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Wordstock, a literary festival
11 September 2010
I gave a brief reading at the 'celebrity" tent on Hurontario Street for the first Wordstock literary festival, today. Small audience, but I was told there were larger crowds earlier in the day. The lineup included a lot of incumbent politicians, so perhaps it was a political event for some, but for me it was more social.
Wordstock appears to have been a success, judging from comments I heard while downtown. Because of prior commitments, neither Susan nor I were able to participate more, but everyone I spoke to during our downtown visit was upbeat about the event and enjoying it.
I had hoped to attend the songwriting workshop with Aaron Garner, Jason Redman and Patrick Ballantyre a bit later in the afternoon. I know and respect Aaron as a songwriter and have attended his concerts in the past. However, other things demanded my attention and I couldn't get there. Maybe next year...
We chatted with a few authors in front of town hall, including Christine Cowley, whose book Butchers Bakers & Building the Lakers has won several awards, including the Ontario Historical Society's award for best book on local history. It's ironic that the best book on Collingwood history ever published is not available for sale at the Collingwood Museum because of anachronistic, Byzantine, and highly restrictive purchasing policies that prevent local authors from selling their books there.
For my part, my reading consisted of three short pieces. First was Father William, from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It has some politically relevant verses, so I thought it would be appropriate, such as...
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
Then I read The Naming of Cats, by TS Eliot. It's one of his lighter pieces, but still in keeping with Eliot's genius. His cat poems were the inspiration for that touching musical, Cats. This verse gave me a bit of stumble:
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
Finally, I read a few stanzas from Wallace Stevens' The Man With the Blue Guitar. Stevens is one of my favourite American poets, and this poem in particular - especially the first five stanzas - is among my most treasured poems. It has some political relevance too, when he writes...
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said to him, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar,
Of things exactly as they are."
I think the toughest part of the reading was deciding what piece(s) to read. Harry Posner, organizer, asked that we read one of our "favourite" poems or prose pieces. I don't have one favourite: I have hundreds. I spent many hours looking through my library, even reading pieces aloud to Susan for her comments.
Originally I had intended to read Howl by Allen Ginsberg, easily one of the most brilliant of the Beat generation poets and a signature piece for the era. But it's long and a bit of a tough read. Then I considered the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, but was told someone else might be reading it. I thought of the opening pages of Frank Herbert's stunning sci-fi novel Dune, and even of reading a few pages from Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle.
Then I looked at the opening of Miguel Angel Asturias' El Presidente (the Penguin English translation), and some recent translations of Dante's Inferno, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Cervantes' Don Quixote and Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. All of them are great works. Then I even considered a piece from Archy & Mehitabel by Don Marquis. That might make a good post-election piece, if I don't get back in.
But time and potential snore factor restrained me to three shorter and more appropriate pieces. Too many, I worried, required a lengthy introduction as to why I chose that piece.
Anyway, congrats to the organizers, the sponsors, the participants and of course the town for putting on this event. I look forward to seeing it return next year.
The only thing that would have made this a better day would have been building-side patios on Hurontario Street where we could have enjoyed a beverage after the reading.
Wordstock appears to have been a success, judging from comments I heard while downtown. Because of prior commitments, neither Susan nor I were able to participate more, but everyone I spoke to during our downtown visit was upbeat about the event and enjoying it.
I had hoped to attend the songwriting workshop with Aaron Garner, Jason Redman and Patrick Ballantyre a bit later in the afternoon. I know and respect Aaron as a songwriter and have attended his concerts in the past. However, other things demanded my attention and I couldn't get there. Maybe next year...
We chatted with a few authors in front of town hall, including Christine Cowley, whose book Butchers Bakers & Building the Lakers has won several awards, including the Ontario Historical Society's award for best book on local history. It's ironic that the best book on Collingwood history ever published is not available for sale at the Collingwood Museum because of anachronistic, Byzantine, and highly restrictive purchasing policies that prevent local authors from selling their books there.
For my part, my reading consisted of three short pieces. First was Father William, from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It has some politically relevant verses, so I thought it would be appropriate, such as...
"In my youth," Father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."
Then I read The Naming of Cats, by TS Eliot. It's one of his lighter pieces, but still in keeping with Eliot's genius. His cat poems were the inspiration for that touching musical, Cats. This verse gave me a bit of stumble:
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
Finally, I read a few stanzas from Wallace Stevens' The Man With the Blue Guitar. Stevens is one of my favourite American poets, and this poem in particular - especially the first five stanzas - is among my most treasured poems. It has some political relevance too, when he writes...
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said to him, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar,
Of things exactly as they are."
I think the toughest part of the reading was deciding what piece(s) to read. Harry Posner, organizer, asked that we read one of our "favourite" poems or prose pieces. I don't have one favourite: I have hundreds. I spent many hours looking through my library, even reading pieces aloud to Susan for her comments.
Originally I had intended to read Howl by Allen Ginsberg, easily one of the most brilliant of the Beat generation poets and a signature piece for the era. But it's long and a bit of a tough read. Then I considered the Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll, but was told someone else might be reading it. I thought of the opening pages of Frank Herbert's stunning sci-fi novel Dune, and even of reading a few pages from Charles Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle.
Then I looked at the opening of Miguel Angel Asturias' El Presidente (the Penguin English translation), and some recent translations of Dante's Inferno, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Cervantes' Don Quixote and Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. All of them are great works. Then I even considered a piece from Archy & Mehitabel by Don Marquis. That might make a good post-election piece, if I don't get back in.
But time and potential snore factor restrained me to three shorter and more appropriate pieces. Too many, I worried, required a lengthy introduction as to why I chose that piece.
Anyway, congrats to the organizers, the sponsors, the participants and of course the town for putting on this event. I look forward to seeing it return next year.
The only thing that would have made this a better day would have been building-side patios on Hurontario Street where we could have enjoyed a beverage after the reading.
