Photos and Video from the February Poetry Salon at Urban Gallery

Fantastic Poetry Salon last week at Urban Gallery (thank you Calvin)! We had a memorable, inspiring, wonderful Salon of many brilliances. It was a poetically and sonically rich afternoon. I'd like to thank Stedmond Pardy, Kevin Fortnum and Amoeba Starfish for being our fantastic features, and Vladimir Azarov, Norman Allan and Alana Cook for stepping up to the open mic and sharing their poems with us. And to everyone who came out to a Saturday afternoon Poetry Salon in February, the coldest month in Toronto on record, wonderful to see you and yah, Canadians got grit. xoxo Brenda

(If you go the Poetry Salons album at Picasa, all the names are listed.)

                                                                                                    

A single video of the Poetry Salon, but you can see below the times each of the readers and musicians begin.

direct link: http://youtu.be/bvB0XMFmGS0

0:32 Stedmond Pardy

23:44 Vladimir Azarov

34:41 Kevin Fortnum

49:57 Alana P. Cook

51:33 Norman Bethune Allan

56:17 Amoeba Starfish, Phil Ogison - Guitars, Synths; Jeff Howard - E-Drums, WaveDrum, percussion/voice synths

STEDMOND PARDY’S first chapbook, "Drugs,” was self-published in 2013, and his next volume "Beached Whales" will be published in late Spring. He has had two one man Shows held at Reg Hartt’s, "The Cineforum,” appeared on Howl 89.5 FM twice, and has read his work at various venues around the city since he started writing 8 years ago. He was born and raised in the Mimico/Lakeshore area. The quotes, "an Artist is an Instrument through which the Universe reveals itself" and "word poetry is for everyman, but Soul poetry, alas, is not heavily Distributed" are the words he lives by.

KEVIN FORTNUM is a nightmare dressed like a daydream who wishes he could be like the cool kids.
He only came here to say, 'hello'. When this show is over, he will drive his car into a bridge.

AMOEBA STARFISH’s bio is bio-degradable. Phil and Jeff met in 1988, began collaborating on various experimental, sometimes controversial, multimedia projects thinly veiled as "bands," They created Amoeba Starfish in 2009 to simply return to the ideals of "play." Quantum Jazz is about being sincere and having fun without fear, limitation and expectation.

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Videoed and edited by Brenda Clews
With thanks to Jeff Howard of Amoeba Starfish for recording the sound

Doing a single, if long, video decreases my time working on the footage from 3 days to 1 day. I video primarily to document my Salons, but understand that people like to see themselves on video, and so I do edit them to try to enhance what is a difficult subject to watch - poets standing reading their work with a camera videoing on a tripod. With this video I think I have, at least with titles, begun to create my own 'look' with the clips of these Poetry Salons and so that's kind of nice. Because all of the Features are tremendously creative people who like to experiment and push boundaries of what poetry is, what music is, I felt adding a bit more of a look to the video worked. I hope you enjoy the video of the Salon as much as I did hosting it!

A snap-shot of a group of writers and musicians...

Courtney Park Library, Nov. 26th - GREAT POETRY EVENT!

From left to right, Nik Beat, Brenda Clews, Brandon Pitts, ParisK Black, Jennifer Hosein, Tallulah Doll, and Susan Munro... Brandon's book of poetry, Pressure to Sing, was launched, and the rest of us read or recited or sang in an interspersed open stage (between the three book launches)... it was a great afternoon!

And a daytime shot like this... rare.