Well kids, it’s edited highlights only tonight cause this old body needs to rest up for #2 Big Volunteer Event tomorrow. Tonight’s The Hand that Feeds hosts appeared in proper bureaucratic outfits (are you allowed to use those two words in the same sentence? Is my computer going to blow up?) (despite 90 degree heat) to present a series of numbered professional artists who each had to answer the same canned questions before presenting their wares. The evening's sponsor, The Stoof Foundation (which may or not be real - I can't tell from the website) sent several letters of support for the Scream's events, one of which referred to Canada as '...our pliant northern concubine' (the letters were clearly art but the website? I dunno...)
But back to the stage - Karen Hines blew the lid off the Pilot with a reading from Drama, her play in progress about a ‘content provider’ writer grovelling before a TV buyer. Remind me to keep an eye out for this content when it gets off the page and onto the stage.
And Angela Szczepaniak’s history of a bureaucrat’s life as seen through the forms filled out about and by him (Memo to: self. From: self. Re: Note to Self) was hilarious food for thought as presented by a diminutive administrative assistant.
Oh yeah – and the Form Slam? The thing where you spend valuable time filling out a grant form and the sons a b’s pick somebody else’s over yours? Well, it happened again. I don’t even know why I bother.
Is it possible that it is even hotter in here tonight than it was TuesdayÈ By the way, the large E with the accent after Tuesday is my keyboardès way of saying question mark…
See you tomorrow for more Screamy fun at the book-length reading of Margaret Christakos' Excessive Love Prosthesis at 23 Prince Arthur.
Nighty night.

Church windows and a disco ball… where could we be but the Scream Premiere at the Arts and Letters Club. It’s just the sort of venerable historic landmark that tends to house this kind of affair, according to the venerable David Antin, whose philosophical wander tonight led through his adopted San Diego, a city with “no streets, only mountains and highways,” past Sigmund Freud and Hitler's uncle, pausing near a shopper who hitched two llamas to a post while picking up provisions at the local grocery store. It's a challenging feat at the best of times, to maintain one’s place in a complex improvisation, but ridiculously so when faced with an extempore erotic performance by a woman in the front row, centre. Mr. Antin pulled off his thought-provoking narrative with charm and apparent ease. I heard and enjoyed but watched the speaker only intermittently.
She preens, she beams, she whispers at the apparently oblivious object of her affection. She drives her shoulders back and holds, shakes her fluffy ponytail and runs a sinuous hand through it, widens then narrows her eyes, pokes him lightly but meaningfully with a jutting shoulder, and shines at him with such aggressive animation that I realize he must be deaf. Her man that is. She’s obviously trying to catch his attention with clever words of sign language. Occasionally, when his unresponsiveness seems too much, she feigns interest in the speaker for 30 seconds or so. Then back to business: she pokes him with her drink, brings it to his lips. Suddenly the woman next to me, previously tsk-ing and shaking her head, leans forward. “Hey!” She shouts, sotto voce, “Stop that!” But the three rows between us are too many and the vixen can’t hear. Some sixth sense has alerted her, though, and she quiets for about a minute. At intermission, she’s the talk of the town. After the break, she’s a changed woman – shoulders slumped, arms crossed and quiet, watching Steve McCaffery perform Carnival Panel III, the third installment of his series of concrete poems. I have to say I really liked Steve, but I’m missing the gene for this genre. It’s like being at a Yugoslavian wedding where you smile and nod at all the nice people who you know are charming and well-intentioned but you have no idea what they’re talking about and everyone else is laughing and after a while you just yearn for a word you can understand. Judging by the explosive reaction of the crowd when he’d finished, I was the only one who didn’t get it…
Tomorrow, The Agent Provocateur: Choose Your Own Poetic Adventure. According to the brilliant full-colour accompanying text, there are 18 possible readings to choose from over an evening’s pub crawl.
Man, it’s hot in here – it smells like wet dog and I don't have a dog. I don't think that's a good thing. I really need a drink. I hope I still feel that way tomorrow.

So, as we count down to another annual Scream, thoughts turn to previous years and the fun and book purchases therefrom. Well, book purchases and book winnings, of which there have been many. But more about that later.
I came to screamery three years ago as a volunteer, having been told by an otherwise useless career coach that it was always a good idea to get out and meet people. Casting about for the least abhorrent option, I asked a friend about that festival she’d mentioned. Showed up at the 2008 opener and fell in love, with a poet of course. Evie Christie, as read by Stuart Ross. Evie’s was my first Scream book, bought the way an alcoholic buys a drink, irresistibly and against one’s better judgment. Unemployment be damned; it was to be the thin edge of a fairly expensive wedge…

I've been proven wrong. It is apparent to me now that the book really is dead. Although a few hundred people spent a lovely evening in the park listening to readings, more T-shirts seem to have been sold than books. Surely this is a sign that all hope is gone.

In all seriousness the event was a complete success, one which I watched between my volunteering duties. I got to watch a bit of each set, enjoying a poem about tampons, a tale of a french woman with a perfect complexion being married into a Hindu family, an airplane flight and a conversation between a girl and each of her dead parents. I didn't get to hear the explanation as to why one reading duo included a stripping Ryan Kamstra and a police man in short shorts providing shade from the moonlight with an umbrella. I must have been selling T-shirts at the beginning of that act and watching the barren book table.

I myself picked up a copy of the Killing Circle by Andrew Pyper and The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark as Remembered by Fourteen People in a Basement. For anyone else who picked up the chapbook, my single addition to the work was the line about the "undiscovered country". For me, the rest of the story went down the memory hole.

What else can I say? There must be some real literature lovers still surviving to have braved the mosquitoes to listen to some good poetry and prose. Another year of the Scream Literature Fest has come and gone, and a little bit of life has been pumped back into the book.

We did do a good job of throwing off our mourning-wear for the Joy-athon! I myself was clad in a light green Scream Fest T-shirt and manning the merchandise table. While the view wasn't the best from there, I did get to hear the readings and observe the goings on.

All of the readers did an excellent job with engaging and often amusing performances. Most of them were assigned readings with little choice in the matter, but all did an excellent job. My personal favourite was the reading of a new Bruce LaBruce script by Maggie Macdonald. An amazing performance of a script included stage directions and descriptions, as well as dialogue delivered to the best of her vocal range ability, from naïve and high pitched Steve to the predatory porn agent.

A few highlights of the event include the raffle, where winners got to spend 60 seconds grabbing as many books as they could from the book table, and an impromptu auction of the Dennis Lee Book length Dinner tickets that occurred after two winners in a row already had tickets. In the end, the lot owner bid $40 on her own item in donation to the Joyland’s story-sharing tour. Brian Joseph Davis and Emily Schultz might just be able to make it home now.

The readings themselves varied from the heart-wrenching to the gut-splitting, but it seems we will all survive to scream another day. And to get back to our mourning for a weekend packed with funerary events.

I must say, if the future of the book relied on the participants of Scream in TYPE's bookstore basement there would be quite a problem.

Do you remember grade 12 English class? Sitting at the back of the class twiddling your thumbs hearing nothing but the mumble jumble flowing out of your teacher's mouth? I'm sure you do. That was probably during the unit of Shakespeare's play Hamlet . Well if you attended Scream Festival's "The Book in the Head" event then you were pretty much doomed.

In a small tight-nit space a dozen readers attempted to put together the famous works of Hamlet. Prompt book (actor in the role of dead text who aided participants when stuck on a line) was their only source of help in putting Hamlet together in modern day. Sadly, only a few out of the dozen actually had some knowledge of the lines, where many others knew the general story line. Though some lines were remembered, quite a few were spoken out of order or included filler words like, "something, something." Others were able to paraphrase lines with versions of what we would call modern day lingo such as hoe and dude.

Putting together Hamlet became a game of broken telephone and you know what that means. Scenes would change, or appear earlier in the text. Main characters would die slightly differently. Not to mention movies which have added and subtracted stage directions, character roles and actions while emphasizing and opting out particular scenes. Movies have already changed our recollections of the book making it easier for the book to get lost in time or changed drastically.

After a few beers and a ton of laughs we managed to put together most of Hamlet. Hamlet might have lost his life in the book, but he continues to survive into our future... or what's left of him.

However, what would happen to the future of books if they actually relied on world of mouth or the movie version? The story would be forever changing. When you are reading a book really appreciate how authentic it is. Realize that you have that ability to grasp the whole book in full and in your own way and not have to rely on someone's broken versions.

Last night the Book in the Head Salon was held in the basement of Type Books. In this event, a dozen booklovers were asked to reconstruct a literary text from memory, the goal being to see how much of the story would survive without the book. The participants were not given any hints prior to the event as to the tale they would have to tell, but they did so with astonishing detail.

Inspiring of a much loved episode of the Simpsons and from which The Lion King is loosely based, it is probably the most referenced of literary tales, the most quoted, most satirized, most familiar of stories. You guessed it: The Tragedy of Hamlet.

Although the Prince of Denmark could not survive his own play, his story will survive the death of the book. Many of us could only form a general story arc and recall a few iconic phrases, but some of the participants provided ample entertainment as they pieced together line after line. They took away the show by reciting entire scenes, and could easily have gone the whole night without much paraphrasing.

The game started out with surprising accuracy, but as time grew short the scenes were summed up by “the poison fight” and “when they started stabbing each other.” The players worked co-operatively to remember particular lines. However, after a few beverages this process became a little bit silly. Hamlet’s innuendos were paraphrased as “the dirty parts”, and my own personal favourite, the suggestion of “How now brown cow,” instead of “How now Ofelia.”

An interesting addition to the game was the Prompt Book: the actor playing the dead text. When the players needed a point in the right direction, the melancholy book would give them a line. Some of Shakespeare’s most melodramatic lines were read with a completely inert tone. The role was well played and provided many laughs for the participants.

There may be a reprise of this experience at the Main Stage so that all might see what we came up with in recollecting a classic. A good time was had by all.

Hullo Kids,

It's happening!

I'm going to be a no-show for the opening night Tony Burgess-and-Derek-McCormack-and-many-more themed festivities, but having scrutinized the Scream schedule, I feel I can properly plan my way through the upcoming two weeks. My absence from certain events has more to do with work requirements than taste. If it was up to me, I'd see em all. If only this "Death of the Book" festival could arrange all its literary content into some sort of portable word-storage device that I could bring with me and read on the subway. Oh well, until such a thing it reinvented, here's what I'm going to:

July 5th, 7pm. Incidental Reading: Melvil Dewey fights back
From what Aaron Tucker has told me, this will be not unlike the scene in Ghostbusters where the librarian gets her hair blown back by Slimer. It's inspired by Martha Baillie's The Incident Report, which I haven't read but I hear is the bee's knees. The layout is essentially this, a bunch (like, eleven) readers are all spaced around the Yorkville Library like some sort of talking statuary exhibit, and you basically get guided around. Fun? I think so. And I'm not just saying that because I'm one of the eleven.

July 7th, 7pm. Five Manifestos in the Book
This one is shaping up to be the intellectual heart of the festival. Five people with their own take on the the state and fate of the book spar it out in a big five-way talkin' fight. One of the five is Big Festival Cheese Bill Kennedy, and we already know what Bill thinks here: http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magazine/summer_2009_scream_edition/artic.... I expect I'll come home all aflutter over these supermodern thinkers and their supermodern ideas, and want to pen a rebuttal, because a lot of this stuff reminds me about how we are all going to be driving electric cars by 1985, at the latest.

July 8th: 8pm. The Joyland Joy-athon
Brought to you by the feverish soul of Canadian online literature, www.joyland.ca, this looks like a busy night of short fictioneering. Readers include Claudia Dey, Rebecca Rosenblum, Kevin Connolly, Zoe Whittall, and Carl Wilson.

July 10th, 7pm. If Hope Disorders Words: Dennis Lee Reprised
I'm affording to go to this $40 dinner because I promised to help serve food. So, if you like $40 dinners with thumb prints in your steak, you'll love this. But seriously, Dennis Lee is the great folk-hero of contemporary Canadian poetry. I've said all I can think of on this subject already for Open Book Toronto, so just go there if you're not already convinced: http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magazine/summer_2009_scream_edition/artic...

July 11th, 8pm. Til Death do us Party: The Scream Gala
It's a party. I'm probably not going to go because I'm shite at parties, but you should. The band is called The Bandiniband, which is exciting, because if the main character from those Fante novels had a band, it would be really great.

July 13th, 7pm. The Scream in High Park
Mainstage, baby! Oh man. I'm so excited about this thing it hurts. There is literally nobody on this bill I don't already love. Lisa Foad's new book is occasionally staggering. Jeramy Dodds is the real deal, that rare hyped-to-the-gills new poet that deserves the hype. Ryan KAmstra is maybe my favourite Toronto poet. And there's like ten more. This stuff sells itself.

See you out there, kids! I have a thing to go do. I'd like to apologize now for any lapses of grammar or non-words that appear above.

-Jmm

We are gathered here today to pay our last respects to an ancient and long treasured friend. My most sincere, heartfelt sympathies to all the friends, family members and lovers of the newly departed. I too feel the loss of our passionate, thrilling, memorizing and tantalizing companion. Though sometimes an untameable lover, quick to sweep us up in its grasp and take us to unknown reaches, the book has always been a reliable source of escapism. Today we mourn its passing.

That may seem a bit melodramatic, and in truth my first reaction to the theme of this year's Scream Literary Festival was defensive denial, but it does appear as if literature may be in the decline. But it is not yet time for the eulogies. There is still hope! This summer Toronto will rise to put the spark of life back into the oldest form of literature, hopefully resuscitating it once and for all. Though avid readers like myself may protest fervently that literature is still flourishing, why not bring back the love of reading for everyone?

And who might I be? My name is Mia, and I am neither a published writer nor an eloquent poet, but a simple bibliophile and English Major. My favourite genre of literature is science fiction because I love how speculative and futuristic universes can say so much about human nature. I keep a sci-fi blog here, and also write short stories in my spare time. I’m really glad that I have the opportunity to be involved in this great event and I can’t wait to get it started.

Thank you all for reading and enjoy the wake. Refreshments will be served.

Hey Eager Screamers!

My name is Cassandra Federbusz, but usually people call me Cas. I am a writer, poet and blogger. I love to write poetry; I keep a journal and I blog every so often. I absolutely love Scream! I am amazed at the incredible amount of time and effort that has been, and will continue to be, put into this festival with the helping hands of all the co-coordinators, volunteers, readers and performers.

When I heard about the Scream Literary Festival in 2008, I underestimated how creative, funky and exciting this festival would be. When I volunteered, I was amazed at the turnouts, the events, and of course, the brilliant readers and performers.

My expectations for this year - bigger and better! I know this year Scream is going to scream louder than ever before. I look forward to the events to come later this month into early July. Can't wait!

I like to keep my blogs very detailed. So keep checking for updates!

The Death of the Book

The "Death of the Book" was an idea first proposed by German thinker Walter Benjamin in a podcast published on his blog in 1928. The original concept then got translated through the usual social-media outlets and eventually spawn a full-fledged meme in several peer-reviewed message boards. It is also the organizing principle for the upcoming Scream in High Park. It is one of those inarguable modern ideas, the kind of thing thoughtful young literary men like myself speak of at cocktail parties and force you to nod your head consideringly until we agree to go away.

Many factors have been fingered as responsible for this pending death, be they technological, economic, or social. I thought I'd take a second in this tense pre-festival leadup to go over some of the suspects.

1. The Internet
The internet is kind of big. It is also full of words. While most people (source uncited) feel that the internet has increased the AMOUNT of reading we do, there's a belief out there that it has hindered our vocabulary (ROFLMAO!) and made us oratorical morons who need to PUT THINGS INTO ALLCAPS to SHOW OTHERS THAT WE MEAN IT.

One specific book-assassin I investigated is called "Daily Lit". It can be found HERE. Daily Lit is a service that trawls all the good bits from the world of open-source literature, cuts it into music-video sized chunks, and delivers it piecemeal into an inbox of your choice. I tried it out and was really into it for, like, 1 day. Then I tried to cancel the service and was unsuccessful. After the 75th installment of Theory of the Leisure Class spewed, unwanted, into my hotmail account at the 10-week mark of the marathon, I was glad I did not go for my first choice, The Odyssey, which takes (I wish I was making this up) six months of daily installments to deliver.

Review, Daily Lit:
Murder Weapon of Choice:Spam
Books when Because: You can read the amount you want to read, and then put them down.
Consolation Prize: The lulz.

**

2. Telecommunications
You know what I'm talking about. Specifically, the iPhone, which has an "app" that you can "download" to let you "read" files called "texts". This would seem to be a powerful device, from the company that completely screwed the music industry comes something to completely screw the publishing industry. I didn't get to test this device, alas, as The Scream couldn't quite pony up the "buying me an iPod" money this year, with the recession and everything. But I did look at the commercial a few times, and was struck by how you have to virtually turn the pages, which seems like both an affectation and an example of pandering. Also, the iPhone suffers from having other apps available that completely murder reading "The Odyssey" when it comes to the immediate visceral experience. For example, you can apparently buy a device that sticks into the end of the iPod, then you blow on it and (I wish I was making this up) it becomes a woodwind instrument. Nobody reads books on these things. They may buy the app and then buy a few files, but I challenge anyone to read a novel more than 400 pages long on one of these devices.

Review, iPhone:
Murder Weapon of Choice: Choice. Also, the pending discovery that it causes brain cancer.
Book win Because: They don't ring and then make you talk to somebody.
Consolation Prize: Millions of dollars.

**

3. The Kindle
Do you remember this thing? In the period between Sarah Palin and Swine Flu, this was the thing every third news story was about. Apparently they're still around, and about to be given away for free somewhere. This piece of crap is the Segway of literary implements.

Review, The Kindle:
Murder Weapon of Choice: Amazon.com, sweet irony.
Books when Because: People actually use books.
Consolation Prize: For Amazon? Anything to distract from the wholesale dismissal of gay fiction.

**

4. The Monoculture
This is the other possible book-murderer in the room. And of the four, it is the slipperiest, the least suspected. It is the "Mrs. White, with the rope, in the conservatory" of possible suspects. But this is of course the real villian in the end, the mastermind. Whenever we hear good news in our book blogs and trade magazines it's about some individual author or some specific new style or scene, there's never any good news for reading as a whole. For example, is it really a boon for children's literature that the final Harry Potter book has sold (I wish I was making this up) 44 million copies? Those kids are all reading the EXACT SAME combination of words. How disappointing. What if 440 books sold 100,000 copies instead? This is why literary festivals are important. Democracy. They bring out the small and mix it with the big and everybody stands on their own merit, not the proximity of their book to the Dora the Explorer section of the Walmart Toys Department.

Review, The Monoculture:
Murder Weapon of Choice: Boredom and complacency and..um...I've forgotten the last one.
Books when Because: They are tenacious and hard to kill.
Consolation Prizes: Music, Public Art, Politics, Talk Radio, Architecture, Urbanism, Graphical Design, Spoken Word, etc.

-Jacob McArthur Mooney, 2009

Hello friends.

My name is Jacob McArthur Mooney. I'm a poet who lives in Toronto and I'm happy to be one of what I'm sure are The Scream's very-much-honoured team of guest bloggers. Like Egyptian cats or Texan quarterbacks, the bloggers here are worshipped like gods by the Scream society, and I hope I will not let their idolatry down.

If you don't know who I am (and if you don't, what made you want to read this?) I maintain an extensive personal website
here:. Now, in terms of what will go in these pages, I'm not sure. I haven't thought this through. Once we all know what the mainstage is going to look like (re:readers) I'll likely be inspired.

Between now and then though, keep re-reading this one blog post. I've made sure to give it many layered meanings that make the reading experience progresively richer with each new attempt.

I've attached a photo of myself so you know that I exist.

Be good.
Jake.

After two years of dismal weather, this year's Scream in High Park took place under the traditional blue skies once again.

I am sure those of you who came to the Mainstage were all wondering: What's it like in the glamourous, exclusive Scream backstage area? Well, wonder no more! I am here to offer you a glimpse into the fabulous Green Room.

First of all: Yes, we had snacks and drinks back there, including a huge pile of samosas (which all disappeared) and a bottle of highly pungent maple vodka (which, um, did not).

Also, we had a mascot:

It was there when we got there, perched in a corner, perhaps warding off evil spirits.

Usually, the authors hang out and chat with each other and have a few beers, but this year's group was exceptionally serious, and they spent a lot of time preparing. Early in the evening the backstage deck was full of people sitting or pacing slowly back and forth, poring over books or papers with deep concentration.

The Scream executive board, meanwhile, were all looking excited but exhausted, having been working a lot and sleeping very little for the past 10 days. There was a lot of deep breathing and hugging.

All that preparing paid off, of course, and the night went off without a hitch.

And then there was the cleanup, and the afterparty, and then six of us wound up on Spadina at the same restaurant we'd wound up in the previous Tuesday. We had the same waiter, and the guy in the suit with the Chinese newspaper was there again too. I went to the ladies' room and found this amazing graffiti on the door of my stall:

That's not a stencil -- it's drawn freehand with a marker.

And that's it! Another great festival! I reconnected with old friends, met new ones, learned about some literary practices I'd known little about before, and woke up on Tuesday with a hangover. All as it should be.

Click here to see all my photos from this year's festival.

A few notes about the Gala and the Aural Transl(oc)ations event. (Better late than never!)

Last year's Gala took place at Hugh's Room and featured Rock Plaza Central, an excellent group of musicians who, however, are arguably Toronto's Least Danceable Band. This year the venue was Revival and the musical act was the Bicycles, who are arguably Toronto's Most Twee Band, but whose upbeat, infectiously bouncy tunes got everyone up and moving. Props to Nick Power, who spent much of the evening energetically swing-dancing near the stage with a succession of partners. At one point he swung Joy Learn so hard her glasses nearly fell off.

The Bicycles were followed by a DJ who kept the crowd moving with mashups of current and retro tunes -- thus adhering to this year's theme, even though he wasn't actually part of the Festival. The dance floor was invaded by a stagette party, the bride-to-be wearing a veil and giant rubber breasts. When I left sometime after midnight, the party was still going strong.

Sunday evening's event was appropriately low-key. Array Studios was a little hard to find, but walking in was like stumbling upon a secret clubhouse full of bongo drums, exotic musical instruments of all kinds, lava lamps, etc.

Aural Transl(oc)ations was a dreamy wash of sound. My one quibble with the event was that it had us all sitting in rows of chairs, as though it was going to be a spectacle, when it was more like a sonic immersion. It might have been nice to have people wander around and experience the sound from different positions instead; or even just scatter the chairs less rigidly around the room.

(Click on the photos to see larger versions.)

Chances are that if you're reading this blog, you were at the mainstage. So I won't recap. But I will say that it has been a pleasure blogging for the scream, and I look forward to seeing you all next year.

Here are some pics from the night:

Our host, hamming it up for the camera:

A peek backstage:

The lineup:

And a final word from our artistic director: