Interview
with James Pickersgill, POW! Festival organizer
by Grahame Woods
1) When did the
idea first strike you - that Ah,ah! moment?
National Poetry Month was established in Canada in 1999 by the League
of Canadian Poets. Since I first heard about it years ago, I have supported
the idea of April being declared National Poetry Month each year. Then,
in April 2008, the small town of Cobalt had a weekend festival to mark
Poetry Month and members of the Cobourg Poetry Workshop gave support
to it. I thought to myself, "Okay, I hope they do that in Cobalt
again year after year … but if they can do it, we can certainly
do it here in Cobourg."
Cobourg has had a very active poetry group for almost a decade and it
has sponsored publicly advertised poetry readings every month for the
past seven years. These regular 3rd Thursday Readings have created a
poetry-savvy audience in town and has made Cobourg a "go to"
place for a lot of poets and their publishers. Not as many people in
town know this as should know it but Cobourg has a reputation as a poetry
place in cities like Toronto, London, Windsor, Montreal and towns as
far away as Kentville, Nova Scotia.
2) Can you give me a play-by-play on how, from that moment, the concept
evolved.
I asked one or two of the founding members of the Cobourg Poetry Workshop
if they thought the idea of a weekend poetry festival here was realistic.
They told me it was. That was in June, 2008. Then, I spent a lot of
time thinking it through in my own head. I tend to be overly positive
in my assessment of things so I wanted to keep it to myself while I
forced myself to calculate what the result would be if the festival
was not successful and if I could "stand that."
One of the aspects that began to make it gel for me was when I was taking
a walk one day and a name for the Festival popped into my head. I had
been thinking, "I want the name to have punch and to stick with
people easily." The word POW! jumped up. Then, I quickly worked
out what that could represent as an acronym: Poetry's Own Weekend festival.
A little later, I "jazzed it up" slightly by changing the
's to an 'z. I thought that did two things, made it a little more modern
by giving a cyber-era look to the words and it emphasized the word-play
in the sound of "poetry's own" which mimics the words "poetry
zone."
Then, I talked the idea over with my wife, Jane, "What if I organize
a weekend poetry festival next April?" I can always rely on her
to tell me the truth and to keep me down to Earth. We kept it to ourselves
as we discussed it back and forth, in and out, up and down, frontwards
and backwards for quite a few weeks. In the end, we decided that I should
simply "go for it." We agreed that it was worth doing in 2009
and whether the festival does or does not have any future could be decided
after we see how it goes.
One of the things Jane insisted that I do is take great care when picking
the weekend. "Don't schedule it on Easter weekend or on the weekend
when all the parents are moving all the university students back home
at the end of the school year." So, I checked all that and picked
the weekend of Friday, April 17 through Sunday, April 19, 2009. One
of the Cobourg Poetry Workshop's regular publicly advertised 3rd Thursday
Poetry Readings falls on April 16, 2009. So, there is "a nice fit"
in that POW! will expand this regularly scheduled Reading into a full
weekend poetry festival
The POW! Festival has "a little sister" in p o e t r y'z o
w n which is a 4 page weekly sheet of poetry mainly from local poets
in the Cobourg Poetry Workshop but includes some work by people who
have been Guest Poets at its 3rd Thursday Reading series. These sell
for only 25 cents and are meant to raise a little money for the same
goals as the POW! Festival.
A nice ripple effect is happening from the attention p o e t r y'z o
w n has garnered, inclucing nice coverage in the Cobourg Daily Star,
lending strength to the news of the POW! Festival. The reverse effect
will be welcome, too: a lot of copies of p o e t r y'z o w n should
sell during the Festival and so on.
Before I took the idea of the POW! Festival any more from theory to
practice, I had to make sure I had a location. I checked with Edward,
the proprietor of "Meet at 66 King Street East" and he let
me book that spot for all the Festival events. This licensed facility
serves food and refreshments ranging from a cup of coffee to a full
meal, with glorius desserts and has both a large sitting area in the
restaurant section and a full meeting hall in an adjacent room that
will seat over 150 people.
I have a bit of "a leg up" because I have been a member of
other poetry groups and had other poetry-related involvements for many
years. This means I know quite a few poets and I have contact with some
people who run very well-respected small publishing houses. For this
reason, I have been given the task of booking Readers for the 3rd Thursday
series for a couple of years.
So, in late January, I made a preliminary announcement of the POW! Festival
in the form of a call for participants who would give Poetry Readings,
participate in a panel discussion, give other presentations, act as
M.C. for particular events during the festival and all that. I was stunned
by the quick response. Three poetry publishers -Porcupine's Quill, Biblioasis
and Pedlar Press- got behind the festival very quickly. With their support
and the replies we got from other individual poets, it took less than
7 days for me to book 12 Guest Poets and 7 local poets as well as other
invited presenters for many separate events throughout the weekend of
April 17 to 19.
2a) How does the weekend shape up at this time?
One gauge I apply when answering that for myself -and for you- is: if
I wasn't the one organizing the Festival, is it something I'd attend?
In all honesty, if someone else put this on, I'd be there as an audience
member for every one of the events we have scheduled. I love poetry.
It has been an avocation of mine for decades and I mean that literally.
The poets and panelists who are coming are all people I want to hear.
I started with the thought that I should have one or two "key events"
that would serve as anchors for the festival at important points. As
it has turned out, we have many, many of those, each of which could
stand alone and be a great poetry event separate from the festival.
We will have 7 Poetry Readings - 8 if you count in the regularly scheduled
Thursday evening Reading, a poetry recitation by a professional actor,
a panel discussion about the future of 'the book' in an electronic age
when we hear that there will be no book-readers and no book-buyers,
a special lecture presentation by one of the Poets, giving a unique
"consumer's" perspective on the mental health system - using
prose that is quite poetic, and, two Open Mike sessions.
For the uninitiated, an Open Mike session is the poetry world's equivalent
of a jam session - a cross between karoke and a hootenanny. Up to 10
people from the audience who are poets are given the opportunity to
get up and read for 3 to 5 minutes each. They might be people who are
quite used to reading their poems in public or people who are doing
that for the first time ever. There will be an Open Mike session on
the Friday evening and again on the Saturday evening.
There will be a whole session during the afternoon on Saturday given
over to poets who write poetry for children and one who also writes
lyrics is bringing along a Children's songster to perform as well. There
will be another session dedicated to reading poetry that has been translated
from Polish, with sample readings in the original language, so people
get "the feel" of the rhythm and sound when they were written.
There will an extremely remarkable presentation of poetry being recited
from memory.
Now the POW! Festival constitutes a lot of events, any one of which
could be considered "the centerpiece" of the Festival, except
that it stands as one of many. I went in search for a centerpiece and
happily ended up with a series of key events.
This should attract an audience that is equal parts people from Cobourg
and folks from out of town. The regular audience for the 3rd Thursday
series is never less than 25 people and sometimes as many as 50. If
we are very successful, we should be able to double those numbers as
our average audience when figured over all the events throughout the
weekend.
3) Are there any other similar events in eastern Ontario?
There is the one in Cobalt, which is North, not East. I am not familiar
with other weekend festivals of poetry in this province - my apologies
if I am slighting anyone or underestimating anyone else's efforts by
saying that. There will be many other National Poetry Month events all
across Canada, most of them will be single evening or afternoon Readings,
though. It is relatively unique to have a whole weekend of poetry like
we're going to have in Cobourg.
4) What will the festival offer the people of Cobourg?
A chance to experience poetry events at a level that would make audiences
in larger centers like London, Peterborough or Ottawa envious. Even
big cities like Toronto or Montreal would be pleasantly surprised if
an event of this scope were held there.
Sometimes poetry and the scene around it can be seen as a somewhat esoteric
involvement but my experience with it tells me it is not. Poetry today,
as will be shown during the POW! Festival, is easily accessible for
the audience. These days poems talk about our everyday experiences living
lives in our current world; it is not a bunch of words that sound like
they were written 100 or 400 years ago in a part of Olde Englande you've
never heard of, never mind visited or lived in.
You might hear about strolling on the sand of the Cobourg beach, about
running around on Albert Street, about breaking up with a lover on the
Montreal subway, about Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, about
women not wanting to be equal to men because of how they'd have to lower
themselves to do that, about men fixing trucks, about wolves killing
a farmer's sheep, about the highway that takes you to the Muskokas,
or about the morning sun glancing across Rice Lake.
For poetry to be vital to the people who read it or listen to it being
read aloud, it has to speak in language familiar to us and speak about
experiences and emotions that evoke the feeling, "That's happened
to me; I've felt like that; I know what she means."
5) Do you see it as an annual event?
Only if my wife, Jane, allows me to see it as an annual event. I am
kidding about that. However, there is a kernel of truth in there: if
it is not a failure, I think there will be a desire to repeat it next
year. We have defined "break-even success" very realistically.
It is a fledgling, this POW!; I hope it proves it can fly.
The side of me - that is my biggest natural tendency - that is hugely
optimistic tells me it will be more successful than the conservative
estimates we have forced ourselves to project while being realistic.
I just think it might draw an even bigger audience than my optimism
secretly forecasts ... as a poet, keeping strictly to reality has little
appeal to me. If poets are forced to keep themselves to reality, only
terrible poetry will ever be written, by the way.
The only way the POW! Festival will be successful is if more people
than just me make it happen. A lot of volunteers have come forward to
help me out. That tells me POW! should succeed. If that evolves into
a group that wants to do the POW! Festival all again next year, that
would be great.
6) Who are the out-of-town "names" who have signed on to
read at the festival?
The list of Guest Poets is very impressive to anyone who is familiar
with the Canadian poetry scene: Edward Carson, Ken Sherman, Jacqueline
Larson, JonArno Lawson, Jo Ellen Bogart, Mike Barnes, Oana Avasilichioaei
and Ronna Bloom have all generated "buzz" with the books of
poetry they have published. Some are new to "the stage" of
Canadian poetry, some have been known for years and have a number of
books published.
We have Juno-nominated children's singer, Eddie Douglas.
I was very excited to get the offer of an added dimension of poetry
in translation for the POW! Festival and if you are going to have translation,
it would be a hard task to start off with a more interesting poet than
Ryszard Kapuscinski or better translators than Diana Kuprel and Marek
Kubisa.
"WORDMUSIC" is the presentation of poetry from memory, with
David Calderisi, a professional actor, reciting Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Robert W. Service, Edward Lear and John Keats. This is an amazing experience
for the audience. Poetry is one of the oldest of the arts. The recitation
of oral (and aural) poetry is, unfortunately, becoming a lost art but
it harks back to times long, long before T.V. or radio or theatre halls.
When I was privileged to witness David perform "WORDMUSIC"
he introduced himself by referring back to a time ages ago when small
groups of humans used to gather around a communal fire for protection
and companionship, passing the time being entertained by hearing one
person in the group "tell the stories" in a rhythmic way that
was a heightened voice somewhere between conversation and music. Poetry
began in those times and it has always been a part of our collective
lives ever since.
7) Who will be reading from the CPW?
They are not solely members of the Cobourg Poetry Workshop but the list
of local poets starts off with Cobourg's Poet Laureate, Eric Winter,
and includes crowd favorite Ted Amsden, as well as Art Cockerill and
Marta Cooper. Also, we will have Paul Brown, who lives in Belleville
but has long been a member of the CPW. There is a group similar to the
Cobourg Poetry Workshop nearby in Picton and two people representing
them will be Karen Dukes reading her "Meditative response to the
Lord's Prayer" with the assistance of Roz Bound (another local
crowd pleaser).
We have a saying that introducing organization into a grouping of poets
is about as easy as trying to herd cats. I say that because when I invited
some local poets to read, I either did not hear back from them or was
faced with trying to hammer out terms in a negotiation to get them to
read.
There is a touch of irony in the fact that poets who are not from Cobourg
are "lining up" to read while people who live a few blocks
from where the POW! Festival will occur are a little slower to react.
It makes me realize that they are not as aware as I am of what a positive
opinion others have about what we do for poetry here in town.
8) Anything I've missed that you can add?
A separate but parallel aspect of POW! will feature readings by Guest
Poets to students in local high schools during the afternoon of Friday,
April 17, 2009. This will include poets who are not among those scheduled
to read at 66 King, such as Carmine Starnino from Montreal. A poet who
is also reading Sunday will give a Poetry in the Schools session. That
is Oana Avasilichioaei, who also hails from Montreal.
Also, I think I have failed to mention so far that we will be putting
on a panel discussion that I personally find very interesting. We call
it "Whither the book / wither the book." It will be moderated
by Eric Winter, Cobourg's Poet Laureate and a great lover of books.
I am very excited that our 3 panelists will be Tim Inkster, Beth Follett
and Dan Wells. They represent Porcupine's Quill, Pedlar Press and Biblioasis,
three Canadian publishers that produce well-made, attractive books by
writers in whom we should all take an interest. Their viewpoint should
be intriguing on questions like "what is the future of the book
in an electronic age?" We are told that in that future, books may
no longer have a place, an audience or relevance. What does that mean
to those of us who read, who treasure books? Will there be no 'readers'
in future generations-who will replace the 'readers' of today?
The P o e t r y'z O w n Weekend Festival (POW! Festival) can be contacted
at this email address: poetryzownweekend@sympatico.ca
National Poetry Month funding is made available each year to groups
right across the country from the Canada Council for the Arts through
the League of Canadian Poets.
There will be a $6 individual admission price to each of six POW! events.
A $30 all-inclusive "passport" will be available in advance
- discounting those individual admission costs by $6 for the full weekend
(15% off).
Revenue from admission fees will be used to cover (a) location rental,
(b) audio equipment rental -with a sound system technician, and (c)
an honorarium to each invited guest who would not be covered by Canada
Council funding through the League of Canadian Poets, e.g. panel discussion
members, the actor doing a recitation, etc.
Any money raised over and above costs for the weekend itself will go
towards three goals that will be addressed in the following order of
priority (1) to subsidize annual fees for anyone who might drop out
of the CPW because they cannot afford the full dues, (2) to cover some
p o e t r y'z o w n costs (3) to reduce everyone's CPW membership costs
for 2010.
The POW! Festival is fast becoming something of an "out of body"
experience for me. I initiated something. I know that. However, an event
like this takes on a life of its own. It grows into something that makes
other people feel excited. They get involved. They bring in wonderful
ideas. They give it their own "stamp." Soon, it is not what
I drew on paper but something that lifts itself off the paper and becomes
so much more full, complete, beautiful and full of potential than I
ever thought I could make it.
One of my favorite little jokes is: a good friend is someone who comes
to the police station to bail you out after you go celebrating, grow
too rowdy and get arrested to cool you off; a great friend is someone
who, when you get arrested like that, is sitting beside you in the cell
saying with a laugh, "That was totally awsome."
Like I said earlier, if it was someone else putting the POW! Festival
on, I would be the first person to buy a weekend pass. I would be there
for every event and I would come away at the end of it saying, "That
was totally awsome."