For more than a year the Zoom H4 recorder has been a constant companion of Art Bar nights. Most of the readings and interviews that have turned up in our podcasts were recorded by this intrepid, although occasionally glitchy little machine. The Zoom H4 appeared centre stage this week, as I had a go at recording readings from the front of the stage.

Stephen Humphrey

Jeffery Donaldson believes that Hamilton is Southern Ontario’s best-kept secret.  He says past the “dark satanic mills” seen from the Burlington Skyway are the Niagara Escarpment along with other natural wonders. As a professor at McMaster University’s Department of English, Donaldson has a concern with the mechanics and hidden implications of words and etiquette towards the days you leave behind. But his soul reaches for hockey, as imagined by both amateur athletes and Shakespeare.

Listen to Jeffery Donaldson

While pregnant with their first child, Vancouver poet and novelist Pamela Porter and her husband travelled to Nicaragua and Guatemala to document the experiences of people caught in the Contra war and the government-sponsored terror against Guatemalan teachers and aid workers. Later, with two children, they worked in Angola and Ghana, where Pamela taught English during the day, and at night they delivered food to homeless children. These experiences inform her collection of poems Cathedral .

Note: Thanks to gremlin-like activity, the audio file of Pamela’s reading was corrupted (fume, curse). Luckily the interview survived.

Listen to the interview with Pamela Porter

Jacob McArthur Mooney writes about place. Not particular places, necessarily, although he has a lot to say about a neighbourhood in Mississauga. Place is an idea, almost a fiction for Jacob. Even when places are real they become history less than they become folklore.

Listen to Jacob McArthur Mooney

The Great Catch-Up continues

Some of you might have noticed the Art Bar blog and podcast postings falling a little behind. Okay, really behind. First it was a few days, then weeks and now months.

All of this great audio and imagery in the can. All that great poetry hidden from the world.

Not to worry… this missing podcasts between May 2010 and March 2011 will make appearances one-by-one.

Meanwhile, we’re leaping over the backlog and posting the most recent readings while we catch up with posterity.

About the Squeaky Wheel factor

If you, dear reader, feel inclined to say, “Hey, what about June something-something when so-and-so read? Hey what about MY reading?” then by all means tell us that. We’ll most  likely rush over and get that episode done out of remorse.

Just believe us: editing audio is fun

Finally, if anyone out there thinks it would be fun to edit audio, interview poets and take pictures yes, we’re definitely looking for volunteers.

Look us up.

Stephen Humphrey

Rob Welch takes you down to a place in the Art Bar, you can hear his poems go by You can stay the night with him. And you know he’s half English but that’s why you want to be there and he feeds you toast and marmalade that are tasted from white pages. Just when you think there’s no better he gets you on his wavelength and lets the poem answer that you’ve always been a lover. And you want to listen to him you want to listen blind and you know that he can win youbecause you’ve heard his British accent in your mind.

Listen to Rob’s reading

Listen to interview with Rob

Amani (The Contemporary Blues Poet) is a Writer, Producer, Spoken Word Artist, Singer, Actor and Creative Consultant that brings a unique flavour to everything that she does. Described as a Tour de Force on Stage, she has the ability to create lyrics about life experiences that leave you wanting to hear more.

Listen to interview with Amani

Sandra Kasturi is a writer, publisher and editor. She is the poetry editor of ChiZine.comand the co-publisher of ChiZine Publications. Sandra’s poetry and fiction has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, Taddle Creek, Contemporary Verse 2, Shadows & Tall Trees, Tesseracts 14, Evolve andChilling Tales. He first poetry collection, The Animal Bridegroom (Tightrope Books) is now sold out. Her second collection, Came Late to the Love of Birds will be out in 2012. She is fond of single-malt scotch and doesn’t sleep much.

Listen to Sandra’s reading

(Photos and recordings by Stephen Humphrey)

(Edited and assembled by Rob Welch)

For the 12th time in as many years the Art Bar Discovery Night, hosted by Art Bar alumnus Nancy Bullis gave Toronto poets a shot at launching their careers into a new orbit by winning an Art Bar feature.

After three rounds and much audience voting, 20 hopeful readers were pared down to three:

Ian Hanna

Kimberley

Nisha

And the winner (drum roll please)….

Kimberley, the night’s deserving winner, is a long-time regular at the Art Bar’s open stage.

Listen to the interview with Daniel

Susan Briscoe’s work has appeared in several of Canada’s literary journals. She has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and was the recipient of the 2001 Lina Chartrand Award for an emerging woman poet.This is her first book. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Listen to Susan Reading

Listen to Interview with Susan

Antony Di Nardo was born in Montreal and has lived in northwestern Ontario, Toronto, Oshawa, the Eastern Townships of Quebec, Germany, and Beirut. His poetry appears widely in journals across Canada and internationally. Both writer and teacher, he has worked as editor of a small town weekly newspaper, has contributed fiction reviews to Books in Canada, and writes fiction and non-fiction content for educational texts. He teaches at International College in Beirut.

His chapbooks, Three Poems and Speedwell, are published by Tibbits Hill Press of Sutton, Quebec, and his first full collection of poetry, Alien, Correspondent, was published by Brick Books in March 2010. Another book of poetry, Soul on Standby, was released by Exile Editions in April 2010.

Listen to Antony Reading

Listen to Interview with Antony

Interviews, photos and recording by Stephen Humphrey

Blog and podcast assembled by Rob Welch and Stephen Humphrey

What inspires Anna Swanson‘s poetry? Multiple jobs and chronic fatigue. Women’s studies and coming out. Secular saints and parsons daughters. Falling in love and months of solitude, watching for fires.

Listen

Blaise Moritz writes about cities: this city, distant cities, a city that qualifies as imaginary. Writers are often told to write what they know. What if all you know is cities? Does architecture become nature? Does civilization exist north of Lawrence Avenue?

Listen

Both a poet and translator, Colin Carberry admires the passion of Mexican poets and the passion average Mexicans show for them. He reveres the quiet passion of Irish rebel and poet Bobby Sands. His globetrotting behaviour has found him on enough islands to write a decalogue of sonnets.  And what else? He’s a snappy dresser. Just look at those shoes.

Listen

Does comedy have a place in poetry?

Why are haikus so especially funny?

Did the photographer have two many beers?

Valentino Assenza, host of the annual Art-Bardy-Har-Har night full of good humour and ready to experience life without Tylenol. One day at a time, dude. Always inclined to public service, Valentino took time to caution about the dangers of Rock Band (TM).

Listen

Cathy Petch was F*****n’ Freestyling or she was milking old material, depending on how well you know her stuff. Apparently her kitchen is her bathroom, her cat is a racist and your baby is ugly.

Listen

Mike Bryant is a nerd. He said it in front of everybody, even his wife. He can talk about Star Wars for hours. He can quote “Howl” and Neuromancer in the same breath. He can speak wookie with a slight accent and he wants to sell you razors.

Listen

Dave Silverberg lives alone and writes haikus about fooling the pizza guy. He sees Mike Bryant’s Star Wars nerd and raises him one sports nerd. He writes stalker-like letters to Sealtest. And eggnog.

Listen

Valentino Assenza is in his usual good humour and sure of his hockey loyalties, but has an ominous curiosity about Lady Gaga. By the way, “Art Bardy Har-Har” was his idea, but he’s too modest to brag.

Listen

Like many individuals, Sandra Kasturi wants to know the whereabouts of William Shatner’s genitals. She does a mean Jack Nicholson, and you don’t want to see her attic. She does not love the pig light.

Listen

Yehuda Fisher has cool hair and his own personal stash of lightsabers. He has the bat signal on his wallpaper. Geeks in the house. What part of drunk at 3 am didn’t you get? And she liked it.

Listen

Jeff Cottrill has a show about a grouch who lives in a trashcan. No, not that one. His open piece clearly demonstrates that Cottrill is literally his own worst critic – as in reviewer, but that doesn’t mean he’s above using a faux southern accent.

Listen

(Photos by Stephen Humphrey)

Sudbury to Margaret Christakos is a place of hills – or maybe the one hill in particular, a lake, the wind and generational pessimism. It’s a place to escape from and to return to, again and again, by Greyhound bus and by poetry. Her hometown is the subject of much poetic confession, although Margaret doesn’t sound all that guilty.

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Like Margaret Christakos, along with most people it turns out, Mick Burrs, also known as Steven Michael Berzensky, comes from somewhere. He comes from the prairie province Saskatchewan, and before that the United States. Recently he thought it important to note the contribution of Americans who came to Canada to avoid participating in the Vietnam war, when he co-edited the anthology Crossing Lines with Allan Briesmaster. Like most poets, he sometimes finds himself on Greyhound buses. While Margaret Christakos remembers the sandwich lady, he remembers when passengers could smoke.

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Roger Greenwald often returns to Norway, which he didn’t come from. He poses questions to his father, who is long since deceased. He remembers Clinton Street from years ago when many Chilean refugees arrived, fleeing their country’s troubles and smiling on warm days. He champions Charles Douglas, a poet who keeps his day job and publishes sporadically. And he’s written an entire poem in quotation marks. As writers will tell you, punctuation matters.

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(Recordings and interviews by Stephen Humphrey)

(Photo by Mindi Saint)

Ian Burgham said he was making a point to pause after his epigraphs so his poems wouldn’t be confused with the work of Petrarch, W.H. Auden and Rilke, adding it wouldn’t be that bad if he was. Many of his poems did carry the unmistakable flavour of Scotland, where he lived for a number of years. Scotland was often the subject of his pieces, along with sibling confessions, ancestral tragedies, would-be lost loves, the “deep weight of the present” and other heavy loads carried by and between people.

Listen

(Photo by Greg Tjepkima)

James Dewar, frequently seen hosting Hot-Sauced Words, observes that men are portrayed as “losers and assholes” in a lot of popular culture. His own investigation revealed that “men drink more than they piss out” and you can’t always trust your fishing buddies.

“Tonight I’m going to kick you in the nuts a couple of times with a couple of the poems when I talk about things that are really hard to talk about,” he said. “And hopefully I’ll alleviate the swelling with some nicer ones.”

Hear more about the best and worst of us guys.

Listen

(Photo by Mindi Saint)

Sharon Harris says she’s called an experimental poet.

“So we’re going to experiment,” she adds, before donning a lab coat and summoning two assistants to demonstrate the poetry love gun.

This demonstration were not documented visually, so you’ll have to imagine what the audience found so interesting.

Luckily Harris practices pataphysics, “the science of imaginary solutions“.

She provides answers to many questions such as how much pressure to apply to poetry, whether or not it’s correct to freeze a poem and why it’s better not to date  poets.

Later she dresses like rainbow and wonders, “Why do I write in shadows?”

Listen

(Readings recorded by Mindi Saint)

The last time around we awarded two features to Jennifer Marston and Eytan Millstone, who tied for first place. Which was interesting, because two poets couldn’t be more different.

Spoken-word artist Relevant fit the evening’s spirit very nicely. His opening set doubled as a vocal warm-up for the audience.

A note to would-be features. The next Discovery Night will be coming up soon, on January 11, 2011.

(Photo by Cynthia Gould)

Relevant says his main mission is to get you to think… Then MELT YOUR BRAIN with sheer awesomeness!!! He is probably the best human beatbox to hit the Art Bar stage (yes there have been others).He’s a bit a poetry remix artist, who sampled Billy Jean, K’naan’s “Somalia” and a poem by previous Art Bar feature Chris Gilpin. He’s written probably the only love poem to mention eye-gouging. He also put down heartfelt social commentary about war, suicide and D’jibouti his African birthplace.

Listen

(Photo by Cynthia Gould)

Jennifer Marston tells everyone, “Tonight I’m going to read all my poems.”

While she is an active freelance writer and blogger, Jennifer confesses she doesn’t write many poems. Nonetheless, specimens of her humble output were enough to impress Discovery night judges.

After Relevant’s poems about big issues, Marston offered smaller narratives, to quote her poet friend Nathaniel G. Moore.

Her poems talk about the small details of a friendship, a house, a romance.

“Small and soft things can cause great damage,” she observes in a soft voice that is sometimes lost in the room’s echoes in this recording.

Listen

(Photo by Cynthia Gould)

Before his Discovery night victory Eytan Millstone (aka Eytan Crouton 1st Disciple) was, and still remains, a regular at the Art Bar open stage.

Eytan not your usual rapper. He rhymes about how he loves his parents, doesn’t fight, hates nightclubs and isn’t gangster.

Eytan’s own take on keepin’ it real has won more than the Discovery Night. He’s also fared well at a number of local slams.

Listen

(Readings recorded by Mindi Saint)