Wending
to Canterbury
April 24 2007
Gentle Folk,
Whan that Aprill
with his shoures soote...er, that is, in April there are supposed to be sweet
spring rain showers, but due to climate change there is now a perpetual draught
of March, the hottest and driest spring on record here in England. At any rate, in April, when the spring
offers up all its goodness, that's when people long to go on pilgrimages, and
wend their way to Canterbury-ward, to seek the shrine of some martyr, perhaps
the result of a medieval jihad or something. Out the train window to my right I can see the mighty Thames
river, first of many landmarks on the journey between London and Canterbury,
where I am now writing on a rail-bound iron horse.
The last time I
was in Canterbury was in the fall of 2000, but I hadn't managed to successfully
fashion myself into the modern re-incarnation of Chaucer back then, so I was
skeptically received. The
Vancouver Sun published a story about that first ill-fated trip to Canterbury
when I put on my show at the Fringe back in 2003, which you can read here, if
you're interested: Sun
Article. This time I'm
going to perform at the University in Canterbury by invitation, part of a
six-week tour of the UK that began a few days ago.
Many things have
been happening recently that seem worthy of mention, so I will try a brief
recap, with some glances to the future.
The day before yesterday I had the honour of performing at the London
Chaucer Conference for an audience of medieval professors, the cream of
England's Chaucerian crop. My
presentation followed a paper by the Chaucer specialist from Yale, described to
me in a hushed tone by one of the other professors as "the top Chaucer-man
in the world". Harumph. My vote goes to James Simpson at
Harvard.
Chaucer, Chaucer,
Chaucer...in other news, I've been getting some emails recently from some New
Yorkers who heard me interviewed on a WBAI NY Radio show called
"Non-Fiction", which wouldn't necessarily merit a mention except that
the host of the show is Harry Allen, famous as one of the original founders of
Public Enemy, whose name is immortalized in their song "Don't
Speaking of rap
and poetry, I put on another successful "Rap is Poetry" showcase in
Vancouver this spring before heading off on tour (the fourth annual!),
featuring Vancouver rap artists Aspire, Junk, Ndidi Cascade, East Side Magic,
and myself, all performing lyrically-heavy material at the Media Club. The show was sponsored by a new website
that recently launched called "RapSpace.TV", which is a networking
website for rap artists. The site
allows you to record raps into a webcam and post them online for free, so that
other people can comment on them and rate them, building a community of
supporters and hip-hop peers globally through the web. Check out the promo video I recorded on
RapSpace for my show, featuring the only rap ever to reference Epictetus, Lao
Tzu, and Thomas More, both lyrically and visually:
http://rapspace.tv/member/rapispoetry
I also recently
got into the world of podcasting, and launched the
Lit-HopCast, a cross between a radio broadcast and a mix-tape, which I will try to put out every few weeks from now on. Each twenty-minute mix will feature new music I am working on, artists I admire who I collaborate with on my tours, remixes of my songs, mash-ups, commentary, exclusive new verses I have recorded, and generally all things Lit-Hop. You can subscribe to these podcasts for free through the iTunes Music Store, and if you are into that kind of thing they will be automatically downloaded to your iPod or Mp3 player every time I release a new episode.
The Lit-HopCast
is of course named after my recent album, Lit-Hop, which I have been promoting
in Canada through a Vancouver-based company called Frontside. This publicity campaign saw copies of
the album sent to every newspaper and magazine in the country for reviews, and
to every college and co-op radio station in Canada for their hip-hop
shows. The good news is that the
album is now on rotation at about a dozen radio stations across the country.
The bad, or rather ambiguous, news is that the reviews so far have been pretty
mixed, and some critics have been having a jolly time taking the piss out of
me. One called the album
"boring" and one said that listening to it was "like chewing
tinfoil", but I try to keep a sense of humour about it all. I mean, if I were just a lousy music
reviewer I'd probably be sour-faced too.
Us rock stars have to be understanding, you know. The best review came from an Exclaim Magazine. If you want
to read this lovely review, hit the link.
If you want to
read the bad reviews, go find them yourself.
Well, the train
will be approaching Canterbury shortly and I think I've said enough for the
moment. I will try to write more
frequently and less capaciously in the future. If any of you get indignant about critics bullying me, one
thing you could do in response is go to Amazon.com or the iTunes Music Store
and submit some positive customer reviews about my book or albums. If you simply find my woes amusing,
then I guess we're in synch.
'Til next time,
I'll leave you with some of the best lines of poetry ever written, which are
rather topical for me at the moment,
baba
Whan that Aprill
with his shoures soote
The droghte of
March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every
veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu
engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus
eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in
every holt and heeth
Tendre croppes,
and the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram
his halve cours yronne,
And smale
foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al
the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem
nature in hir corages);
Thanne longen
folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for
to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes,
kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially
from every shires ende
Of Engelond to
Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly
blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath
holpen whan that they were seeke.