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Apr. 10th, 2011 08:09 pmMy second night of poetry went as well as the first one. It's such a high, getting to share things I made and listening to other people share things that they made, especially when they're people who get how it is to sometimes feel like I have words instead of nerves running up the middle of my spine. The audience was kind enough to laugh at my intros, especially the one to my rhyming-poem-that-wasn't-a-sonnet, which went thusly:
"This poem came about because I wanted to write a sonnet. I figured, Bill Shakespeare used to bang them out by the dozen, I can count to twelve, I can count to fourteen. I had a goddamn rhyming dictionary. How hard could it be?
(pause)
Pretty hard, it turned out.
(unplanned pause to let the laughter die down)
This isn't a sonnet. It does rhyme, though."
They also laughed at my introduction to my poem about spinsterhood ("I don't even LIKE cats!"), which I hadn't actually planned on reading, but which Doug-the-recently-published-in-CV2-which-is-arguably-Canada's-biggest-litmag (the emcee and organizer this year) remembered from 2006 and expressed disappointment that I wouldn't be reading. I had it memorized so I did it anyway.
They laughed at my poem about an octopus, titled "Cephalop-ode".
One person came up to me afterwards, and told me one of my serious poems made her cry, which was a huge honour; people tend to censor tears in public.
Oh! And another cool thing was that there was a woman also performing poetry (and a fantastic short story about what would happen if she invited all the different facets of her personality to a dinner party, but I digress) named Allison Crowe. There was a singer-songwriter by that name whose music I listened to a lot in 2005-ish, but it's a fairly common name, and the sound guy was Tom Cochrane (not that Tom Cochrane), so I figured she was Not That Allison Crowe. She friended me on Facebook this morning and, as it turns out, yes, she is That Allison Crowe.
I spent much of this morning, while working, listening to her music, and she's every bit as spectacular as I remember.
Here's her cover of "Hallelujah", which apparently was nearly used in the Watchmen movie instead of Cohen's. I know it's The Most Covered Song In The World Ever, but it's so worth a listen.
"This poem came about because I wanted to write a sonnet. I figured, Bill Shakespeare used to bang them out by the dozen, I can count to twelve, I can count to fourteen. I had a goddamn rhyming dictionary. How hard could it be?
(pause)
Pretty hard, it turned out.
(unplanned pause to let the laughter die down)
This isn't a sonnet. It does rhyme, though."
They also laughed at my introduction to my poem about spinsterhood ("I don't even LIKE cats!"), which I hadn't actually planned on reading, but which Doug-the-recently-published-in-CV2-which-is-arguably-Canada's-biggest-litmag (the emcee and organizer this year) remembered from 2006 and expressed disappointment that I wouldn't be reading. I had it memorized so I did it anyway.
They laughed at my poem about an octopus, titled "Cephalop-ode".
One person came up to me afterwards, and told me one of my serious poems made her cry, which was a huge honour; people tend to censor tears in public.
Oh! And another cool thing was that there was a woman also performing poetry (and a fantastic short story about what would happen if she invited all the different facets of her personality to a dinner party, but I digress) named Allison Crowe. There was a singer-songwriter by that name whose music I listened to a lot in 2005-ish, but it's a fairly common name, and the sound guy was Tom Cochrane (not that Tom Cochrane), so I figured she was Not That Allison Crowe. She friended me on Facebook this morning and, as it turns out, yes, she is That Allison Crowe.
I spent much of this morning, while working, listening to her music, and she's every bit as spectacular as I remember.
Here's her cover of "Hallelujah", which apparently was nearly used in the Watchmen movie instead of Cohen's. I know it's The Most Covered Song In The World Ever, but it's so worth a listen.
