| tour diary |
| www.luckygoat.org |
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| “i was prepared to leave in the first ten minutes – but – i stayed!”
tobi & cobi’s house, nelson, bc february 17th 10:58 pm (day 8) we went downtown tonight to the wild nectar juice bar on josephine st. to wait for the place to fill up with poetry fans. jamie, the owner, had told me that there was an open mic the night before my show – a good opportunity to promote my event the following evening. i was looking forward to hearing some other poets and then introducing nelson to super goat, complete with sparkly blue horns (thank you becky.) half an hour passed, a chickpea curry consumed… “where is everyone?...this place is dead!” then we thought to look at the poster on the door. ah…saturday is my show. friday is the open mic. today is – thursday! lesson #54 of the road: 4 shows in 6 days makes for a somewhat tired and confused poet. a happy one, though. one of my favourite things to do is go someplace i’ve never been. this is my first time in the kootenays. i spent much of the 5 hour drive through frozen valleys from enderby to nelson gawking out the window. i collected stones in brilliant sunshine during the wait for the ferry on the beach at shelter bay, surprising two white tailed deer. i’m proud of both shows in salmon arm (february 15th.) the high school lunch hour show was on a gorgeous sunny day, and so the audience was predictably small, but that made for a story-time feel and i didn’t mind. the salmon arm art gallery is a beautiful space, and the perfect venue for my show that night. it was my first time trying out the rented amp with the backup tracks from the cd; wyndi ran back and forth between her seat and the laptop, playing dj. and jenny, glenna, liza, paula and awna were all in the room with me. we did a great show. i got one of my favourite flavours of praise that night in salmon arm. (this may come off as sarcasm, but i really mean it.) this species of compliment is usually from someone much older and more experienced than myself, quite often from a man, and almost always accompanied by advice. the complimenter has so sincerely enjoyed my writing and performance, they highlight their delight by also indicating their considerable surprise that this (young, female) poet has managed to impress them. ...i.e.: “i was prepared to leave in the first ten minutes – but – i stayed! i’m so glad!” (me too.) |
| Grant’s Tackle Box
train station, kamloops bc february 21st 3:08 am (day 12) i hope i get some sleep tonight on the train...it's going to be an hour late. there's a cluster of elderly ladies playing cards in the corner, loudly ignoring the two scruffy-looking kids sitting amidst a pile of luggage peering at a laptop under flickering fluorescent lighting. i rented a mic, an amp, and cables for the tour. the mic cord was faulty, and in the confusion of returning other equipment the day i left town, i accidentally returned the power cord for the amp. the nice folks at long & mc quade agreed to courier replacement cords to wyndi’s folks’ house in enderby, teeny town outside salmon arm. a few days went by…no cords. i called the fella at long & mc quade and a search ensued. the cords were traced as far as enderby – they did make it off the island and into the interior…and then they dropped off long & mc quade’s radar. where were they? not at the post office…not at The Stocking Up where parcels often arrive…wyndi’s mom alle made some phone calls, then called us to report with some satisfaction that the parcel was waiting at Grant’s Tackle Box. “but they’re closing in five minutes. so they’ll leave the package on their front step.” the nelson crowd was attentive and emotive, reminiscent of a salt spring island audience on a good day. tobi, a sweet friend in nelson, took us in and fed our bodies with good food and our spirits with a trip to wild hot springs outside nelson. I’d never been to hot springs before – what strange intimacy, to be naked in a steaming pool of water in winter with snow on branches above your head. i’m done the bc portion of the tour! and headed to alberta just as soon as the train arrives. on to a big city tomorrow – i perform in edmonton on tuesday night with the fabulous t.l. cowan. she blew me away at the pub formerly known as thursday's sports bar years ago, performing with ivan e. coyote in "sex, lies and duct tape." i ate up her words, repeated especially smashing rhyming lines in my head for weeks afterwards, and dared to imagine doing that myself one day. |
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| i love the prairies posted from ziysah's peterborough on march 11th 1:00 am (day 29) who knew you could go on a poetry tour and have no time for writing in poetry, let alone keeping up with an online tour diary? having no time to write sucks. i’ve never been so busy in my whole life. but, that’s a small price to pay for how much i’m learning and growing. i’ve been proud of all eleven shows so far, and i’m pleased to announce that i can engage hearts and minds even on 3 hours of sleep, with a miserable head cold. here’s a looong overdue mishmash of impressions from edmonton, calgary, regina, big river, saskatoon and winnipeg... the edmonton show was the first big show since leaving the coast. we stayed with our lovely friend layla, who put on a spread for dinner our first night in town – the girl can cook. (vegans and vegetarians, skip to the next paragraph) we had bison and deer and two kinds of wild grouse. (“you wanna travel canada, you gotta eat canada.” – layla neufeld.) the latitude 53 gallery in edmonton was packed, and t.l. cowan blew me away for the second time. i hugely enjoyed her performance, and i have a ton to learn from her about moving behind the mic. she is such a good reminder of the importance of dynamic delivery. and a bunch of queer high school students rocked up afterwards and spilled their guts at the open mic! i was so happy about that as i’d tried unsuccessfully to make contact with queer youth groups across canada while i was planning this tour. t.l.’s a sweet woman too. she gave us a lift to calgary the next day for our show that night. we talked poetry and queer politics all the way there. i was initially intimidated and uncomfortable in the karma cafe. it looked like lots of people there to drink beer, not to hear poets, plus they were smoking inside (eewwwww) but t.l. was there, thank god. she grabbed the entire bar by the scruff of its neck, demanded their attention in her charmingly effective way, and they listened. i certainly got the impression that even folks who had no idea that there was a poetry gig happening at the bar that night hushed up to pay attention to the two queer girls behind the mic. big big thank yous to shelly for sending her friends to my show! they had a great time and i so, so appreciated the support and enjoyment emanating from their table. molly “i-create-beautiful-art-from-anything-i-lay-my-hands-on” turner put us up in calgary. we got the art tour of her apartment, and packed 3 girls into her bed and one girl on the floor (they had an influx of guests that night) and after 3 hours of sleep, it was on to regina on the bus. that morning i did an interview for the cbc which i think has broadcasted nationally at least twice by now...i’ve not heard it, but hopefully it doesn’t reflect a)my sleep deprivation at the time, b) the fact that the interview was happening on a bus or c)my nervousness about the fourth interview of my life happening on national radio. ...i’d like to come up with some concise responses to questions about art-as-activism, activism-as-art, about the responsibility of white girls like me using privilege in positive ways, the necessity of breaking taboos through a microphone and why performing poetry which heals me and facilitates other people’s healing is a subversive act. all this stuff seems so obviously important to me that i feel kind of condescending, or silly, about saying something like “it is important for girls to talk about sexual abuse because it transforms the shame around it and allows empowerment and healing” but i think that folks are gonna ask me to spell it out for them, on a regular basis, and my goodness, it’s flustering to find myself inarticulate about such issues. any poetry fans with any thoughts on this, feel free to email me about it. tara solheim, my regina-and-saskatoon collaborator, is talented and sweet and generous. she took us into her cosy apartment, fed us, and took wyndi out salsa dancing after the show. the regina show was small but intimate in the way that small poetry events can be. her parents and sister came and beamed throughout. carla braidek and her partner garry in big river fed us well too (noticing a theme here?) gave us free run of their place and welcomed us back anytime. the big river show was excellent too. carla shared the stage with me, did promotion for the show, and grabbed me with her stage presence and well crafted work and the two dozen or so ladies (and a coupla fellas) made for a rapt audience at what was likely big river’s first spoken word show ever. i toned down my material quite a bit in consideration of the show’s location and the ages of most audience members, and i still had a great time. i’m pleased and proud to have a diverse enough body of work to perform for any audience. i was missing my grandma quite a bit that day. it was bittersweet to hear “what a lovely poetry reading” from ladies as old as my grandma would have been if she were still alive. and yes, my two-year-old crush on the prairies has blossomed into a full-on love affair. i love the prairies in winter. i love the stillness of fields sleeping under white, and leaning wooden fences casting crooked blue shadows on the snow. i love sleeping ‘til noon and walking on frozen lakes in early afternoon, getting snow inside my cuffs plunging along in drifts up to my knees. i love getting up before dawn to meditate in the dark for an hour and then opening my eyes to a predawn glow at the horizon. i love the way the sun catches on bare treetops in the morning and again in early evening on its way creeping down past the horizon. i love the owls and the deer and the mostly-wild kittens hunting and pouncing and purring below the porch. i love friendly folks who’ve never ever heard spoken word before, have no context for it, and are blown away by “words that sound just like music!” and who aren’t too cool to laugh out loud at the funny parts. |
| mid april-ish
victoria bc becky's house well it's been over a week and i'm finally unpacked...just in time to leave again. i think that i took so long to unpack because i didn't wanna admit that the tour was over. it's been the busiest & craziest time of my whole life, as well as some of the headiest exhilaration i've ever experienced. i'll definitely do it again. and next time i want a booking agent, so that i'll actually have time to UPDATE THE TOURING DIARY MORE REGULARLY... again, some highlights... peterborough, ontario is a rad little town. i always knew it; growing up in kingston i heard how many queers go to school there, and almost went there myself. ziysah picked us up in toronto and we sped to the trasheteria, a rank straight bar in downtown peterborough which hosted the annual amateur drag revue. for an amateur night, it wasn't entirely - there were some fabulous performances. the following night was the trash n ready & lisa b combo show at the gordon best theatre. i was nervous as hell, but found my feet after the first coupla pieces, and then trash n ready took over the stage and OH what a treat. hadassah hill, lisa foad and zoe whittal graced us with a shocking arcade of multi-media, sex, hysteria, gender and confession, to paraphrase their poster blurb. they are funny, angry, smart, politically astute and welcoming (www.trashready.com) my mission to find community among other queer performance poets was madly successful on this tour. further good news: they are coming to victoria. watch for the posters! the night after THAT was the lezzies on ecstasy show at the grassroots cafe; i danced all night to their electronica punk indigo girls covers. they were hilarious, as well as good musicians. (one single complaint regarding the evening: hippies with dreadlocks should not whip them around at eye level on the dance floor. especially if the dreads in questions are beaded. ow.) two nights later ziysah and i finished off peterborough's epic-homo-fun-weekend with a combo show and an open mic. and i really thought that not many folks would come out, on a monday, after so many shows in one little town, but the grassroots was packed. i like peterborough. a lot. some chick on the street came up to me with a huge smile, say "hey lisa, how's it going! i saw you perform the other night!" and introduced herself. i like smaller towns where folks don't have tons invested in appearing too cool to be impressed, too blasé to be affected. and yes, ziysah rocked the mic. i'd been itching to hear her spoken word for months and it is excellent. she impressed me all 'round, actually; she's a gifted poet & performer and she's a deep thinker as well as creative and articulate and her spoken word reflected that. i promptly began applying pressure for her to produce a chapbook. hers are the kind of words you wanna take home and read again and again. she's also an energetic organizer, and did i mention i made a good friend? she gave us her bedroom and fed us for 5 nights. (i'm working on getting her out onto the coast for the national spoken word festival this october. thank you lindsay for a fabulous peterborough contact & friend!) |
| early may
so i've had this entry in my drafts folder for weeks, and i've been editing it from an internet kiosk in the edmonton bus terminal, humming along to amy grant's "good for me," absolutely determined to finish the online tour diary before heading to my computer-free existence in the bush at my firetower tomorrow morning! thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who came to shows, to folks who stopped me on the street in victoria before i left to say "hey i've got a friend in edmonton you should totally hook up with when you go there", to strangers who've mailed my books all over the country, to audience members who called and emailed friends to tell them about my upcoming shows, to lovely people who listened and clapped and encouraged me in a million different ways. thanks. and, once again, thanks to wyndi, for working hard, for dealing with heavy, heavy stuff, literally and figuratively, for being chipper in the mornings (but never expecting the same of me) for thinking outside the box, for reminding me that it's all about having fun and busting a gut laughing at life even and especially when things get really royally fucked up. ok, my twoonie's just about to run out. see y'all in the fall. xo lisa b. p.s. interesting final note: a coupla vancouver poets have told me that i'm the first poet to tour all the way across canada. no wonder the canada council told me that i was overly ambitious when i asked them for money to fund "salvaged music"! (maybe next time?) |
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| and then...back to the coast. back to green, back to
ocean and home. i had the deep pleasure of sharing
the stage with kim shaughnessey in vancouver - this
girl had me literally in tears with her first poem,
and howling with laughter a few minutes later. she is
funny, brave, sincere, and wacky. and her use of
metaphor is exquisite. three cheers, kim, i'm so glad
you live only a ferry ride away. gunsel performed
again, having raided rusty's (extensive closet) and
devin performed as well. again, an enormous pleasure
to share the stage with creative kings. (check out
www.dev-bot.com)
and finally, home to victoria in springtime, where folks track cherry blossom petals into restaurants if they don't wipe their feet. very beautiful, and yes, a little surreal! liza and paula and auto showed up with their instruments, much to my delight, as did glenna...no mike stand though, so wyndi held the mic for glenna with the help of a pole, much to everyone's amusement. i was expecting a pretty small homecoming show, as it conflicted with a few other events, but the solstice was full. i cried lots. it was really really good to be home. |
| then we took off to ontario again, for two more
toronto shows. we stayed at rebekah's house on galley street, aka my favourite place in the entire province. we had lovely visits with all the folks in that communal house - i'd like to comment here on how highly functioning and loving that home is. and i'd further like to comment (lord, i hope no one interprets this as anti-male bitchiness; i'm being entirely sincere here) that i was delighted to find myself in a home with 4 men and 3 women and to NOT NOTICE the gender difference until it was pointed out to me after a few days, ie i didn't notice that there were more men than women because the men in the house were SO gentle, warm, intelligent, easygoing and respectful. i especially enjoyed the chance to get to know ayal better (tuval, your brother is as beautiful as you - there must be some special magic in your family's genetics!) i did a teeny little set at an "i like girls" event at the cameron house to a really welcoming audience, and then did my final ontario show at the free times cafe. kaleb did a hilariously good job as mc that night, johnny shared some spoken word as well as drag (i didn't know he was a poet! he's really good!) and gunsel performed as well. i like sharing the stage with drag kings. especially gunsel & johnny. kaleb is the first person ever to hand over the microphone and leave me at a loss for words; he did an impression of spoken word poets that had me laughing helplessly at my own expense. it was a good night and afterwards we stood outside in the slush (it was not raining, but not snowing either; it was slushing.) trying to get in to dance at Big Primpin'. we were not aggressive enough to shove our way inside, so we went home after an hour of sogginess. it was really, really hard to leave the galley street house. i love rebekah rempel. i love her madly. and i hope she comes out to bc again soon. |
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| from montreal wyndi and i took the train to halifax.
we discovered early on that the tracks on the eastern side of the country are not as well maintained as the rest of canada; we jounced and bounced and swayed back and forth for many, many miles. i wrote a new poem on the train, launching so far into Art Head that i missed most of the scenery. jess abramson from the dal women's centre met us at the station and took us to her huge communal house, then took us on a walking tour of halifax. i was so glad to be finally be meeting jess in person; we'd been emailing each other for months, swapping poetry and inspiration. oh it did me good to be on a coast again. halifax is a beautiful place, definitely somewhere i'd like to be again. we discovered halifax's homo harbour - wyndi fell in love! there is an 8 foot tall bronze statue of a sailor, the classic faggot icon, complete with 40s style uniform. and, a few metres away, a gigantic wave, or, a tongue, about 6 feet high. my halifax show was in venus envy, an excellent bookstore/sex shop. (thank you maggie for booking me at your lovely store!) it was my first time performing to a wall of dildos. 2 local poets, rosalynn and shauntay, showed up, which totally delighted me. my high school friend gina took us in for a couple nights after we left jess's house in search of our own room. it was so good to see gina again; we stayed with her and her boyfriend cory at their housesitting house. we went from halifax to moncton where we met up with caro again (needed a second dose of that girl!) and her girlfriend jess and were treated to a massive, lavish easter dinner at caro's mom's place; caro's family is as sweet as she is. i had a really good time. (dinner was followed by a decadent chocolate fruit fondue. i do not usually eat refined sugar. i ate a lot of chocolate that night. much giddy goat prancing ensued, coupled with incomplete sentences and uncontrollable giggling.) caro's dad let us stay in his cabin by the ocean in cape pele. i really needed a few days to loiter by the ocean. i programmed hours of ani difranco on the laptop at a time, and slept a lot. wyndi took some gorgeous photos. |
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| on from peterborough to ottawa, where we hooked up
with caro - thank you awna for a smashing ottawa contact! caro gave us her bed, cooked for us (we had the great good fortune to arrive during her winter break) and took us hiking around a lake in gatineau provincial park on a day so bright the sun glinted off the snow on the trees and ground and frozen lake and i remembered all that i love about winter in ontario. it was a whirlwind in ottawa - oni the haitian sensation is a dynamite performer, explosively alive on and off stage, as well as yes, a sweet woman. (www.onistudio.com) (the recurring themes of the tour include good food, generous people, and lovely poets.) i was expecting to be blown away and i was. it was an intimate little wednesday night show at club SAW. from ottawa wyndi took off to toronto to cavort with kaleb, and i took the train to montreal where jenny d met me. annabelle chvostek was kind enough to allow us to stay in her flat for the weekend - she was in texas - thank you annabelle! montreal was fast and noisy and smoky; we took in some beautiful music, some truly bizarre, confusing and inaccessible performance art, and then on sunday night performed to a packed and very attentive, deeply appreciative audience at casa del popolo. montrealers know how to treat a poet. it was so good to be performing with live musician again, for a night - thank you jenny d for making a trip out to montreal and thank you paula belina for hooking me up at the words & music night! |
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| the saskatoon show at mcgettigan’s was packed; jennifer divall (from the women’s centre) and kathy finn (from the whitecourt fire centre – she works dispatch in the same wildfire management area as my firetower! we’ve chatted for 3 years but it was our first meeting face-to-face) did a smashing job of promoting the show, and it was fun to do another event with tara solheim. she obliged me with a second installment of her Wonderwalker story (a prairie superhero.)
i’ve decided that shows organized by women’s centres are the way to go. the crowd was attentive and sweet. my only complaints upon leaving saskatchewan were sleep deprivation and the resulting head cold. it was not at all glamorous to be performing with a nasal voice but i did my best to compensate with blue eyeshadow. and then...winnipeg. friday night i did a show at mondragon, a cooperatively-run anarchist bookstore and vegan cafe. that show was intense for me; i have several beloved friends in winnipeg who hadn’t seen my show before, so of course i wanted to totally rock their socks, and it was the first time in quite awhile i’d had the stage all to myself on a night when i didn’t feel i had to choose my words to avoid overwhelming or offending or losing audience members. i did a great show to an attentive audience and was a happy, tired, and extremely overstimulated little poet afterwards. i got to play hard with my friends remi and jason and liz & reece, who took us in for 5 nights. (i am soooo looking forward to another 4 days there in late april – i’m opening for alix olson (www.alixolson.com) at the graffiti gallery in winnipeg. i hope not to be a stuttering starstruck fool. i’d best pick a couple of poems that i know very very well.) on to peterborough now, wyndi and i are performing in a drag show on thursday night (on the same bill as adrienne, aka johnny class!) and then on friday i get to share a stage with trash ‘n ready (www.trashready.com) at the gordon best theatre!! (another fervent poetry wish, soon to be granted...ahhhh...the luckiness of goats.) t & r are doing a west coast tour from may 20th to 31st...i’m going to suggest they perform in victoria because there are some many amazing poetry fans there...i’ll keep everyone posted. |
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| photo by caro |
| photo by lisa |
| photo by lisa |
| photo by lisa |
| all photos by pussyboy unless credited |
| photo by becky |
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| photo by lisa b |