Eldon House contains family heirlooms, furnishings, and treasures of the Harris family, as well as a re-created Victorian garden. Open to public visitors since the 1960s, it was gifted to the City of London as a museum in 1959.
Subject matter for the poetry submissions may include —but is not limited to— the house, its history and inhabitants, as well as the grounds or artefacts contained within.
Successful contributors will be published in an exclusive, limited-edition chapbook printed by Poetry London in cooperation with Museum London. Contributors will receive an honorarium and a complimentary copy of the book. In addition, a select number of contributors will be asked to read their poems at a special launch of the publication, to be held on the lawn of Eldon House, in May 2010.
Send 1-3 poems, along with a cover letter with your full name, contact information, email address, and a brief 50 word bio to:
Poetry London Eldon House Project
c/o Christine Walde
16 The Ridgeway
London, ON, N6C 1A1
The deadline (postmarked) for this project is: January 15, 2010. >
