Warming up to words

>> Open mics, hip hop flavours, cabarets and zombie liberation

by VINCENT TINGUELY

You're an aspiring spoken-word artist, and the thrill of busting a rhyme at the family dinner table has started to wear off. There's no such thing as Spoken Word 101 (yet), so where do you go to build skills?

A great place to start is Larissa Andrusyshyn's Wednesday's Child, a bi-weekly open-mic series at Yesterdays café/bar. On Oct. 5, aspiring artists of all stripes can sign up at 8:30 p.m. and the show starts at 9 p.m. In addition, on Sept. 28 Andrusyshyn's bringing rowdy Ottawa poets Rob McLennan and Stephen Brockwell to the Scribblers soirée at Club Zone, along with musicians from Montreal and Toronto.

After the open-mic experience, it's time to check out some performance series. Recording artist and Wired on Words mogul Ian Ferrier helms Words and Music at the Casa. It happens on the third Sunday of each month at Casa del Popolo. On Oct. 15 the special guest is slam poet and Insomniac Press author Ken Cormier, and Catherine Kidd will road-test one of a series of new performances based on her upcoming novel Bestial Rooms. Corey Frost will be trying out some material from his CD-ROM project, Bits World: Exciting Version, on Nov. 19. Ferrier's also looking for a few good poets for the open mic portion of the show. His address is poets@wiredonwords.com.

Dub and dancing too!

Ilona Martonfi organizes a reading series at The Yellow Door, a historic coffee house in the McGill ghetto. Every evening features a wide range of poetry and prose, and there's always an open mic at the end of the evening. The next show is Sept. 28 and on Oct. 26 it features legendary Véhicule poet Stephen Morrissey. Martonfi's also hosting Lovers and Others at Café Sarejevo on Oct. 18, featuring a virtual horde of poets and writers, including Robert Allen, Maxianne Berger and Ian Ferrier.

You haven't really seen spoken word until you've taken in some dub and hip hop inflected work at the Coco Café. Organized by inobe productions, this regular poetic soirée spotlights Montreal's black talent every month at the swank Jello Bar. On Oct. 22, host Mahalia "Miss Thang" Verna presents Allongé, featuring francophone artists, and in November the show focuses on female performers.

A couple of events are mixing spoken word into a cabaret-style blend with music, dance and theatrics. The last Sunday of every month, Jon Ascensio conjures the swarming chaos of performance known as The Social at Blizzarts; on Oct. 29 it's The Zombie Liberation Party! Montreal musician Heather McLeod is starting up Hands on Hip Happening, a performance series at Club Zone. On Oct. 19, Ottawa spoken-word recording artist Kris Northey is on the bill, and on Nov. 16, Montreal's Fringe Festival impresario Patrick Goddard drops in to perform excerpts from his one-man play.

Playful poems, artful prose

With a few spoken-word series under their belts, up-and-coming performers can stretch their range of expression into art galleries and theatres. Alex Boutros, Kaarla Sundstrom and Alexis O'Hara will be making themselves heard at this year's edition of Noises in the Dark, Nov. 25-26 at Studio 303. Victoria Stanton compares notes with translator/performer Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood at the fourth edition of La Centrale's Mois de la performance, and former Montrealer Joelle Ciona takes over a storefront. Corey Frost, Catherine Kidd and others perform between plays at SoloFest, running at the MAI from Oct. 24 -Nov. 5. The plays, written by the actors, feature Patrick Goddard and Emmanuelle Prince from Montreal, Vancouver's T.J. Dawe, and direct from France, Thierry Dupré. Spoken word's hot on the francophone side of the coin too. On Oct. 2, novelist and performer Geneviève Letarte launches her second CD Chansons d'un jour at Lion D'Or. At the same place on the very next evening, upstart publishing house Planète rebelle presents the second annual Cabaret littéraire multidisciplinaire, featuring a dizzying array of superb artists, including Anne Dandurand, Jean-Marc Massie, Christine Germain, André Lemelin, Mitsiko Miller and Ian Ferrier. And the groundbreaking Groupe de poésie moderne deliver their signature staccato wordplay at Centre Calixa-Lavallée from Sept. 28-30.

Finally, having seen dozens of amazing performances, relax in the bathtub with the fall issue of Matrix, Montreal's premier English-language literary magazine. You'll find an article featuring 19 francophone and anglophone performers musing about the relationship of spoken word to literature. :