September 22, 2009
Continuing on with our fruits and veggies thing that we've got going on, Steel Bananas recently launched a monthly reading series called the Monthly Eggplant to be held on the third Tuesday of every month - though this was not the case for the first instalment. Hilariously enough, the event, a joint production between SB and the venerable downtown coffee juggernaut, Zoots Cafe, was conceived barely a month before the borrowed microphone was turned on for the first time and the dulcet tones of various local writers rang filtered through an old, battered and borrowed guitar amp and into the streets of Toronto's Little Portugal. There was no time to breathe, it was thought of almost as a lark and then without any time for thought, we were already planning for episode two with talks of prequels.
September 22, not the prescribed third Tuesday of the month as it so happens; no, we had to bump it back a week.
The four writers who brought forth the goods that fateful evening all had a hand in our upcoming anthology, GULCH: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose, which sort of made it, as Open Book Toronto put it, more or less an infomercial for the book; which is cool by me, because it's a pretty deece book if I do say so myself.
So, with high spirits and astronomical levels of caffeine carousing through our veins, the SB gang and a few friends, well-wishers, walk-ins and other miscellaneous cool cats packed the little coffee spot to the rafters to listen to some live fucking literature.
The first reader at the first Monthly Eggplant was none other than Scotty, an eight-year-old neighbourhood boy who buys cappuccinos for his mother and aunt every day from Zoots and usually keeps the change to buy himself a cookie or something. Scotty, he tore the motherfucking roof off the joint after reading an overwhelmingly sweet poem about his mother and then totally laid waste to the audience by reading a poem that would have been considered good for an adult, but for a third-grader was simply unprecedented. What is up with Scotty? I don't know, though surely we were all privileged to have witnessed the finest literary talent of a generation over at the Eggplant.
The daunting task of following Scotty's devastating performance was left up to Richard Rosenbaum, editor of the anthology Can't Lit: Fearless Fiction From Broken Pencil Magazine. Reading his short story from GULCH, "Chicken Coup," and another piece published several years ago in Broken Pencil, Richard proved to be an admirable foil for Scotty with his witty and savvy prose, which popped and snapped with liveliness in nearly every direction available. An excellent way to open up a reading series, we were very happy to have Richard come out for the occasion.
Next up on the "stage" was the Chief. That's right, Ms. Karen Correia Da Silva was on hand to blow everybody's minds to tiny pieces. And then she stomped on the pieces, grinding them under her heels to make a sort of mind-paste, which I was told she later collected to put on her pizza in lieu of tomato sauce. Man.
The Chief was a poetry beast that night. Fiery, passionate and more intense than most people could probably handle, the Chief tore Zoots to the ground and then built it back up again with her savage and otherworldly reading of her unique conceptual poetry. She rocked back and forth on the spot, her voice percolating and building in intensity with every word. If she had felt like it, I think she might have summoned a hurricane as she appeared to be almost entranced and I certainly followed suit simply by watching her.
We all had to have a break after she was done with us before anyone could even think about literature again.
After taking a breather, the Eggplant raged back with a reading by York University lecturer James Papoutsis, who read a selection from his contribution to GULCH, "Reset" as well as the entirety of his award-winning short story, "Piano Lesson". James was hilarious, charming and very interesting in his prose reading. This quiet and sly performance added a great aspect contrast to the explosive experimentation of Ms. Da Silva. Needless to say, things were going really well.
Finally, to close out the night, a young man by the name of Neal Alexander Armstrong was brought to the "stage", the unassuming man no doubt expected by most to simply read his poems and get everyone the hell out of there without any major mishaps. Well, that didn't really happen. Mr. Armstrong preached, cackled, screamed, sang and bitched for way longer than he was asked to do, but he was masterful in his performance. He led the audience in a dramatic reading of a 1920s bluegrass tune, he relayed a poetic recipe for baba ganoush (the key ingredient being those mushrooms) and another poem dealing with the aftermath of eating said baba ganoush and then delivered a sermon while playing an alarm clock as a zither. Then he disappeared for a while and we were all afraid that he had lost himself in the boiler room. Then he showed up and we all grabbed beers at the Painted Lady. Good night, you should come to the next one.
The next installment of the Monthly Eggplant is going on on the 20th of October, same Eggplant time, same Eggplant place (Zoots Cafe, 1438 Dundas West, 7:30 pm) and it's going to be totally wicked. Seriously. For more info, check out the Monthly Eggplant website right here.
Keep on booshing everybody!
