[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Please post on OPRIG-EVENTS


                            The Spirit of Community:
Powerful Poetry that Speaks to Community Activism And Change.

                                    Bud Osborn

                       Vancouver-East based poet
               and social-housing/anti-poverty activist
                      will read from his recent collection.

                        Tuesday, September 29, 1998,
                                               7pm,
                                        Dunton Tower
                                Faculty Lounge, 20th Flr,
                                    Carleton University.

Free Admission.

For further information e-mail: kelliott@ccs.carleton.ca
or tel: 282-0410.


Background Information:
Bud Osborn is a Vancouver-based poet and community activist.  He is
currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Vancouver/ Richmond
Health Board, and is actively working on issues such as needle exchange
centres and alternative medical programs for heroin addicts. Bud facilitates
the South Granville Writer's Group at the Gathering Place, a community
centre that focuses services on low-income community members and street
youth.

Bud Osborn has published a collection of poems called Lonesome Monsters in
1995 through Avril Press, as well as the independently published Amazingly
Alive.  Most recently released is Oppenheimer Park.  The first poem in this
book, "A Thousand Crosses in Oppenheimer Park" was composed in effect to
mourn and protest over a thousand drug-overdose deaths in the Downtown
Eastside in the past few years.  Bud Osborn has also been an active advocate
for low- income housing in the Downtown Eastside and an anti-homelessness
activist.


Bud Osborn on his poetry: "It's not social activism or political activism,
it's the older tradition of being a poet.. It's a real privilege for a poet
to be a part of a community.  A lot of poets live in esthetic circles, very
self-referential and self-congratulatory, and they write to a small group.
They say there's no one reading poetry and I say, that's because you're not
writing about what people care about..."

His poem "Down Here"as recently made into a short film by Eldorado Film
Productions and viewed on CBC. A short video poem of Down Here can be viewed
at: http://artsource.shinnova.com/ downhere.html .   The video exposes the
worst HIV/AIDS epidemic in the Western world in the Downtown Eastside and
the harsh effects of gentrification on an already poverty-stricken
community.

Excerpts from "Down Here":

sunshine
on downtown eastside sidewalks
glows fresh crimson
like rose petals fallen
from ransacked gardens of the broken-hearted

from those who wear the violent evenings
 on faces bruised black & purple
 whose teeth are kicked through panicked
 mouths
 begging mercy
 whose sight is slashed blind by knives of
 darkness
 inside murdered souls
 whose lives are worn out demolitions
 in screaming alleys
 of vomit & unending misfortunes

& for those crawling drunk & sick
 into jaws of rabid doorways & handcuffs of the police
...
& for those lining up more patient than saints
 in cold rain & seagull shit
 to receive crusts of bread
...
& for those plunging needles
 through veins seeking ecstasy
 but flowing with nervous shame & misery
...
& for those who have nowhere to be
 & nowhere to live
 & are somewhere naked & shaking
 with a life no one else could endure
...

for these
 my own
   my selves
      my tortured prey
         & degraded predators
 my sisters & brothers

let my words
 sing a prayer
   not a curse
     to the tragic
        & sacred mystery

of our
 beautiful
   suffering
For further information or for an
     eternal worth

Bud Osborn, 1995


-
This is the OPIRG-events@ox.org list. Announcement only please.
To unsubscribe, send email to opirg-events-request@ox.org, and put
"unsubscribe" in the body.