So, first: Tomorrow, Sunday, is the 8th annual Richard Foreman Fest, in which artists of various genres are given a text and a set of rules from Richard Foreman's copious notebooks in order to create a short piece. They have ten days to do this. The result is a benefit for Performance Works NW, a terrific rehearsal/performance space in Portland. It's one of my favorite events in Portland, and this year I was asked to set the rules. They are a bit different than the previous seven sets of rules, so I'm curious how it will turn out. Sunday, 5 and 7pm (different line ups!), Someday Lounge, 125 NW 5th.

Second: I forgot to mention this! Spare Room hosted a Portland Polyvocal Poetry event a few weeks ago, and I contributed a piece. You can see videos of the event on YouTube. My piece was fairly different from the rest of the poems; instead of the vocal acrobatics typical of polyvocal poetry, I took a social angle. My piece, "Everyone Gets a Poem", consisted of everyone getting a piece of paper with a poem on it. They were to read the poem, and then either keep it (if they were satisfied with it) or give it to someone they thought might be more satisfied with it, perhaps editing it along the way. The audio isn't, perhaps, much to listen to (although the directions to the poem are read aloud, in case you want to try this at home), but it does capture the "sound" I was hoping for: That of the mix of creativity, conviviality, negotiation, and inquiry that I think of when I think of Portland's poetry scene. (And I'm pretty pleased that the poem seems to have resolved/finished by an edit of the instructions themselves.)

It's a scene that, even though I've been gone for two years, still seems to be the site where my creativity functions. I probably won't be there, physically, in 2010, but almost all of my creative output has occurred there. Hm, hm.


