http://www.queenslandpoetryfestival.com/ This occasion also afforded me the opportunity to make a worthwhile connection with the festival Director and ascertain some promising information. Anyway, along with a small group of my Brisbane based Cohenite friends, we witnessed a very entertaining and varied show which was indeed a rare tribute (down here) to LC’s poetry and prose. There were performers singing and reciting LC’s work, as well as improvising with their own poetry or performances based on LC’s work (or loosely inspired it). The bonus was that we also had four guest Canadian poets/performers flown out especially for this part of the festival (though they also did their own work separately). One of the improvisations was an amusing piece of performance poetry about a cat named Leonard Cohen and another was a humorous song about dreaming of Leonard Cohen (amongst others)! There was also a colourful rendition of Gypsy Wife, with the six performers dressed up in gypsy clothes and hamming it up around the stage! Also, I don’t know how extensive it is in Canada, but according to one of the young Canadian guys who read excerpts from Beautiful Losers, this text is on some Grade 9 curricula in Canada – hmmm, I can’t ever see that happening here!
Interestingly, according to the Director of the festival, Graham Nunn, he thought they had almost managed to get Leonard to the festival in person! Whether this was indeed the reality of the situation or not, he told me after the show that he had received an email from LC’s manager (Ed Sanders) indicating that what ultimately prevented Leonard’s participation was his busyness with his new album (due for release next month) and his planning for the world tour – so there still seems to be some hope of catching him in concert for those of us who still haven’t done so! Ed also suggested that Graham should not give up on inviting LC again to the QPF!
Incidentally, Graham Nunn (and another performer, Simon) will be performing their LC routine for us at our 15th Toowoomba LC event in two weeks time! Graham is very enthusiastic about this, as am I!
Cheers
Andrew (Darby)
