accent_open_mic epitome of incomprehensibility Reading series, reading event, in a mirrory mural-y pub on St. Denis. I went there at the tail end of my tutoring-packed weekend. I didn't read anything from love_your_enemies__learn_their_language - even with my notes, it didn't make that much sense - but I did get up and read an excerpt from my novel-to-be. But I feel like the second-last should have ended it - a woman called Lina who memorized, yes memorized, a story she at once told and acted out. A surreal, funny, touching story of a girl who grows long hair to hide from trauma and the hair becomes mobile and she uses it as arms and legs. And then cutting it will mean coming out of a that shell. (In which I mix metaphors.) This was all in French, which is, to my ears, a nicer-sounding language than English. At least in her voice. Voices. I told a guy called Mischa whose chapbook I bought that he had a "great voice" and I meant a writing one; his stuff also had surreal and dramatic touches, plus more overt humour. I hope he didn't think that was a weird comment? Pah, he wouldn't have thought I was flirting. He said he was gay in the intro to the pieces. But you can be nosy or too personal without it being sexual; witness boss B. telling me the expression on my face was "unprofessional" (unprofessionally!)...and, to be fair, me telling him he was using an expression wrong (which wasn't fair because English isn't his first language). But yes. You can be weird in a lot of ways. This writer's weird was good, at least on paper and spoken out. Another surreal story involved monsters eating tourists. Only tourists, apparently. The now-blasé cab drivers discuss how many they lost after their drives, over cigarettes. As for other poetry, James, the Turret House Press publisher, brought a wide emotional range and plain-spoken but image-full scenes. I already have a book of his. It has the word "heron" in the title. Rose with a turquoise scarf had a narrative poem I was swept into. I let it carry me for a good minute. It's weird: at first when I got there, I was afraid that I'd lost my taste for poetry, somewhere in the midst of studying linguistics. But that turned out to be untrue. I heard other readers, other writers, but my eyes are closing, or they should be. 221107 ... e_o_i Still running, every 1st and 3rd Sunday of the month, and they've started having themes. But today I didn't leave early enough to get there. Didn't realize trying out a new recipe for supper would take so long. But I did discover an old poetry folder! And the fear that I used to have more imagination then than now! But also reassurance that I can be inspired by past writing and make it better! ...Okay, I'm all out of exclamation marks. But damn, I wish I'd gone. The theme was mixed metaphors. 240303 ... e_o_i Last Sunday I was there, not reading but listening to others' poems. I talked to people at both breaks, but felt that I was awkward each time. When I got home, I talked and cried to my still-awake parents like I was still a kid. Nothing terrible happened that I could pinpoint. I just felt awkward. I told Willow happy birthday and sorry I couldn't make it to your party, and then I got distracted because her purse was shaped like a frog. Someone I know a little less, Daniel, walked over to me when I addressed him, but when he heard that I'd only asked was "How are you doing?" he turned away, going, "Oh, I thought you were asking a question." Really I wanted to ask which country he was from because his poem was about coming from a war-torn country - which doesn't really narrow things down, but from his looks it's either Europe or the Middle East. He wore a scarf with Ukrainian colours last year, but I don't think he's Ukrainian. Anyway, it seemed rude to ask him that upfront, so I thought, "How are you doing, I liked your poem..." would be a good way into it. Why am I curious, though? I'm too curious. And when I decide, "No, I need to tell other people their work is good because it IS good, not because I decide to ask them nosy questions," I encounter two guys and I completely forget what the second one read. Nerd-like, I take notes, but that's because it's hard to keep things in my head - fucking ADHD. If I'd been able to look at my notes first, I would have remembered. So I'm too honest: I say to the one "Oh, I like your piece about X, how it did Y thing" and to the other "Yours was good but I can't remember it, I have trouble keeping so many things in my brain at once." Gaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh. Anyway, I didn't buy anything and then I picked up two discarded ten-cent-refund cans on the way home, so from a financial perspective it was profitable. And I did enjoy hearing people read. Ooooh, and the featured reader Claire Sherwood had a delightful long poem where food words evoked various other topics: I remember death and sex but nothing more specific. 240714 ... e_o_i The forgotten man's name was Matthew and his poem was about Scotland (very specific, Kirsten). 240714 ... e_o_i I hadn't gone for a while - it happens twice a month - but I caught this past Sunday's. Dead Poets Edition. Simple rule: you had to read something by a dead poet. Mine: Claudia Morrison. I knew her. Not well, but I knew her. She was a regular at a West Island poetry group, plus the partner of my former Philosophy of Communication teacher (whose name happens to be James_Joyce, but he goes by Jim). She died a few years ago, and I wish she were here to create poems, to read; she had a great reading voice, low and gravelly but expressive. No one speaks exactly like her. (No one speaks exactly like anybody, probably, but still.) Other people picked more famous poets, ones I know (e.g. John Milton, John Keats, Pablo Neruda), ones I've vaguely heard of (Frank O'Hara, Mary Oliver), and ones I hadn't heard of but was glad to be introduced to (Alfonsina Storni). Someone named Lina read Mary Oliver, at first enthusing about her way of sketching animal and human behaviour, of being both descriptive and meditative in a scarce few lines. When she read "The Storm," with its line about the "wild feet" of a dog on show, I was thinking, "Huh, this sounds a little like the 'Wild Geese' poem." What did she read right after that? "Wild Geese"! So I do know a few poets. I just forget them. Chava Rosenfarb I'd heard of for her prose. I never met her, she died a few years ago, but she lived in Montreal. A regular-ish reader called Esther read a Yiddish poem by her and then her own translation. Matthew of the Scots is learning Gaelic; at the break I told him of my brother's adventures in the same. I don't think he did the translation himself, but he read a poem in Gaelic and then English. The poet's name, Sorley MacLean. I'd written "Saorlie McLean." I guess I was thinking Celtic names = lots of letters. (I'm not all wrong; Prof. Wikipedia says his Gaelic name was Somhairle MacGill-Eain.) Oddly for Accent - usually at least half as French as English - we didn't get much French. Daniel read something in Italian and did translate it himself. I still don't know where he's from. He also knows Spanish, nodding in appreciation at the Fonsi and Neruda. No apparent recognition of Gaelic or Yiddish, so he can't speak every language in the world. Just an inordinate bunch of them. 241217 ... e_o_i edits Okay, how the flying fudge did "Alfonsina Storni" turn into "Fonsi"?? A weird compression. I googled "fonsi"; Luis Fonsi wrote the annoyingly catchy "Despacito," but I don't think I know any non-singing poets with that name. 241217 what's it to you? who go blather from