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Michael Boyle's weblog

Found while moving!

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Tonight when moving the last of my stuff I came across my old copy of Millennium Cabaret (and yes it’s amazing to me that the site is still up). It’s a CD that (now) doubles as an important cultural record of a scene that thrived in Montreal throughout the 90s – and stretched backwards to the early 80s, as I recall the history.

The CD is full of performance poetry – a recorded anthology put together by Ian Ferrier including a who’s who of what was once a really thriving community here. Check out the website for some clips – but the CD itself is a wonderful document. I won’t name everyone (again, check the site) but if you can find a copy (or convince Ian that it’s time to put the whole thing online), you’ll find early work by Heather O’Neill, now-Toronto-expats Buffy Bonanza, Julie Crysler, and David Jager. It also features the ever-wonderful Cat Kidd (on temporary – I hope – leave from Montreal), the dean of the Montreal scene, Fortner Anderson, and many, many more.

I received an interesting

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email yesterday:

This Friday May 18th, in an unprecedented gesture, the Union des crivains du Qubec will present an evening of ENGLISH poetry and literature in performance.
The show is entitled “Howls and Whispers (Souffles et hurlements)” and it highlights a remarkable cultural breakthrough that has occurred in the spoken word scene in Montreal.
Due to pioneer work by a list of names on both sides of the linguistic divide, the scene for performance literature has become a place where English and French performers know each other, work together and share an audience – an altogether amazing event when one considers that poetry is probably the most language-specific cultural activity one can find.

The show will feature a panoply of the most interesting writers and performers in the city, including Cat Kidd and jack beets, Fortner Anderson, and musician Tom Walsh – all in one of the best locations in town.
[ahem – I should have mentioned that location – it’s at the Lion D’Or, on Ontario St. E. Did you know that Ontario St had that name before the province of Ontario did?]

Gone!

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I have removed the Weblog ad banner link thingie from the bottom of this site. If and when there have been speed problems with mikel.org, it has more often than not been related to the performance of that little feature… and it was holding things up too often for my taste.

Just got an email

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from Station Rose announcing their 114th webcast.

STReaming a la Station Rose, started in January 1999, blends performance, lecture (STR in conversation with guests in the studio) and multimedia jam sessions into a unique form of Net Art. 112 webcasts have taken place so far. Main topics in the program of Station Rose webcasts are live-sessions in realtime, where sounds&visuals are streamed from the studio into the net.

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