the plumb: a new DIY project space in Toronto

Hi everyone,

Chances are you’ve heard about it already, but I wanted to take the opportunity to to reflect on a new and exciting chapter of my life: the plumb. Thanks to the leadership and leg work of Daniel Griffin Hunt and Emma Welch, my partner Amanda Boulos and I have joined with a collective of about a dozen other artists, writers, and curators to open up an art gallery and project space at St. Clair and Dufferin. Our grand opening group show (which we’ve titled Pits, Seeds) has been up for about a week, and its final opening hours will be held this Saturday and Sunday from 1pm to 6pm.

I’ll leave most of the gallery’s self-representation to our mandate. From my own perspective, though, I’m extremely excited for the space to host not only fine art shows, but also literary readings, discussion groups, workshops, and anything else that might be relevant to the literary and other arts scenes in Toronto. As everyone knows, COVID-19 is putting a lot of these plans on hiatus, as well as creating added difficulties for those events we do manage to pull off. Nevertheless, I’m optimistic. At the risk of sounding arrogant, I think we can outlast the pandemic and find something on the other side.

Even though we’re just getting started, I’ve also already learned a ton from working with the many talented artists and curators who make up our collective. I’ve always loved visual art, and following Amanda through her MFA gave me some of the initial connections I needed to start reviewing shows and getting to know the visual art community. But the plumb is expanding my horizons in ways I never imagined. I couldn’t be more thankful to be welcomed in, and to contribute my meagre talents to this incredible endeavour.

Finally, one of the most delightful surprises of my work with the plumb so far has been the opportunity to present a piece of artwork at our opening show–just like a real artist! With help from Hiba Abdallah and her vinyl cutter, I’ve contributed a wall vinyl with a variation of the font I created for The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis: A Selection. (If you’re curious about the source of the text, it’s the chorus of Grizzly Bear’s “Two Weeks.”)

 

 

 

As I said before, the show will come down after this weekend–although there will still be extensive photo documentation on the plumb’s website at https://theplumb.ca/Pits-Seeds. It looks like I’ll be sitting the gallery during some of this weekend’s opening hours, so let me know if you’re planning to stop by! Otherwise, happy reading, and I hope to bring you more updates from the plumb soon.

 

 

Poetry in Motion on All Lit Up / 5 Questions with… on IFOA blog

Howdy everyone,

Two big pieces of news this week. First (and just in time to get in on the hype for my performance at Battle of the Bards next Wednesday), All Lit Up has generously featured me and my book, Players, on the newest contribution to their Poetry in Motion blog series. The post includes a pretty sweet write-up and a poem from the book, “Love Song for Kazoo,” but the main event is a pair of videos of me reading two other short poems: “Lush,” and the ever-popular “for MF DOOM.” You should watch them, right now, here. Though I’ve performed both poems at readings a bunch of times, these videos were shot especially for All Lit Up (with many thanks owed to Amanda Boulos for help with the filming, and for letting me stand and yell in front of her artwork).

A quick word about performing ‘page poetry,’ and the film medium…. The whole idea of performing poetry that isn’t specifically written for performance is both something I’m seriously interested in and something I’m largely baffled by. For their part, All Lit Up’s Poetry in Motion features do a great job of showcasing the huge variety of approaches people take to the genre (that is, the ‘poetry reading’ as a performance genre), especially because combining it with the film medium only seems to exacerbate the variance: if you look through the archives, you’ll notice that Poetry in Motion videos range from recorded live readings to staged, for-the-camera performances to produced and edited video poems (an established sub-genre in its own right). In my videos, I tried to mix together some (very) basic theatrical principles, something of the emotional vibe of spoken word, and some of the from-the-book authenticity and intellectualism of lecture-style readings. But I’m still really curious about how this kind of presentation comes across. Is it entertaining? Engaging? Convincing? Is it any better or worse than reading the book? I’ve always felt that public readings are somewhere in between a unique experience of the art form and a largely artificial gimmick for organizing the literary community; perhaps that in-betweenness isn’t going anywhere, but I’m still always wondering whether it can or should be pushed in certain directions.

In any case, all of this only leads me closer to the aforementioned Poetry NOW: Battle of the Bards, which I and 19 other poets will be performing  nexatt Wednesday at Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre. As part of the build-up, IFOA has just posted a “5 Questions with…” interview with me and three other contestants–Julie Cameron Gray, David Goldstein, and Lisa Richter–on their blog. You can check it out here. It’s a pretty interesting smattering of poets’ opinions about poetry, and the format (each of us answered the same five questions, without knowledge of each other’s answers) gives it a kind of rapid-fire effect. Also, it continues to amaze me that David Goldstein was one of my professors (and a great one at that!) during my undergraduate creative writing days at York; some of the poems in Players were even first written for his third-year poetry workshop. Seeing our names together makes me feel (accurately) like a total fraud. But there we are (see below).

Finally, here’s a ballin’ promo pic from IFOA’s Instagram to cap things off. As always, happy reading!

 

 

Words in Commotion, February 2nd at Creatures Creating Gallery

Hi all,

Exciting news! Recently I’ve been working with Amanda Boulos and Creatures Collective to set up an experimental poetry performance night, and our event has now been officially announced. Words in Commotion: A Night of Interactive Experimental Poetry will take place next Sunday, February 2 at 7:00pm at Creatures Creating Gallery (822 Dundas St. West, just West of Bathurst), and you’re all invited to come! Free admission. You can find more info on the event blog here or the facebook event page here.

The evening will feature performances by three of my favourite poets/performers/artists, Miles Forrester, Neal Armstrong, and Rasiqra Revulva – you can find more information about all three on the Words in Commotion event blog (the link’s above). This night won’t be anything like your average poetry reading: aside from writing which is wonderfully strange and formally radical in itself, you can also expect genre-busting performance set-ups and styles that promise to be engaging, if not much more. We’re also hoping to paper the walls with, well, paper, for attendees to contribute their own words and doodles to throughout the night.

I’ll be hosting (and probably throwing in a little bit of my own experimentation, too). There will also be a merch table featuring work from the performers, including my own O Our Ism poster/broadsheets, last year’s Desk Index zine and my new Room zine, which made it’s first, unannounced appearance at the gallery earlier this month. In any case, I hope to see you there!