 This weekend my videopoem, Headache Summer, will be shown as part of the 2015 Visible Verse Festival. Details below>>>
An evening of videopoems* curated and hosted by Ray Hsu. *videopoem = video art + poetry + creative ingenuity Presented by The Cinematheque since 2000, Visible Verse is one of the longest-running video poetry festivals in the world. Video poetry is a hybrid creative form bringing together verse and moving images. Visible Verse selects its annual program from hundreds of submissions received from local, national, and international artists. On the occasion of the 2015 festival, The Cinematheque says a fond farewell and expresses its great gratitude to Heather Haley, founder of Visible Verse and its curator and host from 2000 to 2014. We welcome Vancouver poet Ray Hsu into his new role as Visible Verse’s artistic director. Admission is $11; attendees must have a Cinematheque membership which can be purchased for $3. Advance tickets can be purchased online: http://thecinematheque.ca/visible-verse-2015-festival
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 I had a wonderful experience last weekend exhibiting my text based artwork for the 2015 New West Cultural Crawl. My piece was part of kuh-myoo-ni-tee, a small group show at Sixth Street Popup & Gallery in New Westminster, BC. Cut #2: On the Road (2015), is from a sequence of found-text poems sampled from canonical works of literature, formed through procedural constraints in the lineage of Oulipo poetics. Each poem is created from the text of one randomly selected book page. The text may be quoted, cut, mixed, or re-arranged in any way. Each poem explores the social and political legacies of literary canon, acting as a conversation in mutual language between the original writer and the poet. The juxtaposition of the cutout book page and the re-ordered text comments on the translation of language by a reader in the subjective creation of meaning and the destruction of the physical work is a literal dismantling of literary canon. Thank you to Sixth Street Popup & Gallery for putting on the show and for showcasing the great breadth of local New Westminster art.  Cut #2: On the Road (2015) by Geoffrey Nilson  It was the moment in your tiny, furniture-cramped bedroom in Surrey, I was staring at the John William Waterhouse poster on your wall and you said to me, I have to play you this song. And I remember it was the exact moment I fell in love with a band and fell in love with you, and I didn’t know where one ended and the other began. It was the moment when Chris Martin still had a shaggy afro of brown curls and the band was straight out of the college dorm room, sounding like The Bends-era Radiohead giving in to every sentimental turn. It was the moment you were studying to be a child care worker at Douglas and I used to visit you at the campus in New Westminster, feeling small in the atrium drinking coffee, the tall glass looking down the hill to the train yards, me: the poet, the musician, the selfish life, the artist as a young man. It was the moment I never dreamed of having children. It was the moment Jonny Buckland’s Telecaster was still the centre of the sound, still chimed more than it pronounced, bouncing in the space between vocal melody, note runs moving up and down the scale, his guitar at its best when used as both an accent of colour and emphatic punctuation. It was the moment just before Coldplay were everyone’s band, where they played the Commodore Ballroom on a weeknight and tickets were still available at the door. It was the moment every journalist in the world was certain they would be the next big one hit wonder. It was the moment unaware the thrill would end, or that it would be my doing. It was the moment with no irony in the lyric: “Did you want me to change? Well I changed for good. And I want you to know that you’ll always get your way.” It was the moment before you asked for more than I wanted to give. It was the moment I sat down on your bed, and said, where did this come from? And you said to me, you’re welcome.  A new book review of Niki Koulouris's poetry collection The sea with no one in it just went online at Pulp.
'While most of text brings an intellectual investigation of myth and art, it is not until the end that the reader sees the speaker’s gaze turn inward onto the poet. “It’s always midnight / in the river / between two poems” (58) it begins and the reader experiences the darkness that envelops the artist between work, the black void without ideas and without creation, like a ship at sea rolling on swells, with no land in sight. From this darkness The sea with no one in it radiates out, looking and looking again, knowing that midnight is simply a few short hours from the light.' Read the whole review on Pulp's website here.  Wonderful online journal the Glasgow Review of Books recently published one of my longer poems, "Emergency Room." This is my first international publication and I am very excited to have placed the poem with such a great journal. Their website is filled with fiction, poetry, book reviews, and lots of critical writing about literature. Check my poem and all their other great publications here.
 My poem "Burning Down the House" was recently selected by Lemon Hound as part of the New Vancouver Poets folio. I'm incredibly excited to have been included with such a wonderful & diverse group of poets. Thank you to editors Dina Del Bucchia & Daniel Zomparelli. Read all the poems from the folio HERE 
PRISM international recently published my review of Placeholder by Charmaine Cadeau from London, Ontario's Brick Books.
"The future is elusive and uncertain. The past is exact, a known experience that marks like “road salt from the side of the car / sticks to your jacket, tells where you’ve been.” (49) Placeholder, the second book of poems from Charmaine Cadeau, takes residence in the moments between these opposing abstracts of time." To read the entire review, please visit the PRISM website.  Brilliant Information Overload Pop Head Most people know Douglas Coupland for his language. The Vancouver based writer and artist is the author of over twenty books of fiction and non-fiction, his first and possibly most well known, Generation X: Tales from an Accelerated Culture, defined a generation of slacker youth engrossed with pop-culture and meaningless McJobs. It was fitting then that Coupland dedicated one claustrophobic nook in his new solo exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery, everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything, to his books. His work is acutely aware of history while defiantly looking toward the future. Collecting artworks from the past fourteen years with over 100 on display in a variety of mediums including installation, painting, photography, prints, sculpture, and furniture, the exhibition explores themes around technology, cultural identity, and how we live in the 21st century. Coupland uses his talent for accessibility by meshing big ideas and a healthy dose of humour. In an interview with CBC, Coupland said about his artistic work, that he is “living in both time and space. Writing exists in time and art exists in space.” Approaching middle age with a greying yet full beard, Coupland still effortlessly embodies theoretical futurism with a wink and smirk. The sheer number of objects in the show is immediately apparent and overwhelming. Greeted by a wall of more than 300 pieces from plastic building kits arranged in horizontal lines, the first few rooms are overflowing with items, from a small pile of Hawkins Cheezies on a plywood shelf, to debris from the Fukushima nuclear disaster that washed ashore in Haida Gwaii. “Douglas Coupland’s work sheds light on subjects as varied as the distinct nature of Canadian identity, the rise of utopian ideas, the power of words, the presence of digital technologies, the significance of the everyday, and the unshakeable nature of one’s own constitution—ideas that Coupland examines with both optimism and some trepidation.” said Daina Augaitis, Vancouver Art Gallery’s Chief Curator/Associate Director.  Slogans for the 21st Century Slogans for the 21st Century, 172 brightly coloured meme-like aphorisms that speak in the irreverent zeitgeist of Internet language, surrounds viewers on all sides, the panels covering the walls from floor to ceiling. “The future feels like homework,” one says. “Real time often feels like neither,” says another. One becomes caught in the bluntness of it all, not sure whether to laugh or cry. What is most surprising (yet shouldn’t be to those who have read his books) is the diversity of the material in everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything. While the funny and charismatic Coupland is a large part of the show, there is a darker vision of the present and future that is also expressed throughout. The twisted steel form of a high voltage tower in The Ice Storm and the paint-obscured faces of Brilliant Information Overload Pop Head express a chaos that runs through the heart of modern life.  The Ice Storm “Marking the first solo museum exhibition dedicated to the art of one of the most thought-provoking artists working today, everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything reflects the Gallery’s strong commitment to provide a global platform for local artists,” said Kathleen S. Bartels, Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery. “We are thrilled to be the first museum to present this survey of Coupland’s work and hope this exhibition will inspire audiences of all backgrounds and generations to consider what defines contemporary Canadian culture.” Douglas Coupland: everywhere is anywhere is anything is everything and Gumhead run until September 1, 2014 at the Vancouver Art Gallery.  The Brain  Gumhead |
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