A Fond (and Awesome) Farewell

I told you about the going away party / show for one of my favourite people and one of the most important people of the spoken word community in Ottawa and Lanark County.

I told you that those that know, know and those that don’t likely never will.

Lots of people heeded my call. (Well…lots of people came to the show. I am sure most of them came with no prompting from me.)

What an amazing show! Sure we are going to miss such a wonderful person but her parting gift was a doozy! She told people that she was hoping poets would cover each other’s poems… and boy, did we!

Listen to some of these amazing highlights:

Festrell performing Steve Sauve’s ‘Beautiful’ (a poem Steve wrote FOR Danielle).

Ken Kicksee performing that evolution poem of Emily Kwissa’s which is incredibly amazing but I can’t recall that name of…

Sense-Say performing Kevin Matthews’ ‘Meat’. (Quote of the night, from Sense-Say: “Kevin Matthews has raps!”)

Nadine Thornhill performing Festrell’s ‘Q-pocolypse’.

V performing Danielle’s… oh damn. I forget which poem. I am mixing it up with D.G.’s set… Anyone?

Jeanette performing two pieces by Jessica Ruano!

Loh El performing a new piece by Saskatoon’s Simon Worms!

Ian Keteku and Brad Morden doing an N’Synch sing (as poem) and later a STELLAR performance of ‘Gone’ by Boyz II Men by Ian, V, Jenna Tenn-Yuk, PrufRock and Sense-Say. You had to be there.

John Akpata broke out the sax and we sang along to some Radiohead.

I was honoured to have three poets choose to perform pieces of mine.

Inez Dekker did Sometimes I Can’t Remember, a piece that we can both relate to.

Tammy Mackenzie did The Real Story of Icarus.

And Ronsense did a lesser known piece, I Want To Believe. His performance made me want to break that piece out again.

When Danielle did her set she covered a piece of V’s (KILLER!!), and she asked me to join her so we could do Library. This was originally going to be a parting Copper Conundrum performance but Kevin was very ill and couldn’t make it. I rearranged it for two and it was fun! Danielle also performed a few other poems – a mix-of classics and a wonderful brand new piece!

Great show.

Oh… I haven’t mentioned the poem I did, have I?

🙂

I was originally going to do the same Steve Sauve poem that Festrell did, so obviously THAT wasn’t going to work. I was sitting with Ruthanne and Nadine and my good friend Nadine mentioned that she had a print out of one of her poems that I could do if I wanted.

I took one look at the poem and agreed.

By the time I took the stage I was feeling that nagging feeling of regret. This could go over big or crash with a sickening thud.

It was the former.

Nadine’s poem is called ‘Clitoral Protestation’ and in it she is having a discussion with her clitoris about her sexual practices. My eyes were burning on stage (coincidence… I felt like I walked through a big cloud of perfume of something. Didn’t smell it…), by I said the hell with it and gave it my all. This all involved moans and groans and the line, “Bitch, please!”

A little different than my usual fare, but it went over pretty big. 🙂 I even got a free beverage as the proprietress thought it was so funny. 🙂

All in all, I don’t like WHY we had the show (as I am going to miss Danielle, Jonathan, Fiona and Joshua a whole great big bunch) but the show was epic.

Don’t forget to come out on August 4th for Capital Slam and if you can volunteer, please let me know!