Thursday November 25th is the Third Annual Peterborough Poetry Slammiversary Cabaret and Ball!

An evening filled with the poetry, music, comedy, dance, burlesque, hip hop, and beat boxing of your Peterborough slam community and beyond.

Come see first-timers and favourites grace the stage of the Spill for a night of hilarity and heartbreak as we celebrate three years of poetry and community.
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Proud to present your feature poets and hosts for the evening, the brilliant and talented 2 Dope Boys in a Cadillac all the way from the West Coast, shayne avec y grec and Johnny MacRae.

DOORS AT EIGHT. This will be floor-sitting room only!

$5-10/PWYC.

'More likely to be found trekking thru the woods than cruising the streets rockin' fly rims, 2 Dope Boys in a Cadillac are individually known as Johnny MacRae & shayne avec i grec. Collectively they have represented three slam teams, hiked the rockiest mountaintops, participated in The Banff Centre's Spoken Word Program, rocked the hottest microphones (it explains the burns on their lips), and look forward to tag-teaming you in an orgy of titillating spoken word and sounds… “shayne and Johnny and assorted other Buds are the spine of the scene in Victoria/Vancouver and terrific young poets. They push envelopes wherever they are!" ~Bob Holman"'

Many thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts for their support.

Fundraiser for the Peterborough Poetry Slam's operational costs & the Team's travel costs.

CALL OUT FOR PERFORMERS

On Thursday November 25th, the Peterborough Poetry Slam will be celebrating its THIRD ANNIVERSARY.

So we are going to do something a little bit different this month. And we need YOU to flaunt your stuff.

The Slammiversary Cabaret & Party needs your talents, whether they be spoken, musical, written, physical, lyrical, comedic, tragic, theatrical, beatboxtastic, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera... We are looking for your poetry, spoken word, dance, theatre, comedy, covers, improv, music, songs, collaborations and everything and all. No theme required, but this is going to be a celebration in every sense of the word.

Think awesome. Think unexpected. Think around 5 minutes (feel free to request longer and we'll figure it out). Think confident and celebratory.

E-mail ptbopoetryslam@gmail.com to sign-up with your act before November 20th. The sooner, the better!

ALSO: If you aren't necessarily the on-stage-type, but want to contribute through something like baking, or visual art, please e-mail and we can figure it out!

Rock on!

SEPTEMBER 23rd SLAM!!!!

What's up Poetry lovers. With lots of features and a bunch of special events coming up, we've got an amazing season planned for you. And it all starts on Thursday Sept 23rd with the Toronto Poetry Slam Team. They will be bringing teams pieces, personal pieces, comedic pieces, real, truthful, activist pieces, and a hell of a lot of love. If you never seen a Slam team before - or even if you have - it is definitely a unique and not to be missed experience.

So bring your poems. Bring your ears. Bring your fire. And remember poetry is not just what you read in textbooks. These Professional Oratorical Education Technicians are here to break the myth.... even if you know nothing about poetry, You are still the expert. Because this poetry is about life, and we all know what it means to live. So come out. Be a judge. Be wild. Be free. Or just be. But be present. Cuz it's gonna be ______ (you fill in the adjective,)!!!!

Sign up at 7:30. Show at 8. See you then.

Peterborough Slam Finals - TUESDAY JUNE 15

Heh Everyone,

We've got the P-Borough Slam Finals coming up: two weeks today... Tuesday June 15th. Of course it's going to be amazing.... the typically chill and welcoming Slam Scene, plus we have a possible feature in the works to add to the amazingness. But more on that later.

Calling all poets!!... The top four poets from the June Slam will qualify for the Peterborough Slam Team, which means, among other things you'll get to go to the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Ottawa this October. It's an amazing opportunity to get inspired, have fun, and be blown away be the wonderfully welcoming talent from across the country.!!

The Slam will proceed as usual two rounds of poetry.. Don't hesitate to re-perform old poems... We all like listening to songs more than once, so why not poems too, right???

HEADS UP!

The FINALS for the Peterborough Poetry Slam Spoken Word Team will be Tuesday June 15th at The Spill!

Keep watch for more information!

Next Slam This TUESDAY!

Remember it's Tuesday the 18th, not Thursday! We're switching it up for the summer. Luckily, Tuesdays are now $4 pint days at the Spill.

Bring two poems to compete, volunteer to be an audience "judge," or just sit back, get a drink and enjoy.

Sign-up will start at 7:30, with the show starting at 8. Actually. Show up between then to be an audience judge! It's fun, we promise.

Invite your friends! Come admire the artwork, drink beer or coffee or tea, read poetry into a mic for the first or fiftieth time, giggle in the corner (between poems, of course).

New poets are ALWAYS welcome and encouraged.

For those haven't been before, a poetry slam is a mock competition between poets. There are two rounds of 8-12 poets, who each perform a poem and are then given a score from 1.0 (meh) - 10.0 (fuck yeah!) by a panel of five randomly selected audience judges. Often emotionally and politically charged, the audience is expected and allowed to cheer and jeer the judges and the poets and each other. Expect any and all styles of poetry from folk ballads to hip-hop. And remember - the points aren't the point, the poetry is the point!

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About Our Feature Poet:

Nathanaël Larochette is a 25 year old Ottawa-area spoken word poet and musician, director of Ottawa’s Capital Slam series, a four-time Capital Slam monthly champion, a three time finalist, a two-time competitor at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word, a CBC poetry face-off regional champion, and a poetry workshop facilitator in schools across Ottawa. Nathanaël lives to create, hope, and dream because he believes these are the keys to the meaning of our being.
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Want a chance to perform at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word in Ottawa with other Peterborough poets? C'mon...

This slam will be one of four operating as part of the selection process for the CFSW. Our lovely and (sometimes) humble poetry slam crowd will be sending a slam team to the festival! Be apart of the action. You don't have to be a seasoned pro to go to CFSW, but you might become one by the time you get back...

If you want to read your poem but not be considered for the slam team, that's totally acceptable. But if you've always wanted to challenge yourself a bit poetry-wise and work WITH other poets then now is the time to do it.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The Fugitives in Peterborough THIS Monday April 5th!

Holy crap!

The Fugitives are awesome! And they are coming all the way from the west coast to Peterborough for a last minute house show on Monday April 5th on their way to the east coast!

Come see the combined brilliant poetic musical magic stylings of Vancouver artists Adrian Glynn, Barbara Adler, Brendan McLeod, and Steve Charles. Poet/performer/storyteller Brendan McLeod graced the Peterborough Poetry Slam's stages earlier this year, but to see The Fugitives in full-awesome-band-form, you've had to go all the way to Toronto to try and get a seat at the Toronto Poetry Slam or sold out show!

Now we get to be up close and personal at a special acoustic set at 640 George St. (The good people at 640 George have been nice enough to host us at the last minute, so not too much tomfoolery, please!)

Donation of $5-10 pay-what-you-can will be recommended to keep the band on its merry way (and that is a STEAL for this show).

You HAVE to make it out to this, no matter what. They'll be driving from Sault Ste. Marie that day, so the show will start around 9pm.

Make sure to check out their myspace for tracks off the NEW ALBUM, Eccentrically We Love!

www.fugitives.ca
www.myspace.com/canadianfugitives

"This show is simply brilliant.”- CBC

“A hypnotic and swirling mix of voice and music that straddles the line between traditional songwriting and poetry” – Vue Weekly (Edmonton)

“Wildly talented” - Georgia Straight (Vancouver)

“The Fugitives are capable of achieving dizzying, Arcade Fire-ish crescendos, replete with parallel melodies, complex harmonies and brimming torrents of emotion.” – Uptown Magazine (Winnipeg)

“One of the best events we’ve ever had…right up there with Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey” – Executive Director, Dylan Thomas Festival (UK)

“A surprising auditory experience blending elements of bluegrass, jazz, folk and spoken word. They are new age pioneers, unabashedly forging a new sound, and exploring new mediums to do so.” – Uniter (Winnipeg)

About the Album

In late 2009, The Fugitives released a short EP, Find Me, which tracked extreme examples of people living in isolation: a park ranger suffering from cabin fever, a woman trapped in an unforgiving marriage, and a man whose death went unnoticed for seven years. Maybe the band’s just getting old and morbid, but the songs made them uneasy. Not to mention neurotic. After a brief spell where they walked around telling everyone, “who cares, nothing matters, we’re all going to die alone,” they decided this response was boring, and headed back into the studio.

Eccentrically We Love, The Fugitives’ newest full-length, takes anxiety and isolation as its starting point. As it turns out, the band thinks anxiety is good. They are also fans of: frustration, discontent, being overworked, and living in broken down houses with noisy roommates. It’s not that they’ve suddenly developed a pessimistic worldview – the album is primarily about gratitude, but it avoids clichés by centering on topics we’re normally not appreciative of. The album opener, ‘Snail Shell’ revels in the everyday annoyance of hearing your neighbor’s love life through the walls (and sometimes ceiling). The title track celebrates human relationships at their most exasperating, and ‘All this Trouble’ is an affectionate list of life’s sand-papery frustrations. In a sense, these are all songs about love and affection, but they aren’t offering anyone bouquets of flowers. If Find Me was about people lost to isolation, Eccentrically We Love chronicles the beautiful itchiness of being close. It’s about getting irritated, angered and distraught, and the exhilarating necessity of feeling this way.

The secret to the theme of this album might lie in how it was made. Immediately upon their return from a seven-week Canadian tour to support Find Me, the band locked themselves in North Vancouver’s Neighbourhood studios and embarked upon a month of recording. After 1,536 hours in each other’s company (yes, they were counting), the group decided that they still liked each other. More than that, they realized that their different musical backgrounds and lyrical approaches actually brought them closer, and made them a better band. Eccentrically We Love is the result of co-writing, co-editing, and co-performance – a true collaboration that balances eclecticism with the kind of unity a band earns by spending days and days in each other’s company.

Featuring co-production by Leo-Award winning producer\composer Matthew Rogers, guidance from Canadian art-rock icon Veda Hille, as well as guest appearances by Jesse Zubot and Rod Murray, Eccentrically We Love expands on the “top notch” vocal harmonies established in Find Me (ChartAttack) and the tight composition of their Canadian Folk Music Award nominated debut. The album will be supported by a cross-Canada tour in April 2010, a brief stint to Europe in the fall, and a request for fans and friends to send ‘small troubles’ to their website. These daily annoyances are to be funny, poignant, or heartfelt. Hopefully, when all is done, a quick survey of the amalgamated catalogue will make one feel grateful (and normal) for the beautiful, unavoidable difficulties in life.