pow_schedule

Interview with David Calderisi

1) What are your thoughts about being a participant at the POW! Festival in Cobourg?

I think the organisers of this event deserve high praise for reaching out into the community with this wonderful enthusiasm for poetry. All too often I think poetry, and poets, have tended to spend too much time in ivory towers. Poetry can be and should be a popular art form. Events like this demonstrate that. I'm proud and delighted to be part of it.

2) Please tell us about your most recent performance work and also a little about any CDs, DVDs, etc with which our audience might be familiar.

My first love was live theatre. In my middle years I got diverted quite a lot doing film and television. Now my primary passion is again to work with a live audience. There's nothing like it. The role of "The Carpenter" (Centaur Theatre, Montreal, 2007) was particularly challenging, and also particularly rewarding. The character, Sylvio Rosato, aged eighty-three, is an Italian-Canadian patriarch who slides into dementia and dies captured in the confusion of Alzheimer's. Even though the story is stark, there were also moments of intense comedy. Audiences responded with tears and laughter. It doesn't get better than that.

3) What inspired you to create WORDMUSIC? Can you describe (a little) your process in developing this performance piece?

It's probably true that the study of speaking poetry is an important part of the training of all young actors. It was certainly the case in mine. At the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (usually called LAMDA), where I studied from 1959 to 1962, we had several teachers who had a tremendous passion for poetry, who were gifted in inspiring at least some of the students with their enthusiasm, and who were also extremely demanding in their expectations. What I learned early on is what a daunting challenge it is. To tell the words in such a way that they "come to life" for the listener. To make the thoughts clear inside the rhythmic demands of the poet's "score." And to evoke, to the right degree, the living emotion that the poet felt. It's a tall order.

I've given it a lot of thought over the years, and of course I've had the chance to keep practicing. The older I get the more fascinated I've become by the challenge, and the more I've come to realise that you never get it altogether right. Of course with practice everything gets better. But with great poetry you're always aware that there's something more that eludes you. And in the end each time is different because it's "this" time. A year or so ago I had the idea of putting together a little performance that would test my abilities and maybe be enjoyable enough that some people who thought that poetry wasn't for them would discover they were wrong.

Each of the five pieces that make up WORDMUSIC tells a wonderful story in rhyme. I chose them because each is vivid in a strikingly different way. What I hoped to accomplish is that listeners would "see" the story as vividly as possible as they "hear" the words. I love performing this programme because each time I do, as I prepare, and then deliver it for a live audience that is in some subtle way different each time, I always discover something new.

For an actor, a voice performer, there can be nothing more exciting.

4) The POW! Festival is built on the notion that poetry should not be relegated to an existence as "a niche art form" that the average person doesn't care about. How do you respond to that?

I think it's fantastic! Let's be honest. Poetry can be off-putting for many people because they often "don't understand" it. No one likes to be made to feel stupid. And all too often poets don't give enough thought to how to share what poetry means to them. An event like POW is just great because it involves a whole community in experiencing a wide range of different kinds of poetry, and celebrates the coming together of poets --- who often work in lonely isolation --- and the community at large. We hear a lot of talking these days about the "oral tradition". In my experience it tends to end there. An event like POW recaptures that idea of "oral tradition" and reminds us that if we go back far enough in any culture, we eventually get to a place where a group of people are sitting, probably in a circle, listening to a "poet" tell a wonderful story, in language that is somewhere between conversation and singing. What's happening here in Cobourg for these days in April, is a wonderful revival of that ancient spirit of the "oral tradition." I'm very glad to be part of it, and once again, I have nothing but praise for the organisers. In many ways, they're way ahead of similar groups who live in larger communities. Hurray for the Cobourg Poetry Workshop.