TAC Says No, WOTS Says Yes, Neil Says Let's Dance

I am 0 for 2 in the arts council grants department. A few years ago the Ontario Arts Council turned me down, and last week the Toronto Arts Council said no dice. So while I didn't score any taxpayer-funded largesse from TAC, I'm pleased to say Steve Thornton, A.M. Matte and Rob Brunet did. All of them are associated with the Toronto Writers Co-op, which has to be the best writing group in Hogtown: Thank you founder, promoter and eminence grise John
Miller.

And the same week that I missed out on some TAC coin, the Word on the Street moved to its new digs at Harbourfront. I've already said I was none too keen on the idea. That's because I predicted that it won't be long before WOTS is charging for some of its talks, panel discussions and so on. I still think that, and I still don't like the idea, but the switch to Harbourfront was nothing less than remarkable. The exhibitor layout was easy - or at least easier - to follow; I didn't see or smell any food trucks selling their deep fried gut plugs; there was more space to move around; there was a clear separation of the kids' and adults' sections; the sun shone; the ducks on the lake quacked. Of course, I had some quibbles: I only saw one coffee shop and its lineup was long and discouraging; there were far too few places to lock up a bike; and fortunately I didn't need a Fraser Nash, as Cockney rhyming slang has it, so I didn't have to visit no doubt oversubscribed washrooms.

I made first for the Quattro Books tent, yakked it up with Luciano Iacobelli, one of the gang of four that runs Quattro, scanned their table and found Terminal Grill, a 2013 book by Rosemary Aubert, one of this country's finest crime writers. I'm already reading it and Rosemary had me hooked from the first page, which is exceptionally well done, as is her portrait of the down and out poet we meet on that page. He's unnamed but can only be the late Milton Acorn. A few pages later we learn that the antagonist Matthew claims to be Neil Young's pianist and is back in Hogtown to shoot a music video. Great crime writing and Neil Young. I mean, how good can it get? All the more so because Neil's wonderful and delicate country gem, Harvest Moon, is the song this week at Choir! Choir! Choir! II which I belong to along with lots of other untrained songsters. Clinton's on Wednesday at 7:30pm. Five bucks gets you in and a song sheet with the lyrics and an arrangement from Daveed Goldman and Nobu Adilman, who run the choir and the event.

So no TAC cheque, but WOTS @ Harbourfront was a winner, I get to warble a classic tune on Wednesday,  and there's a spate of launches up ahead and the promise of some interesting reading. Not bad.   

  

WOTS and IFOA Getting Hitched: Who Pays Tab?

Welcome to the world of literary mashup. No, spoken word artist Dave Silverberg and novelist Lisa Moore aren't writing a book together (but they should). What is happening, however, is a hookup between Word on the Street and the International Festival of Authors starting in 2015. From then on WOTS will be held at Harbourfront rather than Queen's Park Circle where it's held now. I read some bumf today, I think from someone at WOTS, that the arrangement will help two great Canadian literary "brands" to become bigger, stronger, more virtuous, more likely to avoid fattening foods, more likely do their laundry every week...Really?

Brands? Brands! Put me down as dubious. Dubious about brands unless it's a Lazy S mark seared into the flank of a heifer, or some shrill new ad campaign for a product we don't need to be told to buy. It's far more likely that once WOTS relocates - literally and figuratively packing its tents and leaving for Harbourfront - admission will cease to be free. At the moment all events at WOTS are just a matter of showing up on time and taking a pew. But, as the WOTS spokesthingy said, there are two good theatres at Harbourfront so it's a no-brainer that for popular presentations the public can expect to be charged a few bucks to get in. What a terrible idea. WOTS should insist that as part of this new love match IFOA must eliminate its admission fees. After all, WOTS has the heft. It attracts two-and-a-half times the audience of IFOA in a single day. I've blogged before that there are lots of people, myself included, who can't afford to attend IFOA - when I brought my impecuniousness to IFOA's attention I got nowhere, just a dismissive "good luck" from some uncomprehending PR flack. I repeat: at least working writers should be admitted to IFOA events free of charge.

Still with literature - in a roundabout sort of way - them book-lovin' bros, Rob and Doug Ford, now have their own show on You Tube. That doesn't bother me at all. If they want to share broadcast space with farting frat boys and dogs playing the piano, good luck to them. No, what's interesting is that the day after the show was posted, that is today, I listened to Hogtown radio station CFRB-AM's 9:00am newscast. The lead item was about the Fords and RoFo's always unreliable claims about lowering taxes, creating jobs and so on. CFRB refuted each of the in-name-only mayor's boasts with some actual if inconvenient statistics. That's a level of detail you don't often hear on the morning news. Hmmmm. John Tory works for CFRB. John Tory may or may not declare for mayor. I wonder if, perchance, the two could be related. Nah. I'm being paranoid. Still, I wonder about what he thinks of the arts generally and what his arts policies would look like.

   

          

WOTS At Random This Year

Another Word on the Street has come and gone. Intermittent rain dampened my enthusiasm this year, and diving for cover every so often made it a sort of random experience. So some random thoughts about what is a Hogtown cultural staple. 

In the Toronto Star tent columnists Joe Fiorito, Carol Goar and Christopher Hume held forth about the columnist's lot. Fiorito, who, I suspect, could be or would be a large pain the ass if provoked, was the most engaging of the three. He was in turn witty, passionate, critical, informed and analytical. Decked out in dark hornrims and a knit tie of brown and bilious orange, Fiorito reminded me of a latter day F. Scott Fitzgerald, strong moral compass and all. Hume, puffy and rumpled, was frank about the role of the columnist and the media, and his loathing of Mayor Rob Ford, but I got the impression he'd rather have been anywhere else Sunday afternoon. In fact, either Fiorito or moderator Dan Smith, also from the Star, expressed mock surprise that Hume was out of bed so early. Goar came third in this three-horse race, mainly because I found she wandered off topic.

Strolling around the perimeter of Queen's Park Circle I spotted outside another tent what I thought at first was a human-size wax figure, spiffily dressed and wearing a large straw hat. However, on closer - well - inspection, the unmoving mannequin turned out to be journalist Allan Fotheringham, who was pushing a book, likely his memoirs. He's just turned 80, so props to Dr. Foth for coming out. But next year one of his publisher's flacks will have to tell him to show some signs of life. Seeing him sitting stock still like that was unnerving. 

At the Guernica Editions tent, poet Sonia Di Placido was selling Exaltation of Cadium Red, her book of poetry from Guernica. Sonia is a good friend and a fine poet and deserves far more attention than she gets. I hope she sold a ton of copies. I know she sold one to Max Layton (son of Irving), who had his own book to sell.

At the admirable Quattro Books - is there any small publisher that tries as hard as these guys? - I spoke to John Calabro, one of the four figures behind Quattro, and bought his second novella, The Cousin, about a transvestite Sicilian and soon to be translated and published in French. Since I'm just finishing Robertson Davies' The Cunning Man, this new book seems just right as a follow-up read.

In a couple of other places authors were giving away their self-published efforts, not something I readily understand. There was one on the U.S. Air Force and another called The Book of Psychological Truths that I took a chance on. I'm suspicious of anyone who purports to know "the truth", and a quick look suggests the book might be a touch prescriptive, but it was written by a Utah psychiatrist with extensive experience in the trade, so we'll see.   

Overall, WOTS was OK this year, weather excepted. Not vintage, but not rotgut either. Still, I'm hoping for a better harvest next year. 



     

WOTS this then?

I've always considered Word on the Street an event for the bookish, so I felt clammy dismay creeping up on me trawling through Eye Weekly's guide to this Sunday's festival. Surely there are other venues for a "Money Matters" tent and a "Cooks 'n' Books" stage pushing tomes about French recipes and cooking with beer. And of course, much of WOTS will be accompanied by tuneless and wholly unnecessary amplified dirges passed off as music.

I can only hope those of us who take the "word" seriously - like, y'know, fiction and lengthy, serious stuff in serious magazines - that Austin Clarke, Ray Robertson, Camilla Gibb and others will come to our rescue. We'll see.