PanCanadian WordFest, the Banff-Calgary Writers Festival, brings together over 50 writers from around the world in venues ranging from formal theaters to jazz clubs to high schools. Generally the arena readings grab the attention -- I participated in a 6-poet, 5-piece band and theater director collaboration that was a highlight -- but it was a noon reading at a small art gallery that galvanized me, a reading that was a barometer of poetry’s move towards the center of things, of how poets can make the moves to take it there and not be corporate shills.
I’ve known the writings of Clifton Joseph and Sheri-D Wilson for a while. Joseph is a powerhouse Dub poet from Toronto: he’s “a be-bop wailer & hollerin’ ghost,” to quote Larry Neal, and a jazzman and organizer, too. His poetry television shows leap off the screen. Wilson is Queen of Canada’s PerfPo scene, with a brand new CD out -- she also writes and acts in plays, and is funnysexy.
These poets are wild, understand -- I mean, Sheri-D wrote a book of poems, Girl’s Guide to Giving Head (Arsenal Pulp Press, 1999), do you read me? This kind of community outreach is not a teaching gig like the amazing poets-in-the-schools programs inspired by Kenneth Koch. This is a “standard reading.” You’re hired to be a poet: so what do you do in front of an audience of 60, including 20 children between the ages of six and eleven?
What they did, was to rock the house in such a fashion that all sentient beings were riveted -- tweaking their game plan to bring in the whole audience, and not send parents racing for earplugs. Here’s a blow by blow:
poetry's move toward the center of things
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After a droll and insightful intro by Noah Richter, the poets took stage together. Immediately the crowd knew something was different, and the easy banter of the two poets further defused the rather formal atmosphere of the Calgary Art Gallery. This was going to be a tag-team reading, and before you could say “For our first poem...” Clifton had cupped his hands to his mouth like a conch, a shofar, and was wailing harmonics meant for the walls of Jericho. The audience was impressed, and the kids were loving it, as Clifton busted out into a one-man dub band with guitar licks and bass thumps.
how poets can make the moves...
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Sheri-D followed with a scatty-rhymey singsong about Paula, the Airplane Goddess, that trilled with humor and packed a hilarious punchline. Clifton came back with a poem about back home, Antigua, and in an audience where he was the only black person (there was one Asian woman there), the universality of being away from home resonated for all, but was special to him. Sheri-D segued into “I am back home!” and indeed she is -- after years on the boho circuit in San Francisco, New York and London, she has settled back into Calgary, her hometown. She was going to read a poem about being home, but, alas, she couldn’t find it -- it must have been left -- at home! Then she entered into “Crow Fusion,” a dark poem that crosses to story-telling mode: we all went on a journey, words took on different meanings, somehow animals might just be humans. In an arts audience, “Crow Fusion” might seem too prosey... here it was magic. The children were totally engrossed in the story, and Sheri kept it moving out to the adults too.
...to take it there and not be corporate shills
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Clifton replied with a reggae koan: “If they give you fish, you eat fish, but if they teach you to fish, it’s cool” before launching into a homiletic on black-on-black violence, without skirting killer cops on the other side as you walk the sidewalk tightrope. He pulled us into the world of the Toronto black community with no punches pulled. You could see the kids sit up --they were hearing a Truth from the Source, and appreciated it. Sheri-D talked of her roots then, how she switched from ballet to poetry by buying a table to write on, a hilarious saga that ended with her being tied down to the table, keys lost, and having peed her pants. I don’t do it justice, but it was a perfect story about starving artists and growing up. Sheri-D began to take on Lucille Ball hilarity!
Poets who speak of sex, and sweat, and politics
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“Intense Paranoia” allowed Clifton to act, too -- who’s that over the shoulder? In place of the “F” word he said “France” and “Franceing” and it was so clear and funny and deft that the audience was bowled over. Sheri-D’s last poem was a speech from her play, Sin City, that was sexy but with words of flamboyance and metaphor, not flesh, and concluded by her sitting on? giving birth to? a huge chocolate egg. Clifton brought the reading to a close full-circle with “Untitled,” another all-sound one-man reggae band piece that was beyond and beneath language.
Poets who speak of sex, and sweat, and politics. Who trade poems. Who look to the show and don’t read too long or care that the same poet opens and closes. Who temper when necessary (“France”? for the “F” word? Genius!) but are never anything less than the poets they are. Arena readings -- you get a mass market audience, and a quiet, appreciative house. At noon in an art gallery, with a walk-in audience aged from 6 to 60 -- you must push the envelope in many different directions. Clifton and Wilson did it like pros. The audience ate up their books. And the kids? Well, of course... they all want to be poets when they grow up.
Bob Holman
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