Day Four: We Spell it "Kanada"

10:09 AM - Saturday, 23 August 2008

I'm considering Vancouver poet Michael Turner, whose book I found in this triangular café. Why isn't Mr. Turner here at this conference? His work "think[s] about cities and people" which, like, is the whole point of the conference. Plus look at his author photo.

Yesterday: The poets talk about seizing social space—Laura Elrick's hooded-and-handcuffed walk through in Manhattan, Jules Boykoff and Kaia Sand's political slogans posted on signs along southern roads. In the capitalist North American context, we're accustomed to living in commercial spaces "created for us, not by us," (in malls looking at adverts, on sidewalks looking at adverts) but maybe we can take some of that space back for social/public (non-commercial) use. Juliana Spahr mentions that, at the very least, these actions remind the polis that poets and artists (read: dissenters) are still among us...

Someone says that "shooting at monuments has a very respectable pedigree."

Louis Cabri discusses etiquette as "the right way to avoid another social class."

Last night: After 2 months of Fury-ous work, Toscano and I performed Protagonistic Forces, a fifty-minute video/audio/movement/text poem. I've been nothing but warped nerves and ulcers while worrying over this piece, but during the performance itself (around the time I donned goggles and started beating a bubble machine to bits with my hammer while the speakers blared "my space! my space!) I attained a real "sublimity" (Toscano's word). People were... taken aback... by the piece... and not just because their feet got splashed with soap-water.

Rod Smith writes a damn good love poem, all razor-sharp social commentary aside. Jeff Derksen shifts smoothly between high and low brows... I think his poems have shark skin. I want to stay at poetry camp all year.

Day Three: KPC Gets Rolling

10:04 AM - Friday, 22 August 2008

Pat O'Riley and Peter Cole kicked off yesterdays *land & language* panel with some very actionable contemplations about indigenous language extinction (10 yards), 'minoritized peoples' vs. 'minorities' (20 yards), English as the [colonial] crowbar of culture destruction (touchdown), mostly in the context of academic institutions. That is: shouldn't first-people/indigenous/native students be allowed to write thesis papers in their own tongue, rather than the Queen's English?

But then, like, here comes Juliana Spahr in full 'gladitorial' gear (whole different game) with a barrage of poetics history (all folks from Edwin Torres to Marianne Moore), talking about "altered and disruptive Englishes" and how they can knock the wobbly vase of *English* from it's power pedestal... and she lets us know who's doing it right now. Incredible.

I had a moment.... met a poet hero of mine. This poet didn't so much "recoil" (as in "retreat disdainfully") fromme, but really "re-coiled" (as in "coiled up to strike—with venom!"). I heard the rattle rattling and... ...

So by 11 PM, we're 7 hours deep in straight-up podium poetry readings (with the exception of Michael Davidson, whose sweet essaies were a real relief) and everyone has read for nearly an hour each. There's more Angelina Jolie, more Abu Ghraib stacks, more mutilated gay men, imperialism, post-colonial jolly slaps, even-tempered slide-shows, "resistance is nubile," "S.O.S... O... Same Old Same Old;" but maybe there's excitement too: a sense of *We*ness. As in: We're all poets here, so we like all of it, even (especially!) hearing (explicitly!) where lines break; we like references. and name dropping.

Essentially, the ball got rolling, the issues surfaced: we're talking about shanking the English language, we're talking about getting poetry out of books and into the "social space." Translation: "fuck grammar, here we come."

Highlight: polyvocalic poetic duet (intoned) by Louis Cabri and Rodrigo Toscano. Cabri reads slowly while Toscano (in white pants?!) spells out each word of the poem. They react to one another's spontaneous tonal shifts. Just gorgeous decentered poetic act—who's the poet here? where's the poem? who's the reader?

Day Two: MH for RHT @ KPC @ Vivo, Vancouver, BC.

Wednesday 8:32 AM - Vancouver, B.C.

One moment of levity / clarity last night: As Brian Kim Stefans prepared to read, a film projection of his computer-animated word / visual / appropriation (!) piece shuddered against the far wall, the podium stood empty... and then he stepped up to the podium, so that the projected images played across his face. "I'll read in front of the screen. It's an intervention into the, um, digital... social... blah blah blah," he said. Big audience laughter.

Are we serious, here, are we joking? Yes, no; no yes. Social criticism plus in-jokes... do the in-jokes negate the social criticism? Some are perturbed that the KPC hasn't been serious enough, others think that it's been too too, too, already.

Also featured: funereal reading of homophonic translations; semi-Oedipal Angelina Jolie leitmotif (throughout the evening, for real); major enlargement/insertion of Self in Robert Fitterman's slideshow of a single self-portrait (comforting); and real big laughs over a climactic what-if-Ezra-Pound-had-a-blog? poem (Pound jokes get to SF poets every time).

Other news: on Canada's Pakistani news radio, "critical condition" is the only phrase spoken in English; at a glance, my "Smells Great / All Day!" deodorant looks like it "Smells Gay!"; East coast women struggle to accept Pacific Northwest incurable hair-frizz effect (advice, Maggie?); Lindsey, in Canada, it's "Mind the Lip" not "Step Up."