Elephant Engine High Dive Revival

My love affair with poetry is largely due to Mongo at Indeefeed:Performance Poetry. There's a link to it on my blog. If you don't go there, go there. It is the main reason I'm becoming a poet and while it's not where my interest in poetry began, it's where my interest in poetry was fixed.

The Elephant Engine High Dive Revival is a tour of some of the more regular spoken word poets that I discovered from listening to Indeefeed. This is something I would love to see. It's been a really long time since I've seen live poetry performed, and never by these people in person. I also admit that most of this is because of Andrea Gibson. I don't know if she's on the official tour, but she is my favorite living poet. Give me a second to see if she's on the tour...
...alright, couldn't figure it out. I'm pretty sure she is though. That's not really the issue anyways, since the tour doesn't go to Canada. Damn it. How come all the poets I know and love are either dead or American or both. (Leonard Cohen doesn't count, because he's doesn't have the same place in my mind as someone like Andrea Gibson, i.e. I can see myself sit down with Andrea Gibson and talk. I don't think I could do that with Leonard Cohen no matter how cool he is).
How come I feel more interested in American writers and not with Canadian writers. There are very few Canadian writers I'm interested in. Cohen is the only one that I can think off. I might have worked Robertson Davies in there once, but I was frustrated by "What's Bread in the Bone." The majority of my favorite writers are Americans, though this is due to the fact I'm a fan of the Beats. The rest are from England, and also special notices from Russia and Chile. Is this bad for me or is National Literature going to be dead because of the internet? There's really not a lot to be proud of about being a Canadian. I'm proud of the health care system, because it helped me fix my back without bankrupting my family. This is something I am thankful for, though with all the town hall meetings in America it's something I don't think I'm being as vocal with. I'd write something about it, but the entire fact that a bunch of rednecks believe that a government that cares about your health is evil, while having an army full of gun wielding murderers to slaughter innocents is God's will and thus should be actively supported. This is such an alien idea to me that I am filled with a rage that feels like a cubist painting, all crooked and out of sink and that my body is distorting into a way that is not normally scene by human eyes.
Anyways, before I got onto that tangent about rednecks and being Canadian I was talking about poets and poetry. I was talking about my identity of being a poet. I don't know if I'll be remembered as a poet, or even if my poetry is that good. Either way I like this kind of poetry and I liked at least one of the poets involved. If any of you guys are reading this, if you could run this through Waterloo at some point that would be wonderful.

Canadian Literature and It's Relationship To Me

I'm writing this at the public library in my hometown and you should expect more posts from here in recent days. I'm hanging out here to save money as whenever I'm at Revel I tend to buy stuff, usually food and I've already bought a book and an ice cream with the large amount of government money I came in with recently. I can also get more writing done here I imagine. I'll tell you how it goes.
Anyways, Today I'd like to talk about Canadian Literature. It's something that I'm really comfortable with, as I don't really see myself as being involved in Canadian Literature. I'm not familiar with Canadian Literature and have very little knowledge of it other then what I've heard. I read very little Canadian writers. Most of the people I read are either American or British, and among by favorite authors are a Russian and a Chilean. Also, I don't really know if I want to be considered involved in Canadian Literature because I don't feel that Canadian Literature is really taken seriously. Maybe it's because most great Canadian writers haven't been dead long enough, but I just never saw myself as a real Canadian. I just sort of live here. I don't even know if I'll spend most of my life in Canada. The idea of living in another country is seeming more and more appealing, since I feel dangerously close to America sometimes. I'm growing more and more distrustful of America and the capitalism I believe it represents. I'm becoming more and more worried about what I hear of economics, which I'm seeing more and more as a lie, a giant con, that the entire world is being brought into.
Anyways, back to Canadian Literature, I'm wondering right now if I am going to end up in that category because I'm a born Canadian. I don't even know that much about my native literature, except it has something to do about survival. I don't think much of my writing has anything to do with survival. I don't even know if that was just Margaret Atwood shooting off about Canadian Literature. Anyways, because of my ambiguous relationship with my national literature, I plan on doing readings of the following writers in the near future.

1. Robertson Davies (I really liked The Rebel Angels. I found What's Breed in the Bone pretty long-winded and boring though. I figure I have to finish the trilogy off at some point though. I'm hoping it will be better then the last one)
2. Timothy Findley (A friend suggested his book Pilgrim)
3. Mordecai Richler (No reason, he's just Canadian and I like his name or something)
4. Leonard Cohen (I figure I should add a poet and Leonard Cohen is someone I feel I should read more off)

And that's it. After that I feel I have read them I will think I will have a better handle on Canadian Literature. I may also read some Margaret Atwood, though my last English teacher said she came off as an angsty white girl in her novels. Other then that I don't know what else I should do about this. Probubly forget the whole thing.