Brian M. Nelson

Our guest this Wednesday will be Brian Nelson, poet and performance artist.

Check out his work and upcoming shows at www.creativebuzzevents.blogspot.com

Maxine Gadd

Maxine Gadd, way back when. Photo Elaine Briere.

Our guest was long time Vancouver Poet, Maxine Gadd. I came across a great article on the Tyee website by Grant Shilling that features a quote from New Star Publisher Rolf Maurer about labelling Maxine's poetry:

I like her humour, and the fact that her poetic experiments, the arrangement of text on the page, her made-up words and her play with sounds (of words) were all related to something beyond just poetics: they were related to her desire to document, describe, write about her world in a way that might be recognizable by others.

"Maxine's work represents a poetic tradition that tends to be (subtly) disparaged, both by the more conservative lyric poets who until quite recently dominated the writing about Canadian poetry as well as the prize lists (and juries), but also by the more theoretically inclined, Euro-American-influenced poets that include the motorcycle gang also known as the Kootenay School of Writing, which is where my own tastes were forged.

"'Hippie poet.' 'Street/urban poet.' She's actually a damned good poet, whose 'hippie,' 'gritty urban' poems have actually been influenced by a very broad range of writers. Maxine, I discovered not just from her writing but her attendance at many readings over the years and her genuine interest in all kinds of other writers, including many not very much like her at all, allowed a lot of influences in. Her style is unmistakably her own, but her wide reading has given her the licence, or courage or madness or whatever, to push what she's doing, so that her work tends to stretch whatever category she's working in."

Read the whole Tyee article here...

Audio from the show to follow.

Robbie Burns aka Todd Wong

With CelticFest and St. Paddy's day on the 17th, we decided a tribute to the Scotch and Irish would be appropriate, so we are raising the dead for this show and bringing in Robbie Burns to help celebrate.
Burns (really Todd Wong of Gung Haggis Fat Choy-fame) will be going head-to-head with Dylan Thomas and William Butler Yeats in a unique literary event this year on Thursday, March 13: The Battle of the Bards Literary Pub Crawl, a combination pub crawl/poetry slam where the legendary poets go from pub to pub downtown performing their works and being judged by members of the audience armed with scorecards. The event culminates in a Jack Karaoke-style match at Ceili's Pub, where they must do their pieces accompanied by a DJ (All Purpose's Michael Louw) and fiddler Elise Boeur. Once the contest is over much drinking and dancing is done into the wee hours. Click on the image below for more details.

Here are some pics taken at the studio:


Note to future guests: We like guests who bring Guiness!



Video of the show to follow.
Audio of the show to follow.
Ed. Note:
The "Battle of the Bards" event was a great success and fortuitously for us, Burns/Wong won the event, walking away with the heavy weight belt with a less than 3 point lead on the other two bards.

Check out pictures from Edgewater Casino CelticFest 2008 here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9057324@N08/sets/72157604144696435

Or see the sideshow here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9057324@N08/sets/72157604144696435/show/

It was a big week for Wong who was also honoured by Premier Gordon Campbell for making an outstanding contribution to his community.
Read the full story here!

Rachel Flood

Rachael Flood, organizer of the grrl-friendly Sistahood Celebration, was our guest this week. It was interesting to hear her work and find out more about how this festival has grown and evolved over the past few years.

Listen to her work on Myspace...

Audio from the show to follow.
Video from the show to follow.