"Telephone" by Owen Davis and Eugene Brosseau, performed by Jess Ryan and Christopher Fox Graham

"TELEPHONE for solo piano and mixed media" from Owen Davis on Vimeo.

Poet Christopher Fox Graham, left, composer Owen Davis, pianist Jess Ryan,
and poet Eugene Brosseau at Northern Arizona University's Ashurst
Auditorium on Saturday, Dec. 8.

In collaboration with visual artist and poet Eugene Brosseau, "TELEPHONE" is a piano solo commissioned by Jess Ryan in 2012. Using the sounds of live and prerecorded telephones along with spoken word poetry, this work aims to integrate the entire performance space and audience into the music. The video serves as a montage of information and the full performance at Ashurst Auditorium at Northern Arizona University on Saturday, Dec. 8.
For more information on the work, please contact: owendavismusic@gmail.com

What I do is use one cell phone to call another, put them both on speaker, and place them earpiece to mouthpiece to create a feedback loop, which grows louder. By the third portion, it sounds like digital crickets, which coincides with Brosseau's line "holding it tight as crickets call from under the back porch."

"Telephone"

By Eugene Brosseau

This whole thing started as a conversation
but has turned to so much noise that neither of us can hear the other

as if the words themselves were now the meaning
and the only virtue of silence is its contrast to such incessant discord

I can barely tell your voice from mine as we run together unaware in wasted words

our minds made unclear by the now hoarse voices we hurl at the walls of each other's holdings

I know passion must play a part and I suffer for not recognizing yours
and yet I insist on trying
at first to convince you
and then to drown you out

unwilling to refuse myself I beat you about the ears while I persist in covering my own

but I am beginning to feel that I want something better

I want a revelation

BREAK

Some strand of hope must be running through this
something vital coming over the lines

I can feel it under my bare feet as I run through you like a puddle

splashing as I go to make you feel my waves
which are all reduced to ripples

when
if ever we stop
can we listen to the silence
and find something in common there

there is where we could live

in the stillness on the line

we could walk into that silence
like a Baptist into a river
with all our armor off
complete and unrevealed
and wash away this enmity and dread

BREAK

Are you there

I can hear you breathing
please don’t hang up
stay on until I fall asleep

you can tell me what you see when your eyes are closed and I'll just listen
holding the empty can to my ear while the string hums

holding it tight as crickets call from under the back porch
and the stars are coming out in the purple sky
and the pine trees send their comfort on the cool air
through the screen window into my room
where I lie on my bed legs crossed

listening to your words

humming on the string

into the empty can

pressed against my ear

Slam Tutorial: "Beauty Ba-Bo" by R.C. Weslowski, solo and group versions

"Beauty Ba-Bo" by R.C. Weslowski. A little Lewis Carroll, a little absurdist, a little funny and a whole lotta awesome.


I have included this poem in my Slam Tutorial section of this blog is because it clearly shows how a perfectly fine solo poem by a single author can be converted in a group poem by adding choreography and multiple voices. If you want to make a group poem from your solo piece, watch the two poems in sequence.

A little backstory.

When Azami and I started talking seriously about poetry, she mentioned having seen R.C. Weslowski. I knew the name and knew his face from around the National Poetry Slam but wasn't that familiar with his work. The VanSlam (Vancouver, British Columbia) has a reputation for great poets - Ms. Spelt, Shane Koyczan, Barbara Alder - and sending great teams to the (U.S.) National Poetry Slam. They also have a rep for being somewhat ... quirky. As one of the heads of VanSlam, R.C. Weslowski certainly demonstrates that trait in his work. Being with Azami at NPS 2010, I was certainly more attentive to the Canadian teams that year.

At the Group Poem Slam, I first saw this poem (video below) and was blown away.

Brilliant.

Combined with seeing R.C. Weslowski at several other events at NPS 2010 made me come to love him as one of favorite performers on the national level.

The best way I can describe it is that it feels like it was written in the vein of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" though more mainstream linguistically or an experiment in alternate history done in poetic form. (Alternate history is a sci-fi concept that postulates, for example, Julius Caesar avoiding his assassination in 44 B.C.E., Robert E. Lee wining at Gettysburg in 1863, young Adolf Hitler dying in the trenches in World War I).

I.e., imagine that the evolution of the English language diverged at some point so the thematic elements of the poetic ideas are the same, but the vocabulary has diverged slightly.
"before the let-go and slippage into forging"; "the talk-me-down"; "me boom-boom" instead of "my heart"; "any-be" instead of "anyway," and the titular "beauty ba-bo," etc.

If you listen to the poem line by line, it's fairly obvious how R.C. Weslowski chose how to write the poem - not to say it was easy to write by any means - but listening at regular speed with his cadence and performance style, it almost feels like tasting this alternate history.

The style reminds me of how 2001 FlagSlam alum Andrew Clark Hall, Ph.D., would write. I mean, Hall was so brilliant he once wrote and slammed a poem written in Middle English for fucksake.


The same solo poem converted into a five-person group poem by the Vancouver Slam Team in 2010. Coincidentally, I'm the fellow in the cowboy hat seated two or three rows in front of the person who shot this team video.

R.C. Weslowski has been a clown mouth full of bologna in the Vancouver poetry scene since 1998. As a performer R.C. Weslowski is a five-time member of the Vancouver Poetry Slam Team and has performed at Festival across Canada, including:
 The Calgary International Poetry Festival, The Winnipeg Writer’s Festival, The Saskatchewan Festival of Words, The Vancouver Folk Festival, The Vancouver Storytelling Fesival, Music West, The Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

R.C. Weslowski has also performed his poetry on the Eiffel Tower while snorting the remains of Orson Welles and along the Rhine River in Germany while debating Schopenhauer with a schnauser.

As an event organizer R.C. Weslowski was the artistic director for the 2005 Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and the publicity coordinator for the 2007 Individual World Poetry Slam. R.C. Weslowski is the current president of Vancouver Poetry House and he is one of the main people making the Vancouver Poetry Slam run.

The VPS is Canada’s longest running poetry slam, now in its 11th year. He is also on the board of the Spoken Word Arts Network.

But aside from all that he will literally blow your brain apart and put it back together again using nothing but his voice. Seriously.

Team Tucson

A group poem by Team Tuscon, comprised of Lindsay Miller, Mickey Randleman, Ethan Dickinson and Maya Asher in Round 1 at the Old Town Shootout, Saturday, Dec. 13, at the Old Town Center for the Arts, in Cottonwood, Arizona.



Video courtesy of Apollo Poetry, of TravelingPoet.com