Neil Wedman’s “Flying Saucer Types” from VR’s 1st original Centrefold spread.

VR contributor Neil Wedman currently has a show on at the Charles H. Scott Gallery on Granville Island. Titled: “Selected Monochromatic Paintings and Works on Paper”, the show runs ’til February 24th. It features a selection of large paintings of underwater volcanoes, flying saucers and newspaper pages rendered in his uniquely muted and timeless style. And it wouldn’t hurt to remind the world that the Centrefold image above is still available from a limited edition print run of 20 signed and numbered archival prints (at 16″ x 20″) for a very affordable $250 direct from VR. E-mail mark@vancouverreview.com for details.

http://redsara.wordpress.com/2012/02/23/sixty-four-mandala-old-work/

"Fever Trees" by Rebecca Chaperon

Here’s another Centrefold gem from VR’s past. Specifically, this was in the Fall ’09 issue of VR. It is by Rebecca Chaperon and we’d like to remind you that all our Centrefold spreads are available as fine art prints. $250 gets you a signed, numbered, archival print from an edition of 20.

Marian Bantjes' Vancouver Skyline from VR #28

For those of you who, like us, have yearned for a more interesting vision for Vancouver’s waterfront architectural skyline we present this gem by designer Marian Bantjes. It was our final Centrefold and, like all our Centrefold art, it is available for purchase as part of an edition of 20 archival quality fine-art prints. This one is 30″ across and will be signed and numbered by Marian. Price per print is $250.00.  For more information please contact: mrm@portal.ca.

In honour of Charlotte Gill’s recent nomination for the Charles Taylor prize for literary non-fiction and in anticipation of her upcoming reading at Project Space on the 28th, I thought I’d post these two versions of the cover for the issue that first featured Eating Dirt. For whatever reason, we decided against them but they do have their merits. I think the first one was nixed because I felt the pose seemed forced and the seedling too strategically placed in the glove. And if I recall correctly, the second didn’t seem to have enough overall front and centre power. In any case, we hope you enjoy them. I’ll post some more alternate covers in the coming months.

http://www.dmpibooks.com/book/eating-dirt

There are 5 of these 23″ by 38″ prints being made available for purchase at $500 each (+tax & shipping). There is also a smaller version available in an edition of 20 at $250 each. They are 11.25″ by 20″ and all VR fine art prints are printed to archival standards by Fidelis who do prints for exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery and who print the work of Fred Herzog, Rebecca Belmore, Roy Arden and many others.

In addition to Sonny’s new work we are still selling the complete selection of commissioned VR Centrefold art from the last 5 years of publishing the magazine. Watch this space as some of those works will be reproduced here!

For more information, or to order your print today, please e-mail mrm@portal.ca.

Maxine's Hideaway. Soon to (partially) grace the entrance to another condo tower at 1215 Bidwell St.

This is the current state of one of the west end of Vancouver’s great heritage buildings. Known as “Maxine’s Hideaway”, it spent its last days as a dinner/dance club. But the building has seen many incarnations over the years and was mentioned in connection with the city’s rum running history in Helen Eady’s “9 O’Clock Gun” feature in VR #27 (Winter 2010/11):

“A beauty school for girls a brothel, a criminal hideout, a nightclub and a cabaret all existed at 1215 Bidwell Street. Under this off-Davie institution are filled-in tunnels that once connected to the English Bay boat houses for rum-running.”

Sadly it is now another victim of the city’s relentless and unchecked development spree. Façadism at its worst.

"Digital Orca" by Doug Coupland Photo ©2011 Mark Mushet

Timothy Taylor’s piece in VR #28, “Chaos and Planning”, was recently criticized for its lack of a mention of the public artworks of Doug Coupland. While the article was not intended as a comprehensive survey (its focus being mainly about policy and its effects) we would like to go on record as really loving this piece by Doug Coupland called “Digital Orca”! It’s on the waterfront by the Convention Centre.

The 125 Vancouver Poetry Conference, sponsored by the City of Vancouver as part of Celebrate Vancouver 125, saw more than 70 poets give readings around town from October 19 to 22. I attended the Poetry Cabaret on Evening 2, at the Revue Theatre on Granville Island.

Cynical thoughts on poetry being declared as important enough

It was uplifting to see the Celebrate Vancouver 125 organizers acknowledge the relevance of the poetry community to the bones of this city. Celebrating sleek Skytrains and Olympic legacies are far more popular, but cultural pulses can’t be overlooked if we want our city to offer more than unaffordable housing and lululemon lifestyle aspirations. The organizers must have known that no other figure brings as much cultural mystique and authority than a poet behind a podium. After all, poetry is for really, really, deeply cultural people.

More thinly veiled cynicism

I’ve always had reservations about authors reading in public, especially at officially backed festivals. I love the idea of the in-the-flesh storyteller, but we can’t pretend that’s what it’s about anymore. I felt anxious for these readers: there’s the unspeakable disagreeableness of self-promotion, not to mention the chill that must accompany the thought of reading to a roomful of strangers. Never mind that I’ve always felt that poets and those who read poetry belong to the same tribe – still.

On possibilities

The idea of poet as promoter/entertainer isn’t impossible (see some bouts of spoken-word poetry if you want to see the possibilities), but print poetry isn’t the most obvious of genres to exploit. So, rather than attend a daylight reading where I’d probably have spent my time pondering how the poet struggles to address the “Here we are now, entertain us” factor, I opted for an evening cabaret reading. Poetry pimped out with cabaret styling just might work as both cultural pulse and entertainment, I figured. Besides, the darkness, the bar and the bonding that evolves when people sit in the dim together listening hard might take care of the devils whispering, Sell yourself, sell yourself.

Modest expectations

As I approached the venue, I wondered about the crowd. Would they be Ginsburgian hedonists ready to take what they could get? Or would the more likely scenario greet me: would it be like walking onto an earnest CBC radio set, where everyone has an engaging radio voice and can effortlessly toss off erudite, modestly elitist banter?

No worries

I shouldn’t have worried. The emcee, Billeh Nickerson, an established poet, writer and editor himself, set the irreverent tone immediately: he laid down the law on texting during readings (it’s disconcerting when an audience glows an alien blue) and, in a moment of inspired stage management, explained that a cell phone with Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald” would play if readers went on and on. Throughout the night, he encouraged the audience to engage in glass-rolling-down-the-aisle bacchanalian behaviour, charmingly mixed up names and syntax (well, I thought it was charming), and even dared to suggest on stage to a poet that his comma use was off – enough said?

Of course, the audience had its share of tweed and caps and island-dwelling patinas (how I envy island-dwellers), but I can safely assume no one wore lululemon. And, as the night proved, this crowd was ready to entertain the idea that poetry and cabaret could exist in the same sentence. They were really ready to laugh – laugh, not navel-gaze or consider the apt use of enjambment. (Note: a friend thinks she spotted Joni Mitchell, which I only mention because Joni Mitchell may be the only artist any country needs to maintain cultural integrity.)

The readers

The first reader, Srikanth Reddy, opened with the type of technical, meditative poetry that is splendid on a page but hard to appreciate the first time through. And it was odd watching people try to listen to this sort of “proper” poetry. But, after Reddy, most of the poets seemed to increasingly follow the theme that, although poetry may be best appreciated while one is alone, very alone, with scads of alone time to read lines over and over, it does have entertaining – if not exactly cabaret – possibilities.

Melanie Siebert’s impeccably crafted narrative selections from Deepwater Vee were much easier to latch on to. Then Antonette Rae stepped out with a crash, quite literally, as her cup slipped off the podium and broke. After much sweeping, she delivered her poetry – by memory: the storyteller had landed. Her experiences as an aging, transsexual prostitute dealing with her addiction and various species of assholes in the DTES might not have elicited head-nodding recognition, but since she carried off the performance with bawdiness and humour, the promise of cabaret finally appeared.

Steven Wright takes over

Matthew Zapruder was certainly ready to take over, if not in cabaret trappings, at least in cabaret-calibre laughter. I think I started feeling like I was at a Steven Wright performance (remember him?) after he read, “Saying pocket makes me feel potentially, but not yet busy” with perfect comedic – or was it poetic? – timing. David McGimpsey continued the groove with his “chubby sonnets,” with titles like “Bury me under the willows, but throw out my CD collection, it’s useless.” He delivered line after line that the audience simply roared at, like “I do regret writing fiction,” and, “Before the iPhone arrived, we lived like pigs,” and “Nobody, not even the rain, has such a hairy back” (ee cummings surely would approve).

Proper poetry muscles back in

The mood shifted once our new Poet Laureate, Evelyn Lau, read. Her venerable role will include many podium appearances, and she shared her trepidation about embarrassing herself in front of officials like Gregor Robinson. (I do hope that she will embarrass us all quite often and shake things up; everything is just so predicable these days. Did anyone else see the Stanley Cup Riot coming a mile away?) Her solemn poetry selections calmed the room right down, yet she still kept the audience connected to the stage.

The return of Wright

Suzanne Buffon brought us back to cabaret-decibel laughter. Although an award-winning “proper” poet (as, indeed, most of the readers were), after two and half years of mothering, she’d also taken to writing lists, such as, “Bad ideas that would probably sell,” like hamster camp, stationary tricycles, and diet ice; and “Guilty Pleasures,” like beating a child at checkers. Ken Babstock ended the night with a couple of formal poems, then plunged into a piece that followed the raucous, crowd-pleasing formula of a) one vulgar person, and b) a mode of transportation, for example, a “chicken rapist on a sailboat.” After some impressively offensive combinations, he ended it all with “Ahoy!” He said we weren’t to take it personally, but seriously. Indeed.

Stand-up poets

No, it wasn’t a let’s-peer-into-my-soul-together ending. But if a cabaret is more laughter than contemplation, more populist than esoteric, Babstock ended on the right note. Yet, after the lights went up, I still felt conflicted about asking poets to transform themselves into entertainers (and in this case, comedians). Then again, aside from Buffon, they were reading poetry that just happened to be entertaining – or to be read in an entertaining way. So perhaps we need not always typecast poets and poetry in formal, serious roles, as we are apt to do. In fact, this night made it clear to me that poets have a better sense of humour than many comedians.

Caroline Harvey is VR’s poetry editor

Here’s the latest project that may well appeal to readers of Vancouver Review:

Close to 100 of North America’s finest poets will gather in Vancouver October 19 to 22 to exchange ideas, read poems and inspire a new generation of poets as part of Vancouver 125.
The conference features four days of readings, panel discussions and cabaret nights and is open to writers, academics and poetry lovers. With its focus on a new generation of poets working in a wide range of styles, the event is being touted as a landmark exchange of poetry and poetics.

Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference highlights:

• Vancouver Day: The opening day of the conference will feature an all-Vancouver line-up including Elizabeth Bachinsky, Stephen Collis, Jeff Derksen, Mercedes Eng, Ray Hsu, Evelyn Lau, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk, Catriona Strang and more (Oct.19).

• Cabaret Nights at the Vancouver International Writer’s Festival featuring Christian Bök, Wayde Compton, Matthea Harvey, David McGimpsey, Ken Babstock, Srikanth Reddy, Suzanne Buffam, Evelyn Lau and more, plus musical guests (Oct.20 and 21).

• Keynote reading by Don McKay, Fanny Howe and Martin Espada (Oct.21).

• Inauguration of the third Vancouver Poet Laureate in a ceremony with Mayor Gregor Robertson and current Poet Laureate Brad Cran (Oct.22).

• “Directions in Contemporary Poetry” grand finale panel with poets Clint Burnham, Ken Babstock, Suzanne Buffam Christian Bök, Steven Heighton, Jen Currin, Sachiko Murakami and Stephanie Bolster (Oct.22).

Conference passes and schedule information are available online at V125PC.com

The Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference is part of Vancouver’s year-long celebration of its 125th anniversary and 2011 Cultural Capitals of Canada designation, which also includes major events, a grants program supporting over 130 community events, public art commissions, murals and civic initiatives like Viva Vancouver and Vancouver Archives digitization projects.