Twin Cities Daily Planet

TCDP TOP PICK: Tish Jones, a spoken word powerhouse and community organizer, is presenting a new series of youth poetry slams that will culminate in the selection of six remarkable teens to represent Minnesota at the international Brave New Voices Youth Poetry Slam Festival this summer. The second event takes place February 1 at Southwest High. 

- Jay Gabler

A pint of raspberries rests
in the lap of a pint-sized child.
Lolling in her stroller, she’s
living in the lap of luxury.
“Don’t eat them,” Mom says,
as the little one begins eating,
two-handed, two-fisted,
too much; we laugh until
we grow red as raspberries.

-Mike Hazard 

Mike Hazard is a multimedia artist who lives in Lowertown near the Farmers’ Market. This poem is from his series Cornucopia.

In 2012, artists Diego Vázquez, Jr., Shaquan Foster, Patricia Young, Kimberly Nightingale, and Lisa Steinmann created two related Irrigate-funded projects: “Lowertown Voices” and “University Avenue Voices.” The two projects produced 14 large-scale posters and one 200-square-foot banner that were installed at various points along the light rail corridor, from August through December, 2012.

The old man was not really in a rowboat
under the Mississippi River bridge.
He was in the process of turning
inside himself, as we all will do one day.

Inside, he was finalizing the finished
and unfinished business of his life.
I just made up the part about him in a rowboat,
fishing being some of his best times.

In the rowboat, he tied a hook on a line,
fashioned a slab of plywood into an oar,
nailed, plugged, chopped, and welded
all the materials of his backbreaking years.

This was great work for him and his face
was pinched with effort. Beads of sweat
glinted on his forehead as he gently laid
each of the items back into the water

from which they came, I imagine. The river
was grateful and in return rocked him
in its faithful current downstream
toward home,

which was a warm house filled with sisters
and all his old friends and Ma right there.
There, baking bread in the wood stove
from a recipe in her head.

- Linda Back McKay

In 2012, artists Diego Vázquez, Jr., Shaquan Foster, Patricia Young, Kimberly Nightingale, and Lisa Steinmann created two related Irrigate-funded projects: “Lowertown Voices” and “University Avenue Voices.” The two projects produced 14 large-scale posters and one 200-square-foot banner that were installed at various points along the light rail corridor, from August through December, 2012.

nature abhors
taxation
as does the
populace,
yet rain showers
and sunshine
blend well this month
as do last minute
important
imaginative
deductions
that give us
a running chance
to refund
ourselves.

- Diego Vázquez, Jr.

In 2012, artists Diego Vázquez, Jr., Shaquan Foster, Patricia Young, Kimberly Nightingale, and Lisa Steinmann created two related Irrigate-funded projects: “Lowertown Voices” and “University Avenue Voices.” The two projects produced 14 large-scale posters and one 200-square-foot banner that have been installed at various points along the light rail corridor, from August through December, 2012.

Jeffrey Skemp presents a cacophony of poetry at the Bryant-Lake Bowl

Despite a great number of near-meets, sightings, and acknowledgements of friends-of-friends, I still haven’t met poet Jeffrey Skemp. Prior to October 18, I had watched him read once, at the Hazel and Wren Words at WAM open mic last February, and in June, noticed him watching (and enjoying) Sierra DeMulder, Haley Lasche, Cary Waterman, and Richard Robbins reading at a Maeve’s Session, while I sat hoping that he would get up and read as part of the open mic. No dice.

While it’s not my intention to make it sound like I’m stalking and journaling my every interaction with the local poet, I do bring these details up for a few reasons. One, I had assumed that Skemp was a dabbler. He is not. Turns out he just likes performing and taking in poetry where and when he can. He’s been performing poetry and stories in the Twin Cities for over 15 years, and for the past four years has been participating in the monthly Bosso Poetry Co. readings at Dusty’s Bar NE. Two, both times I’ve seen him read, his performance surprised me.

On October 18, Skemp and a rather large group of musicians—including Ben Durrant, JG Everest, John Colburn, and Karen Townsend, all of whom are friends of the poet’s—put on an interesting show at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, pairing Skemp’s poetry with music and occasionally video. The two-hour show offered the audience 19 of Skemp’s poems and a few instrumentals from the Greg Schaefer Trio. Some of the poems came across more like regular chorus-verse-chorus songs, with the poet singing and speaking alternately (this reminded alternately of both William Shatner’s and Johnny Cash’s infamous covers albums) and other poems weren’t set to any music at all. One poem, titled “The Darling Ones,” made use of not only live music and video, but also a tape recorder with Skemp’s voice, repeating lines he was speaking live. While the clacking of the play and stop buttons being pressed was a little distracting, on the whole this particular part of the performance was one of my favorites of the night. 

Describing the performance is great, but what I really wish I could have walked away with thoughts on is Skemp’s actual poetry. The music was lovely and Skemp’s deep voice is stirring, but together, along with watching the live performance (one poem even included sound effects from a bucket of water being sloshed around in on stage), it became increasingly difficult to pay attention to the poetry. However, he did perform the poem I had heard him read at Words at WAM, “Capt. Ocean-Talk,” so I did have a little point of reference about whether or not what the whole show was working.

For me, the performance of the poem with the music wasn’t as exciting. Whether that’s because at the open mic I was hearing the poem for the first time, and at the time was elated when my awkward confusion melted into silly joy as the audience loosened up and took the ride to the bottom of the Bering Sea, or because Skemp didn’t use his deep voice in the same way, to build curiosity or suspense, as the music was doing that for him, is anybody’s guess. It did make me think that the music acts as a cue for listeners, sort of explaining how to feel about the words in a way that didn’t make me listen as hard to what was being said. 

The tidbits of Skemp’s poems that I did take away had to do with both infidelity and fishing. When I asked the poet about these themes he said, “Mostly it’s coincidental,” citing his interest in the varying reasons for infidelity, and his experience working on a fishing boat in his youth, and falling in love with the ocean.

Although the night may not have completely connected with me as a fan of poetry, and as someone interested in the potential of Skemp’s work, it brought me immense joy to witness the BLB full of people supporting the poet. After all, I’m pretty sure that I might have been the only person in that theater who didn’t know Skemp personally. When I asked Skemp about how it feels to be an artist with so much support he said, “Really lucky. I mean it.” 

If you’re interested in hearing some of Skemp’s poetry set to music,  buy his album SPENT, or check out some of the tracks (including “Captain-Ocean Talk” and another favorite “Oceans of Straw”) on Bandcamp.

- Courtney Algeo

SubText is the Twin Cities’ newest independent bookstore, and it comes with quite a pedigree: it’s located in the former Common Good Books space below Nina’s, and its employees include Sue Zumberge (formerly of Common Good) and David Unowsky, owner of the late great Hungry Mind. On July 11, four poets will be presenting their work. Heid Erdrich is the big name; she’ll be joined by Jim Cihlar, Kate Kysar, and Bill Reichard. Mary Turck attended a reading last month, and described the atmosphere as “welcome and relaxed.”

In retrospect, it was inevitable that this would happen: take a town known for world-class beer and national champion slam poetry teams, toss in a drinkin’ spelling bee, and voila! We have our first (to my knowledge) drunk poetry slam. On July 2 at the Artists’ Quarter, the Soap Boxing slam poetry team—recently unseated from its back-to-back national championship dynasty—will “compete against the audience in drinking games while performing (with diminishing returns) for your amusement.” If nothing else, it’s gotta be better than Bye Bye Liver.

I think that I shall never see: a poem as lovely as a machine.

Artist Bridget Beck has created a whimsical interactive sculpture intended to inspire poetry, and Franconia Sculpture Park is celebrating the sculpture’s installation with a two-day poetry event featuring creative writing workshops and performances by Cromulent Shakespeare Company. If Beck’s poetry machine doesn’t fire your creative circuits as effectively as you hoped, Franconia will provide technical assistance by poets including Heid Erdrich and Dobby Gibson.

What is poetry? The answer to that question is always changing: some now consider artfully arranged computer desktop screenshots to be poetry. Acclaimed poets Mark Doty and Tracy K. Smith probably—I’m going out on a limb here—probably don’t have much to say about screenshots, memes, macros, or even tweets, but they do have a knack for arranging words in lyrical and artful assemblages. Doty and Smith will be among the poets sharing their wisdom at a poetry conference organized over the weekend of May 18-20 at The Loft Literary Center. All poets, prospective poets, past poets, and poetry partisans are invited to Open Book for this summit of eloquence.

- Jay Gabler

image macro by Steve Roggenbuck