Tye Carson

DETAILS

2010 Calgary International Spoken Word Festival
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Wednesday, April 7 - Friday, April 30

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In the beginning, there was no spoken word. Writers and poets who performed for audiences and worked with text, rather than visuals, didn’t fit into the performance art scene.

“Certainly, when we began, we were the super freaks,” explains internationally renowned poet, spoken word artist and festival artistic director Sheri-D Wilson.

A disparate group of her colleagues across the continent laboured in an unnamed artistic genre as diverse, joyous and full of wild abandon as cabaret. “We fell through every crack, so we decided we had to have a landing pad. It became spoken word.”

The cabaret theme of Calgary International Spoken Word Festival (CISWF) 2010 honours these creators of the form, innovators like Sini Anderson.

CABARET ROOTS

Anderson’s artistic bona fides, like many of the festival performers’, are diverse. A San Francisco poet, performance artist, producer and director, she also co-created Sister Spit, an all-girl open mic series. Cabaret reflects her art.

“The majority of my work cannot be defined strictly as poetry or narrative storytelling,” she explains. “I collaborate with musicians, incorporate video and feel most at home with a mixture of performance elements.”

Anderson will take part in Pen-Ultimate Cabaret Scandal-Us, one of two cabaret and burlesque events. In describing her performance, she offers a suitably colourful, if less than literal, description: “Michael Jackson, love, heartache, suicide, god-like experiences, people who cry on the streets of New York, alcoholic disco parenting, girls playing boys’ baseball, protective cups, swimming goggles, home perms, after-hours jackass acrobats, finding freedom in basements, breathing, letting go, flying.”

Fuelled by enthusiastically free-spirited performances, events like the Pen-Ultimate Cabaret Scandal-Us have made the CISWF the biggest festival of its kind in North America. Wilson believes that success reflects well on Calgary. “People say we’re all right-wing squares,” she says. “Well, we’re not.”

Certainly, events like Super Sonic Phonic Duende aren’t for squares. Featuring poets who blend music and poetry, the event takes its name from “Duende,” the Spanish word for that part of a poem that sends shivers up one’s spine, inspiring crazy singing, dance and laughter.

One featured performer is Brian Brett, poet and author of Trauma Farm. “He is duende,” says Wilson.

“I want to be the spine-tingling transcendent moment,” explains Brett. “Duende means ‘deep song.’ It's about having a ‘voice of blood’ — which can be loud or soft — that’s possessed by the spirit of the song or poem.”

Like Anderson, Brett says the theme of cabaret is a good fit for his work. “Some people have the impression poetry has been captured by academia,” he says. “It belongs in the coffee shops, on the streets and [in] the nightclubs.”

THE NEXT GENERATION

The flip side of CISWF 2010 is its next-generation artists.

Edmonton’s Spoken Word Youth Choir, for example, is also participating in Super Sonic Phonic Duende. The choir has become a fixture at Edmonton literary events and will perform “Oh Canada” at CISWF 2010. In past years, the song has been performed by the country’s top drag queen, by a dog named Magoo and in Cree.

The festival’s inaugural Youth Slam and Open Mic, meanwhile, will be open to participants up to 19 years old. Budding spoken word artists are invited to compete by reading original three-minute poems. The winner will compete for a spot on the Calgary Slam Team and will be invited to perform at Olympic Plaza for the Calgary Urban Festival.

GUYS AND DOLLS

Two perennial festival hits have been Smart Men Hot Words and Story Circle Woman Song. Smart Men is the Chippendale’s of poetry, says Wilson, who’s enlisted literary lads she considers hot — men like Ojibwa playwright, novelist and journalist Drew Hayden Taylor.

“I tell them: ‘You’re going to be objectified,’” she says. Far from feeling exploited, many of these authors actually feel flattered.

“If you did that with women,” continues Wilson, “they’d go crazy.”

Smart men, she says, are the ones who are hot. “The smarter you are, the hotter you are to me,” she says. “And women love it. We love having our minds titillated.”

Story Circle Woman Song, meanwhile, features spiritual female performers like Penn Kemp, a lecturer on Hindu-Buddhist arts deity Sarasvati and an original Canadian beatnik. Also taking part is northern Alberta-born Cheryl L’Hirondelle, an artist of mixed European and aboriginal heritage whose multidisciplinary work draws on a Cree worldview.

“It’s Sunday, and it’s our church,” explains Wilson. “It’s about women being the carriers of stories.”

A second all-female event, Unveiling the Breath, is named for the book by event co-co-ordinator Donna Kennedy-Glans. Recent controversies over female Muslim head coverings have generated a strong curiosity about women in Islam, says Wilson, and both Muslim and non-Muslim women who’ve experienced Islamic culture will participate.

Kennedy-Glans hopes the “agenda-free” event will take a subtle approach to such issues. “Let’s get past the knee-jerk, polarizing conversation that we have right now,” she says. “Let’s understand why women in Yemen would want to veil and why women in Canada might want to veil.”

LIFE IS A YOU-KNOW-WHAT

“Expect the unexpected,” Wilson advises festival-goers. Nowhere is that directive more imperative than in the Pen-Ultimate Cabaret.

“I may wear feathers,” says Wilson, who also notes that attendees are free to wear what they please, from chaps to jeans to nothing at all. “That’s what cabaret is. You get to be whoever you want to be for a whole day — yourself included.”

Check the festival guide or access calgaryspokenwordfestival.com for event and ticket information.

Donna Kennedy-Glans

Calgary writer and international social development advocate Donna Kennedy-Glans authored Unveiling the Breath. Her examination of Islam and gender equality inspired the CISWF event of the same name. “We’re trying to introduce the subtleties of the issue and profile the growing number of female writers on this topic — Muslim and non-Muslim,” she says.

Unveiling the Breath, Saturday, April 24, 2 p.m., Big Secret Theatre, Epcor Centre

Sini Anderson

A resident in The Banff Centre’s Spoken Word Program, Anderson is working on a collaborative piece entitled “The Ninth Floor.” She writes and records segments, sending them to musician Aimee Norwich in New York, who composes accompanying music. The process will continue until Anderson performs the piece at CISWF.

Pen-Ultimate Cabaret Scandal-Us, Saturday, April 24, 8 p.m., Big Secret Theatre, Epcor Centre

Cheryl L’Hirondelle

Cheryl L’Hirondelle’s art is based in her aboriginal heritage and the Cree worldview. She will be leading an interactive drum song she conceived in a northern Saskatchewan women’s correctional facility workshop, titled “The Beauty Within,” at Story Circle Woman Song. Her audience will be called upon to sing, drum and dance along.

Story Circle Woman Song, Sunday, April 25, 1 p.m., Big Secret Theatre, Epcor Centre

Brian Brett

Super Sonic Phonic Duende performer Brian Brett has long been a guiding voice in Canadian spoken word. Like the genre itself, however, the award-winning author of Trauma Farm has only recently gained wide recognition. His live work reflects his musical artistic method. “I ‘sound’ my poems when I write them, so performance and poem go together,” he says.

Super Sonic Phonic Duende, April 21, 8 p.m., Big Secret Theatre, Epcor Centre