Linda and Bill Studley
Despite the nasty weather, we had a really good turnout at the January PRSA coffee-house (Peace Region Songwriters’ Association) at the “Faking Sanity” Cafe in Dawson Creek. Bill and I were the featured performers and played mostly original songs for the better part of an hour. A great variety of performances were provided during the open mic sections of the coffee-house by musicians, singers, and poets.
Barb and Ian Munro
Barb Munro, long time member of the PRSA, debuted a new song, “Over You” (she made a point of telling us that it was NOT about her husband, much to Ian’s relief!). Lovely people, Great new song, Super talented!
Kjetil Landsgard
It was a treat to have Kjetil Landsgard perform a couple of songs for us. Kjetil is a past member of the PRSA and I hope we’ll see more of him now that he’s moved back to the DC area. Kjetil’s music is unique and compelling, he uses his voice in the most amazing ways and had the audience enthralled. Welcome back Kjetil!
Barb Carlson
We had poets aplenty too! Barb Carlson delighted the audience with a reading from her original poetry.
I am also privileged to be a part of a group of writers who meet regularly to share and challenge each other. One of our most recent challenges came from Sabrina L’Heureaux, who unfortunately couldn’t make it to the coffee-house. She challenged us all to write pantoums (an unusual poetry form that repeats lines in a specific pattern). So we exchanged photos that we thought were interesting and we wrote 10 lines/ phrases/ questions about the pictures, then fit them into the pantoum form. The resulting poems were quite interesting so we thought we’d share the exercise with the audience at the coffee-house.
Rebekah Rempel Chorney
Rebekah brought a picture and asked the members of the audience to write a line/phrase/question about it. Then she and Jeannie Lindgren worked to put the lines into the pantoum form. The result? A beautiful pantoum poem. Rebekah has promised to send it to me so I will post it here, with the picture as soon as I get it.
Jeannie Lindgren
Jeannie and Rebekah also entertained us with more of their poetry during the evening. These ladies are very accomplished writers. You can find out more about
Rebekah on her blog
Janina Carlstad and John Fletcher
More music! We had some wonderful collaborations last evening.
Janina Carlstad – our local Flute aficionado teamed up with guitarist John Fletcher to great effect! Both PRSA members!
Jenna Bratt and Andrew Ho
Another great duo included Jenna Bratt, vocals, and Andrew Ho on keyboard. Jenna and Andrew are new to the open mic and we are very pleased that they participated. Jenna has a very lovely, expressive voice and Andrew is a brilliant pianist.
There were other performers too, including a very talented trio of young ladies who sang for us and an amazing performance of South African music, vocal and Kalimba! That was a real treat! I apologise for not including everyone, but my little old digital camera is not fool-proof (I guess that would make me the fool taking the pictures!) but if I can find more photos I’ll definitely post them!
All in all, another excellent coffee-house.
Writing – songwriting, poetry, it’s so much better when it’s shared!
Posted in
Coffee Houses,
Writings and tagged
Andrew Ho,
Barb Carlson,
Barb Munro,
Bill Studley,
coffee,
coffee-house,
coffeehouse,
Dawson Creek,
faking sanity,
flute,
house,
Ian Munro,
Janina Carlstad,
Jeannie Lindgren,
Jenna Bratt,
John Fletcher,
Kalimba,
Kjetil Landsgard,
Linda Studley,
music,
original music,
Peace Country,
Peace Region Songwriters Association,
poetry,
Rebekah Rempel,
songwriters,
South African |
Linda Studley 
Angels Bowling in Fort St John
Tina Tompkins and Peter Fehr reading "Angels Bowling"
My partner, Bill, and I were recently asked to perform at the first “Everyone Belongs” Coffee House at ‘Patch Java’ in Fort St John (BC Canada) and while we always enjoy getting out and performing our music, I was also very happy to have some talented young people recite one of my poems, “Angels Bowling”. Apparently they had heard of it through one of my friends and this blog, liked it and asked if they could recite it at the coffee-house. It was a very special moment – hearing someone else recite my poetry – knowing that something about it touched them. Thank you Tina Tompkins and Peter Fehr, for your lovely reading of my poem!
“Angels Bowling” is about how my father explained thunder and lightning to me when I was a child. The Back Story to Angels Bowling was discussed in a previous blog post.
There are many different styles that can be used to write a poem. I believe that the style you choose can and should complement the message. “Angels Bowling” is a rhymed poem with a very regular meter and rhythm and I feel that style projects the childlike innocence that the message requires. That is not to say that all rhymed, rhythmic poetry is childlike – certainly not – but in this instance, I think it worked that way.