| POETRY CURRENTS | |
CORRESPONDENT TO CORRESPONDENT
This round, Chris Blakeley (community literary calendar coordinator for Eleventh Hour Productions and the newest addition to our team of Museletter correspondents) and Danika Dinsmore (Director of Eleventh Hour Productions) decided to have a little online literary dialogue regarding happenings in the Pacific Northwest. The virtual conversation went as follows:
DANIKA - Chris, you are the official “calendar” guy for Seattle area literary events... I was just wondering if there are particular open mics you attend and how they differ? Energy? Audience? Tone?
CHRIS - Any particular? Differences? Ye gods, Danika, you really haven't gotten out much.
DANIKA - Well, the thing is, I don't get out to open mics very often. It's not just that I'm a little burnt out (having been to more than 1,000 poetry readings in the last 8 years), I'm also so immersed in poetry in my daily work-life that I try to explore other artistic arenas on my off hours (like the new Star Trek series on Wednesday nights).
CHRIS - Tsk, only a thousand? Wimp. <*grins*>
DANIKA - Plus, every time I go to an open mic or slam in Seattle, conversation invariably turns to the Poetry Festival or what's happening with Eleventh Hour. Half my friends are involved in some way, shape, or form with our activities. There's no escape…
CHRIS - Well, let's see, between my own self and my recent introductions to a new arrival to Seattle, I've been back to my old haunts and will probably be checking out some new ones in the near future. For now, I can talk about four:
First up are, well, the typical scenes: Red Sky Poetry Theatre is your typical open mic without too much variance and, of course, the Seattle Poetry Slam is your typically atypical slam. The mic is almost stubbornly polite and the slam is wild and raucous and, theoretically at least, anything goes.
DANIKA - Red Sky was the first poetry reading I ever attended in Seattle and it's a perennial favorite. It's the oldest running open mic in Seattle. Many of our greatest poets have graced that microphone. A warm venue with a fairly reliable cast of talent.
CHRIS - A bit different from those is Hypocrisy, which would be your standard mic but for the crowd. Much younger than most other local scenes, it seems to be a respite for some slam regulars, a chance to rehearse a piece without having to bother with the hassle of points, just the rush from the audience. Of course, the vibe of the room changes from week to week, but I tend to find it a very satisfying room.
And then there are the Poetry Games, which are difficult to explain. Basically it's a slam and it's more or less competitive but it's framed as a board game as opposed to being judged by strangers in the audience. Dice rolls are managed by means of a decibel reader, with the calibration poet now being used to figure out what a rolled three would be and a scale is extrapolated from there. This is probably one of the more typically raucous rooms I've been in lately and it's a lot of fun to read there. Better still are the challenges issued during the mic itself, but that's another story.
The oddest thing I've noticed of late (courtesy of getting poetic friends to come along) is that it seems like every room is trying very hard not to be something, without saying what that “something” is. The slams are trying not to be so quiet, the mics are trying not to be slams but be open to new voices, and the games are walking a fine line...
But that's just me. And you? You're the one who's been well nigh invisible of late…
SPECIAL OCCASIONS IN PORT TOWNSEND & VANCOUVER
|
I was also up in Vancouver in November to read with Bernadette Mayer and Phil Good at the Kootenay School of Writing (not affiliated with the Kootenay School of the Arts) and to attend the last day of the Vancouver Videopoem Festival. The Kootenay folks are a small intimate collective with a poetry library that makes me drool. I told them I wanted to stay for a week in that room and read all their books. They were very warm and attentive and Bernadette gave the best reading I've heard her give since her stroke in '94.
The Vancouver Videopoem Festival gets better and better each year. Some snazzy stuff from Bravo!FACT (a Canadian TV channel that shows videopoems, unfortunately not available in the US) -- in particular, a videopoem of Michael Ondaatje's “Elimination Dance” that was visually and thematically stunning. I was really impressed with Bravo!FACT's ability to create diverse, cutting-edge videopoems of the work of both well known and lesser known poets. There was nothing “mainstream” about them. Another recommended literary road trip.
CHRIS - Well my goal for this coming year is to see more but see different. Hypocrisy and the Games are my favorite regular venues, but I definitely want to check out some new stuff, and the more avant garde, the better. So I'll probably be owing a lot in gas money.
DANIKA - I recommend a mini-road trip down to that new monthly slam in Tacoma, The South Sound Slam, or S3: First Thursday of every month at the Tacoma Bar and Grill, 625 Commerce Street, lsmiraldo@broadwaycenter.org for info. We in Seattle often make fun of our little sister Tacoma, but the cultural pot is brewing down there and there's a lot of good creative energy.
DANIKA - Before signing off, I'd like to mention the fabulous cast of Eastside Eternity, who performed their hip hop opera, Freight Train Land, for us last month before heading south on a West Coast tour. The opera was written and directed by Vancouver's C.R. Avery -- a mad genius if I ever knew one. If you ever see his name posted on an event calendar, GO! He dazed and amazed the Seattle Slam crowd in a cameo appearance a few days before the event. There's a little video clip of him on our Eleventh Hour Web site. He combines poetry, hip hop, and harmonica (sometimes all three at once), and his work is mesmerizing.
Danika Dinsmore
Chris Blakeley
