projector-verse-august-24Sunday August 24 1:00 – 2:30 PM
Harvey + Abel + Reid
a KSW series @
UNIT/PITT Projects, 236 East Pender St., housing the KSW library

Poets / writers presenting poems / antipoems / language.
Spoken; visually projected.
Each will read one short text, followed with open discussion.

Karlene Harvey projects Mary Augusta Tappage
Jordan Abel projects Tom Comitta
Jamie Reid projects Gerry Gilbert

Mary Augusta Tappage
“Baby Basket”

Baby baskets are made different these days – not so good, no, not so good.
In those days we made a frame first of saskatoon branches. They are strong. They make a good frame. Then there are two ways to go:
You can put a covering of birchbark on the frame and sew it tight. Or you can put the saskatoon branches close together and cover it with buckskin, untanned buckskin, so it won’t go soft. Yes, either way.
You’ve got to decide for yourself which way is best. If you use the birchbark you’ve got to line it. I lined my basket first with cloth all over. Birchbark sweats, you see. Birchbark is tight and won’t let out the air. And you’ve got to keep it dry and clean.
Or you use buckskin – is a strong basket, that buckskin! You don’t tan it, no. Just take off the hair and clean the blood out and then you’ve got to be quick and sew it before it gets dry while the hide is still green. Yes, is a strong basket.
Then inside for the baby – yes, inside you put in the bottom with dried wild hay; they used to cut it and dry it and store it. I used feathers, yes, for my children I used feathers. And they all have a juniper hoop across the basket near the head to hold the blankets off the baby when he’s sleeping. And he’s laced in tight and cosy with buckskin thong.
They don’t put a spout in no more – but they used to, yes. They used to make a tube of birchbark and sew it and stick it out the bottom end. The urine used to go out this way. But as we grew and got civilized, we didn’t do this anymore. We did away with the spout.
I don’t know about this getting civilized. In those days it’s birchbark or buckskin, dry hay or feathers. Now it’s cardboard and gingham and no spout for the urine. Our baby basket, our eklah-day-lah, it’s not so good now, not so good.

Tom Comitta
From O

[O is available to read online or download as pdf at the UglyDucklingPresse.org homepage]

Gerry Gilbert
“Poem to the Editor of Scientific American Flatly”

i didn’t see the 50-man driftwood stump
beached before me on the high tide line
floated in on the strength of silence
i was seeing you
knocked out by what you were looking at
when we woke up we were talking
“ wooden iceberg”
“a pyramid holding its breath”
“barely room for us above the water line”
“it’s the word for deadhead where your boat turns the page”
“you just hope it shows”
“pre-columbian come to this”
we crossed paths and walked in our opposite ways around pancake bay
if it had been shrove tuesday i would have added “i just heard that we have a sense of
each other’s presence going back to using sound underwater like we’re using light
right about now”

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