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:

At the Revival...

Last night, we looked at poetry and we said, "bah, not tonight. Tonight, we drink and we dance."

And so we drank.

And so we danced.

And there was a birthday, with cake! Happy Birthday Natalie!

And even though it wasn't her birthday, Maggie Helwig is so awesome, we gave her presents anyway.

Then, back to partying.

But since it was poets trying to party, we had to be all awkward, like it was a juniour high prom. At least, that was the interpretation put forth by Leigh and Chris.

And finally, after so many posts, the camera got turned around - thanks to Angela Rawlings.

On a final note, I've decided to take a day off before the mainstage. So, I won't be at Aural translocations. See ya on Monday!

Two events yesterday: The Toronto Women's Bookstore Reading and the Machinima Salon.

First, at 7:00, the TWB. There was some uncertainty as to whether or not our readers would show up. But then most of them did. So, with a little careful rearranging, a change of hostesses, the world was right again, and the event went off marvellously.

Emily Schultz hosted:

Our first reader was Monica Rosas, doing her unique blend of theatrics and spoken word:

Then Camille Martin, reading (for the most part) sonnets:

And finally, Lisa Foad reads her (incredible!) short story, before inviting Sonja Ahlers up for a semi-impromptu colloaborative performance:

Then a three hour break.

...

And off to the Peter Petro Gallery for some Machinima.

There was a surprisingly large crowd in attendance, considering that this was an 11:00 pm event, and at a location not specified in the program (we had to move venues after the TYPE books basement flooded).

Darren Wershler provided and an excellent overview of the history, high-points and implications of this obscure genre.

It began with the Ill Clan and some Quake mods:

Soon, this very same crew had refined their skins and their style... and, sure, it still kinda sucked. But there was improvement, y'know:

It wasn't too long before Red vs. Blue debuted... and became the "single most popular thing on the internet" (according to one of their machinimas... I'll try to get back to you with a fact check on that).

Honourable mentions:

"This Spartan Life" - a live machinima talk show, hosted in the Halo 2 engine

Cantina Crawls = virtual conga lines in the Star Wars universe

Machinima recreations of iconic moments in dance

We ended with another look at the same Quake engine, reworked in immaculate detail to represent a universe well known to us all

Aaron posted a link to a great play-by-play of last night's event.

Which frees me up to simply share all these images that I stole.

First - Arthur and Rimbaud, desaturated:
I once was lost...

...but now am found.

Second - a slideshow of my very own:

Third - some people on some stage:

Last - Kenneth Goldsmith reads the interrogation transcript from the arrest of Senator Larry Craig:

It's really amazing what people can through together in almost no time. Mark Higgins woke up yesterday morning with a show to run in the evening, and an art installation caught up in the limbo between here and Ukrainian cultural bureaucracy.

So he got some umbrellas, stripped off the fabric, printed out a bunch of words on to computer paper, smushed them together, and voila! Art!

And it was a huge hit... people were talking. That's all I can say. People were talking.

Then the show got moving. A bunch o' artists got on a stage together:

There was a lot of talk about honouring Kevin Connolly's original work. And, Kevin didn't really seem to mind.

First we saw a movie. A fascinating character documentary about a guy who's allergic to the world. Seriously. And in this state of isolation, anything beyond the borders of his home constitutes "plenty".

Second was a play. A play adapted, apparently, from a different poem in Kevin Connolly's book Revolver. It was a Kafka-esque interrogation scene.

Then a poem... which an amazing Icelandic sound poet (Eirukur Orn Norddahl...) wrote 25 minutes before going on stage.

Finally... the band. NQArbuckle. Rocked the house.

And Angela Rawlings danced a delightful dance with Natalie Walschots.

What do Canada Post and the Lexiconjury have in common?

Despite the rain, the show went on:

That's not a blurry picture, by the way. Those people are just running really fast.

The poetry last night, at the revival of the much-loved Lexiconjury, was awesome. And, more importantly for my purposes, so was the lighting. Bill Kennedy and Angela Rawlings were our hosts:

And, yes, they were simultaneously hosting a poetry reading and starring in an iPod commercial.

And yeah, as I said, the readers last night were awesome:

And again, for purely visual reasons, Sharon Harris' projections were the winners. Of everything. Somehow.

And then we drank.

And ate blueberries that just kind of appeared beside our booze.

And Angela made a funny face at one point.

And there was a great Open Michelle.

Okay, so I'm getting a little bit lazy with this blog. But, going to every scream event is tiring at a certain point! It never stops being awesome... but... you know, writing out a play by play of the evening's events is a pretty challenging task after a week of it.

Anyway, the night wrapped up, and the rain let up... so I went home to get dry:

We were standing around upstairs in TYPE books. Kyle Buckley notices a woman looking in the window. She's wearing a t-shirt that reads "textually active".

"Well," says Kyle, "We know why she's here."

Last night was the fanfic event at TYPE books. And the crowd in attendance ranged from those who actively write fanfic, to those who've heard the term in passing.

So Maggie had to level the ground with a course in basic fanfic terminology:

There was much discussion about the controversies inherent in fanfic, including what does and does not qualify as such.

But mostly we talked about Mulder and Scully doin' it... no, Mulder and Scully and a Scully clone... yeaaaaahhhh... awesome.

Then the Scullys get bored of Mulder, and send him off to do work in the basement suite while they smell one another's hair. Mmmm, strawberries.

Ahh, the esoteric world of fanfic.

Wow, last night's event is a hard one to cover. So far, it's the most directly participatory I've been to, although I missed out on the "Vocable" sound and movement workshop yesterday afternoon. Considering this, I'll try to walk you through what we did, and then I guess I'll let the pictures and the product speak for themselves.

In the beginning, was a word. "Infinito" to be specific... projected onto the wall of the TYPE books basement space. Then we all started to yell out different possible translations. The interesting bit is I think that Hugh was the only one in the room who actually knew Spanish. Sure, it wasn't hard to guess that the translation was "infinite" - but we allowed ourselves to draw many more oblique suggestions:

Then we did the same with some more obscure words: Herausgegeben, homenaxe, mjadmirnar, M'illumino d'immenso. Every one feverishly scratched pen on paper until one of our hosts called time:

We moved on to a more visually based exercise: single greek characters were projected on the wall and we generated associations based on how they looked.

And then those of who so chose, shared our work with everyone else.

Taking the same basic exercise a little further, we each received a Haiku in the original Japanese, accompanied by a picture. This was mine:

Then breaktime, and beer.

Break over, we all received full poems which we were to use as launching points for our own interpretations.

I started with a spanish poem. I didn't keep a copy of it, but I do recall that there were certain words repeated throughout: repolo, auga, torreto... something like that. I decided that I would either correlate these words one for one with english words, or implement some associated idea: i.e. "repolo" was always "replace" and "auga" was always a notion of "sameness". This is what I came up with:

Just try to replace me with the Earth
it's not interested
replace me with others, with the desperate
with terrace-bound pioneers
who repent, but with disinterest still

Replace me unconsciously

Replace the city with that same torment
that same disinterest
replace the water we've lost
or the torment will never lessen

the arrogance of replacements
thoughts of folly-made-royal
the heart without fever
that sane without motive
a bleeding canoe
a mirage, devoid of magic, sapped of life
torment for the vacant effort

the same weather
the same drought
a replacement fitted with nothing, with loss

So today, I'm going to break with what appears to be the through-line of this blog (i.e. photostalking Bill) and focus on the stars lurking in the shadows of the scream: the volunteers.

And last night was one of the events that truly could not happen without a team of great volunteers.

So, yeah, on one level, I'm just patting myself on the back. But, seriously, there were many of us last night, all working very hard to bring the show together seamlessly.

It starts, as always, with our arrival at the venue:

St. Thomas' Anglican Church, it was.

And without so much as a minute to pray, the volunteers are up and folding napkins:

All the while, of course, peeking in the kitchen, curious as to what we'll be smelling, staring at, and ultimately handing off for other people to eat.

Then we got to arrange it, decoratively, on platters:

Afterwards, tables were set up, chairs put in place, decorations finalized, the bar stocked, and the t-shirts stacked:

And yes, one of our volunteers had a broken leg. That's dedication, folks.

Suddenly, the wonderful folks in the kitchen are handing us fruit on sticks, stuck in fruit:

We wander, offering up our decorative skewers to the first arriving guests. Soon there's quite a swarm. But, people seemed skeptical of the fruit, opting instead for tried and trusted liquor...

Which is an issue, because apparently you can't drink in the church. Nadia suggested it might have something to do with transubstantiation. I think if we're going to be theme-appropriate to "barbarians", a little bloodthirstiness couldn't hurt.

The event starts. A quick reading on the steps as people pound back their wine, and we're heading into the church:

Meanwhile, servers make the final preparations for the first course. Candles are lit. Cutlery is set. There's jam, and muffins, and scones:

And all of a sudden, while we're drying wine glasses in the kitchen, we get word that the people are already seated:

So, franticfranticfrantic, we mill about looking calm as clams.

And the food looks so good:

And after that... well... when we weren't scrambling to either serve the food or clear the dishes, the best thing to do seemed, as another volunteer put it, to go and stare at your table until they needed something.

And listen to the poetry, of course:

Then, after 6 hours of work, after the readings are over and the guests have started to file out, Leigh says what we're all thinking: "where are the dixie cups?!"

Because there's leftover wine, and there's not a chance that any of us are going to wash another dish. So we tap our dixie cups together, and head into the kitchen for our sweet recompense:

Special thanks to Aaron Tucker for helping me figure out the photo issue. I'm going to celebrate with...

Mmmm.

And here are some highlight photos from the last two nights events:

Alumni Night:

One of out lovely volunteers in one of our spiffy t-shirts.

The Venue.

More beer. Always more beer.

The Program.

Damian Rogers, the host of alumni night.

Kevin Connolly.

Priscilla Uppal.

Mike Lista tosses one back.

Stuart Ross.

Emily Schultz and Bill Kennedy.

Joyland, a hub for short fiction.

Emily Schultz, reading Turduckin.

The crowd... and oh, what a crowd.

Ken Babstock.

Freedom in Death:

Food, t-shirts, glory.

The Venue.

The park, before arrival of seagulls.

The mingling, the shmoozing.

A man, a beer, a baby. Meanwhile, Kyle Buckley sees something displeasing in the corner.

A Smellable marker and a Scream survey.

Kyle Buckley.

The Park at sunset.

Your time may be running out.

Little Town on the Prairie. All good things must end.

Always looming, that grim spectre of death.

Let Diego speak for himself.

I hope to see you tonight at the dinner!

Ah, not so much Zombie Poetics as a poetics of posession... Bogie, is that you? Speaking through a young poet in the basement of a Toronto bookstore?

First off, I just want to mention that I tried to include more pictures in yesterday's post, but I couldn't figure it out. Also, there was meant to be a link to the Wikipedia entry on Turduckin, but I also failed there. I would change the posts, and fix those things, but I also can't figure out how to edit completed posts.

And the worst part is, after trying all morning to sort it out, I still can't perform. Apologies.

Speaking of apologies, I should probably make some attempt at amends for skewering Bill Kennedy in the last post. Although, he is a bit of a glutton for punishment. In fact, when he brought it up to me at last night's event, "Freedom in Death," he was sort of excited by the whole thing: "Now every drunken, ridiculous thing I say while on stage could end up on the internet." At first I thought he was lamenting the new level of self-censoring this would imply... but then I noticed a kind of exhibitionist glee in his voice. His comment wasn't totally true anyway, because he didn't say that on stage and look where it is now....

As for the events of last night, I recommend checking out Nadia's blog for all the highlights. As for the text below... it mostly details the time I spent in the park across the street, at a seedy gas station bathroom, and eavesdropping on Bill.
In fact, it seems to be some hybrid blend of self-implicating Gonzo journalism and a celebrity photo-stalking blog, like Perez Hilton for experimental poets.*

Too much preamble. Here we go:

So I arrive late. I don't know how late constitutes "fashionable," but I'm wearing a backpack and sporting a camera case like a manpurse, so even if I were smack dibbity in the "coolest" possible window of time, I doubt I'd be anywhere close to fashionable. Plus, Bill isn't here yet. And that's the real litmus test.

There's free food against the wall, and I overhear a group of people discussing smellable markers. I grab some grapes and some cheese, snap a couple of pictures, and head across the street to the park.

I read some of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and a lady with a greasy box of fish n' chips sits beside me. The smell is, well, what you would expect. I bear it until a gang of seagulls try to steal the Chippy's® out of her mouth. I fear for my laundry.

Now I can't tell whether it was the smell of the Chippy's® or the undercooked Pad Thai I'd eaten for breakfast, but I ran to the 7-11 just in time to witness a south-asian man flirting with somebody's grandmother. She gets to the bathroom first. It turns out it was the smell of Chippy's® anyway, so I turn around...

Back to the event. Bill's here now. I've now sauntered passed the "fashionable" window, and am, in fact, just late. As recompense, I arrive exactly in time to see Bill get baffled by a bottle opener. There are pictures to prove it... or at least pictures that suggest it. Assuming I can ever figure out how to post them. Well, I know I can post at least one picture at the top of the page...

People mingle. People smooze. I eat a few more grapes.

Midway through the event, Leigh, our volunteer coordinator, engages us with some of Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little Town on the Prairie." Mostly I mean she engages Bill, who follows her by reading the last two pages. Okay, I admit, I wanted to see where it was going too.

And the final words were, "... the winter soft and the green grass growing."

Even if Bill wasn't moved to tears, I know I was.

Tune in tomorrow for coverage of the Dinner length reading: "Breakfast for Barbarians". And for a change of pace, I'll be writing from the perspective of a waiter... so... unless I get Bill at one of my tables, I'll have to vary my focus a little.

Note: Because I'll be waiting tables tonight, I will not be at the youth event today.

*this clever line is partially stolen from another blogger, who made the joke at the event last night... but if I told you who, it wouldn't be stealing anymore. What, it's theme-appropriate!

Hi everybody! So, here's the first post of Scream week... which is apparently not Scream "week" so much anymore as Scream "week-n-a-bit". Correct me if I'm wrong, but this year's schedule appears to be the most event-filled ever. Of course, you're all invited to join us at each and every event... but if you happen to miss anything, check back to the blogs, where myself and our panel of courageous pseudo-journalists will attempt to keep you updated on what you missed.

Last night, for example, at the Super Market in Kensington, a group of poets gathered together and did the seemingly impossible: praised the work of other, younger poets.

Ah, I kid, I kid. They only read it, no praise necessary. But, in fact, everyone was very humble, except of course for our fabulous artistic director Bill Kennedy. As it happens, if Bill were remotely humble, he would lose all of his powers. What powers, you ask? Well, the power to drink, of course. And the power of eternal youth, which is really just a result of the first power... as you can see, after a single Jägerbomb, Bill's shadow takes on a life of it's own - Peter Pan style.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Bill didn't reveal his "secrets" until after the midpoint of the night's festivities. Actually, it all began with the volunteers showing up to get their t-shirts and their duties for the evening. That's right ladies and gents, this festival is made possible by the hard work and dedication of a bunch of awesome people who care more about supporting the arts than being paid. Big thumbs up.

After the volunteers were set up, the masses began to file in. Within minutes the venue was packed. But there was much time still left before the show began. So we drank. Except of course for our very own Maggie Helwig, who prefers to shirk the lesser pleasures of drink, rather ensuring our venues get paid and our poets get praised.

Speaking of which, the reason we're all here I presume... I have yet to mention anything about poetry. The night kicked off with Kevin Connelly reading poems by Gabe Foreman. For those not familiar with Gabe, Kevin assured us that he was "the best poet ever to be born in Kakabeka Falls." The poetry was delightful, and precisely as Kevin suggested: "you can almost figure out what he's talking about."

Next up was Priscilla Uppal reading Jason Guriel, whom she first discovered while judging a student poetry contest. The winning poem, which Priscilla read on stage last night, centered around one of Shakespeare's most interesting stage directions: "exit, pursued by a bear."

Stuart Ross was next, reading from Evie Christie's Gutted as well as some of her newer stuff. A very interesting read, carried off with absolute grace... except for when Stuart was sidetracked by a capitalized S in Styrofoam. He covered himself stylishly with, "that's what happens when you're a proofreader who reads other people's poetry."

Then when took a break. I think this is where Bill started hitting the Jägerbombs. Ah, well, in his defense, while on stage after the break, he claimed he lost his Jägerbomb virginity that night. So Jägerbombs plural is not really fair. The important thing is that he proudly declared this moments before claiming that "short story writers are crawling in that thin space between poets and the ground." I'm almost certain he said it with a hint of jealousy towards the short story writers.

In any case, this was the introduction to "Joyland - a hub for short fiction," which you can check out at http://www.joyland.ca/home/toronto.

Emily Schultz, the creative force behind Joyland (both the novel and the "hub") went on to read the winning selections from Eyeweekly's first annual poetry contest. And in first place, believe it or not, a poem about turduckin. Yes. That's right. As Emily said, "some of you may know it, and some of you may be naive" - so click here to learn about the delicacy.

And then our final poet, Ken Babstock, reading Mike Lista. I think Ken summed up the night fairly accurately, as he went on to explain the concept behind Lista's poetry collection (which I won't even attempt to explain here, cuz it's real fancy): "I'm thinking of retiring. Fuckin' kids these days."

This blog is brought to you by... a student with the summer off... a degree in literature that makes finding paid work an exercise in clever self-marketing... a dwindling interest in journalism... an escalating interest in writing... a Apple™ laptop and a solid wifi connection... a complete breakfast in accordance with the Canada Food Guide™ recommendations... postmodern irony... and self-reference.... and a distrust of Totalizing statements or ideas... okay, postmodernism in general... a dialogue with friends... a monologue by dead white men... a looming deadline... ellipses and their improper implementation...

My name is Nico Dicecco. I am a recent graduate of York University's English program. I have volunteered with the Scream for two years; this will be my third. I like poetry. I like film. I like books with pictures in them. One day, I hope to grow up and to be a writer. This will be hard because of all the lying I do. It is more challenging to write horizontally.

OK, I've had my fun. If you're just tuning in now, you don't have to read the beginning bit. Sorry if this disclaimer is too little too late. I've found many disclaimers to be unreliable... take that as a bit of forewarning. A disclaimer of its own, if you will.

I'll be at all of the festival events this year, so if you're looking for some coverage on an event you missed, or another perspective on an event you found, I'm sure I can steal something to inform you with.

Other than that... I'll see ya when I do.