Live and reciting

>> Poet and performance artist John Giorno
talks about terrifying moments, teenage
poetry and the pitfalls of teaching

by VINCENT TINGUELY

One time stockbroker and Warhol muse, John Giorno has spent the last 40 years changing the face of contemporary poetry and spoken word. In 1965 he founded Giorno Poetry Systems, a record label and artist collective that released the work of some of the most important voices in American poetry, including Allen Ginsberg, Jim Carroll, Laurie Anderson, William S. Burroughs and Patti Smith. Giorno’s performances and recordings have been instrumental in popularizing the form and some of its greatest creators. Giorno spoke with the Mirror from his loft on Bowery Street in New York, where he’s lived since 1962.

Mirror: Can you tell me about your recent performances?

John Giorno: Well, I perform all the time. I went to Europe nine times this past year, and those are two- and three-week tours. It’s always a collection of countries, France, Italy, Spain.

M: I was wondering if you had any involvement with the slam poetry circuits in the United States?

JG: Very much. That’s an amazing phenomenon for poets and for kids. Mark Smith, who invented the whole thing, and Bob Holman—they’re very good friends of mine. I’m on the Bowery just a block away from Bob and the Bowery Poetry Club. What’s particularly good is when these kids are 14, 15—they get up, they don’t know what they’re doing, and they get a blissful experience or connect to their nature in some way. They’re poets, they’re really young poets. And even though the work could be terrible, they’re connecting to something inside themselves, and what they say is, “Well, I’m gonna do that again, as just a thing that I like to do.”

They’re just like me, that’s happened to me—in a completely different way. When I was 14, at school, this English teacher gave a poetry class. This was 1949 (laughs) or ’47, this teacher says, “Go home and write a poem as homework.” And I did, and I got this really great feeling. When I handed it in two days later, she read mine. It was the third poem that she liked, you know, and I said, “I’m gonna do that again!”

M: Do you remember the first time you performed in front of an audience, and what that was like?

JG: I do, actually. By 1962 I started using found images, and that was the influence of Andy Warhol, Bob Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns. I met all these artists in 1961, ’62—they became the focus of my life. In 1962 they were quite young themselves, and not famous at all. After the first year, I was published in Ted Berrigan’s magazine, called C Magazine. Ted Berrigan, a great New York poet, was organizing poetry readings, and he said, “John, you should read your poem.”

I was terrified! (laughs) You know that thing, your heart is racing and you’re sweating! So I did it, and after, I said, “What happened?” It took me by surprise. And then I started working with performance, and indeed, one uses that same energy, but it’s not terrifying energy at all, it’s just energy. And so one shapes it, one learns how to use it.

M: What do you think about the idea of teaching poetry?

JG: Well, I’ve stayed away from that. I’m 71 years old and (laughs) I’ve never... for me, it’s not such a good thing. Because when you’re working with words every day, to talk about them, I’ve always thought, is a very bad idea. Even if you only teach once a week, week after week your mind is filled with—all of this great poetry, no doubt—but you’re teaching, and somehow it’s affecting your mind. You’re making concepts about it.

As a poet, I’ve always thought it’s better not to do that. What I did 40 or 50 years ago was reject lyrical poetry and reject modernism (laughs) and I embarked upon this trip which became my life’s work. I knew what I was doing, but these things you do intuitively. Your intellectual mind isn’t really the driving force, something else is the driving force. And so, I learned everything that is necessary to love poetry, to appreciate it—and I read all the time—but to teach it...

But on the other hand, often when I’m performing I get invited the next day to do a workshop. That I love doing and I think is very helpful, because I talk about my relationship to poetry and words, and what it is, and talk about other people’s work.

John Giorno is the guest of honour at
the Festival Voix d’Amériques. He performs
at La Sala Rossa (4848 st-laurent),
Feb. 1–3, 8:30 p.m., $12.

Spoken fever

>> The acts to catch at the Festival Voix d’Amériques

by Sacha Jackson

John Giorno may be the godfather of performance poetry but our homegrown artists have some tricks up their sleeves. Some of the city’s best French-language poets, including Louis Dupré, François Charon, Jean-Paul Daoust and Geneviève Letarte, perform alongside Giorno at Meet Montreal on Saturday, Feb. 2. The following day, Sunday, Feb. 3, he encounters representatives from the rest of the country, including Sheri-D Wilson, Ivan Coyote, Erin Mouré and Catherine Kidd, at Meet Canada.

Back by popular demand, La Salle des pas perdus, which was performed at last year’s Berlin Poetry Festival, hits Ex-Centris on Monday, Feb. 4. A revolving door of poets, among them Alexis O’Hara, Michel Vézina, Fortner Anderson and D. Kimm, will take to the stage and stay there throughout each others’ sets, backed by music from Bernard Falise and Michel F. Côté and visuals by Brigitte Henry.

Body and Soul 5 honours the ladies on Tuesday, Feb. 5 with an eclectic mix of female talent— Giselle Numba One, singer/musician Donzelle and New York-based multi-instrumentalist Baby Dee (see pg. 28 for interview) will display their many talents.

French-language acts dominate the middle of the week, beginning with French transplant Jérome Minière’s performance on Wednesday, Feb. 7. Things will get heated Thursday, Feb. 8 at Combat contre la langue de bois, a debate about cliché featuring queen of kitsch Mado Lamotte, playwright René-Daniel Dubois and journalist Marie-Louise Arsenault, among others.

Festival closer DADA Cabaret is a multi-lingual act designed to take things into weird territory, with performances by Nathalie Claude, Dayna McLeod, Simon Brown, Alexandre St-Onge and videos by Mike Stecky.

For anyone who was ever enchanted (or disenchanted) by the hedonistic antics of the beat writers, check out the screening of the 1959 film Pull My Daisy at Espace Go (4890 St-Laurent) Sunday, Feb. 3 at 1 p.m. Written by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady, this rarely seen film is bound to give you a raw glimpse into these legendary writers.

Also screening are performances by Giorno and shorts by William S. Burroughs—worth the trip just to hear Burroughs’ deadpan Midwestern drawl.

The above nightly performances are nicely bookended with two events at Casa del Popolo: Bandpoésie is a 5 à 7 that twins music and poetry; and Night Shift is a changing roster of local spoken and open mic performances, at 11 p.m.

All events take place at Sala Rossa (4848
St-Laurent) at 8:30 p.m. unless otherwise stated.
See www.fva.ca for all schedules and details.