Ok. I know I say this every week but this time I mean it: Johnny MacRae is my favourite poet out there right now. He killed it last time he was through town, and now he’s back, armed with an amazing arsenal of new insanely brilliant poems. You have to come see this show. Come out to Lydia’s Pub this Sunday at 8pm.
A bit about Johnny:
The first ever Canadian Underground Indie Slam Champion, a member of the 2009 and 2010 Vancouver Poetry Slam teams, one of 2 Dope Boys in a Cadillac, and the 2010 Van Slam Grand Champion, Johnny MacRae is a self-identified shithouse poet. He’s been called A Douchebag, a scraggly bear riding a circus bike, and many other hurtful things. He has designated himself Public Enema Number One, and his feet hate shoes.
Our first show back after the New Year is a big one. Huge actually. This Sunday, January 8th, we have Canadian spoken word legend Scruffmouth coming to town to blow your poetic minds. Check it out:
Kevan Cameron, also known as Scruffmouth is a spoken poet, performer and writer with the ability to condense issues of social justice, knowledge of self, identity, philosophy, history and freedom into creative poems for the page and the stage. He is a veteran of the North American poetry slam scene and has had poems published in We Have A Voice: An Anthology of African and Caribbean Student Writing; Blood Ink: A University of Alberta Literary Journal and Sudden Thunder. He is creative director for Black Dot Roots and Culture Collective, a group of artists and professionals with the vision to connect the dots of the community through education, creation and celebration of the heritage of peoples of African descent. He is currently working on his debut album and an anthology of Black Canadian poetry.
Show up at Lydia’s around 7:30pm for a good seat, the show starts between 8:00-8:30.
Tonight! This is the last slam of the year so bring out your best! And we are so very happy to have Saskatoon’s own, Leah Horlick back for the holidays as our awesome feature!
She needs no introduction, but for those who don’t know Leah:
Leah Horlick is a poet and spoken word performer from Saskatoon. She has presented her best work at venues including Tonight It’s Poetry and the Saskatoon Poetry Slam, Bluestockings in NYC, and the Vancouver Poetry Slam. Her poems have been published in Grain and are forthcoming in So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art. Her first chapbook was produced with artist Alison Cooley and JackPine Press, and her first collection of poetry will be released by Thistledown Press in the fall of 2012. She is currently living and writing in Vancouver while completing her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC and working as incoming poetry editor of PRISM international magazine.
You have until Sunday to write Haiku!
GO! The more poets who sign up to participate, the more Haikus you will need! A minimum of 15 is recommended.
Unleash your creative freedom in Haiku Death Match, being restrained ONLY by the SYLLABLE COUNT:
Five
Seven
Five
(Although, because these Haiku are read aloud, you don’t need to make these separate lines. You can finish a word with the syllable of the next line.)
Poets, Prepare your dramatic dying abilities!
Audience, prepare to participate like never before, as EVERYONE in attendance, not only the five randomly chosen judges which decide the winners of slams, help determine the Haiku Death Match Champion!
It’s that time of the month again. Poetry Slam time. And this month we have a very very very special guest all the way from Montreal, Moe Clark. She is a legend.
Sign Up at 7pm
Show at 8:00
Métis sound artist Moe Clark fuses her unique understanding of performance narrative with traditions of circle singing and spoken word. With a background in voice, spoken word, and visual arts, she employs a looping pedal to add multi-layered vocal structures to her performance. Her poetic songs resonate with the power to heal, to celebrate spirit and to connect with authentic purpose. After her debut album release Circle of She: Story & Song (April ’08) Moe toured extensively across Canada and recently made her debut performances in Europe and South America. Her work will be published in a bilingual poetry book in Spring 2010 through Maëlstrom publications. Feature highlights include performances for the 2009 Maelström ReEvolution Poétique FiEstival in Brussels, Belgium, ’07-’08 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, the 2008-2009 Diverse as This Land Performances at the Banff Centre, and the 2007 CBC Calgary Poetry Face-Off. Moe has performed with artists such as Ian Ferrier and Pharmakon MTL, Kathy Kennedy (Montreal), Sheri-D Wilson (Calgary), and Tanya Tagaq (Nunavut), among others. Aside from her performance work, she facilitates voice and looping pedal workshops and works in areas of artistic production, composition and festival creation. She co-directed Tusarniq, the second annual Indigenous Words, Music & Images festival in Montreal, Circle Haiku, a poetry-music video with Emmanuel Hessler and the NFB, and most recently she premiered her video poem Intersecting Circles, an award-winning poem from the 2007 CBC Calgary Poetry Face-Off.
Join us at Lydia’s this Sunday at 8pm for a performance by Alexis Kienlen, who will be reading from her newly-published poetry collection 13. We have plenty of community stage spots open and this is going to be awesome.
Alexis Kienlen‘s second full-length book of poetry is being published by Frontenac House and launching in Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver this November, 2011. 13 creatively examines beauty and darkness in many arenas including the workings of bee hive, board games, childhood depression, the personal lives of monsters and a failed romantic relationship in a beautiful Canadian city. The poems of 13 find humanity and beauty within horror and despair, hope, humour and light within darkness.
Alexis was born on Friday, August 13, 1976, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She holds an Honours degree in International Studies from the University of Saskatchewan and a Graduate Diploma in Journalism from Concordia University.
We’re excited to announce that this Sunday, November 6th, we’ll be featuring Ian Ferrier.
If you’d like to read on the Community Stage this week, contact us at tonight.its.poetry@gmail.com.
Ian Ferrier is one of the core writer/performers in the North American performance literature scene. His work is well-known across Canada, New York and Europe. Rooted in poetry, his live performances are a haunting blend of acoustic guitar, choir; whispered voice, and the trancelike music of a band called Pharmakon. His signature is the quiet, compelling voice at the centre of every piece.
His first CD/book, Exploding Head Man, received national acclaim. Rooted in the spellbound winters of his childhood, it took a passionate look at love, sex and death against a background of the falling snow; representing the best of three years of collaborations with musicians from Montreal and New York.
Canada’s National Post called it “an insistence on the music of words that acknowledges the unique possibilities of language.”
Said the Montreal Gazette: “Even without instrumentation, the poetry of Exploding Head Man-heady, impassioned, sometimes hallucinogenic stuff that regularly makes nods to the Beat work he grew up on-has sonic power. Dreamy words soothe, lusty sentences steam, and with a delivery that’s often more gentle that the imagery it yields (even at its most volatile, Ferrier’s vocalizations, with their warm, cushiony and almost child-like diction, scream pseudo-innocence) his spoken word is a complex song in and of itself.”
Continue reading »
In honour of Halloween we are having our first ever Anarchy Slam. The only rule of the Anarchy Slam is you have to break a rule. So to enter you MUST do one of the following: wear a costume, use a prop, cover a poem, do a group piece, and yes get naked. It will be first come first serve sign up so get there early! (poems will be cut off after four minutes). It’s going to be chaos!
Now a bit about DMP:
Daniel Mark Patterson (a.k.a. The Modern Day Penguin) is a popular and familiar figure in the Lower Mainland Poetry Slam Scene, as well as at open mics and poetry readings. He is the author of three chapbooks Confessions of a Modern Day Penguin (2009), Love Experiments of a Modern Day Penguin (2010), Existential Ramblings of a Modern Day Penguin (2010). Collectively, they are known as The Modern Day Penguin Trilogy, and are shockingly not about Penguins.
Daniel Mark Patterson (a.k.a. The Modern Day Penguin) is a popular and familiar figure in the Lower Mainland Poetry Slam Scene, as well as at open mics and poetry readings. He is the author of three chapbooks Confessions of a Modern Day Penguin (2009), Love Experiments of a Modern Day Penguin (2010), Existential Ramblings of a Modern Day Penguin (2010). Collectively, they are known as The Modern Day Penguin Trilogy, and are shockingly not about Penguins.
This Sunday at Lydia’s we’re bringing in Jen Kunlire, an amazing spoken word poet from Calgary. There are also a few spots left on the Community Stage, so send me an email at s.r.rutherford@gmail.com if you’d like to read.
Jen Kunlire is a Calgary based spoken word poet, who hailed onto the Calgary slam scene in 2008. With Canadian performances from coast to coast, Jen is currently working on musical projects and funk fused collaborations. She enjoys long walks in the park and has no pets.In addition to winning the Calgary 2009 Regional CBC Poetry Face off, Jen represented Calgary two years in a row at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word. She made her first appearance at the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival in 2009 following her participation in The Banff Centre’s Spoken Word program.
Check out her tracks at:
www.myspace.com/jenkunlire
www.myspace.com/jenkunlire
It’s storytelling time at TiP, so get ready for our quasi-annual Story Slam! Stories must be an original piece of writing under five minutes long. Win prizes and listen to one of this country’s most hilarious storytellers, Dawn Dumont! We’ll be starting things a bit later than usual to accommodate those of you who’ll be having Thanksgiving dinner with your families.
Edmonton writer Dawn Dumont is a Plains Cree comedian and actress born and raised on the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan. She began her comedy career in Toronto on stages such as Yuk Yuk’s and the Laugh Resort and has made people laugh at comedy clubs across North America, including New York’s Comic Strip and the Improv. Dawn is currently a comedy writer for CBC Radio and the Edmonton Journal, and a Story Editor for By the Rapids, an animation comedy series on APTN. Dumont’s writing has been published in the anthologies Native Women inthe Arts and Gatherings as well as in Rampage Literary Journal. Most recently her play, Nicimis (Little Brother) was workshopped at Native Earth’s Performing Arts Weesageechak Begins to Dance Festival in Toronto.
Dawn Dumont’s debut novel, Nobody Cries at Bingo, was released in May 2011 by Thistledown Press. She is also the co-host for APTN’s Fish Out of Water. Her three great loves are Barack Obama, little kids with chubby cheeks and Starbucks free wireless.
