I’ll be alternating sets with Ronney Abramson at this lovely, bohemian music café Saturday night at 7. Accompanying me will be Cathy Watt, vocals and Phil Peters, bass. Details in the sidebar to the right.
Category Archives: What’s new?
Depannage
Most Mondays these days I play music at the Depanneur Cafe, which happens to be close to where I live in Montreal’s Mile End. It’s a homey place with a couple of decent mikes and sound system, and musicians play there throughout the day. Most of the patrons are laptop nomads or there to meet friends, write, doodle, read books — so it’s like public practice, as it were. But more often than not I earn attentive listeners, and often sell CD’s or interest them in an upcoming event. The other week a photo enthusiast named Thomas Colin took pictures with his fine Sony camera; the following week, an artist named Sophie Jama did some watercolours in her sketch pad. I gave them free CD’s. If you want to drop in and see me play, I’m there Mondays between noon and 1pm.
Brian at Depanneur by Thomas Colin
“Slick” in “Weather Watching”
The other artistic spinoff from the anthology “Refugium”, my poem “Slick” was among those incorporated into “Weather Watching”, an exhibit of sculptural coracles by artist Erika Grimm that hung from the rafters of the White Rock Museum and Archives in White Rock, BC. in February and March of 2018.
“Slick” inspires “Neverbird”
One artistic spinoff of Refugium was an exhibit of twenty-two works of art responding to specific poems in the anthology, which was held in Maritime Museum of British Columbia (Victoria, BC) late last year. I’m honoured that “Slick” was one of those chosen, and that it inspired a most haunting sculptural work by Karina Kalvaitis. From the exhibit program:
My poem “Slick” published in Refugium
In 2017, my poem “Slick” was published in Refugium, Poems for the Pacific, an anthology edited by Yvonne Blomer and published by Caitlin Press. Originally published as a short prose poem in my collection Passenger Flight, it was recast here as short poem. The poem was inspired by memories of the Valdez oil spill, although of course it could reference the travesties wreaked on animal life by any oil spill. It’s an excellent anthology, by the way, featuring fine poems by the likes of Rachel Rose, Jan Zwicky, Patrick Lane, Maleea Acker, Barbara Pelman, Steven Heighton, Lorna Crozier, Fiona Tinwei Lam, and others. For the anthology — and for this poem in particular — there were a couple of surprising artistic spinoffs which I’ll describe in other posts. Below, a handwritten version of the poem.
For the record
I’ve been ignoring this web site for a while — spreading most of my news and events on Facebook — but updating it recently, I thought, well, this news page could be a useful record. So that’s what I’ll use it for, while my blog, Out of the Woodwork, which years ago was extremely active, will serve for entries of occasional reflections.
Shimmer Report to be published by Ekstasis Editions
Great news! My latest poetry manuscript, Shimmer Report, has been accepted for publication by Ekstasis Editions. It’s to come out this fall.
What’s New?
So what’s up now? While my latest manuscript seeks publication, I’m in an in-between state. A new creative project: a series of ekphrastic poems on paintings and sculptures in my house. So far, in the last couple of weeks, I’ve done five, including a homage to a dead friend, a surrealist cat, a humanesque figure made of paint squiggles. Most of these are works that I’ve lived with for years, done by friends. The only two artists that are at all well known are Barbara Sala and Nathalie Trépanier. Many are abstract. Some I doubt really work without viewing the works they are inspired by. If I do enough of these, and I’m really happy with them, I’ll publish them with photos of the works on line and eventually, in a rather pricey limited edition chapbook. A beautiful, if rather personal, project.
MONTREAL LAUNCH OF SHY: AN ANTHOLOGY
The event, held at Le Depanneur Cafe, was a highly enjoyable success. Eve Krakow and Jeff Miller read their contributions, and I mc’d and read my poem included in the anthology, as well as others. Thanks to Naomi Lewis and Rona Altrows at U. of A. Press, Le Depanneur Cafe, all who came out on this rainy evening to make it a wonderful event!
Brian Campbell 