The Poetry Slam

So I was talking to Andrew Titus and he invited me to spend St Paddy's Day making a fool of myself as opposed my usual celebration of falling asleep early in a ditch. He had in mind a poetry slam at UNB's Memorial Hall Arts Center which was holding a grand falutin' evening of art called Inverses - an exploration of opposites that you really had to see to really feel the impact. Now, Mem Hall has two, yep TWO, art galleries on either side of one of the coolest live theaters in the world. One gallery had paintings and sculptures with themes like happiness, fear, sleeping in ditches (well, I might be remembering that wrong ... there was much beer involved and the inevitability of sleeping in a ditch increased as the night progressed) ... and in the other gallery, each artist had an opposite work: you know, sadness, courage, waking up in ditches.

All these works were from students in the ArtZone collective and they were awesome. In fact, some of the works (like the plant-like heart in a birdcage surrounded by surgical instruments that was downright Saw 3) ... were even weirder than one of my novels.

And that was just to wet the pre-ditch artistic sensibilities. There was music by jazz funksters XIII Wise Mothers, a multimedia explosion from 9 Volt Sound System, and breakdancing from the Battledudes.

But I'll just let the pics tell the story.

The lovely and talented Lori Morse taking pre-ditch poetry slam pictures. Little did she know that the camera was pointed towards her, resulting in 250 beautifully rendered studies in iris and cornea. She was also one of the ArtZone artists.

The lovely and talented John Heinstein, author of The Cheap Red Wine Manifesto, in his angry young poet pose. We're still searching ditches around the city for John.

This is the lovely and talented John Borne on drums. I worked with John at a courseware company several ditchtimes ago.

On the left is my old friend and radio station co-worker the lovely and talented Jill Canney-Benn. Beside her is her lovely and talented son, Charley Benn, one of the ArtZone artists, and beside him, the lovely and talented Candice MacLean, photographer extraordinaire for the Aquinian who claims that she's never going to let anybody take her picture.

This is a lovely and talented break dancer. A crew of carpenters, physicists and astrologers is still trying to get his head out of the floor.

The lovely and talented John and the lovely and talented Andrew Titus jamming in the stairway of Mem Hall. Any wonder why Andrew's students think he's the coolest English prof in the world? But that didn't save him from waking up in a ditch two days later. None can escape the leprechaun.

The lovely and talented Moi trying to read my own handwriting after too many beers and too many words.

A group of lovely and talented evil leprechauns after eating everybody from the poetry slam. Burp.