London Open Mic Poetry Archive
  • Home
  • Frank Davey Blog
  • Stan Burfield Blog
    • Fred Burfield's Homestead Memoirs
  • Our Events
  • News
  • PHOTOS & SUMMARIES
    • Season 5: 2016-2017 >
      • June 7th, 2017: Summary & Photos featuring Stan Burfield
      • May 3rd, 2017, Summary & Photos featuring Jason Dickson
      • April 5th, 2017 Summary & Photos, feeaturing James Deahl & Norma West Linder
      • Mar. 1st, 2017: Photos & Summary featuring Andy Verboom
      • Feb. 1st, 2017: Photos & Summary featuring Ron Stewart
      • Dec. 7th, 2016: Photos & Summary featuring David Stones
      • Nov. 2th, 2016: Photos and Summary featuring Don Gutteridge
      • Oct. 5th, 2016: Photos and Summary featuring David Huebert
    • Season 4: 2015-2016 >
      • June 1st, 2016: Photos and summaries: featuring Lynn Tait
      • May 4th, 2016 Photos and Summary: featuring indigenous poetry
      • April 6, 2016 Photos & Summary, featuring Steven McCabe
      • Mar. 2nd, 2016 photos, summary: featuring Andreas Gripp
      • Feb. 3rd, 2016 photos: 3 Western students.
      • Dec. 2, 2015 photos: featured reader Peggy Roffey
      • Nov. 7, 2015 photos: Our Words Fest open mic
      • Nov. 4, 2015 photos: featured reader Charles Mountford
      • Oct. 7th, 2015 photos: Madeline Bassnett featured
    • Season 3, 2014-15 >
      • Aug. 16, 2015 photos: The Ontario Poetry Society's "Sultry Summer Gathering"
      • June 3rd, 2015 photos: John B. Lee featured
      • May 6th, 2015 photos: Laurie D Graham featured
      • Apr. 1st, 2015 photos: John Nyman & Penn Kemp featured
      • Mar. 4th, 2015 photos: Patricia Black featured.
      • Feb. 4th, 2015 photos: feature Gary Barwin
      • Dec. 3rd, 2014 photos: Feature Debbie Okun Hill
      • Nov. 5th, 2014 photos: feature Julie Berry
      • Oct. 1st, 2014 photos: feature Roy MacDonald
    • Season 2, Sept. 2013 to June 2014. >
      • June 4th, 20114, featuring Monika Lee
      • May 7th 2014, featuring Susan McCaslin and Lee Johnson
      • Sept. 4th, 2013 featuring Frank Beltrano
      • April 16th, 2014, featuring Penn Kemp and Laurence Hutchman
      • March 5th, 2014, featuring Jacob Scheier
      • Feb. 5th, 2014: featuring four UWO students of poetry; music by Tim Woodcock
      • Jan. 2nd, 2014: featuring Carrie Lee Connel
      • Dec. 4th, 2013, featuring M. NourbeSe Philip
      • Nov. 6, 2013 , featuring Susan Downe
      • Oct. 2nd, 2013, featuring Jan Figurski
    • Season 1: Oct. 2012 to June 2013 >
      • June 4th, 2013 featuring David J. paul and the best-ever open mic
      • May 1st, 2013, featuring Sonia Halpern
      • Apr. 24, 2013 featuring Frank Davey & Tom Cull
      • Mar. 6th, 2013, featuring Christine Thorpe
      • Feb. 6th, 2013, featuring D'vorah Elias
      • Jan. 3rd. 2013: John Tyndall featured.
      • Dec. 5, 2012: RL Raymond featured
    • Dig These Hip Cats ... The Beats
  • Poet VIDEOS (open mic & featured readers)
    • 5th Season Videos (2016-2017)
    • 4th Season Videos (2015-16)
    • 3rd Season Videos (2014-2015)
    • 2nd Season (2013-2014) videos
  • BIOGRAPHIES - Featured poets & musicians
  • INTERVIEWS & POEMS (featured poets)
    • SEASON 6 - Interviews & Poems >
      • Kevin Shaw: Poem & Interview
      • David Janzen - Interview
    • SEASON 5 INTERVIEWS & POEMS
    • SEASON 4 INTERVIEWS AND POEMS
    • SEASON 3 INTERVIEWS AND POEMS
    • SEASON 2 INTERVIEWS & POEMS (only from Dec. 4th, 2013)
    • Season 1 INTERVIEWS & POEMS (& 1st half of Season 2) >
      • INTERVIEWS of Featured Poets
      • POEMS by Featured Poets (1st Season & to Nov. 2013)
  • Couplets: Poets in Dialogue
  • Future Events
  • Past Events
    • 5th Season: 2016-2017
    • Season 4: 2015-2016
    • Season 3: 2014-2015
    • Season Two: 2013-2014
    • Season One: 2012-2013
  • Who we Are
  • Testimonial
  • Our Mission
  • Links
  • Contact us

3rd Poetry Night Essay

9/28/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
THERE’S A COW ON MY PAGE by Stan Burfield

What to write about.... The eternal problem of the empty page.

Last night I went to the Poetry London readings, and everyone who has that problem should have been there. Paul Vermeersh read poems about everything and anything. Koko the famous signing gorilla led him down dark historical paths through the fierce strength of monsters and the delicacy of Koko’s arms protecting that little kitten. We found ourselves sloshing around in deep human undercurrents. All of us could easily have started a poem with Koko, but last night we got to see where a really open mind could go. Pick an animal, he said. We picked the coyote. In


Read More
0 Comments

Samuel Beckett as a Poet

9/25/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
I didn't know Samuel Beckett was a poet until recently. Then I read two pages of prose, in one paragraph, called, imagination Dead Imagine'. It's one of the strangest, most intriguing things I have ever read. Like reading something written by an alien from another planet, you find yourself trying to get it, him, and yourself all at once.
Without really understanding logically any of them. Beyond the content and the incredible way he wrote it, it taught me what a prose poem is. It's definitely not prose turned into a poem. It's a poem written as prose. And so it taught me what a poem should be.

0 Comments

Oblivious

9/23/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
Rushing out to revel in heavy
and profoundly awesome
        things,
hopefully,
we bubbled on about our little
        selves--
me, a plume of dust,
she, a drop of dew --
and blew right past
the Louvre 
under the whispering sun.


Stan  Burfield
         ...I hope I make it to the open mic. I intend to.

0 Comments

Lineup of Featured Poets for Year #1

9/22/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
We now have all our featured poets signed up for the first year. Each event,  except for the April one, will include an hour of open mic and fifteen minutes  of readings by a featured poet. Most will be on the first Wednesday of each
month at Mykonos Restaurant terrace, from 7:00 to 9:30, with live music and  sign-up beginning about 6:00. Cover by donation.

October 3, 2012:  ANDREAS GRIPP is well-known in london for the many readings he has given over  the years, for the 14 books and 13 chapbooks he has had published, for editing  and publishing his own literary journal for six years, and for hosting several  reading series.

November 7: KATHRYN MOCKLER has an MFA in creative  writing from UBC, has been published in many journals, has two collections in  print, has had her work screened several times on television and screened at a  number of festivals. Currently she teaches creative writing at UWO and co-edits  the UWO online journal ‘The Rusty Toque”.

December 5: RL RAYMOND has  two collections published. From a review of his first, ‘Sonofabitch Poems’:  “These poems scream with life. Really. This is not your blue-hair’d  grandmother’s genteel poetry. This is shock and awe poetry…take no  prisoners…bomb-blast poetry. Poetry perched on bar stools, lounging in beer  joints, waiting to catch you unaware and take you to your death.”
  
January 3 (THURSDAY): JOHN TYNDALL,  a Londoner since 1967, has been
published in several anthologies, and many journals. His two collections, one
with poems about the birth and childhood of his son, the second (2006) the
illness and death of his mother, have been praised by the University of Toronto
Quarterly for his use of "strange and iridescent language". Tyndall also will be
reading newer works, both found poems based on an obscure book from 1947 and  narratives in various voices, including that of his late father.
  
February 6: D’VORAH ELIAS,  who was born in South Korea, was abandoned by
her mother and adopted to the United States from an orphanage. She married the  late poet/physicist Vic Elias, and raised four children in London. She is a
playwrite and poet and has one published book of poems.

March 6:  CHRISTINE THORPE  says her poems are addressed to “those who feel in each  bright stream, the pull of an underground river. Readers are drawn from personal crossroads into subtly strange lands where skies may be truly falling but the  play of imagination endures.” Before settling for English literature, Christine  studied biology, mathematics and computer science. She has two published books of poetry.

April 24, 2013  (note this is the fourth Wednesday):  This is a special non-open-mic reading for National Poetry Month, held under the  auspices of the League of Canadian Poets.
            It will include FRANK DAVEY, who, since 1963, has been the editor-publisher of the poetics journal Open Letter, and who co-founded the world’s first on-line literary journal, Swift Current, in 1984. A prolific and highly-esteemed author of numerous books (the latest published in 2010) and scholarly articles on Canadian literary criticism and poetry, Davey writes “with a unique panache as he examines with humour and irony the ambiguous play of signs in contemporary culture, the popular stories that lie behind it, and the struggles between different
identity-based groups in our globalizing society—racial, regional, gender-based,
ethnic, economic—that drive this play,”according to his publisher’s reviewer. 
            London’s first Poet Laureate, PENN KEMP, will also read. Born in Strathroy, Kemp is co-editor and co-publisher of Pendas Productions. She  describes herself as a ‘sound poet’  and has published twenty-five books of
poetry and drama, ten CDs and Canada's first poetry CD-ROM. Since Coach House published her first book in 1972, Penn has been pushing text and aural
boundaries, often in participatory performance. The League of Canadian Poets
proclaimed her one of the foremothers of Canadian poetry. The following is from
my review for this page of Kemp’s August 4th performance: “It's the opposite of
narrative poetry. In that if you are looking for a story to carry you forward you are completely missing what's happening. What's happening isn't in the future but the moment, not the story but each word the poem is built from. Not even the word, but the sound of the word. Not just the sound of the word but many of the possible sounds of each word, all fitting together, interweaving, each evolving with each other and with the whole. Imagine hearing jazz built from vocal sounds. Now imagine it's the first time you have ever heard any jazz in your life. Beyond the experience itself there is your own mental experience: You find yourself continually working on your expectations. And your needs. Which turn out to be many.” 
    Also to be included in the April reading are LONDON’S SECOND POET LAUREATE, who has not yet been announced at the time of this writing (to be expected September 28th), and possibly one other poet, not yet decided upon.

May 1, 2013: SONIA HALPERN has won many teaching awards including UWO’s 2012 Arts & Humanities Teaching Excellence Award for her teaching and research in women’s studies and art history. She has published a number of books in that field. She has been voted one of UWO’s most popular profs for five years running. Halpern is also an actor and a composer, and has one book of published poetry, ‘The Life and Times of Transition Girl’ (2005).

June 5, 2013: DAVID J. PAUL has taught in London high schools for nearly thirty years. He has published two chapbooks and one full-length collection (2005). His poetry has been described as concrete, honest, earthy and visceral. He plans on reading poems about birds, dogs, earthquakes, spiders, writers and desire.

Enough feature poets (nearly all of the roughly twenty Londoners with published books) have agreed to read for Poetry Night to run us into our third year. We have deliberately intersperced the more well-known with the lesser-known poets so there will always be a good mixture. Anyone whom I have not contacted, please talk to us at London Open Mic Poetry Night.

0 Comments

2nd Poetry Night Essay: HOW TO BUTCHER YOUR POEM AT A READING by Stan Burfield

9/16/2012

0 Comments

 
Picture
    Get in its way.
    The opposite is just as true.
    I’m a mediocre poet, but when I read my poems aloud they tend to go over well. They
have an impact. 
     I thank my blind father for that. When I was a kid I would sometimes read to him, to give him a break from braille, or his talking  books, which both of us would often listen to. The readers of the talking books were always very good. We soon forgot their existence and only heard the story. I picked up on this so that when I read to Dad I tried to make the feeling and drama of the story overpower the dryness of my voice. I still read like that when I read poems to others. It works. 
     On the other hand, some of the best poets regularly butcher their poems. I often go to hear some of Canada’s greatest poets read at the Poetry London readings. I listen as carefully as I can but usually am left wishing they would read them over again. I’m lucky if I grasp more than half of any poem.
     The voices and the style of reading are usually so distracting, and the speed of reading so fast, that by the time I really take in a good phrase and enjoy the beauty of it I have usually missed the next line completely. I soon find myself putting most of my energy into just trying to figure out what’s going on and ignoring the subleties and beauty of the poetics. 
     I admit that many listeners are quicker and more focussed than I am. But let me give you a specific example. At one of the Poetry London readings the editor of one of Canada’s premier poetry journals, highly esteemed for his own poetry, gave a reading. A workshop was held before the reading, as usual, examining two poems by us local poets, and two by the featured readers. This guy’s poem was amazing. It had a huge impact on me. I can remember parts of it to this day. So I was really looking forward to hearing him read it aloud. I thought I might get more out of it than  I already had, by how he emphasized or deemphasized certain words. Well, even knowing the whole poem so intimately, from such a recent examination, most of it passed by me without any contact. I was shocked. And angry. I thought, how can he so casually do that to such an incredible poem? And that was only one of many he read. Imagine the incredible stuff I completely missed.
 `The worst thing he did was read every poem with some kind of a weird, monotonous rhythm that broke up all the phrases and sentences into totally illogical pieces. It made them impossible to follow. I suppose he was trying to get the look of the poem on the printed page across to his listeners without actually showing it to them. He would have been much better served by using an overhead projector. A poem written on paper and a reading are two completely different art forms. A person can’t hear a visual form.
     But reading a poem on paper, you can get both the form and the content at once. If you focus primarily on the content the look will still have its impact. And if one intrudes on the other too much, you can simply reread it. But none of this works at a reading. The only way to really communicate the poem is to ignore the look of it and concentrate on the content, the meaning, the phrases, the sentences. Then, if the poem is truly poetic, those poetics will to some extent make themselves felt in the normal reading of the sentences. In other words, the sentences will be different than if they had been written as prose. 
     But forgetting the look of the poem is only the beginning of communicating it. It only points the way. The reader has to really try to communicate, just as people talking to each other have to. Communicating largely involves empathy with the listener, imagining how the listener is taking everything that is spoken. If a word is spoken one way, will that lead the listener astray? Preventing misinterpretations is a very big problem in written poetry, and is part of the difficulty of both writing and reading a poem on the page, but to then read it aloud poorly is to compound the problem dramatically. And the listener has no time to think about meanings. 
     The listener has no time because the poem is usually read too quickly. Many impatient conversationalists speak far too quickly. They never seem to realize that even though they already know what they are going to say before they begin, the listener seldom does. The listener not only has to understand the words and the grammar but also must try to figure out the correct meaning at the same time.
The speaker only has to say the words. One requires more time than the other.  Many good poets also seem to be ignorant of this lack on the part of their  audience. And to grasp a poem takes much more than does grasping a simple  conversation. Reading slowly is essential.
     But few poets read with this kind of empathy for their audience. Reading each poem twice would make up for it, but that never happens. As a result, I often find myself giving up after the first few lines, shrugging my shoulders, and daydreaming through the rest of the poem.  
     Here’s my recipe for a good reading: The reader shouldn’t start out with the idea of trying to get across the complexities of the written poem, but instead should begin at the other end of the spectrum, as if the reading isn’t a reading but is actually just a conversation and the simple story in the poem is all that is important to get across. Then, with that, the reader can add more and more complexities from the written version until an optimal point is reached. Stop there. Beyond that, both content and poetics rapidly lose their stickiness until, at some point, the whole thing just bounces off the skull.

0 Comments

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012


    Categories

    All
    Administration
    Alan Leangvan
    Allen Cook
    Allen Ginsgerg
    Andreas Gripp
    Andy Verboom
    Anthology
    Basic Poetics Study Group
    Bernie Koenig
    Bill Paul
    Blog
    Book Launch
    Brighton Mckinnon
    Brittany Renaud
    Carl Lapp
    Carolyn Smart
    Carrie Lee Connel
    Chapters
    Chapters Reading Series
    Charmaine E. Elijah
    Cheryl Cashman
    Children's Poetry Workshop
    Christine Thorpe
    Coming Events
    Couplets: Poets In Dialogue
    David Heubert
    David Hickey
    David Stones
    Dawna Perry
    Debbie Okun Hill
    Dennis Siren
    Don Gutteridge
    Dorothy Nielsen
    E-journal
    Elliot Sapp
    Erik Mandawe
    Erik Martinez Richards
    Essay
    Featured Poet
    Founder
    Frank Beltrano
    Frank Davey
    Future
    Gabe Foreman
    Gary Barwin
    Gloria Alvernaz Mulcahy
    Guerrilla Poetry
    High-school English Students
    Indigenous
    Internet Manager
    Interview
    Jacob Scheier
    Jaime R. Brenes Reyes
    Jan Figurski
    Janice McDonald
    Jan Stewart
    Joan Clayton
    John B. Lee
    John Nyman
    John Tyndall
    Josef Kaplan
    Journals
    Julie Berry
    Karen Solie
    Kathryn Mockler
    Ken Babstock
    Kenny Khoo
    Kevin Heslop
    Laurence Hutchman
    Laurie D. Graham
    Lemon Hound
    Leonard Cohen
    Light Of East
    Linda Burfield
    Lineup
    London
    London Arts Council
    London Open Mic Poetry Night
    London Yodeller
    Louisa Howerow
    Marlene Laplante
    Martin Hayter
    Mary Dowds
    Media
    Monika Lee
    Music
    Mykonos Restaurant
    National Poetry Month
    Ola Nowosad
    Open Mic
    Organizer
    Patricia Black
    Peggy Roffey
    Penn Kemp
    Penn Kemp
    Photography
    Poem
    Poet Laureate
    Poetry
    Poetry London
    Poetry Night Essay
    Poetry Reading
    Poetry Study Group
    Poetry Workshop
    Press Coverage
    Prison Poetry
    Projects
    Rl Raymond
    Ron Stewart
    Roy MacDonald
    Sebastian Rydzewski
    Sharon Bee
    Sheila Deane
    Shelly Harder
    Sidewalk Poetry
    Slam
    Social Media
    Stan Burfield
    Students
    Summary
    Table Reading
    The Ontario Poetry Society
    Tom Cull
    TOPS
    Tribute
    Videos
    Volunteers
    Workshop

Proudly powered by Weebly