Naomi Beth Wakan and David Bateman at The Old Crow Cafe July 18th

is happy to present

NAOMI BETH WAKAN AND DAVID BATEMAN

reading from ‘pause’— response tanka

PLACE:     THE OLD CROW CAFÉ, FOLKLIFE VILLAGE, GABRIOLA

TIME:        JULY 18^TH, 2013, 7:00 pm - ALL WELCOME

ADMISSION: BY DONATION

Contact for information and reservations:altogetherlisa@yahoo.ca

Naomi Beth Wakan, Gabriola’s resident and profuse poet, and Toronto performance poet, David Bateman, (who will be familiar to Gabriolans from the performances he has offered at Poetry Gabriola Festivals) will be presenting a reading of their dual-written poem “pause” at the Old Crow Café, Folklife Village, Gabriola, at 7 pm, on July 18^th.

Soon after the 2010 event “Canada Speaks,” held at Dragon’s Lodge on Gabriola Island, where David offered a presentation, Naomi and David began to correspond by email and created, over the course of eight months, a full length manuscript in tanka form that chronicles their responses to a diverse array of life circumstances. From forms of drag and masquerade found in both culture and nature, to the daily chores of keeping homes in the city (David), and within the rural setting of Gabriola (Naomi), both poets strove to navigate the essence of an ancient form of Japanese poetry in order to reveal that that essence itself lies within so many opposing, contradictory, fleeting, and at times beautiful instances of reflection, meditation and celebration.

As a kind of call and response across generations, genders, and geographic sites, from two very different poets, pause explores the ways in which tanka can elegantly defamiliarize the familiar and bring two disparate voices together in conversation.

no matter 

how many words we say

to each other

the essence lies in the spaces between

the essence lies in the pauses                                                   (from ‘pause’)

The generous support of The League of Canadian Poets and Poetry Gabriola is gratefully acknowledged