Now, my French isn’t that fabulous but from the parts of the slam that I do understand, I’m blown away by the talent of these 16 year old kids! I don’t think I have anything in my little notebooks of my own poetry that strikes as powerfully or makes as much “noise” as the poems of these young people.

Hard issues such as racism, drug addiction and immigration are beautifully explored in a beautiful language. What better way to fall in love again with a language? I need to work on my French (and Spanish for that matter) and though poetry is probably a difficult road to take, it may be the more interesting.

Fight with words

Since my camera died and I couldn’t film the whole event in Montreal (many more sound bites as well as interviews with the performers will be available next week on CUTV), I tried to write down phrases that caught my attention. Some of my favourite poems I couldn’t write a thing down because I was too caught up, so I look forward to seeing the sound bites later this week from CUTV!

I erase violence from my dictionary.

No one is really alive here anymore, there are only ghosts.

…this damn frailty we’ve inherited…

Peace…where? when? how?

Some of the items from “What I’ve Prayed For:” a dog, a bike, better parents, a bra, my parents to let me be, my parents to get involved, to lose weight, to stop puking, to get out of this damn college with a fucking degree, talent, implants, fame, a baby, a baby, a baby, a full night’s sleep, a babysitter who isn’t a psycho, a family doctor, a pension, peace in our time…

What a tangled web we whirl…

Watch this new Nagasaki burn…

Give me one more chance… next time I’ll take a bike.

…higher minds that are constantly pressed…

There will be a day of reckoning…Stephen.

Revolution will be a bold flower growing amidst the blackened remains of the Boreal Forrest.

Were you at the pub in Montreal? Were there any other phrases, moments, words that struck you? Please share!

Montreal poets for change event

At a downtown pub in Montreal, 20 some creative people performed their poetry in various styles to an enthusiastic audience. Including Spanish, English and French, long time Montrealers, new Montrealers and former Montrealers weren’t afraid to rant, rave, rap and rhyme on many difficult topics.

Here are some snippits of a few of the performances I managed to capture before my camera died.

And, here’s my partial summary of the performances:

• Betty Esperanza performed the poem “Why” by Bob Flanagan, a performance artist who had cystic fibrosis and died in 1996.
• Claudia Cortes read her work in French about violence.
• LB da Wizard performed “It’s The Big Bang,” which was adopted as the anthem of 100 Thousand Poets for Change.
• Xavier performed in Spanish and French, rapping/singing to the guitar played by Pierre Luc (in video above).
• Native Son dedicated his poem to abused women all over the world (see video above).
• Susan Shulman, a visual artist, payed tribute to all musicians and creative people.
• Kevin Lo a graphic designer and organizer, said, “These are words I’ve organized,” before performing his piece.
• Reginald Kambale talked about hope for Africa (listen to an excerpt in the above video).
• A lady named Deborah wrote a lovely, short poem about “prevailing peace,” partly inspired by the peace garden made for the anniversary of the Dawson shooting.
• Beverly Akerman, author of The Meaning of Children, read an excerpt called “What I pray for” that was an amazing journey through all the different stages of life one can experience.
• Mickey Boston, an underground hip hop artist, performed the last 16 bars of his track called “America.”
• A young, new student named Ethan read his poem “Squirrel” from his phone.
• Megan Ann Ward, after getting lost trying to find the pub, performed “Classroom,” talking about the youth of today and their bravery.
• A young woman from Edmonton (didn’t catch her name) performed her reaction to the media’s definitions and portrayals of activists in her poem “What’s an Activist?”
• Alessandra Naccarato performed “Bold Flower Growing” written around election time.
• Finally, the event ended with a spontaneous performance by Michael Farkas who got the crowd to keep the beat for him while he performed a homage to John Lennon.

Oh, and I can’t seem to embed it properly so here’s one of the photos within the story any ideas on how to make the whole storify appear here?

[View the story "Getting Lost in the Virtual World" on Storify]

The same night as Nuit Blanche, in the tiny Crobar on Crescent, all-girl band Line Spectra launched their first music video of their song City Stars, an ode to Montreal. The version they chose for their launch night was the French one – Les Etoiles. So fun!

Line Spectra is off to the Canadian Music Fest in Toronto. They will be performing March 12. I hope they do well!

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life  – Pablo Picasso Walking through the Yanamilla prison in Ayacucho- your hand is your passport of entry.  One needs to make their way through several checkpoints, where, if deemed “suitable”, your hand gets tattooed with stamps of approval to move on to the next checkpoint. The stamps are the differentiating accessory between the ones who are able to leave at the end of the day, and the … Read More

via WanderLust

My friend visited the Yanamilla prison in Ayacucho and has a few revelations to share. For example, one usually doesn’t think of mothers or children in prison, or at least I didn’t, so this post was a bit of a shock for me.

Another shock – though really, once I think about it I’m not that surprised – was that most of those caught for drug related crimes are the small fish. The desperately poor people who took the job as a last resort and have little to do with the large scale operations of drug trafficking. I have recently been learning a lot about Latin American countries, their cultures and their issues and more and more see how complicated and how deep the whole drug and weapon trafficking situation goes.

I have no answers and there are no simple solutions but the first step is probably awareness, and blog posts like Prisoners of Circumstance are a good place to start.

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,400 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 17 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 23 posts. There were 43 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 37mb. That’s about 4 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was December 13th with 89 views. The most popular post that day was World Cup Hangover.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, digg.com, facebook.com, slashingtongue.com, and the-best-twitter.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for jesse shea-cowper, world cup hangover, donovan chronicle, “close-up.jpg”, and johannadonovan@readersdigest.com.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

World Cup Hangover July 2010

Everyday Adversity March 2010
1 comment

About February 2010

The Ultimate Donation April 2010

Our future leaders… November 2010

“Many of them just don’t know how to relate to the written word anymore,” said the professor. A multi-talented and extremely intelligent woman, this was only one of her disturbing opinions on how our increasingly image-based culture is hurting the abilities of students when it comes to the basic skill of writing.

Many of the students in her class were international students and writing in their second language. But it wasn’t always the writing that was bad, it was the inability to follow simple instructions and guidelines on how to format, for example, a business report or inter-office memo!

The written word itself and our relationship with it is evolving and there is no use in trying to stop this change but I think we might be losing something important in the process. I grew up on tangible, turn-the-actual-page books and bedtime reading as well as studied English literature, so I guess I’m a little old fashioned, but I’m still a part of the generation that has transitioned into the world of the Internet, Facebook and Twitter, but only to a point!

After coming across this article called The Shadow Scholar about a guy who is hired by students to write their papers, I am now even more concerned about our future leaders in, apparently, any and all fields. This “Ed Dante” has written on every subject under the sun and all the way to the doctorate level. Now the words of Sir Ken Robinson on how, in short, university degrees are a dime a dozen rings even more true. If students are cheating their way through university and getting a nice degree that says they have all these wonderful skills when they probably don’t, where is the value in the whole process?

“I live well on the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has created,” wrote “Ed Dante” in the article. What a telling statement, along with this one:

Students who come to American universities from other countries find that their efforts to learn a new language are confounded not only by cultural difficulties but also by the pressures of grading. The focus on evaluation rather than education means that those who haven’t mastered English must do so quickly or suffer the consequences.

More people really need to start reading Ken Robinson and his ideas about how the education system is crushing creativity and really needs a good overhaul to suit the present age.  The shadow scholar’s road to where he is today seems like the perfect example of what Robinson has been trying to bring to light when it comes to the experience of education students have today.

“Ed Dante” writes that “the story of how I got into this job may be instructive. It is mostly about the tremendous disappointment that awaited me in college.” What he met in university was that grades and competition were still number one and “the threat of failure was used to encourage learning.” At least he managed to escape the crushing effect of the current system and didn’t lose his creative drive that is slowly ground out of most students at a very early age according to Robinson. The only problem is that his creativeness capitalizes on the failure of education:

Say what you want about me, but I am not the reason your students cheat.

You know what’s never happened? I’ve never had a client complain that he’d been expelled from school, that the originality of his work had been questioned, that some disciplinary action had been taken. As far as I know, not one of my customers has ever been caught.

That’s a bit scary, no? Just take a look at some of the emails the shadow scholar had to decipher, there are some classics. But my favourite line is from the shadow scholar himself: “I’m planning to retire. I’m tired of helping you make your students look competent.”