Performance poets send first literary festival out with cool, creative edge

If the theme “Words Without Borders” could describe any one literary genre, spoken word poetry would have to come pretty close.

The final event of this weekend’s festival is therefore a fitting conclusion to an entire program of inspiring work. Featuring C.R. Avery and Magpie Ulysses, two of B.C.’s most outspoken and acclaimed poets, the Mahon Hall stage will host an exciting congruence of words and ideas starting Sunday, Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m.

Ulysses, whose stage name aptly calls up images of a cunning trickster able to win her way with words, has been a member of two Canadian champion slam teams at The Canadian Festival Of Spoken Word, and is the winner of Vancouver’s 2008 CBC Poetry face-off. She has performed at festivals, poetry slams, fundraisers and house parties across Canada and throughout the United States.

Having once lived on Salt Spring for a year, Ulysses said she’s looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new faces while here. She spoke about the unrestrained nature of her work via email while on tour last week.

“I am mostly interested in speaking the unspoken and discovering what those things are, and where they cross over lives to become human experience beyond just a cliche expression,” she wrote.

“I was a youth who was consistently considered, and in trouble for being, a loudmouthed pain in the . . .  that is, until I was given a place and purpose for my voice both in public and in my art.

“I have always been interested in writing and thinking about the things we don’t say and all the places of insecurity in fairly regular everyday living that can blossom into major issues and/or take hold of the North American fear of being seen. Sometimes I surprise myself to find those things are intimately personal about my own struggles and I hadn’t even noticed them before.”

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Themes that emerge in her work include history, science, love, exploration, abuse, addictions, loneliness, illness, environmentalism, strangers, human triumph, sacrifice and struggle. Current events may trigger ideas, but the human experience is always the touchstone for how those events are interpreted.

Her poem 98 Per Cent, for example, takes off on the idea that most of our atoms are exchanged with the universe, and brings it to an intimate and lyrical fantasy: “I want to be a complex structure living symbiotically with your body, so make me a really good mystery,” she states at one point.

Ulysses feels performance is the natural medium for presenting her poetry, explaining, “I am my work, and my work is me. It is just as important to my work as the writing itself.”

Avery is a musician and poet with harmonica skills, freight-train hobo chic and East Van street cred. He has 15 albums and six hip hop operas to his credit, along with a new book of poetry that’s meant for the page, not performance, called 38 Bars Blues through Write Bloody press. A new album he recorded with the Prague Symphony Orchestra is being pressed to vinyl and will be available in a couple of months.

Coming straight to Salt Spring from performing a showcase at the 2012 Folk Alliance conference in Memphis, Avery’s material on Sunday will be determined by the night itself.

“Everything comes down to the moment,” he said on a quick call from Vancouver.

“It all comes down to the live show — that’s everything, that’s what it’s all about. It pulls people out of their reality TV and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo bullshit and they’re like, ‘I used to paint, or I have a novel I started writing in college . . . the live show, it changes everything.”

As a musician, Avery is cognizant of the value of a good lyric. He feels the importance of words can be found in material anywhere from the musical Guys and Dolls to that of a native storyteller. The inspiration for a new work can also come from multiple sources.

“Sometimes somebody says a phrase and it sparks something. Sometimes there’s a beautiful moment that’s passing and you just need to get it down with what you have. And sometimes you’re just trying to pick somebody up,” he said.

On the nature of performance, Avery has taken cues from some of the last century’s greats and developed his own style, which may include beat-box stutters in an elegy to Trudeau-style politics or an energetic harmonica interlude.

“[Author Charles] Bukowski said there’s got to be a certain amount of moxie and I like that,” he said.

“You watch old footage of James Brown and it’s so good it can’t be denied. He wasn’t a pretty boy . . . but he knew how to bring the church to the whorehouse.”

Tickets to the event are $10 or $5 for youth.

See www.saltspringfestival.com for the full schedule and ticketing information for the Feb. 24 to 26 Words Without Borders literary festival, or see the ad on Page 15 of last week’s Driftwood.