Poetry readings are an arcane beast ... often drawing quite small audiences, rarely garnering much publicity beyond a blurb in the back page listings of the local papers, yet they serve the crucial role of breathing life back into the form. At a reading, poetry drops its recent modernist guise as ‘text’ and reasserts its oral origins. It becomes, not black marks on white pages, but pops, blurts and glottal pauses delivered by the mouths of the poets themselves. At readings, poetry escapes the role of ‘private’ transmission between reader and author, and becomes a public thing.
The Prose and Poetry readings at the Yellow Door carry on a tradition that has been going on since the days of the sixties folk coffee house circuit. The current organizer, Ilona Martonfi, has been hosting about 15 readings a year since 1999, and shows a keen interest in all forms of literature. Any given reading at the Yellow Door is as likely to feature spoken word artists, storytellers and slam poets as it is published authors of fiction and poetry; while the majority of performers are locally-based, the series also plays host to touring authors from other parts of Canada. It’s an intimate space, so much so that there’s no need for a sound system for the readers to be heard. Martonfi also hosts The Visual Arts Centre Reading Series at the McClure Gallery, and co-hosts (with Carolyn Zonailo) the aunnual Lovers and Others.
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| John Reibetanz @ Atwater Library |
The Atwater Poetry Project at the Atwater Library has been running since 2004, and generally features two poets in an evening. Because of the old-school ‘lecture hall’ atmosphere of the reading space, the events have a somewhat more formal feel, as if one were attending a recital or a play ... perhaps a greater sense of respect for the work. The readings are generally followed by a discussion between audience and poets, and occasionally poets have also given workshops in conjunction with their readings. Like the Yellow Door readings, there is no particular emphasis on a particular school or style of poetry at the Atwater Poetry Project. According to current organizer Katia Grubisic, “I’ve tried to pair emerging poets whose work I’ve encountered with more established writers. We have had Francophone writers reading alongside Anglophones, and having those excellent Montréalesque conversations. We’ve had language poets and nature poets and poet-philosophers and love poets and potty-mouths. Next year we’ll be hosting John Steffler, Lisa Robertson, Johnny “Rock Star” Barger, Sheri-D Wilson… Different ways of looking at the world, but ultimately we’re all looking to reach, and create, and evoke the same thing, I think—the perfect way of saying the unsayable.” There’s an interesting audio archive of past Atwater Poetry Project readings by poets on the Atwater Library website (http://www.atwaterlibrary.ca/mp3cast), including Susan Musgrave, Margaret Christakos and Christian Bök.
Poetry Plus is a grassroots reading series organized by John Fretz and Susan Dubrofsky. It’s been at the Arts Café on Fairmont since 2005, and audiences are encouraged to combine drinking and dining with their enjoyment of the poetry on offer. John Fretz wrote, “We encourage all ages, regardless of whether or not the reader is published.... The Poetry Plus circle would like to see more poetry disseminated on the media, particularly CBC Radio, and to campaign for a greater appreciation of the literary arts; particularly, as poetry is so aptly geared to our rapid-paced, multi-tasking society.... Our belief, simply stated, is that reading and writing raises consciousness.”
Poetry Plus has a bilingual mandate, as do a number of poetry series in Montreal. In fact, there are two trilingual reading series as well, Élizabeth Robert’s Noches de Poesía and Lapalabrava. Lapalabrava has been running for three years; it started out in 2007 at Sofía Bitrán’s Café Volver. She, along with Jorge Lizama, Flavia García and Hugh Hazelton, thought there ought to be a trilingual series in Montreal, with readings in Spanish, French and English. The café closed last year, but the reading series continues at La Petite Marche on St-Denis. “It's been quite a success, with at least forty people or more attending each time,” Hazelton said. “We've been pleased at the interest of poets in French and English, in addition to those in Spanish, in reading at the venue. We feel that, to a certain extent, we complement readings like Noches de Poesía, SoloVox, the Yellow Door and others, and we regularly invite people from other series to read at Lapalabrava as well.” The series also features an open mic segment.
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| Reading @ Twigs |
Another open mic series is Twigs and Leaves, which takes place at the Twigs Café in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue, under the guidance of Erika White. She’s a poet and the publisher (along with Ralph de Smit and Gary Townsend) of Broken Rules Press, producing chapbooks and CDs of original and live material. “This is an open mic event, so there is always a little chaos theory in operation,” White explained. “It's a very relaxed environment, we encourage audience participation by playing word games, creating community poems, having contests and prizes.” The open mic format also encourages an always eclectic line-up of performers. “College kids unfolding the first poem they ever wrote and reading it off a piece of crumpled looseleaf. Professors who have been appearing in Montreal poetry anthologies since the seventies, trying out new work. Rants, rhymes, villanelles, prose, things so strange you're not sure what they are, occasionally, something startling and beautiful.”
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| Erika White @ Griffintown Gasworks |
White was the organizer of a recent poetry marathon event in Griffintown, as part of the Nuits Blanche weekend celebrations. She felt her experience was a good indication of the robust health of the Montreal poetry community. “More than fifty poets performed, we had five m.c.'s, no one was late, everyone showed up, everyone was totally on their game. I was blown away. Eyes Wide Open Artistic Peace Movement and Throw Poetry Collective organized their own sets, brought their own crew, made my life easy, I just sat and sold chapbooks. Other m.c's (Jeffrey Mackie, Collette Vidal) helped with radio spots, free translation services, everyone involved in the project helped in some way, I learned so much and am grateful to all of the poets and performers who shared their time and talent with us in Griffintown.”
Montreal is known as a hub of performance poetry, of course, and there’s no shortage of series with an emphasis on the performative side. Currently coordinated by Alessandra Naccarato and Andrea DeBruijn, The Throw Collective’s Throw Slam is in its third season; having sent teams to compete in the national slams at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Victoria and Calgary, they’re currently competing for slots in this year’s nationals in Ottawa. After bouncing around a number of venues, they’re currently at O’Hara’s pub in downtown Montreal.
The Kalmunity Vibe Collective is made up of dedicated musicians exploring all aspects of Black diasporic sounds, working with practitioners of dub poetry, jazz poetry, slam, hiphop and reggae chanting along with singers and song writers. It was founded by drummer, producer and all-round cultural visionary Jahsun; currently Katalyst is the administrator, coordinator and promoter, and Fredy V and Odessa Thornhill are the vocal directors. (They’re all also performers in the collective.) After almost seven years in Sablo Café, the series recently moved downtown to the much more spacious Le Consulat. The audience should expect something a lot groovier than your average night of poetry; according to Katalyst, “Kalmunity is dedicated to promoting and perpetuating the potential of art as a tool for communication and activism for social, political and environmental consciousness, respect and harmony. Our platform for expression is live organic improvisation, which incorporates music and poetic expressions in both French and English without any limitations on musical or poetic genres.”
Ian Ferrier helms the monthly Words and Music at the Casa (del Popolo). The series recently celebrated its hundredth show; in those years it’s brought an astonishing range of artists to the stage. Ferrier has always shown an interest in collaboration, both as a spoken word artist and as an organizer, often inviting fellow poets to curate events. He’s currently co-organizer of the annual Tusarniq Festival, a three day festival featuring work by Inuit and First Nations poets, performers and film-makers. Ferrier is as likely to invite an academic like Jason Camlot as he is to showcase the more performative poets of Montreal like Moe Clark, Fortner Anderson and Kaie Kellough. Words and Music at the Casa is a regular waystation for touring performers as well.
 | | Jeff Gandell, host of Clamourous Sundays. Photo © Gabriel Teller |
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 | | Gillian Sze, Photo © Jeff Gandell |
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 | | Moe Clark, Photo © Jeff Gandell |
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One of the newest series in town is Jeff Gandell’s Clamourous Sundays at the Green Room on St-Laurent Boulevard. Inspired by his experience of organizing a one-off book launch, Gandell decided to curate a monthly evening of unpredictable performance. “All sorts of poetry, stories, comedy, hop hip, music. I like to have a diverse mix of performers with varying styles,” Gandell explained. “I aim to bring poetry and stories to audiences who might otherwise not go to a poetry night. I use a lot of comedy in my hosting techniques, and other hokey things to get people listening.
It works, sometimes.”
Vincent Tinguely is a Montreal writer and poet. His work has recently appeared in Four Minutes to Midnight no. 10, Canadian Poetry no. 64, and two prose anthologies: The Portable Conundrum and The Art of Trespassing. He is the co-author of Impure — Reinventing the word, a book about the Montreal spoken word scene.
