The Vehicule Poets at Place des Arts

Tom Konyves, Endre Farkas, and Claudia Lapp, Montreal, April 2004

Tom Konyves and Carolyn Zonailo, Montreal, April 2004

In April, 2004, the Vehicule poets celebrated their twenty-fifth anniversary. It was a quarter century since the days when Ken Norris, Artie Gold, Claudia Lapp, John McAuley, Tom Konyves, Endre Farkas, and I met every Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. for readings at Vehicule Art Gallery on Ste. Catherine Street West. Since then we’ve all gone our separate way: Ken to Maine, Tom to British Columbia, Claudia is in Oregon, Artie died in February 2007, and John McAuley, Endre Farkas and I are still here in Montreal. But we still have the occasional reunion or a project we work on together. The last reunion was a gala reading on April 8, 2004, "Cabaret Vehicule," at Le Septieme Salle de Place des Arts, with an overflow audience of 300 people. That evening, a dance troupe performed a selection of our poems and then there was a short reading by each of us, with Ruth Taylor reading for Artie who was not well enough to attend. As well, an anthology, The Vehicule Poets_Now, edited by Tom Konyves and I, was launched. Now, video excerpts of the readings are available online at the Vehicule Poets website.

Our Endless Winter, 2008

Our endless winter -- 2008 -- here in Montreal. This is from the last snow fall, 30 - 35 cm. in early March. Here I am, leaving our home by the side door.

Our front lawn and "tempo", or temporary garage, installed every fall to early spring in which people who don't have garages park their cars.


More shoveling, and then the city snow plough drives by and you're snowed in once again.

Impassable sidewalks, no parking, endless shovelling, endless winter...

This was the kind of winter we used to have years ago, an old-fashioned winter, Glad they're not too common anymore...

Welcome

Alexis Nihon Plaza, March 2009

About ten years ago, Lasha Seniuk, an astrologer in Vancouver, told me that in a few years I would be very involved with the Internet. I know it’s difficult to conceive of a time without the Internet, but I can remember receiving my first Email, and then the gradual, almost complete, ending of personal snail mail until the point where receiving a letter via Canada Post is a quaint reminder of a by-gone age. So, it isn’t too far fetched to say that "being involved with the Internet" seemed a fairly unlikely prospect at that time. It seemed unlikely at the time even though my son and his friends all seemed to exchange email among themselves, and later had their own websites, wrote computer programmes, and some now work in IT.

I now have several websites and writing this blog seems the next step into virtual reality. I am hoping that working on the blog will be a place to discuss what I love, poetry and poetics, taking photographs, and what my old friend RR Skinner called “things appertaining”, by which he was referring to psychology and spirituality. Other interests that I hope to discuss on this blog are Jungian psychology, dreams, shamanism, spiritualism, the ancestors, family history, politics, history, and so on. That’s a lot! Let’s see how it goes.

Addendum: It's ten years later, 23 May 2018, and how my life has changed. I'm old, fat, white hair, and feeling tired all the time. But I'm still interested in and writing on "Jungian psychology, dreams, shamanism, spiritualism, the ancestors, family history, politics, history, and so on." I guess I omitted poetry because I thought it was a given. It's been an interesting ten years, not the easiest ten years, but at least it's been interesting...

SM