Raise the Stanza of Living

On Labour Day weekend in 1969, some young people took to downtown Cobourg with brushes in hand to paint the downtown, literally. It was called a Paint-In. Retail stores offered up their windows for a week to be painted by local artists. Only water-colours could be used. The Sept 3 issue of Cobourg Sentinel Star did a big front-page-above-the-fold spread on the Paint-In.

There are too many empty retail outlets downtown with store windows looking more like sore windows. Here’s the pitch.

Cobourg is chock-a-block with poets. They could fill the emptiness of windows with literary substance. One poem per window. The Cobourg Poetry Workshop is a gathering pot of poets, emerging poets, and poetry lovers who could easily fill the windows with their inspiration.

Surely the town could provide the paper and print one poem from each of Cobourg’s three Poet Laureates. The current Poet Laureate could vet the submitted poems from others.

There must be some aspiring poets in our three high schools who would like to display their highly refined literacy.

Don’t take my word for it, take theirs and celebrate it. Fill empty windows with eloquent intelligence. Spread the word. Bring poetry out of the better poems and gardens salons and take it to the streets.

Poetry all too often lies like a cadaver collecting dust on library shelves. Take it to the streets. Poetry for pedestrians.

Raise Cobourg’s stanza of living, post poetry on the ephemeral emptiness of store windows. Make Cobourg our poem and native land.

Ted Amsden Acceptance Speech

It was stanza room only in the Cobourg Council Chambers, October 3, when units of verse of the universe, the better poems and gardens set, the poetariet, and other elements of poetry circles and triangles, gathered to bear witness to the decree that Ted Amsden will be Cobourg's third Poet Laureate.

The Cobourg Poetry Workshop has posted a splendid interview of Ted here. Also the same page has a link to Ted's acceptance speech in ascii -- it is worth the read.

It is also worth a listen. After all, it did receive a stanza ovation.

STANZA ROOM ONLY @ MEET AT 66 KING

It was stanza room only last Thursday evening as the Cobourg Poetry Workshop assembled another monthly poetry reading gala at the faux grand salon at Meet at 66 King Street. It is a wonderful place where the local better poems and garden set gather to indulge in refined eloquence blended with the finest pirouettes of soliloquy.

The feature poet was Mick Burrs, the poet formerly known as Steven Michael Berzensky. In 25 words or less, Mick was born in the USA, became a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war and arrived in Canada to enrich us with poetry ever since.

Mick delivers his poetry in a subdued voice; the strength of his words do not require volume. Much to my personal delight he turned tovarishch and introduced the richness of Russian poets Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova, then launched into his own poetry, especially a short poem of Stalin, in which he briefly delineates the cruel horrors of his deeds then ends the poem with Stalin’s hand lovingly stroking a grandchild’s hair.

(Can we imagine today how lovingly Muammar Gaddhafi might be embracing his children each night, strongly, as if it were the last time that he could hold them?)

The evening began with some Chinese language lessons of the first order. John Stubbs provided a handout to the audience which presented excerpts of the Tao Te Ching written by Lao Tzu. The handout was a brilliant device because it contained not only the Chinese characters, but also their transliteration as well as a translation in such an eloquently colloquial manner that the audience could get it. This was supplemented by Wayne Shlepp who read the Chinese in his own voice with impeccable clarity.

The evening concluded with a powerful and emotional performance by Deborah Panko, a Cobourg poet who has been acquitting herself since letting her inner poet chirp and sing and pirouette on very branches of poetic expression. Deborah’s voice is unique and distinctive from the illuminati literaturistas of the Local Lot. She has a full bodied laugh indistinguishable from a mortar.

The poetry reading at Meet at 66 King was sublime compared to the rowdy poetry reading two evenings earlier at Art Bar in Toronto. It was the last time that Art Bar will be holding its venue at Clintons on Bloor. Next month it will be at Paupers Pub, just down the street. But I’ll tell that story later this week with video to match.