Word Vancouver at various venues throughout the city until Sept. 28. For details visit wordvancouver.ca.
It can feel like an eternity.
For burgeoning writers intent on having their voices heard, the journey leading up to their first big publication break can seem never-ending.
An interactive, literaryfocused project housed at Capilano University is working to bridge that gap for students and community members alike, by offering local scribes a means of engaging with audiences now.
The Cap Art Vending Project was launched by author Anne Stone, a faculty member of Capilano University who teaches English and creative writing. Stone was inspired by a similar project, Distroboto, launched in 2000 in her former home of Montreal. In the wake of changes to the city's smoking bylaws, Distroboto founder Louis Rastelli purchased decommissioned cigarette vending machines. He refurbished them to instead sell chapbooks (small, writer-made books that are often photocopied), and installed them in a variety of spoken word and performance art-focused venues throughout the city.
"It's just this incredible project," says Stone, who was also inspired by local initiative, Outsider-art-ina-box.
"When I started teaching creative writing here, I really wanted to do it and I started searching Craigslist for cigarette machines. But I must have missed the moment - they were rare and expensive," she says.
Stone was eventually rewarded for her efforts, snapping up an old clown's head capsule vending machine for $200. She too refurbished the machine and sourced mini plastic capsules to hold writers' works.
The vending machine made its debut, with the help of Stone's first-year creative writing class, at Vancouver's Cafe Montmartre for a series of readings in August 2008. The machine has been housed in Capilano's Writing Centre, located on the fourth floor of the school's Fir building, ever since.
For a nickel, the machine will dispense a capsule filled with a literary work, like a miniature chapbook, a little poem or story.
Project contributors vary, from current and former creative writing students to Cap students at large, faculty, local established and visiting writers, and artists from other disciplines.
Stone continues to be impressed by the calibre of submissions.
"It's so varied and diverse," she says. "It's kind of like these little photographs of where the individual young writers are at that moment. In the first year, it might be a fragmented poem, a this, a that. And then maybe they come back and do it again later and it takes a completely different kind of form. Some people take it incredibly seriously and they create these tiny, miniature books, which are just completely amazing. And some people... it's an opportunity to play.. .. There's all kinds of things in that machine. They're all pretty amazing."
The Cap Art Vending Project offers a unique experience for young writers.
"Students get the opportunity to see what it's like when your work goes out there," says Stone. "There is this long break between when you start as a writer and when you finally get published and it feels like forever. There is this conversation that you can still enter, not through vanity publishing or something like that, but in an independent way and that's what chapbooks are about. They have a long, amazing tradition. Lots of writers, after they're established, still make chapbooks because they're this form where you can play with ideas, you've got freedom from all of the market forces and things that come with a larger publication and you're not beholden to it. So you can try your work out in one particular form and then later it can take it's final form in a different way, but it lets it enter a smaller conversation with people."
Stone encourages community members to pay a visit, invest a nickel, get a capsule and if they choose, create something small enough that could go back inside, and drop their submission off at the Writing Centre.
"Everybody's welcome to do it," she says.
"I have a thousand capsules sitting in the workroom. I just load them up and I refill the clown. I usually have a pot of about 50 sitting on the side at any given time. I just add whenever it starts to get low," she adds.
While they don't have specific guidelines regarding submissions, basic code of conduct rules apply, for example, no texts that are racist or sexist in nature. In addition, the machine is accessible to people of all ages so content creators should keep that in mind.
Apart from the literary works housed within, the clown head vending machine has become a bit of a discussion piece in its own right due to its ability to instill a sense of whimsy or terror in viewers, laughs Stone.
She recalls, prior to its installation at Cap, housing it in her apartment where it continued to frighten her partner, fellow author Wayde Compton, who kept forgetting it was there.
"He was terrified of the thing," she says. "At first people didn't quite know what it was. Even now there's the occasional, 'What's this thing?'" she adds.
However, they've continued to develop the Writing Centre, available to students to work in alone or meet up and collaborate with one another, filling it with creative writing materials, a chapbook library and refurbished typewriters.
"I'm building a context around it," says Stone.
She's excited for the machine to make its first appearance at this weekend's Word Vancouver, an annual festival of reading and writing. Word Vancouver is marking its 20th year and is being held as part of Culture Days. The festival got underway Wednesday with daily programming, mainly author readings, being offered at a variety of venues, through to the main festival day, Sunday, Sept. 28, held in and around the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, from 11 a.m.-5 p.m.. A free allages event, festivities will
include approximately 100 readings, 150 authors and 20 workshops in addition to musical entertainment, an exhibitor marketplace and panel discussions.
Authors featured for 2014 include Bruce Grierson, George Murray, Sarah Ellis, Dina Del Bucchia, Grant Lawrence, Kevin Chong, Wayde Compton, William New, Doretta Lau, Nancy Lee, Tilar Mazzeo, Ian Weir, Caroline Adderson, Danielle S. Marcotte, Linda Bailey and Willie Sellars.
The Cap Art Vending Project is part of a new festival component focused on chapbooks, celebrating the form through a workshop, exhibits, readings and a panel discussion. The machine will be housed in the Words On Chapbooks area for festival-goers to access.
In addition to their contributions to the vending machine, Capilano University's creative
writing students will also be featured for their work on underground literary publication, The Liar. While currently funded by the school's English department, for the last 25 years, students have managed the publication on their own. The Liar has continued to flourish and showcases works by Cap students as well as writers at large.
Six current and former Capilano creative writing students involved in The
Liar (Alex Wetter, Lauren Gargiulo, Tremaine Friske, Allie Quelch, Iain Angus and Bryan Wood), will be featured in a session entitled Lying To Try It-The Liar Editorial Collective.
"It's their first time reading at a festival so it's going to be incredible," says Stone.
Lying To Try It is planned for Sunday at 3:40 p.m. in the Magazine Words area.
wordvancouver.ca
