(We're posting them as they come in, but only if they're written in the compact style of the entries below.)

• Wed. 5th: London Open Mic Poetry: Mykonos Rest., featuring James Deahl & Norma West Linder. Has open mic. 7 pm. Pay What You Can Event.  http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/news/do-you-have-an-april-poetry-event
• Sat. 8th: Basic Poetics Study Group, 1st edition on "line breaks", open to everyone, hosted by London Open Mic, each month one participant teaches the others about an aspect of poetics. 2 pm, Landon Branch Library, Community Room. Cost about $2 each to pay for room rental. http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/news/basic-poetics-study-group-meeting-1-sat-april-8th-youre-invited
• Sun. 9th: Lois Marie Harrod Poetry Writing Workshop, ALL DAY, in 3 parts, from 10 am into the evening, at Forest City Gallery and Mykonos Restaurant. Included in workshop: writing small poems, creating origami poetry books, Ekphrasis poetry, followed by reading and open mic.  Fee for the day is $50. (meals not included). Contact Frank Beltrano frankbeltrano@hotmail.com or Sharon Lindenburger slinden@rogers.com Learn more about Lois Mary Harrod.
• ​Wed 12th: Open Workshop, hosted by London Open Mic, participants critique each other's poems, 6:30, Landon Branch Library Wortley Room, If interested, email Stan at burfield@live.com                                 http://www.londonpoetryopenmic.com/news/join-our-new-poetry-workshop
• Tues. 18th: Sarnia-Lambton’s 2017 National Poetry Month Celebration, readings by Kara Ghobhainn Smith, Sharon Berg, James Deahl, Norma West Linder, Carmen Ziolkowski, and Debbie Okun Hill, 7 to 9 p.m. at John’s Restaurant’s Famous Room, 1643 London Line in Sarnia. Admission is free. More information athttps://okunhill.wordpress.com/2017/03/23/sarnia-lambton-poets-prepare-for-npm17-celebrations/
• Wed. 19th: Poetry London featuring ULRIKKA GERNES & JOHN NYMAN: Landon Branch Library, readings at 7:30pm, pre-reading workshop at 6:30pm
• Fri.  21st: London Poetry Slam Finals: Aeolian Hall, 7:30, $10.00

Out of our first six events, four have seen between 45 and 50 attendees each, including the last three. 

The mix of music, poetry, food, drinks, the Greek atmosphere and good conversation makes for a great evening, and people look forward to returning. 

We have a place for established poets to read, and another, the open mic, for everyone, both the established poets and the amateurs like myself. 

There is a third group in London, some of whom also come to the open mic. They are the poets who are too young to be established, but who are also far too serious about their poetry to be seen as dabblers. These days they are finding the paths forward very difficult to negotiate, partly due to their numbers and the very long waits at the doors to the few serious journals that accept works by new poets. 

We would like to become useful in some way to these poets, in hopes we can help prevent them from completely giving up like so many have before them. We're actively thinking about this, and any suggestions from anyone would be welcome. A possible route for us might be workshops, one of which we have just begun. Workshops are a form of community, and nothing provides motivation as well as being part of a community. 

More on this later.

We are about to begin a new project, one which may be much more useful to the local poetry community than are our monthly events: We are going to do a free online launch of everyone’s new book release. 

The book can be of any kind, real paper or online-only, commercial or self-published. We only have one restriction: The poet must have been published in two mainstream journals, by which we mean journals that are discriminating. 

Our launches may prove to be more effective than are the traditional restaurant or library launches, for several reasons. 

First, we will post a batch of the poet’s previously-published poems so that readers can really sink their teeth into the author’s work, as opposed to only hearing them once as at a normal launch. And these poems will be linked directly to whomever is selling the books - a publisher or the poet’s own website. 

Second, the launch will include, along with a photo and bio, an interview with the poet, which will also be linked to the poems and to the book source. 

Those of you who have come to London Open Mic Poetry Night events at the Mykonos will be familiar with the incredible variety of people who write poems and read them at the open mic. By the time each person's five minutes are up you've just started to get used to that individual; you've deeply thought about and felt and watched, inside and out, that one of the zillions of forms that us human beings take. Then, with a clap and a few footsteps, someone entirely different is standing there. 

This is a big part of the enjoyment of our events.

It applies equally to the featured poets. So far I`ve read a book of poems by each of the four we`ve featured, as well as one by the next. And I've interviewed them and gotten to know them to some extent. And I`m amazed at how different they are from each other, in both their person and their poetry. I keep thinking the next one will compare to one of the others. Be similar. But no. How many wildly different kinds of poets can we possibly have? There are only so many directions on the compass. 

I'm really getting into this. Each book I read is a whole new world. 

The first four months of London Open Mic Poetry Night's first season have been a success, with the last event, on Jan. 3rd, featuring John Tyndall, drawing a crowd of fifty to the terrace at the Mykonos Restaurant, even more than attended the series' launch. We're optimistic that the remaining five months of the season will be just as upbeat.

We've made good use of the first four events to test out and then toss out ideas that sounded much better in an excited discussion than they actually worked on the floor. In the process we ended up with a leaner, simpler event, composed  

Revisit 100,000 Poets for Change on the Radio

If you read a poem at the Sept. 29th 100,000 Poets for Change event, hosted by Penn Kemp (or wanted to but missed it) you may want to tune in to Kemp’s radio show on Tuesday. She is airing  recorded selections from it, from 6:30 - 7:00 pm. 

Kemp’s show, ‘Gathering Voices’, which she has hosted for five years, will take a second look at the theme of change that so many poets in many locations around the world focussed on that evening, as we did at Landon Library, celebrating our Culture Days as well.  

‘Gathering Voices’ will be on CHRW FM 94.9 FM (to be re-aired December 25, 6:30-7:00 am). Listen live on www.chrwradio.com/listen Some photos from the London event are at http://www.100tpcmedia.org/100TPC2012/2012/05/london-ontario-canada/

RL Raymond, who will be launching his third book, 'Half Myths and Quarter legends' at the Dec. 5th London Open Mic Poetry Night, has just been nominated for the prestigious 2013 Pushcart Prize.

The New York-based Pushcart Prize - Best of the Small Presses series, published every year since 1976, is, according to the prize's publishers, "the most honored literary project in America". Writers who were first noticed by the prize over the years include Raymond Carver, Tim O’Brien, Jayne Anne Phillips, Charles Baxter, Andre Dubus, Susan Minot, Mona Simpson, John Irving, Rick Moody, and many more.

RL Raymond, who has been nominated for the prestigious 2013 Pushcart Prize, will be launching his third book, ‘Half  Myths & Quarter Legends’, at the December 5th London Open Mic Poetry Night, held at Mykonos Restaurant, 572 Adelaide St. N. Music starting at 6:30, event at 7:00.

The interviewer is Stan Burfield, the organizer of
London Open Mic Poetry Night. 
　

Stan:   When did you begin writing poetry and what got you into it?

RLR:   I remember writing stories as a kid. Then for a while, I didn’t write a thing. It began in earnest during my university years; that’s when I started writing poetry. I was published in a few journals. I wrote, but not really seriously. Then I went dark for a few years when I graduated. It’s only the last 4 or 5 years that I’ve

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?

    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.