Poetry at the Enpuki-ji Zen Centre and a new theatre piece

I love going to readings at different kinds of spaces: former bath houses (St-Michel, where Infinitheatre  has their main space), strip clubs, drag bars, gardens outside, brunch places, even metro cars. The space itself informs the readings in very key ways and the audience relates to the readings in very different ways as well.

Before the reading: the Enpuki-ji Zen Centre

The other night I saw a reading at the Enpuki-ji Zen Centre in Montreal. The space is amazingly simple and very beautiful. And I've seen events here in the past though this was the first reading I've attended here.

The readings were by writers I know and whose work I know as well. Asa Boxer, Gabe Foreman, Darren Bifford. And a writer I didn't know: Talya Rubin. What a wonderful evening! Each poet read a mix of older published work along with work which they are still developing. What stands out for me is the simple uniqueness of each voice: Boxer is a confident, incredibly intelligent reader whose work needs to be seen to appreciated, where one can linger of his images and the juxtaposition of language he excels at. Despite his play with language, he's a physical poet in many ways, focusing on tangibles and the concrete. Foreman is funny, also intelligent, but with a view of the world that is uniquely his own (his collection from Coach House a couple of years ago, A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Kinds of People is one of my favorite most recent poetry collections). Bifford's work I am less familiar with though I've seen him read in the past (a great interview with him on his work here).

Talya Rubin's collection comes out in the spring from Signal Editions, Véhicule Press's poetry imprint. But more immediately, Rubin has a theatre piece about to take the stage at La Chapelle. The piece is called Of the Causes of Wonderful Things (see a trailer here). The show toured all over Australia and Rubin is bringing it to Montreal for the first time (the first time in North America, in fact).

The premise is this (from the Theatre La Chapelle site): when five children mysteriously disappear in a small town in the American South, their aunt begins a search to find them that leads her underground, literally. The work is an installation theatre piece for a limited audience of 50. Immersed in a noir atmospheric world, Of the Causes of Wonderful Things weaves dark comedy with tones of Faulkner and the Southern Gothic. This deeply human, visionary solo work examines the redemptive power of confronting darkness.

I love theatre and the last few years, it's become a major part of my exploration, both in terms of possible Festival events but also personally. So this piece is definitely a  must see for early November. It shows at La Chapelle from November 4 - 9, each performance limited to only 50 seats.

Yet again, Montreal shows its amazing innovation and variety of events and artists. I travel a lot and see artists (writers, dancers, performers) all over the world, and Montreal is up there with some of the best cities to see art. We should all be out taking advantage of it whenever we can!

Book covers: Foreman to Salinger to Orwell and Gallimard

Since hawking books is part of my livelihood, we often find ourselves discussing book covers around our offices, which ones work and which don't. Which surprised us and which we think fit perfectly with the spirit of a book.

Once summer evening I was walking with some friends across the Plateau and we came across a box of old books that someone had discarded on the street. For some reason, we started a little game where each of us would pick out a book and then try to guess the year by looking only at the cover. It was actually pretty easy and I had some kind of knack for it. Generally I got my books right on the nose or within just a year or two of publication. And when everyone seemed impressed I couldn't really articulate what it was about the design exactly (the colors? the font styles?) which clued me in.

Gabe Foreman's A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Kinds of People

Take this book: it actually won an award last night at the Quebec Writers Award Banquet (which, sadly, I  had to miss). It's an excellent book and uproariously funny. And while Coach House does have some talented and creative designers in house, this one misses the mark in my opinion. I can see where they were going: it's clearly supposed to echo some an encyclopedia cover to fit with the title (and overall theme) of the book. But instead it looks stuffy and recalls some dry academic book that one reads once in graduate school and never touches again...

J.D. Salinger: Franny and Zooey

I have no idea if something about this cover screams out 2011 necessarily but the idea that good book design somehow overrides tastes and current trends is clearly wrong. Take Franny and Zooey, one of my favorite books when I was a teenager. Here is the cover of the edition I read (and re-read and re-read). I still recall so many details about the story when I see this cover (and I have no idea where my copy of this ended up: probably in a box somewhere that got lost in all my moves).

Recently I came across this cover from an online post about re-imagined book covers. I really find this one interesting and it represents a real shift. For so long, book covers seemed to be more about just titles and text rather than details from the story but this one clearly bucks that trend.

J.D.Salinger: Franny and Zooey

Clearly the artist knew about or wanted to allude to the story in the cover chosen which I think makes the book cover far more interesting. The earlier cover recalls French book covers which often (though it's changing, particularly in Quebec) have very simple covers (all those Gallimard editions with the same color, design, font and size). There are exceptions: those Folio editions (2 Euros for a paperback!) are beautiful often and only allude to the book's content with subtlety.

I tend to be the kind of reader who, when I am really enjoying the book, will stop every few pages or so and flip the book around, really examine the book cover and read every single thing on the cover again and again as I consider what I'm reading. The cover becomes an intimate part of the experience of reading the book and like the J.D. Salinger cover above, become intertwined with my experience of reading it. All it takes is for me to find an old edition of a book I once read to recall a thousand details: where I read it, where I was living at the time, what the weather was like, etc.

A Folio edition: Jean-Jacques Schuhl:

Entrée des fantômes

J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye

George Orwell: 1984