Winnipeg

Wednesday March 11th, Doors open 7:00 PM, Show 8:00 PM
Location: Aqua Books, 274 Garry Street, 2nd floor
Host: Wabanakwut Kinew

Poets:
Andrea von Wichert
Di Brandt
Marie Annehart Baker
Skip Stone * WINNER
T'ai Pu

About the Event

Winnipeg is known for its arctic temperatures and hardy breed of inhabitants. And boy, did we prove that the night of our Poetry Face-Off. In most places, -40 in mid-March may as well be followed by swarms of locusts, but here it’s par for the course (unfortunately).

Aqua Books kindly kept us warm that night. Aqua is one of those places that just make you feel right at home as soon as you walk through the thousands of used books. The store is a bit of a cultural hub; there’s almost always some sort of book launch, concert, reading or storytelling going on up on the second floor, always presided over by Margaret Laurence’s stone angel (that’s right, the statue from the film of ’07… she lives there).

Poetry enthusiasts - once they were fully defrosted and regained the ability to bend their legs - filled the room to the point of us needing more chairs. To kick things off, we had the honour of award-winning poet Chandra Mayor reading us some of her poignant and hilarious pieces in a non-competitive set.

The first competing poet to strut their stuff that night was Andrea von Wichert. Her piece isolated those few milliseconds when a cyclist soars through the air, just before landing on a car windshield. An excellent poem that put a twist on this year’s theme.

Next up, the man that ended up winning: Skip Stone. A past member of the Winnipeg slam team, Skip had been out of the circuit for a while. It took some coaxing, but we managed to resurrect the performer in him, to the absolute delight of our audience. Love and flight may be an obvious correlation, but Skip took it to the next level with his poem “Mayday.”

From there, Annharte, took to the stage with her vivid poem “Fly Lady Fashion.” We were fortunate enough to convince Di Brandt to make the two-and-a-half hour drive in from Brandon, MB. It was worth the ride, in my opinion. Lastly, the ever-energetic verbal percussionist T’ai Pu gave the audience a pretty amazing poem, complete with four different voices and a pilates ball (you kinda had to be there).

It was a terrific evening that let us forget the about the frosty winds outside, at least for a couple hours.

Andrea von WichertAndrea von Wichert paints, writes and performs, but rarely simultaneously. For the last three years she has been a member of the Winnipeg Poetry Slam team at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Toronto, Halifax and Calgary. Her work has appeared in "Prairie Fire Magazine" and "Mic Check: An Anthology of Spoken Word in Canada." She is the creator and producer of Girls!Girls!Girls! an annual women's art show and cabaret and is one of the organizers of the Winnipeg Poetry Slam. She prefers to spend her time at home playing with her cat and contemplating the state of Humanity.

AnnharteAnnharte (Little Saskatchewan First Nation) is Anishinaabe and a Winnipeg born/based writer, advocate/organizer for people with disabilities and member of the Aboriginal Writer's Collective. Her published books are: Being on the Moon, Coyote Columbus Cafe and Exercises in Lip Pointing. A current project is a memoir as she bases creativity and inspiration from journal writing. She has also written essays, book reviews and plays besides being a storyteller in the Manitoba Public Schools. Consequently, she finds a real profession as being a grandmother.

Di BrandtDi Brandt is the author of a dozen books of poetry, fiction and essays. Her poetry has been adapted for video, film, installation art, music and dance. Her poetry titles include questions i asked my mother; Agnes in the sky; Jerusalem, beloved; and Now You Care. She has received numerous awards and recognitions for her poetry, including the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada, the Canadian Authors Association National Poetry Prize, a Silver National Magazine Award and the Foreword Magazine Gold Medal for General Fiction (with Annie Jacobsen and Jane Finlay-Young, for the collaborative novel, Watermelon Syrup). Di Brandt holds a Canada Research Chair in English and Creative Writing at Brandon University.

Skip StoneSkip Stone is a Winnipeg born writer who lives his civilian life under the alias Jonathan Surla. He is a member of Winnipeg B-boy crew Dangerous Goods under many aliases, and tried to be an actor in Toronto for what he feels may have been waaaaaay too long. He's been a member of the Winnipeg Poetry Slam Team twice and competed in Toronto and Halifax. He raps, wears hats, teaches kids how to boogie, and in his spare time he likes to write short bios for his various other aliases.

T'ai PuT'ai Pu has worked as a verbal-percussionist with bands, d.j.'s, poets, painters, healers, dancers, children and seniors in schools and extra curricular programs, in clubs and at festivals. Perfroming as PuConA, the intent at a gathering is to join with the audience in a celebration of that moment and the purpose of that gathering. Using chants, drums and beatboxing in combination with verbalz, spitz and spok'n werd to commune and to 'call-out' cats, performances tend to turn into circles with audiences becoming participants. Free up on the fire of word-sound power.