Big Poetry Bonanza Day - cough

Today's the day that WordPlay comes to the middle school. I'll be at the school with Barbara Adler and Brendan McLeod, two incredibly talented and good-hearted poets, helping with a poetry workshop for 2 groups of Grade 6 kids. The teachers at the school have organized "Literrific Day," and we're one of the workshop choices. Barbara and Brendan are part of the WordPlay workshop project put on by Vancouver Poetry House. It's going to be great.

I'll actually go in to work for a couple of hours after that, then off to more poetry.

Tonight there's a fundraiser for the West Coast Poetry Festival at Cafe Montmartre at 4362 Main near King Edward. The show starts at 8. Admission is by donation. Here's the show, in the words of WCP organizer, Sean McGarragle:

Performing at Montematre will be myself, Bill McNamara, Fernando Raguero, Patrick Swan (AKA Dunce the Wizard), Chrystalene Buhler, Anis Mojgani, Emily Elder and Susan McIntyre.

For those of you who may not know these individuals, Bill McNamara was last year's Vancouver Story Slam Champion; Patrick Swan is the Vancouver representative at this year's Individual World Poetry Slam in Charlotte North Carolina; Fernando Raguero and Chrystalene Buhler are former members of the infamous Vancouver Poetry Slam team; Susan McIntyre will be competing in the 2006 Poetry Face-off and Emily Elder is a performer, political burlesque dancer and relatively recent migrant to Vancouver from the cold climate of Calgary. A recent addition to the event is Anis Mojgani, the 2005 National Poetry Slam Champ. He's up for a couple of days and has offered his services for the evening.

If you can come, you should. It will be a wonderful show, and for an excellent cause. WCPF is the biggest, best, free-admission poetry festival you could ever imagine, and it happens every summer in Vancouver thanks to the genius and courage of Sean McGarragle.
It should be a really hot show of storytelling and performance poetry. And all proceeds will be going to the production of this summer's West Coast Poetry Festival.

In the meantime, echinacia is letting me down, and I have a tumbleweed in my throat, but that's okay. I'm too busy to get sick today - maybe tomorrow (well, no, I have to go in to work and write my budget) probably Friday. Oh well, by that time the virus will have given up in frustration at not being able to book an appointment and it will move on to someone more susceptible - I hope!

question: read any good eggplants lately?

mompoet - reassembling myself for the day