The ‘table reading’ section of the October inaugural event of London Open Mic Poetry Night seemed to be the most enjoyed one, at least going by the energetic conversation and laughter that lasted the full hour and a half, and the positive comments by participants afterwards. With a little refinement, we expect this innovation of ours to always be the most anticipated portion. 

The general idea behind Poetry Night itself is to bring together as many different kinds of poets and as many different levels of ability as possible, to place them in a situation in which they can learn from each other and get to know each other. The featured poets’ readings, with their Q&A, introduces poets with proven talent and ability. The open mic, on the other hand, introduces poets of every ability. The third section, the table readings, brings them all together -- in discussion of poems read, in general conversation and in just plain good times. 

The table readings solve two problems. First, with many people attending the open mic and only a limited number being picked to read (twelve at present), what happens to all the others who wanted to read but didn’t get picked? Do they have to leave disappointed? And second, how do you really create a sense of community amongst poets who sit down together to hear each other read and then just get up, file out the door, and go home? 

The table readings eliminate these problems by breaking the large group into smaller ones and having poets read at all groups simultaneously, which allows everyone who brought poems to read them to an audience. And by having small, intimate groups of listeners, each one of those people can contribute to the discussion of each poem they hear. Thus the less advanced poets can learn from the more seasoned. And many viewpoints can be heard. Which, for one thing, can show poets where and why their readers will likely go astray, and how to fix the poems so this doesn’t happen so easily. 

Unlike in the open mic, where the audience is simply enjoying hearing the poems, at the table readings the audience not only wants to enjoy them but also to think about those aspects that worked and those that didn’t in order to discuss them usefully afterwards. For that reason, the poems have to be read twice, the first time for the effect, and the second for the details and to help remember them for discussion. 

Also, all the poets at a table should take turns reading one poem each, going around the circle until they have read all the poems they brought or Mykonos closes for the night. 

As with any artist, a large part of being a poet involves things which can’t be learned or taught -- intelligence, sensitivity, empathy, creativity, life experiences, etc. But much can. And that which can, can be shared. So, hopefully, not only will the apprentice and journeymen poets read at the tables, but the master poets will as well, so that the others will be able to delve into high-quality poems alongside the poets who wrote them, for a really intense learning experience. 

We learned two lessons from our first table-reading session: First, the people who take part need to know the benefits that come with small groups. Otherwise they tend to drift together into larger ones. At the first event, we didn’t discuss this with the audience beforehand, the result being that those who were by themselves or in couples tended to join the larger groups, making them even larger. Also people liked to stay with their friends and their own age groups. To get the most from the table readings, they should do just the opposite, filling out the smallest groups, and groups that are not made up of their friends and their age groups, so that they get different input for their poems than they might be used to, and also so they can involve themselves in poetry different from their norm. Most of the tables at Mykonos seat six or eight, which is probably the best size for a group. As group sizes increase, their numbers decrease, so that less poets get to read less poems. Also, as sizes increase, there is less time for everyone to contribute to the discussion, until at some point that familiar thing happens: a few dominant people take over, forcing everyone else to just sit and listen. In groups of six, that doesn’t happen. The larger a group gets, the more like a regular open mic it becomes. 

The other lesson we learned was how loud people should read. Of course, if a group is large, the readers will have to read louder so everyone can hear, and they may disrupt other groups in the process. With smaller groups they don’t have to. In any case, they should always consciously modulate their voice level so it doesn’t carry into neighbouring groups. At our first event, most people did this without any discussion about it beforehand. Which was cause for relief.

These table readings have the potential to help create an actual community of poets and poetry lovers here in London. Simply, if those who keep coming to the table readings all season sit in different groups each time, then by the time the first season is over everyone will know everyone else.

UWO’s Kathryn Mockler will be the featured poet at the London Open Mic Poetry Night on November 7th, followed by an hour of open mic, and then an hour of table readings, where poets take turns reading to their tables, followed by discussion.

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” at www.therustytoque.com.
 
The interviewer is Stan Burfield, host/organizer of Poetry Night. 
 
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”. The interviewer is Stan Burfield, host/organizer of Poetry Night.

Stan: When I started reading Onion Man, I thought, “Hey, this is just prose broken up into short lines”, but when I got further into the story I began to feel that you had found the perfect format for it. It actually felt like you had discarded all poetic and prose forms and, starting from zero, had asked yourself how this content would best be presented. Did it happen something like that?

KM: At the time I started writing these poems, I was reading a lot of narrative poets. Douglas Burnet Smith’s collection The Knife Thrower’s Partner, Michael Ondaajte’s Collected Works of Billy The Kid, and Michael Turner’s Company Town and Hard Core Logo were particular influences for me. 

Stan: Considering that prose is much more popular than poetry, it would
seem that you made a big sacrifice writing the story as linked poems. Did you
think about that?

KM: Over the years some people had suggested that the story would work as a novel, but it didn’t feel right for me for this project. I write in many genres, and I generally let the project dictate the genre, and sometimes I will adapt my ideas from one genre to another—often poetry or fiction to short film.Poetry (and I would say micro-fiction does this too) forces you to pay attention to images, details, bits of dialogue, fragments that you might gloss over in a larger block of prose. Poetry offers us the opportunity to slow down and pay close attention. I would never consider it a sacrifice to write poetry.

Stan: Many readers would be able to read the whole book in one sitting. I did it in two, and I’m a slow, unfocussed reader. I was very surprised how easy it was to read, considering that poetry usually is a bit of a struggle for me. But your writing was so clear and precise, and each little vignette led to the next and the next so well (yes, like peeling the layers of an onion) that I had no desire to put the book down. Just the opposite. Also, it read as if it had been a breeze to write. But it must not have been. How much work did it take, and over what time period?

KM: I started Onion Man over fifteen years ago. I didn’t work on it all the time but just kept adding to it over the years. The biggest struggle was working out the narrative thread and then settling on the line breaks during the inal days of editing.

Stan: The story develops inside a corn-canning factory, but it was only later, when the protagonist leaves the factory and goes into the city, that I found her, and me, in places right down the street from me here in London. The shock of reality was very strong. Did you expect that to happen to us London readers? Could you have located the story pretty much anywhere?

KM: Perhaps I could have set the story in a fictional town or another Canadian city, but some of the social conditions that I wanted to portray were particular to my experiences of living London. For instance, I was interested in having the young protagonist not be fully aware of her own class biases which her boyfriend Clinton calls her on at one point in the story.

Stan: I assume that you, Kathryn Mockler, don’t feel the same as the protagonist’s boyfriend about London, which he calls, “just another shitty little town.”

KM: I did when I was a teenager. My experiences of growing up in London weren’t particularly positive which I guess is why I wrote about it.

Stan: I was surprised how perfect the voice of the protagonist is, an 18-year-old factory girl, even though you only diverge from proper English grammar in small, unobvious ways, and not often. Was it difficult to find a balance that would convey her realistically and yet not be so blatantly colloquial as to make the writer obvious?

KM: The voice is close to my own, so I wasn’t focused on how it should sound in terms of believability. My biggest hurdle was the narrative.

Stan: One of my strongest impressions of the story is that there is no way it could have been written by a college professor. Much of it, especially the complex emotional and social situation in the corn-canning factory, is strongly familiar to me from my early days working in similar situations. Is the young protagonist some version of yourself when you were that age?

KM: Yes, very much so. I did work in a corn-canning factory one summer. Although the book is a work of fiction, I did base some things on my experiences.

Stan: Virtually all the characters, male and female, live sad, depressing lives that are so real the reader will struggle desperately to find a way, in vain, toward a happy ending for any of them. Yet there is humour and lightness in many small episodes. Is this how you see life for everyone, or only for this particular lower stratum of society? Or only for a recession era, such as this one, which took place in the 1980s? Or only for individuals in certain situations? In other words, why did you not have any relatively happy lives in the story?

KM: I don’t see the characters as being in a lower stratum of society. The characters (because of the recession and economic conditions outside of their control) don’t feel that they have a future. They don’t have the same opportunities that were afforded to the generation that came before—such as a living wage. Similar conditions are certainly at play today, and I hope that this experience resonates with readers who feel that same dark cloud over their future.

Maybe I’m hanging around the wrong people—but I don’t know hardly anyone who has a relatively happy life.

(Stan: I especially liked Kathryn’s answer to this question. I was worried when I wrote it, but decided to leave it to see how she would answer it. She really aced it. Her answer contains much far more than its words.)
 
Stan: I kept hoping for something positive for someone while reading it. On the last page you provide it. You describe hope so powerfully you practically define it. I’m curious whether, during the lengthy time it took you to write the book, you found a need for that hope in the story, not only as a gift for the reader, but for your own emotional needs, as well?

KM: I knew that the protagonist needed to transform in some way and having her get out of her present situation felt natural for the story. I wasn’t focused on trying to create hope, but rather I intended for humour to balance out some of the bleakness.

Stan: Could you describe your second book, ‘The Saddest Place on Earth’, which has been published by DC Books, but is not yet available at the time of this interview?

KM: The Saddest Place on Earth is coming out in December 2012. It’s a collection of absurd poems that I started writing in 2004 while collaborating with my husband, David Poolman, who is a visual artist. Some of his drawings will be featured in the book as well. The Saddest Place on Earth began as a response to the actions of the U.S. government in Iraq, and many of the poems follow the structure outlined in the following Donald Rumsfeld quote. When briefing his press secretary on how to deal with the media, Rumsfeld said: “Begin with an illogical premise and proceed perfectly logically to an illogical conclusion. They [the media] do it all the time.” However, my critique in this book now extends to the Canadian government, most significantly, in its attack on the environment in the pursuit of oil.

Thanks, Stan, for your thoughtful questions and for inviting me to participate in your event.  Kathryn


     

One of the main difficulties poets have is getting  published. This is true especially of the less-experienced poets, but of all
poets to one degree or another.

What I would like to do is begin a  list of Canadian journals, both print and online, put together by poets who have been through the mill and can offer their wisdom and practical advise along with the items on the list.

Any poets who would  like to
contribute can not only add journals and their thoughts about them, but suggest
helpful categories to put them in.

The lists will be updated constantly by the contribution of different poets, and each journal will have increasingly more comments.

The actual list we put together will not be attributed to anyone, but the comments about the journals will of course include the names of the authors, if they consent to their names being used. If not, there will be no name attached. But we will post the comments nevertheless. 
  
Poets will then not have to rely on trial and error over long periods of time, or their own stumbling research, or the PR put out by the journals, but will in essence be able to ask a group of experienced poets what they would do if they were in their shoes.

I've been reading with fascination for some months now a blog called 'The Urge:
Reviewing New Canadian Poetry', by a poet named Stewart Cole. Well, last night
at the Poetry London reading, one of the two featured poets couldn't make it, so one Stewart Cole subbed. His poetry was great. I was totally sucked into it and, while he was reading, it slowly percolated into my overly-busy mind that This Urge must be The Urge I'd been reading. Not only that, Stewart Cole had just moved into London in September. So I made sure to ask him afterward if he would be a featured reader for Poetry Night down the road. (It's not just his poetry that's great. His reading is too.) And YES! Wow. You never know what's going to happen. Please check out The Urge. Cole does one very substantial review a month. And I mean very substantial. 

http://theurgepoetry.blogspot.ca/

CANADIAN LITERATURE a Quarterly of Criticism and Review  has an excellent online section called 'CanLit Poets', with poems and authors' commentaries by many well-known Canadian poets, "geared towards motivating the next generation of Canadian poets. The poems in this archive have all been published in the pages of Canadian Literature."  Check it out:       http://canlit.ca/canlitpoets/

 Yes, we  will gladly take your poem and post it here, on our Facebook
page and also on our website. 

There's a catch, though. There has to be. If not, we would probably be
overrun with poems, and more than one from everyone. The problem is that in
order to winnow them down, I would have to judge them. And I certainly don't
have that ability. And even if I found a way to judge them well, I would be
leaving a trail of angry losers in my wake. Just as in any contest with only one
winner. So....

 My catch is that you have to write an essay for us. Then you’ve earned the
right to attach one poem to it. The essay has to somehow relate to poetry. A
good idea you had, an intuition, a revelation in the sense of a sudden
understanding, even an opinion. But you need to write it in the form of a
personal essay, not the formal kind you remember from school. A personal essay
has no citations, no footnotes, no bibliography, only you and your ideas. In a
personal essay you are the only expert that counts, and you tell your idea
breathlessly just as you would to your best  friend on the phone.
Including, if possible, how and where you came about the idea. Or, if part of it
is not your own, which is guaranteed, where that came from, in a general sense.
And so on. I wrote a personal essay below about writing personal essays, if
you’re interested. It’s called, ‘4th Poetry Night Essay.... Wanted:You’.

 Have fun.

THE PROBLEM WITH SLAMMING SLAM by Bryton
McKinnon

There is a common misconception about the genre of "slam"  poetry, that it all sounds the same. Yes, the syncopated rhythm is replicable. What I often see are very young poets repeating what they perceive as good poetry. But many developed poets grow to understand that they have their own voice that must be cultivated.

However like many of the poets who are not influenced by the genre of spoken word... poetry, many slam people still imitate other writers' works; imitation being the highest form of flattery. I would like to make it clear that we veterans of the London poetry slam do not enjoy this cadence and work to develop our own matured writing voice just like everyone who attends Poetry London and London Poetry Open Mic.

A little context to the evolution of poetry events: Poetry slams started as a reaction to the sophisticated, upper brow poetry reading all too common prior to the 1980's. Still relevant today, “noobs” would be put at the end of the night, after all the popular poets performed. The result was an empty venue and belittled
writers. A poetry slam was built so everyone could have a chance to share. To
let all styles of writing be shared on stage. Journalism, skits, novella excerpts, sonnets, etc. There is a 3 minute time limit to let everyone have a chance to share.

As for the political/catharsis nature of many poems, with slam that depends totally on the writers who attend. However, many poets/writers pre-judge the event as political or for only one style, and don’t see the totality of creative writing. They prematurely judge and so don’t attend the event due to bias. Slam isn't about a style of poetry, it is about everyone having a chance to share.

In regards to the competition aspect, that is based in dadism or absurdism. It is a farce. Points cannot be given to poetry. We have a saying in the writing community that winning is unpredictable; in other words, "any given sunday". The idea behind a cash prize is that we try to encourage people to continue developing their voice and reward writers for such.

So, if there was a lack of representation from non-spoken word poets at slams,, it is not because of the structure of the event, but the outsiders making judgements. Our slam is the "show the love" slam. We accept all. Even better, we encourage young writers by letting them share their work, just as was done at the first Wednesday Poetry Open Mic.

Fostering poetry in London. I do not believe an "us" and "they" perspective would
legitimately build the London literary community. That being said two slams are
scheduled for October. On the 19th at the London Music Club from 8 to 11 and a
Youth Slam on the 27th at King's University College from 6 to 9. I hope to see
many first-timers – young and old – share their stories, ideas, and messages!


Comments?

WANTED: YOU by Stan Burfield

This is the fourth in a series of what I call blurb essays, or, as they’re more formally called, personal essays. The first one was written by our first featured poet, Andreas Gripp. I found it on his website. I don’t think he thought of it as an essay. Since that one, I’ve written all two of them. No problem. They’re like candy to me. I could write personal essays til the cows come home. It’s fun. I have a blog full of them. They’re about anything I feel like going on about. 
  
But this space has to do with poetry. Of which I have a limited acquaintanceship. Anyone who has put in a week with Kathryn Mockler at UWO knows a lot more about poetry than I do. So I will very soon need some help to keep this thing going. Maybe even from you. 
 
I can imagine that when you look at this space you have a hard time seeing yourself here. It looks like it belongs to me, Stan. I’m the big banana. The
head cheese. The whole shootin kaboodle is mine: the websites, the open mic, the table readings, the featured poets. I started it all, organized it all, put my pennies into it, and cajoled and wheedled people to work for me for nothing just to make me look good. Like top dogs always do. The rest of the people just look on.  
 
But actually no, everybody came of their own accord. They wanted the open mic to happen as much as I did. And this internet space isn’t here just so I can show off to everyone that I know how to put a paragraph together. It’s for whomever will take advantage of it.  
 
It’s for anyone in the London area who’s into poetry. Students. Teachers. Beginners. Andreas. It’s also for those who don’t write poetry. For people who happen to stroll in off the street. And for Gregory Wm Gunn, who is packed and ready to explode, methinks. (I looked at his Facebook page.) It’s for those of you who, after that first Poetry Night, are already regulars. It’s for those who will never attend. It’s for young Bryton McKinnon who will be clobbering us with something about slam in a few days. It’s for Erik Martinez Richards, whom I’ve been pestering to tell us about the poetry of Chile. It’s for Dawna Perry who is brewing up something in the back room that she isn’t talking about. It’s for Kevin Andrew Heslop who has only been in his freshman class a few weeks and yet is so much more of a poet than I am that I’m in shock. He owes me an essay for that comment. And it’s for you. 
 
There’s a community here. It’s small but it’s our own. It’s us. The open mic and table readings will help to bring us together physically. This internet space is for our minds.  
 
It’s an easy thing to take part in. If you don’t have it in you to write a blurb, well, when someone else does, just leave a comment. A few words will do. Or get carried way. We can get to know each other just through website comments.  
 
Okay, what’s a personal essay? That’s easy: no citations, no footnotes, no bibliography, no proofs, no cutting out your opinions. A personal essay is you having a conversation with a very patient listener--your reader--about something that excites you. A personal essay is you. At a minimum you just write out your idea the way you would explain it on the phone. If you want to do a better job, then have the reader enter your life, follow along with you, enjoy your situation, and think of your idea exactly as you did, while you’re explaining it. Or before. And when you get the reader to the big idea, don’t look around for the perfect formal logic in which to cast it. No. Get frustrated. Break through all that. Just say, “Look...” and let loose on your patient listener. That’s the instant in the conversation when you wish you had a recorder. But you don’t. So start typing as fast as you can. And don’t stop till you’re done. When you’re done, you’re done. People either get it or they don’t. Take a break. Go for supper. Then read it over. Add, subtract, rearrange, clarify, check your grammar, spelling, and then email it to me:  burfield@live.com  
 
If it isn’t perfect, don’t worry about it. Who is? 
 
　

                   For the overly curious, my old essays: http://airweb.blogspot.ca/

Andreas Gripp’s reading at the launch of London’s Open Mic Poetry Night in  the terrace at Mykonos Restaurant Oct. 3 seemed to have more humour, as well as  more profound and deeply interesting moments, than I remembered ever hearing  from him before. Maybe it was actually the music that preceded him, the vibes  and cello of Bernie Koenig and Emma Wise, that made me more open to his poetry,  or the cozy Greek atmosphere of the terrace, or the fact that most people had  come early for the music and food and wine and were comfortable and ready when Andreas began reading. Or maybe it was just me hoping it would be extra special. Or it could have been  all of us wanting and needing a new series of events for the poets of the city who aren’t into slam. Or all of these. 

As soon as London’s Town Cryer, Bill Paul, opened the night with his rousing introduction, and I began the proceeedings, I was amazed to see the night proceed by itself, despite my numerous flubs. Without having to be pushed or pulled, everybody enthusiastically got right into it and really enjoyed themselves. 

The open mic section went smoothly with Dawna Perry picking the names randomly from the pot and calling the poets up to read. Very few went over the allotted five minutes, and the audience obviously enjoyed the variety of poems and readers. Everyone was surprised at the general quality of both the poems and the reading of them. 

We did some musical chairs to prepare for the table readings, with people forming larger groups separated from each other for sound buffering. Each group organized itself, self-appointing readers and their sequence and how many poems each read. By 9:30, after three quarters of an hour, just about everyone who brought poems, of the 47 in attendance, had read and most had read more than they had expected to. People who had not even put their names in the Ballot Bowl for the open mic brought out poems in the general excitement. The room was constantly abuzz with discussion, laughter, and conversation. 

At the smallest group, where I spent most of my time, John Tyndall, one of  London’s most well-known poets (and our January 3rd reader), happened to be  sitting next to up-and-coming poet Dawna Perry who read from her coil-bound  notebook. John made a few suggestions, and Martin Hayter leaned over and  remarked to me about how good she was. Dawna's honour's degree in literature and  her talent were showing themselves. Martin also read to our focussed attention.  Neil Desborough and I, the two country gents at the table, (Neil a real one,  living on a farm out in the Ingersol area) listened with the reserve and  taciternity we have earned from our long years of toil (or is it shyness, at  least on my part), while the hubbub ensued around us. 

There were a few “little hickups” through the night, as Martin was kind enough to call them the next morning when he found me exagerating every uneven breath in my mind. But now, a couple days later, I’m pretty happy and pumped to go on to #2, with Kathryn Mockler.