a.rawlings and i run a little literary shindig in toronto called lexiconjury. our format is pretty standard... two to three featured readers, and an open mic portion. we have a special rule with the open mic: read one poem of your own, and one cover poem (a poem by someone else), a tradition started way back in the early nineties at the cafe may in toronto (a reading series that i was cohost of for a stretch). the cover poem rule has served us well, all things considered. it was instituted as a way to foster a "what are you reading, what are you writing" atmosphere, and has for the most part succeeded. open mic participants come prepared to share a cover and an original poem, and newcomers are quick to adopt the process. now last night we had an interesting incident. we had a bit of a sleepy little reading, but the readers were good and in general there seemed to be happiness in the room. during the open mic a new face in the crowd took to the stage, and was greeted with a less than ideal reaction. this isn't typical, but the majority of the audience found his material to be, well, aggressively misogynist, and began bristling. as co-organizer, i bristled more than most. there is always one who seems to feed off of the hostility of their audience, that takes such hostility to be a mark of the effectiveness of their writing, and this reader seemed no exception: one way to earn ire quickly is to bang on about the-bitch-that-done-ya-wrong.
what's more, the reader flaunted the rules attempting to do three poems instead of one and a cover. (to contrast, there was another new reader who, upon hearing the rules, read one of the provided covers, and read it well, then read his own work, and was quite well received).
so here's the issue. we were approached after the reading by a young writer who was offput by the way we handled the situation. she said that while she did not agree with the reader's style or presumed politics, she did think that the snide chatter it engendered, especially among the people of authority and older writers in the room, was uncalled-for and created an unfriendly, in-crowd atmosphere that was in stark contrast to the rumours she heard about our series. what's more, i cut the reader off with little aplomb. i admit i was (over)reacting in part to the sector of the room that believes that the open mic is not worth the trouble.
what are the politics of an open mic? on the one hand, there is the "i don't like what you say but defend your right to say it" issue, but on the other hand, can you blame people for reacting in a hostile way to someone who obviously is trying to provoke hostility at some level? how would fellow babblers have handled that situation? what do people think of the cover poem idea? for those who have been there, what is your take on the lexiconjury series, in whole or in part?
as a side note (though not unrelated), how can we encourage more women to read in our open mic portion?
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posted 06 June 2002 04:52 PM
