{"id":880,"date":"2011-09-28T11:56:52","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T19:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/onelife\/?p=880"},"modified":"2011-09-28T11:56:52","modified_gmt":"2011-09-28T19:56:52","slug":"this-dream-this-precious-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/?p=880","title":{"rendered":"This dream, this precious life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Stormy weather and animal dreams. I was in a slaughterhouse, looking at a hole in the wall. A mouse hole? A hand reached out to stroke the snout of a hippo. To soothe it? Are they related to swine or do they just look like they are? Then many hands emerged from the hole, not exactly waving. Next night, with a guinea pig on my shoulder, I watched as a woman in a window frolicked with four little lap dogs, all different breeds, housed within a kind of four-plex cage. So I don\u2019t know what\u2019s up with that but perhaps such bizarreness was triggered by news of an incident in North Carolina, a sheriffs’ department using stray dogs for target practice, which made me think of the sled dogs that were euthanized in Whistler post-Olympics, after they lost their usefulness. Ah, human cruelty knows no bounds. We treat each other like garbage too.<\/p>\n

Word on the Street Festival endured more weather challenges than usual, tents on Hamilton Street blown down by high winds. I was astounded, thought they\u2019d cancelled or something. That would be a first. Then we endured a colossal downpour. An hour later, rainbows and sunshine, me cursing. I always travel with sunglasses and an umbrella but that morning couldn\u2019t imagine the sun emerging. I should know better after all these years of Vancouver weather. Highlights, Elizabeth Bachinksy\u2019s<\/a> Event Magazine<\/a> writers\/readers Wayde Compton<\/a>,\u00a0Charles Demers<\/a> and Amber Dawn.<\/a> They’re celebrating 40 years, as is Talonbooks<\/a>. As usual I ran into many fellow maniacs, happy to see the majority. (Some) people will treat you like garbage, if you let them. One perk of maturity; I know life is precious. Ditto time.<\/p>\n

And we are not dogs. Dinner with precious friends. Does wine tastes better in a restaurant or is it just me I asked? Laughter. It\u2019s just you Heather. True enough. It\u2019s just me.<\/p>\n

Recovering from an intense weekend of Visible Verse Festival programming. Whew! It really has grown, this festival and I was forced to make some very tough decisions. There were more than a few submissions in the Maybe pile that I wanted to screen but ran out of time. I announced the program<\/a> Monday, making quite a few artists very happy in the process. Guess it’s all worth it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m posting the essay I wrote for Sheri-D\u2019s Spoken Word Workbook<\/a> earlier this year. She\u2019ll be in town to perform at the Vancouver International Writers Festival next month and will facilitate a master class<\/a> in spoken word as well. I’ve been asked how collaborating in music and video affects my practice, thought this answered the question:<\/p>\n

S I D E W A Y S <\/em><\/p>\n

By Any Medium Necessary<\/em><\/p>\n

Subversive, sub rosa\u2014<\/strong>sideways\u2014<\/strong>like a snake in the grass is often how an artist must move and technology can help us cover more ground. I address social issues in my work but I dread dogma as much as clich\u00e9. I believe that being an artist is a political statement.<\/p>\n

Though founder of the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre, I am not a technocrat. I felt strongly it was vital for poets and artists to have a presence on the World Wide Web, so published\u2014or Web authored as it was referred to\u2014the Edgewise Caf\u00e9<\/em>\u2014one of Canada\u2019s first electronic literary zines. I\u2019m not a technophobe either, just a poet struggling to be heard, by \u201cany medium necessary,\u201d as my Telepoetics friend and colleague Merilene Murphy used to say.<\/p>\n

I employ myriad media to advance my art including the Internet. Democratic, even anarchistic, the Internet provides a powerful alternative to print, as publication in print becomes more difficult, but also less critical. Musicians have adapted well, learning to cultivate an audience online though social networking. Adapt or die.<\/em> Brutal. Darwinian. Natural. Some writers, dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming, are beginning to think outside the book, beyond text and adopting the DIY\u2014Do It Yourself<\/em>\u2014edict. Be your own agent, publicist, and publisher.<\/p>\n

I for one will be relieved when we are free of the gatekeepers. Then we will do it our way, according to our own individual circumstances, style and vision. Opportunity abounds.<\/p>\n

I must confess. Though I\u2019m a well-adapted digital immigrant, I am still a page baby at heart. It is safe to say that when I was a child my dogs and my books saved my life. I am thrilled each time I manage to get published and still consider the book to be a valid technology. At the end of a long, hard day I am only too happy to abandon the screen and curl up in bed with a good novel. Recall too, that the demise of painting was predicted when photography came along and then movies with television. There is much fevered talk of the book\u2019s extinction but I\u2019ve been noticing a backlash, not unlike the slow food movement. Popular lately are elaborate volumes replete with illuminated text much like the books of yore. In any case, I try to think beyond media, because what is most fundamental is voice.<\/p>\n

One of the most useful aspects of the Internet is the personal website or blog. A website is an effective showcase and more versatile than ever before. Images, video and music players, podcasts and Internet radio stations can be incorporated without much difficulty. I\u2019ve had a web site for a long time and was reluctant to begin blogging. I instinctively resist trends, but eventually I overcame my trepidation. My blog, One Life,<\/em> has forced me to be more productive and helps to keep my writing chops up. I was afraid of the pressure, the unspoken law that dictates daily entries, but I have found there is no giant hammer that drops from the sky onto my head when I don\u2019t, or can\u2019t. It\u2019s a journal and I often post poetry or prose as well. I like to include photographs and graphics and provide as many links as possible, because of course the more links, the more traffic is driven to the site. I use WordPress but Blogger and LiveJournal are popular and user friendly as well. I promote my blog primarily through Twitter, Networked Blogs and Facebook.<\/p>\n

Another vital medium is video. I believe Jean Cocteau was the first poet to employ film. In 1930 he produced Blood of a Poet<\/em>, usually categorized as surrealist art. Then there were the \u201cfilm poets\u201d from the West Coast abstract school, James Broughton, Sidney Peterson and Hy Hirsh, the latter two collaborating with John Cage, in 1947. In 1978 Tom Konyves of Montreal\u2019s Vehicule Poets coined the term \u201cvideopoetry,\u201d<\/em> to describe his multimedia work. Rather than get bogged down in semantics, I\u2019d like to point out that I think in terms of moving images, and don\u2019t make a huge distinction between film and video. I work with digital video because it is accessible and affordable, important considerations for most poets. A high definition camera can now be acquired for approximately $500. I don\u2019t have to settle for a lower quality image either.<\/p>\n

Though most of us in the West are visually literate, it is brave\u2014foolish some say\u2014to adapt the oral tradition to a medium where image is<\/em> metaphor. I\u2019m drawn to video because of its populist nature. It lends itself to hybridization and its history of experimentation is a fundamental aspect of the medium. Video is a natural fit for me, having grown up with television and cinema. According to my mother, I was enthralled with movies and always viewed them with my mouth gaping in awe. It\u2019s a powerful medium and I still can\u2019t resist its lure. In 1999, as one of the curators of the Vancouver Videopoem Festival, I defined videopoem<\/em> for a journalist as \u201ca wedding of word and image.\u201d Achieving that level of integration is difficult and rare however. In my experience the greatest challenge of this hybrid genre is fusing voice and vision, aligning ear with eye. Some poets like to see words on the screen. The effect can be exquisite but I find that film\/video doesn\u2019t accommodate text well. We are busy listening to the poem with our eyes, assimilating it through our ears. I prefer spoken word. Voice is the critical element, medium and venue secondary considerations. Unlike a music video\u2014the inevitable and ubiquitous comparison\u2014a videopoem stars the poem rather than the poet, the voice seen as well as heard.<\/p>\n

As for criteria, the words must have true literary merit. Approaches to production are as diverse as the poets, but in terms of execution, I prefer to take a cinematic approach. Using the poem as script, I start with a shot list and storyboard. I see it as an adaptation process, adapting voice and text to video. Preparation is crucial. Choose your crew wisely. Get everything in writing. I pay artists half their fee up front and the remainder when the work is completed. Invariably videopoems are produced despite zero budgets; one must be inventive and resourceful.<\/p>\n

Speaking of voice, it\u2019s the other thing that saved me. Singing. Performance. I grew up listening to folk and country music and sang in choirs at school and church, the only reason I attended. I would get very excited donning our robes and making our \u201centrance,\u201d only to drift off to sleep during mass.<\/p>\n

In my book, poetry evolved from the oral tradition. Long before Gutenberg, people gathered together to share stories. Verse was devised as a way to preserve myth, to pass it down generation to generation. By breaking the story into lines and stanzas people were better able to recall them. Rhythm and rhyme are powerful mnemonic devices, as is melody, song evolving for the same reason.<\/p>\n

And speaking of song, music can be a powerful vehicle. It\u2019s entirely possible to find and develop a rapport with a guitarist, cellist, accordion or banjo player\u2014according to your own bent\u2014to accompany you and your words. In my AURAL Heather<\/em> work, which I call \u201cspoken word song,\u201d I collaborate with musicians in several ways. They might compose melody to accompany my words, or I will write poetry to go with their music, improvising and experimenting along the way, a \u201cfusion\u201d of spoken word and song our goal.<\/p>\n

Advice I wish I\u2019d received along with Read and Learn your craft: Find your voice. Be true to it.<\/p>\n

As for the future, I can imagine a growing awareness of spoken word and video poetry, more cross-pollination between disciplines, genres and media, currently manifesting in media and music as the mashup<\/em>. With nearly universal access to the necessary tools, I envision rampant experimentation and innovation certainly. I can see, and hear, a melding of poem and music, a blurring of the distinctions between song and verse, music video and videopoem. Perhaps a renaissance in poetry is inevitable. I’d like to think so, but I\u2019m an incurable optimist, daring to imagine a utopia where everyone is a creator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stormy weather and animal dreams. I was in a slaughterhouse, looking at a hole in the wall. A mouse hole? A hand reached out to stroke the snout of a hippo. To soothe it? Are they related to swine or do they just look like they are? Then many hands emerged from the hole, not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[24,38,76,110,114,123,149,152,233,236,284,296,308,309,352,353,359,364],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/heatherhaley.com\/hh2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}