What is a poem?
There are many answers to that question. For most, it likely conjures up memories of rhyming verses maybe about love or nature.
For others it represents stanzas of words that they can't understand.
Calvin White's new book of poetry The Bodies and Other Political Poems is an example of poetojournalism.
Instead of photos creating the journalistic reporting, White uses poetry forms. And in the book he reports on our wars, our crimes, our relationships to others, and the issues that inhabit our deeper selves.
Ottawa novelist Christian McPherson calls the book, "a gleaming machete, marching us like riot police into the human mind....looking at our atrocities...but ultimately writing about hope."
White will launch his book with a special free concert Wednesday, Feb. 25.
Daniel Stark, an accomplished drummer and specialist on the sarod, an Indian stringed instrument, will join White in a special evening billed as The Performers.
Stark will open the concert with dynamic hand drum renditions followed by the melodic and entrancing sarod.
White will join with him on some collaborations and then finish the concert with his own performances of selected poems from his book.
White has previously taken the stage with similar performance pieces throughout the Okanagan with his performance troupe, Cirque De La Vie. This included a run at the Vancouver fringe festival.
The Performers will take place at 7 p.m. in the library of the Downtown Activity Centre.