Still the Bashiest Night

By Lori Cayer

Is Bash a misnomer for the venerable poetry night at the Thin Air writers fest? Instilled in the Winnipeg International Writers Festival in the early days, Bash was once a more appropriate word for the evening. The poetry night was the highlight of the festival in those days, if you can imagine such exaltation of poetry at any writer’s festival. It was done up old-school at the old West End Cultural Centre on Ellice Avenue, it was dark and probably smoky, there was only beer to buy and the featured poets shared a social hall table mixed in with the audience tables. One time a couple of famous poets got into a loud argument and refused to perform together, or sit together, or something unconstitutional like that. And the audience was mostly poets and their friends.

The Bash nowadays is stately in comparison. It is a classy and dignified occasion in red theatre chairs, your glass of wine and door prize ticket in hand, and the poets sit together on stage on enviably gorgeous furniture lent by a corporate sponsor. The audience has changed a lot over the years. It’s now mostly people who read instead of mostly people who write, secretly or otherwise. Since the Bash has been held at Manitoba Theatre for Young People it seems there is a core group of poets and writers who come to this event festival after festival, and I swear we all sit in roughly the same seats every year. I know there are more poets in Winnipeg than the few of us and I cannot explain why the rest don’t come out, but those of us who do have a great time hobnobbing on stage during the intermission chatting with the visiting poets, getting books signed and catching up with friends.

Before the readings I always wonder how many new books I’ll be taking home. When I hear a poet read their work aloud I enter the work with them, absorb their intent along with their words and I feel a need to take the book home and really read it that I just don’t feel from reading a review or browsing in the bookstore. I got that feeling in spades on Wednesday night. By way of briefest review, the three men all made me laugh. Glen Downie with the store in his neighbourhood that seems to sell only sawdust and admonitions to would-be customers; Jacob McArthur Mooney whose book Folk is not a funny topic, the crash in his east coast neighbourhood of Swissair 111, but he cuts a wry character on stage; and Gabe Foreman, whose presence and poems were both delightfully ridiculous and sublime.

The two women entranced me with gorgeous language, one in each half of the program. Sandra Ridley’s unbearably beautiful study of a medical world that hardly could seem to have helped anyone (Post-Apothecary), and Jennifer Still’s haunting and honest coming of age poems in Girlwood.

The evening was reliably perfect. Well-chosen poets who behaved very nicely together and didn’t go overtime, and an appreciative audience. Maybe Bash in this incarnation is what the poetry does to one’s literary senses and is the most appropriate name after all for what is still the best night of the festival.