New Music Alert! Just before COVID I put my heart and soul into a new band. We played one thrilling gig and then the pandemic hit. We also recorded a few tracks that I intended to release as an EP. But it has been almost 2 years since then and I honestly don't know whether... Continue Reading →
You wouldn't think it possible, really. That in this day and age the world's largest jazz festival would commission a white theatre director to create SLĀV, a major dramatic work based on African American slave songs starring a white singer and featuring a predominantly white cast. And yet, as anyone following the cultural news knows,... Continue Reading →
Last night I attended an excellent event put on by the Public Policy Forum called Social Media and Democracy: What Can Be Done? at which no less than 5 smart and highly informed guest speakers from journalism, government, academia, civil society and the tech sector discussed the state of the internet and the threat of 'surveillance... Continue Reading →
Last night Annie and I attended the opening of the Biennale. Its distinguishing conceit is that the work on display represents a selection of recent (2014-17) acquisitions by the National Gallery. So, not a truly contemporary biennale, but for all that a powerful one, featuring some exciting and intriguing artworks. The best work is –... Continue Reading →
Madness. SXSW Interactive is utter madness. 75,000 people, 400 scheduled conference sessions a day, just one poor brain and one weak body to drag back and forth, into which only so many ideas and contacts and information and free food and liquor can be poured before you break down and beg for mercy. "Please, just... Continue Reading →
I turn 50 today. Ta-da! Not such a big deal to me, but hey, it's an excuse to share this little compilation of some 21 recordings from my lifetime as a musician and performing poet that I have recently compiled in a SoundCloud page. The tracks date from 1981 to 2013, and cover some of... Continue Reading →
Last night at the Capital Slam I met a poet who recently returned from several months in the Philippines and Nicaragua. In both countries he gave numerous poetry workshops. Very cool. He is a hard-hitting poet whose piece about the selling of girls into sexual slavery in Asia last night was brutally intense. His name... Continue Reading →
I've had a nasty prejudice against Poetry Slams ever since I led the first Canadian team to the first National Poetry Slam in San Francisco in 1992. That event was so so unsatisfying in so many ways - so self-indulgent and self-satisfied and poetically unadventurous - that it led my poetic teammates (Kedrick James and... Continue Reading →
Today is my birthday and I am feeling good. Not just because I can be thankful for another year of relatively good health, a loving family and a peaceful, prosperous homeland, but also because with this blog post I am kicking off an exciting new phase of my professional life. Giving birth, if you will,... Continue Reading →
YOU ARE YOUR MEDIA 