Success for the Capital Poetry Collective

During the past few weeks, the Capital Poetry Collective, organizers of Capital Slam, have made some waves on the air at CHUO FM. The artists who appear on Live at Capital Slam 2006, the latest compilation CD profiling some of Ottawa's best performance poets, should be congratulated for appearing in the Top Ten of the CHUO chart for two straight weeks.

The recording debuted at Number One during the week ending November 28, 2006 and went to #10 the following week. On a chart dominated by indie musicians, having a spoken word CD at the top of the chart is quite an accomplishment.

CPC Co-Directors Danielle Gregoire and Elissa Molino lead a strong team of dedicated people who continue to put together a terrific show and a welcoming training ground for the next generation of performance poets. If you've never been to Capital Slam, you should come by and check it out.

Their next edition is Thursday, December 14 at 7 p.m. inside The Thirsty Scholar (126.5 York Street in the Market). Jill Binder, an Ottawa-raised spoken word artist now living in Toronto, is the featured artist. Next month, Ottawa superscribe rob mclennan will grace the Capital Slam stage. For more information, and to purchase your own copy of Live at Capital Slam 2006, visit the CPC website or come by the Scholar for the show!

1970s Octavo exhibition * anyone see it!?

Does anyone know anything about the Octavo exhibition that took place at SAW Gallery somewhere in the mid to latter seventies? It was a group exhition of what sounds like text art and visual poetry. (I don't know since I wasn't there nor is there any trace of documentation about it in cyberspace; apparently, no note on the SAW archives web pages.) I'm very curious to know more about the exhibition. Leads on this front would likely assist Grant Wilkins conduct his ongoing research into the histories of sound & visual poetries in Ottawa. Imagine that there must be records in the deeps of SAW Gallery archives. Justin Wonnacott mentioned that it took place during the time when SAW was located above Bill's Cameracraft on Rideau St. He described it (i'm paraphrasing) as being an exhibition of text based visual art.

By the way, Justin is working on a project in which he is photographing every structure on Somerset Street between Bank & Preston. There was an article about his Somerset Street plans in the City Journal a couple weeks ago. The relevance of this project to Ottawa poetry? There is an image of the house where 'The International Driving School' is located. Messagio Galore take II (september '05) & bill bissett's Rush: What Fuckan Theory - a study uv language (january '06) were both performed there as part of the Hit'n'Run Lecture Series. Look for 882 Somerset:

http://aregeebee.typepad.com/somersetonline/preston_to_booth/index.html