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"Thanks, Don"

5/31/2017

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Picture
Don Gutteridge, who is currently Professor Emeritus at Western and was our Nov. 2016 featured poet, and who has over 20 volumes of poetry to his credit, sent me a letter last week as follows:
 
“Stan: When I read your biography about your upbringing in Alberta, your years in the flower shop, and your lifelong battle with shyness (and its torture), I was moved to write a little poem about your defiance and persistence and the role that poetry played.”
 
DEFY
 
For Stan Burfield
 
For more than a dozen years
you were surrounded by blooms
in your shop, a long way
from Alberta’s unlyrical
land, and when you tried
your hand at verse, were
your first poems for poppies
and their roaring red, sonnets
for sunflowers a-burst
in lavish light, lyrics
for larkspur and their passionate
purple, or pentameters
for peonies and their kissing cousins?
Did you let them speak
for you, go soaring through the
petrified petal of your fear?
For poetry is both bliss
and consolation, a way of speaking
to the world that subsumes
both shy and defy.
 
--Don Gutteridge
 
 
And only one day earlier, Don had sent me this message:
 
“Stan: I went onto your facebook page and saw that beautiful poem there. Gorgeous imagery and wonderful pace. … Anyway, poetry begets poetry. I sat right down and penned the attached poem, inspired by yours.  I am looking forward to hearing you read on the YouTube video of your performance.”
 
MY TURN
 
Whenever I think of death,
I take a deep breath
and congratulate myself
on being alive, ever
since that day
long ago when I wished
my way out of the womb and uttered
my first articulate cry
and wondered how many
had come before me
in humanity’s slow bloom
all the way back to the
great apes and their generous
genes and the dinosaurs who groomed
the ancient foliage of the Earth
and finally the fish-churned
sea where something
grew anew, a birth
with no antecedent,
a blip in God’s thought,
and here I am against
the odds still living,
waiting patiently for my turn.
 
--Don Gutteridge


This is the poem Mr. Gutteridge had read:
 
CONCERNING OUR GLORIOUS FUTURE
.
As I lift the spoon
from this morning’s coffee
I feel the same long pull of time
that my father did
my mother
that their parents did
and theirs
a chain rattling down
into the well so far
I cannot imagine.
And up, out of that darkness
into this present,
all of it--
the slow ages of our reptilian forebears,
our fearful hominid ancestors,
the entire charging ascent of Man--
comes to a juddering halt
at this drop of coffee
falling
from this
spoon. 

We are stranded here
immovable
at the endpoint
of time, banging
our heads
on the ceiling.
 
--Stan Burfield
 

Suffice it to say, I feel honoured. Thanks, Don!
 

Don has a new book of poetry out, Sands of Canatara, of which he is donating 19 copies to London Open Mic. If any of you who received one of his books from his feature reading would like one of these, gratis, email me and you can pick it up Wednesday. The remaining copies will be given away first-come first-served.
 

BIO:  Don Gutteridge is the author of more than fifty books, including poetry, fiction and scholarly works in educational theory and practice. In 1972 he won the President’s Medal at The University of Western Ontario for his poem "Death At Quebec". Among his best-known poems are the mythic tetralogy: Riel: A Poem For Voices, Coppermine: The Quest For North, Borderlands, and Tecumseh. Gutteridge is best known across Canada for his historical fiction. He has also recently produced a series of mystery novels, The Marc Edwards Mysteries.

Don Gutteridge was born in Sarnia, Ontario in 1937, and was raised in the nearby village of Point Edward, Ontario. His high schooling took place in Sarnia and Chatham, Ontario. He attended the University of Western Ontario (UWO), where he graduated with a BA Honours in English in 1960. Gutteridge then taught high school English for seven years before joining the Faculty of Education at UWO in 1969. He is currently Professor Emeritus. He lives in London, Ontario with his wife Anne. He has two children, John and Kate, and six grandchildren. ​

Read our interview with Don Gutteridge, and three poems.
Read our interview with Stan Burfield, and three poems.
 
 
THE EVENT

WHERE: Mykonos Restaurant at 572 Adelaide St. North, London, Ontario. The restaurant has a large, covered terrace just behind the main restaurant, which comfortably holds 60 poetry lovers. Mediterranean food and drinks are available. Overflow parking is available across the side street and in the large lot one block north, in front of Trad’s Furniture.

WHEN: June 7th, 2017. Poetry begins at 7 pm. Come anytime before that and place your order.

THE FEATURED POET: Stan Burfield opens the event at 7:00, followed by a Q&A.

OPEN MIC: Following the featured poet, 15 open mic poets will read until 9:30 at the latest, with an intermission at about 8:00. Each poet has five minutes (which is about two good pages of poetry, but it should be timed at home). Sign up on the reader`s list, which is on the book table at the back. It's first come, first served.

COVER: Pay What You Can (in jar on back table, or use Donate Button on website Donate Page). Donations are our only source of income to cover expenses.

RAFFLE PRIZES: Anyone who donates at the event receives a ticket for a raffle prize, three of which will be picked after the intermission. The prizes consist of poetry books donated by The Ontario Poetry Society.




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FOUNDER STAN BURFIELD TO FEATURE JUNE 7TH

5/14/2017

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Picture
The featured poet at the June 7th, 2017 London Open Mic will be the organization’s founder and organizer Stan Burfield. The June event is the last of his tenure, the culmination of five seasons of work. He will be passing the torch to co-organizers Mary Dowds and Kevin Heslop. Before his featured reading, he will be introduced by his wife Linda.
.
BURFIELD’S BIO:
​
 I was raised on a small farm in central Alberta. My first ambition, a very serious one, was to live alone in a log cabin as a trapper. That changed to farmer, then biologist, then journalist, then florist. 

In Calgary, I studied biology, then journalism. Amongst numerous more-nondescript jobs, I was for two years a reporter.
 
Then, over a four-year period, I went on some extremely long, arduous adventures by foot, canoe and bicycle, hoping they would break me out of my life-long shyness and anxiety. No such luck. So, having read that poetry was a possible route into the subconscious, which I assumed was the home of my anxiety, I took a poetry anthology out into a closed provincial park near St. John’s, Newfoundland. For a month and a half, I read, wrote and memorized poetry until it floated across the sky in my dreams. But it did nothing for my anxiety. 

In 1987, I married Linda, a flower designer, and we opened and ran a flower shop in Vancouver for nineteen years. 

When we sold the shop and semi-retired, we moved to London, Ontario in 2008 to be near our children and grandchildren. 

With more time on my hands, I revved up my poetry writing, and, as a form of shyness therapy, began attending Ron Stewart's excellent poetry workshop. When I got used to that, the next logical step in the direction of my fear was to find a place to read to an audience. Since there was no open mic for regular “page poets” in London then, I decided I would have to organize one. In doing so, the constant social contacts that were necessary turned out to be just the therapy I needed. The stress nearly killed me but I eventually got used to it, and by the fifth season had lost most of my shyness. After 62 years, I felt like I was stepping through a door into a completely new life.
 
In the process, my ability to write decent poetry has dramatically improved. And I have a place to read it!
 
RECOGNITION:
  • The 2014 Ted Plantos Memorial Award from The Ontario Poetry Society.
  • 2nd Prize in the 2014 Poetry London Poetry Contest. 

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LONDON OPEN MIC'S FUTURE

5/10/2017

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Future seasons of London Open Mic Poetry will be led by two organizers: Mary Dowds and Kevin Heslop. They will be backed up by an organizing committee.

As co-organizers, Dowds and Heslop will each specialize in specific aspects of organizing, and will share others.

Mary Dowds will be responsible for most of the internet work and for keeping everything chugging forward as it should, making sure every aspect of the series takes place at it’s designated time. She has already carved out a very new job for herself as well, using her accurate reporting skills to write detailed summaries of the Q&As by the featured readers. Watch for her first one in her summary of Jason Dickson’s feature, to be posted shortly.

Kevin Heslop will put most of his energy into the community, into all the ways London Open Mic can promote poetry outside of its traditional venue. Of course, he will also continue to do what he is most known for, interviewing the featured poets.

Mary Dowds recently moved to London from Victoria, where she was involved in the local poetry scene. Luckily, she responded to our ad for help in carrying London Open Mic forward when current organizer/founder Stan Burfield retires this season. (June 7th at Mykonos Restaurant is his last event, at which he will also be the featured poet.)

From Mary’s bio: “Mary Dowds was previously a Court Reporter. Having written millions of other people's words, she now enjoys writing many of her own. Mary was also a live TV broadcast captioner "and always some kid's mom."

Kevin Heslop has been a member of London Open Mic’s organizing committee since near the beginning and has specialized in interviewing featured poets, researching them massively before posing his famously-appropriate questions. Within the organization, Kevin is known and highly valued for his ability to solve complex problems with finesse and subtlety. He also knows the community, not only the poetry community but also the institutions of the city and the proper ways of approaching them when trying to accomplish things. Kevin has been known to the public for his sometimes-astonishing poetry, but lately has been taking a break while he gets his acting career off the ground. He has just finished his third role on the stage, a starring role in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew at The Grand. See our review.
​

Kevin’s (earlier) bio: “Kevin Heslop is a twenty year old writer-in-the-making, currently attending Western University as an English major. He is heavily influenced by the poetry and prose of Charles Bukowski and Ernest Hemingway, the philosophical works of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Neitzsche, the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso and the music of J.S. Bach and Miles Davis. When not reading or writing, Kevin is either playing the drums, drawing with an 8B pencil and/or feeling distressed about not writing.”

----Stan Burfield, fulfilling one of my last duties.
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