There’s a poetry slam starting in Victoria today, The Canadian Festival of the Spoken Word.

I’m incredulous towards Canadian poetry (hence the “bah, humbug” in the title). Just as in painting, where I think cleaving to our G7 heritage limits us, I think Canadian poetry typically overuses weather themes to the point of extreme boredom. It’s the poetry-is-to-television equivalent of watching the Weather Channel (not Service, though — his stuff is gold).

“Oh, Canadian poetry”, I teased a Canadian poet once, “Let me guess: The bleakness and isolation of the farmhouse in Winter is a metaphor for the bleakness and isolation of the souls of its occupants?”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, do you?”

“Not at all,” I said, “but that’s how I feel.”

Anyway, I always hold out hope for art — hence the “?” in the title — so I’ll be attending to see how slamtastic the festival is, and hopefully hear some good stuff.

I expect any Canadian spoken word festival to have a healthy complement of Maritime and Acadian accents, if not outright French. In my experience that’s where really exciting usage which is uniquely Canadian comes from. I’d really like to see something Aboriginal too, like the rappers on APTN.

That might be a tall order for Victoria, but we’ll see.