Leif Baradoy

Just quickly: Reap Calgary is a non-profit association of Calgary businesses that are concerned about sustainability. One of the many good things that they do is publish articles on a variety of topics, including film reviews.
Craig Copeland recently published a film review of What Would Jesus Buy?, which I found because he gave a shout-out to ChristmasFuture (thanks!). Anyway, I approached WWJB from a very different perspective from Craig and made it known by commenting on his review.

Read all about it here. Do join the conversation if you’ve seen the movie.

Just a short post. A few months ago I was featured on Not Your Mother’s Poetry, a radio show out of CKXU in Lethbridge. In case you missed the show, I’m proud to present it here as a podcast: songs, interview, and poems.

The interview for this show was conducted in a non-standard way. Blaine stuck me in a room with a microphone, gave me a list of words to respond to, told me to talk until I was done, and then left the room.

Listening to this broadcast is hard for me because it exposes me a real, rather than perfect. I stammer through the interview, lost in some of my thoughts. Regardless, I believe I communicate my perspective and ideas in a way you’ll enjoy. So, this podcast might be enjoyable for your transit ride or wherever else you listen to podcasts.

You can download the podcast here by right clicking on the file name and then selecting save. Note: it might take a few minutes to download.

I’ve intended to provide an update on my twitter poems, however I wanted to share this picture first.

Adam—a Calgary based Developer/Tester—follows me on twitter. As part of his technological adventures, he used my twitter poems as test data and tracked the frequency of the words I used. The size of the word in this image is relative to the number of times that it appears in my twitter poems.

As you can see, words, back, now, and night are my most frequently used words. I can’t decide if I am happy to learn about my repititions or a little disappointed that none of the words are utterly distinctive. I guess tiger is farily unique.

If you click on the image, you can see it in full size.

As already noted I was featured on Spotlight on Jazz and Poetry—a radio show based out of Philidelphia, which also streams online. This was the first show to feature Canadians. I was in great company with Mary Pinkoski, the CBC Poetry Faceoff champion for 2008.

Simply because you might be impatient, I’ve made the audio of my sections of the show available in the audio player below. I’ll post the whole show soon.

Bio

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High Margins (working version)

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“unspeak the tomb”

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Notes Towards the Wailing Wall

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Power

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I’m pleased to announce that, from November 9-15, I will be featured on Spotlight on Jazz and Poetry—a radio show out of Philadelphia that pairs poets and jazz artists like wine and good company.

SOJP will also include jazz musician Yves Léveillé and poet Mary Pinkoski. I met Mary at the South Country Fair this summer; she was the 2008 national champion of the CBC Poetry Faceoff.

You can listen to SOJP live (or, if you miss the show, archived) here.

If you really can’t wait, here’s a YouTube video of me reading some twitter poems, which I uploaded today:

Lastly, I thought you might appreciate the bio that SOJP is using for me:

Leif Baradoy was born in Banff, Alberta, Canada—in the heart of the Rocky Mountains—in 1981. Raised by a pentacostal christian and an atheist, Leif grew up in the small village Seebe (population 100) and attended a one room school house. Living in the Rocky Mountains instilled in Leif a love for nature, silence, wandering, and solitude.

As you may know, Laura and I took a brief trip to NYC in the early-mid part of October. While I could tell you about Pentecostal Wall Street prophets, Ground Zero situated conspiracy theorists, 11pm t-shirt weather, or masturbating homeless man, I wanted to instead call you attention to the photo on the right.

This is me standing on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art overlooking Central Park. What is the shiny and colourful item behind me?

“Coloring Book” by Jeff Koons

Say what you will about postmodern art (which, apparently this is); this structure was certainly among one of the more memorable pieces I saw in NYC—among the Kandinsky, Picasso, Dali, Warhol… there is, of course, a the long list (MOMA = glory). Perhaps I like this piece because it is reminiscent of Kandinsky (one of my favourite artists).

Anyway, Laura and I had a great discussion over beers about the nature of art. I tried to explain why I liked it. She explained why she hated it. As we drank more beer, it became apparent that neither one of us would be convinced to change their position. We finished our beer, walked back to our bed, and got ready for another day of enjoying New York.

I wanted to write about Coloring Book because it captures my feelings about NYC: unexpected, colourful, messy, beautiful, flashy, possibly mocking the viewer, possibly striving for authenticity, stand apart and admire, or get close and find yourself in it.

Anyway, in her defence, Laura made a little art video too. It was shot at 6:45am. Check it out, I think you’ll appreciate it.

I like the part where I give up completely and got back to slamming down the coffee.

I’ve been AWOL from this blog for a few months, without good excuse. I’ll be posting some poetry videos here from the summer, and will then get back to it . . .

I just saw Radiohead play Thunderbird Stadium in Vancouver, BC. I attempted to writre down the setlist as they played it.

On July 3rd, 2008, I read at the flywheel reading series at Pages Books, sponsored by filling station Magazine. CJSW’s Writer’s Block attended the event and recently sent me an audio recording of my reading.

The recording begins with me reading some twitter poems.

Enjoy.

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