Friday, April 10, 2009

News! Poetry! Life!

March 17th! Well that was a long time ago since my last post!

Things have been a little crazy on this end (tell me something new, right?) and I've been a little disorganized.

I'm writing this post from my parent's couch, on the first day off I've had in about 2 weeks. I just moved here from my old place because I wasn't able to find a place to live for April 1st. I did find a sweet one for May 1st, though, right near the Drive, that I'm pretty excited to move into pretty soon. My chaise lounge is already there, and I wonder how she likes it so far.

Anyway, this means it's me and the parents for a month. It's not so bad, we're never here at the same time, and I get to use the car a lot, which I like more than I'd like to admit. Getting to Burnaby is just so much easier in a vehicle, it's just true.

Anyway, I've been doing this thing called the Poem a Day Challenge for April, which is Poetry Month. Every day, Robert Brewer posts a prompt here: http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/. You post your poem in the comments section every day, and there's going to be some sort of ebook at the end I don't quite understand yet.

Anyway, it's been amazing for me to be writing this much. It's busted me out of my usual writing box (sex, sex, sex, love, sex--boring!) and I've got a whole bunch of other stuff that's been on my mind out. I feel GREAT! Daily therapy. Love it.

On Tuesday night, I went to this event called Foundationradio.ca....'s open mic I guess. I'm not sure what the name of the night is, but it's every other Tuesday at Nyala on Main and 26th. It's amazing....i've never had such a good response from an audience. I read one of my (edited) poem a day poems on the open mic, and the response was really overwhelming. I recorded everything, of course, and I'm posting a recording of the new poem to my website as we speak. Check out the A/V section at jcpeters.ca to hear it.

I also read a poem a day poem on my radio show yesterday, which you can download and listen to here: http://playlist.citr.ca/podcasting/audio/20090408-152500-to-20090408-160000.mp3

And if that's not immediate enough for ya, here's yet another one from the same well of creativity:

Outsider


I just wanted to know that you were in there somewhere.
I wanted to be sure that when your personality split
like a reproducing cell
two equally sized and shaped blobs of yourself at first,
then shaking, quavering into something else,
someone else I didn't recognize,
that you were still, somehow, the blob I used to know.
I wanted to know that from across this table, glass of wine in my hand
half full beer in yours
that you were still in there somewhere.

I can't feel anything but sorry.
I dreamt all last night of letting people down
of being late, of getting lost, of forgetting the safe combination
and being unable to speak the language where you are.

For all the words flying like artillery between us,
trying to understand, trying to make sense,
we're just not speaking the same tongue.

I could touch your hand from where I'm sitting,
but I don't.



And it's only April 10th. Stay tuned for more!