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Festival and farmers’ market on World Cup weekend
A little more on the festival weekend. Every Saturday morning there is an excellent Farmers’ Market in Courtenay/Comox, conveniently placed right next door to the festival. So the minute we’d staked our tarp we marched ourselves over there to see what was on offer. There was a looong line snaking towards one of the several bakery stalls and I later heard it was all about the cinnamon buns. But I went elsewhere, and bought some incredibly good cheese bread, a fantastic pumpkin muffin and some durable vegetables for snacking on, including peas in the shell and cauliflower florets. This morning I came upon a clipping that’s been floating around my office for a while that says certain vegetables, particularly broccoli and cauliflower, are naturally abundant in the compound sulforaphane (SFN) which is believed to reduce the risk of developing hereditary cancers.
Back at the site, I was greatly amused by Todd Butler who hosted a Sunday morning workshop. Acknowledging they were up against the gospel hour on the big stage he said, thank God for atheists or we’d have no audience… Paul Reddick’s concert was well attended by a well baked Sunday afternoon crowd. One of them in a mellow stupour in front of me piped up at the end of Villanelle. Hey, he said, did you write that one? Yes I did, said Paul. Man, that was beautiful, said the listener… Sunday afternoon in the barn was hot in oh so many ways when the giant talents of the Campbell Brothers shook the pigeons loose from the rafters. As this musical mayhem was immediately followed by epic and ecstatic helpings of Los Rastrillos, the birds didn’t get much rest till much later… Crankiest moment of the festival came courtesy Jamaica-based Anglo-German punker Ari Up who dropped out of her scheduled workshop to feature herself in another and then tried to run overtime, and when that didn’t work she — um… the polite word is remonstrated I think, although her arguments appeared to have far fewer syllables than that — with the beleaguered organizers. I suspect she’s not getting a repeat invitation. Even if her mom did marry Johnny Rotten. (Well ya didn’t see Peter Yarrow‘s daughter or Joe Fafard‘s son behave that way. )
Charlotte and I slipped away midday to cheer with the Italians and weep with the French in the air conditioned comfort of the bar at the local golf club. It was harder than it should have been to find ourselves a World Cup venue (shockingly, we were two of only six footie supporters in the pub) and near impossible to find an authoritative start time for the match: there was not a newspaper in sight and I must have asked at least a dozen people at the festival (including the Information booth, the First Aid booth and a pair of homesick Ozzies working the Mediterranean BBQ kiosk) before a man at the Security booth said he’d heard from a dedicated soccer fan that the start time was 11:00 (PST). Cut no ice with the bartender who had looked it up and decided it started at noon, so we missed the first 21 minutes before he got around to switching it on. And of course with two goals in the first 19 minutes, that was tragically poor timing. Since it all ended I’m tapering off by checking at intervals for breaking news of What Materazzi Said To Zidane To Make Him Do It.
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Festivalia on the Island
Just back from a weekend sitting on the cold hard ground, alternately sheltering beneath waterproofs or burning under a too-hot sun, having my eardrums blasted by massive speakers, my sensibilities overwhelmed by fried foods, cold drinks and new music. Yes, it’s festival time again. I was drawn to hear our local wonder Eugene Smith, poetical blues guy Paul Reddick and the always interesting Steve Earle, but a couple of new (to me) standouts this year included a ten-man Mexican reggae epiphany, Los Rastrillos, and Jon Voigt’s musical brother Chip Taylor (songwriter of Wild Thing and Angel of the Morning) with fiddlin’ singer Carrie Rodriguez. Favourite festival food was cheese and potato taquitos from Tita’s – served with Oliva’s salsa (smooth and dangerous: tomatillos, avocado, sour cream, jalapenos).
Eugene Smith
Chip ‘n Carrie
Los RastrillosPrior to departure I had to say a sad farewell to my fluffy lodger Boris who has gone back to hang out with his fellow furbies at Animals for Life, dreaming no doubt of the pleasures he found in Anton’s dog dish (and Anton well pleased to be rid of him). With his charming white socks and endless frisk I’m sure he’ll be among the first to find a new home.
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Not talking about poetry and not eating oysters
I enjoy talking prosody or fine technical points in the context of a workshop, but otherwise I’m not a one to want to discuss poetics with all and sundry. On this matter I was glad to find a kindred spirit in WS Merwin, who made a few seemingly timeless points when his 1956 collection Green With Beasts was made Poetry Book Society Choice:
“I don’t usually like literary conversations, though I deeply enjoy talking with writers other than poets about the practical side of getting things written. I like talking with some people about particular poems: though I think that in such conversations all I usually do is to try to describe a quality that excites my enthusiasm in a poem. I do not like writing about poetry… Above all I do not like trying to generalize about poetry…
…I think that one of the dangers of modern poetry has been a tendency to become inbred. Its small audience enhances the danger. It even seems possible for some poets to write as though critics, even particular schools of critics, were a fit and sufficient audience for poetry.”
He then makes
“one of the few general statements I feel safe in making about poetry. It is a mystery. It is a metaphor of the other mysteries which comprise human experience. But, like some other mysteries, it gives us a feeling of illumination – one mystery giving us a name by which to know another.”
I’ve been feeling some illumination from reading a collection of writings by MFK Fisher called The Art of Eating. Her prose is exquisite. In The Well-dressed Oyster she begins, firing on all cylinders and out of both barrels:
“There are three kinds of oyster-eaters: those loose-minded sports who will eat anything, hot, cold, thin, thick, dead or alive, as long as it is oyster; those who will eat them raw and only raw; and those who with equal severity will eat them cooked and no way other.
The first group may perhaps have the most fun, although there is a white fire about the others’ bigotry that can never warm the broad-minded.”
One suspects her allegiances lie with the second group.
“..almost every oyster-eater who does not belong whole-heartedly to the third and last division, would die before denying that a perfect oyster, healthy, of fine flavor, plucked from its chill bed and brought to the plate unwatered and unseasoned, is more delicious than any of its modifications. On the other hand, a flaccid, moping, debauched mollusc, tired from too much love and loose-nerved from general world conditions, can be a shameful thing served raw upon the shell.”
At least we have her words to savour, in lieu of a leisurely oyster harvest on the beach, since red tide has robbed us of some of our summer fun.
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
