Charlie Petch : part five

How does a poem begin?

I usually enter with no plan. I sit at my desk in the morning, before the news and any other influences have started my mind spinning in all directions (I have ADD) and find this is also my most emotional part of the day. I can cry at almost anything before 10am, a perfect state for creating art. Sometimes I open up a book and blindly let my finger fall on a line, or word and use it as a prompt. Sometimes it’s the dictionary, or whatever is usually nearby, and I write a little something. My poetry begins with the sunrise. 

Other times it is an idea that has stayed with me, a dedication or need to get a message across wrapped inside a narrative. For this process I will write with intention, and go into the editing process soon after. There’s a different excitement for these poems. Sometimes I will carry around the idea for years before it’s ready to be voiced and oh my gosh, that day when the poems comes together, is a real celebration. 

Charlie Petch : part four

Why is poetry important? 

As a spoken word artist, I know our strength is in telling the truth. In creating something bite sized that can illuminate the listener. As so many of us fall into a kind of social media hypnosis, I find poetry is thriving because it doesn’t demand a long attention span and so much of it has become instrumental in bringing forward the idea that we need to really decolonize our minds and embrace our shortfalls as starting points for learning. Once we really move away from the more academic parameters of poetry, it really becomes a tool of the people. They don’t call them three minute power poems for nothing. 

One of my favourite spoken word pieces, “Whitey on the Moon” by Gil Scott Heron, recently got a lot more airplay after Elon Musk started taking fellow billionaires to space. I’m a huge lover of the power of satire, and that poem is just devastating in it’s effectiveness. I’m big on horrifying and funny as a political tool.

The act of writing has helped me to process so much of my long indoors of the past few years. Writing keeps me from stagnancy, keeps me from silencing myself, and being able to produce during this time has really helped with my mental health. Here I can imagine myself an earthworm, a multiheaded alien, a person who can just be free to wander, at least in my mind. It is dreaming while awake, and when the landscape is bleak, it can really fill it with emotion and resilience. 

Charlie Petch : part three

How important is music to your poetry?

For me, poetry and music will always exist together. When I published Why I Was Late, I made sure to notate what sounds the reader should be hearing for each poem that has musical accompaniment. It’s funny to publish just words when you’re used to being able to create the atmosphere you’d like to perform the poem in. For my 4 part long form poem/dance/music collaboration “Daughter of Geppetto” I listened to Chopin’s nocturnes non-stop, since they were a real hit in the 1880’s, when the original Pinocchio was published. When I finished the opening poem, I tried reading it out along with Chopin’s Opus 9 no.2 and it fit so perfectly, I had to keep it in the show. 

Right now I am looking for the perfect strained relationship poem to go along with Chris Isaac’s “Wicked Game” to be played with ukulele and singing saw on a loop pedal. I might already have it, but we’ll see how it all blends. Poetry really is one of the best collaborative mediums, I’m so lucky it found me. 

Charlie Petch : part two

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I recently read Tenille K. Campbell’s nedi nezu (good medicine), Arsesnal Pulp Press, so hot and steamy, and honest and funny, it paired well with Molly-Cross Blanchard’s Exhibitionist which is also raw, real and erotic and published by Coach House Press. Also the legendary Lillian Allen’s Make The World New, a selection of her poetry from Laurier Poetry Series, a real masterclass of spoken word and Jamaican Dub. So happy for this much overdue collection of her iconic poems and some new ones. I’m pretty intentional on whose work I read with whose, I always have a few books on the go, because of my distracted mind, but you want the right ingredients in that cocktail. 

Charlie Petch : part one

Charlie Petch (they/them, he/him) is a disabled/queer/transmasculine multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto. A poet, playwright, librettist, musician, lighting designer, and host, Petch was the 2017 Poet of Honour for SpeakNorth national festival, winner of the Golden Beret lifetime achievement in spoken word with The League of Canadian Poets (2020), and founder of Hot Damn it's a Queer Slam. Petch is a touring performer, as well as a mentor and workshop facilitator. In 2021, they are launching "Daughter of Geppetto", a multimedia/dance/music/performance poetry piece with Wind in the Leaves (TBA), their first full length poetry collection Why I Was Late with Brick Books, and their libretto "Medusa's Children" with Opera QTO.  

What are you working on?  

I’m working on my next manuscript, loosely titled “Poetic Monologues”. I’m both revamping some spoken word theatre pieces, and creating new works that exist somewhere between monologue and poetry. Like most larger works, I started it with a mapping, a kind of installation art piece thinking about where I am already, where I could go, and how it can be presented both on the page, and off, in accessible ways. I recently had to take the wall installation down and am now putting it together from the little nest of papers, feathers, bits of cloth and laminated pigeons (by Emmie Tsumura). I’ve been using the pidgeons to indicate the more “bouffon clown” poems. Comedic placement and timing is everything in a manuscript. It’s been very fun to go through my old plays and find those gems that are monologue/poetry.   

I’m also refining my new spoken word play “no one’s special at the hot dog cart” which is part poetry/storytelling/music and de-escalation workshop with the premise “Everything I needed to know about emergency response, I learned as a teenage hot dog vendor in downtown Toronto”. I’ll be doing a development workshop with Theatre Passe Muraille in March for their “The Buzz” series for new works. I’m very honoured to have DM St Bernard and Adam Lazarus signed on for this process.