by Anne DeCecco, ocw's Writing Director

Early Saturday afternoon at JJ Bean, I find RC Weslowski in an unoccupied corner beyond the buzzing throng.

“Do you want a drink” I ask him.

“No thanks,” he says, pointing to a tall bottle of Gatorade and explaining that he’s all set on the fluids front.

No caffeine. That’s interesting, considering that when Weslowski spits spoken word his thoughts are a moving ball of momentum, unwrapping image upon vivid image until one wonders where he got the energy to come up with his poems, let alone say all those words before his next deep breath.

Vancouver’s Spoken Word Scene

Randy Jacobs, known as RC Weslowski in the spoken word world, has been actively involved in Vancouver’s spoken word scene as a performer and organizer since 1998, just two years after the movement took root in our city.

He admits that his passion for spoken word actually started out somewhat accidentally. While participating in a clown performance at the 1997 Fringe Festival, he and his acting partners stopped by the Press Club one Monday night during a slam. The slam team asked his group if they would be judges, Weslowski recalls. He left the club that night intrigued, and returned soon after to participate in the slams as a performer.  

“I think a thing that is often times a misconception is that [slams are] just a straight up hip hop battle kind of thing, and it’s not that. Which is what I thought it was, and then I saw what was going on and I was like, ‘I can do that.’ By and by, he discovered that this was his favourite form of artistic expression.

Today the Vancouver Poetry Slam is the longest running poetry slam in Canada. The event is open to the public and spoken word performers of all backgrounds and skill levels are invited to participate. According to the Vancouver Poetry House website, the slam’s umbrella organization, Vancouver has been “recognized as the Mecca of Slam in Canada.” 

“I think it’s really strong, I think it’s really diverse,” Weslowski says about the Vancouver Poetry Slam. “It can always be more—I mean, I think that’s the one thing I always lament is that, you know, we can always have more diversity, as far as both the audience and performers. But I think stylistically it’s really diverse.”

According to Weslowski, slam-goers and performers may not represent a wide variety of cultures, but the performers’ repertoires are quite varied and include poetry that is humourous, confessional, romantic, hip-hop and surreal, among other styles.

The Vancouver Poetry Slam, which originally began at the Press Club, has survived many venue relocations and the fluctuations in audience size associated with moving. It has now had a home Monday nights at Cafe Deux Soleils for about six years with a healthy audience that regularly ranges between 100 and 130 onlookers.

The Vancouver Slam Team, a group that is hand-picked by slam audiences each year and made up of regular slam performers, has won numerous competitions both in Canada and abroad. Its participants have authored many innovations in the spoken word art form. In 2001, the team competed at the National Poetry Slam in Seattle performing solely group pieces—a first for any slam group. In the same year, the team’s Cass King and The Svelte Ms. Spelt penned the National Poetry Slam Honour Code, promoting fair play among poets and stating that “The points are not the point. The point is the poetry.”

In 2006, the Vancouver Slam Team (made up of Weslowski and his teammates: Magpie Ulysses, Patrick Swan, and Nora Smithhisler) won the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word National Championship. As a result of this victory, Weslowski was invited to participate in the 1st World Cup of Poetry Slam in France, which took place in June 2007 –- and he placed second! 

In February of 2007, Vancouver hosted the Individual World Poetry Slam for the first time. 

Weslowski has been around for the greater part of this grassroots movement. In addition to performing, he has served as Co-Slam Master for the past two years, working on the day-to-day operations of the slam events. Currently, Weslowksi sits on the board of directors for the Vancouver Poetry House, as well as on the board for Spoken Word Canada (also known as Spocan), the body that has been organizing the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word since 2004.

Sweater Vest: Experimentation with Performance Art

Instead of sticking strictly to spoken word, Weslowski has also experimented with other types of performance art. About three years ago he formed a group called Sweater Vest that incorporates music, clowning, improvisational humour, and poetry, with his friend Martin Vansteinburg on the guitar and himself playing the drum machine. The group’s reunion performance happened at the slam on May 19.   

Weslowski says he dabbles with different performance methods and forms of expression because he likes to blend art forms rather than “box” them in.  

“I like playing with things, I think that’s just how my head works—it’s scattered, you know, its jumbly...and I guess when I do stuff I’m mish-mashing it anyway,” he says. 

Another way to blend poetry and performance which Weslowski hopes to develop, is a spoken word laser light show.  

Writing, and Weslowski’s Process

In his day job, Weslowski is an audio producer for radio. His only formal education related to writing was a weekly night class on creative writing at UBC several years ago. Besides that, he briefly studied acting and clown performance.  

Weslowski’s latest contribution to one cool word magazine is a poem entitled, “Swallow the Ocean,” which begins in a folk tale format by telling the story of a fabled man who tried to swallow the ocean, an impossible feat due to the fact that “the ocean never empties.” Suddenly, the lilting, rhythmic folk-tale tone of the poem explodes into a hyper-real rant about pop culture, and more specifically, U.F.O.s, Britney Spears’ pelvic x-rays, and Posh Spice and David Beckam’s sex life. The poem then lapses back into a calm and romantic rhythm for the finish.

When asked about the poem’s meaning, Weslowski explains that he focuses on sound and imagery when writing, rather than a final meaning.  

“A lot of the stuff I write, the ideas for them come just from puns or things that I usually misread or mishear and then I go, ‘oh that’s kind of, you know’ –-and then I check to see whether or not it was what I heard so I’m not, like, stealing it,” he explains.  

Weslowski says the ocean could well reflect loneliness, or the way people try to sustain themselves on things that really don’t give sustenance. However, he says he is influenced by what Sean Penn has said about his own writing process—that he tries not to have an end result, or to avoid it as much as possible. 

“It’s like a sculpture, you know. You take something and just play with it and work with it and then finally a structure arises out of it...” he said.  

Looking Ahead

It’s possible that Weslowski’s calm demeanour during the interview reflects the recent decision he made to step down from being Co-Slam Master, a position he held for the past two years. May 5 was his last official day of duty, and his plans are now to scale back his role to the promotional side of things, which he’s also been handling for several years now.   

“I didn’t realize how much work it was until I stopped doing it,” he says.

With some extra time on his hands now, Weslowski says he looks forward to focusing more on promoting his poetry and exploring new poetic and performance forms. 

“Like, the slam’s got a lot of rules. Like three minutes, no props, and no costumes, and all that sort of stuff. Which is fun, but I want to do stuff that incorporates, you know, a longer form.” he says.  

What would Weslowski say to other Vancouverites who may be itching to get their creative spark out in some form?

“Just do it,” he says. “Yeah, just do it. You know, it’s simple as that.”

For more information on spoken word events in Vancouver, go to www.vancouverpoetryhouse.com .