Sarah's Poem 'Buddha Crowns' is Online

Sarah's poem 'Buddha Crowns' has been published for the first time online on HealthyGirl.net.
The poem is included in Sarah's latest book of poetry, The Baroness that is on sale at Sarah's site and a handful of stores.

Earlier this year Sarah played a concert of HealthyGirl's event for women, WellSpot. Recently they posted pictures from that event to Flickr.

Drink Poetry - Slean poems on wine bottles (Update)

Sarah's poetry will be landing on Southbrook's new bottles of wine, Poetica

Information regarding the launch of the wine, availability, other poets involved, and more can be found in the following Quill & Quire report of October 31st.

Bottling poetry

October 31, 2008 10:42 AM By Danielle Ng-See-Quan

Just when you thought the combination of poetry and public transit couldn’t be topped, along comes a new pairing to shake things up all over again: poetry and wine.

Poetica, a new wine label that will feature Canadian poems on each bottle, is the brainchild of Ontario vintner Southbrook Vineyards. The limited edition label series – which will be available only to regular Southbrook customers – will reportedly consist of the vineyard’s best annual output of chardonnay and cabernet merlot. The labels will feature excerpts – or, in some cases, full-length works – by poets such as bpNichol and P.K. Page.

According to Southbrook director of customer experience Elena Galey-Pride, the new label was devised in order to celebrate the company’s relocation to Niagara-on-the-Lake, after more than 17 years in Richmond Hill. Graphic designer Laura Wills, who was hired by Southbrook to create the labels, says she read “hundreds and hundreds” of poems for the project, and contacted the poets (or their estates) directly for permission to use their work. According to Galey-Pride, all but two of them immediately agreed to the project (she wouldn’t say who the two holdouts were). In return for their involvement in the project, poets will receive a case of wine.

The full poet line-up for the label’s launch, besides Nichol and Page, includes Christopher Dewdney, Wendy Morton, Lesley Choyce, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Stephen Elliott-Buckley, Charles G.D. Roberts, Steve Venright, Martin Tielli, and Sarah Slean. Going forward, each new year will bring two more vintages and two more poets.

Poetica launches in Toronto on Nov. 19 at an invitation-only event for the wine biz and the arts and literature communities.

Update, 2008-11-19 - Launch
The launch party took place as schedualed today at The Richmond. The event featured two poetry readings but Sarah was not scheduled. Posters of some of the wine bottles were also displayed that may contain an enlargement of Sarah's poem.
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Southbrook-Vineyards-921327.html

Update, 2008-11-21 - Sarah's poem
The poem of Sarah's included, is actually an excerpt her song Your Wish is My Wish from her 2004 album Day One. To see the bottle, learn more about wine, and cost information see the following page:
http://www.southbrook.com/Poetica_2005chardonnay.html

Sarah's New Book of Poetry - New Tour Merch

New to Sarah's merchandise table for the Book and Ballgowns Tour is her new book, The Baroness. This is her follow up to her 2005 book of poetry and original paintings titled Ravens.

Thanks to Kyall for proving images of his copy. The table of contents is as follows:

1. The Glacier (Posted to Sarah's Journal, 2004-11-04)
2. Vs.
3. Driving in Saskatchewan (Read at Wanderlust, 2006-02-13)
4. Emergency in Night Fog
5. Buddha Crowns
6. Sun I Send Down
7. The Child’s Room
8. Modern Man (Played live at Harbourfront, 2007-12-20. Song did not make the album)
9. If I Did Not Eat
10. Randall’s 50th
11. The Art Professor (About Peter? Sarah's forum post 2004-10-01)
    
12. Orphan Music (Title of her 2006 live and b-side album release)
13. Lonely Side of the Moon (Inspired by Schubert for the 2007-03-15 Art of Time Schubert show, song available via iTunes)
14. Abecedarian (Projected during Lucy Ruperts dance inspired by the poem 2007-11-08. Poem published to her blog on 2008-03-20)
15. The Grandmaster (Posted to Sarah's Journal, 2005-02-06)
16. Molly (Not to be mistaken for Pepper McGowan's song of the same name)
17. A Hundred Years
18. Equator
19. You Are The Holy Tower
20. Good Sweet Lily (Posted to Sarah's journal - 2004-12-11)
21. There I Travel
22. Widow
23. Jack-in-the-Box
24. Rays
25. Crescendo (Posted to Sarah's journal - 2006-02-11)
26. Positive Nihilist
27. One Day (Anagram of Day One, Sarah's 2004 album and song title)
28. I Dream of You
29. The Rose (Inspired by Schubert for the 2007-03-15 Art of Time show, song available via iTunes)
30. The Baroness Redecorates
31. Soliloquy (Published in The Baroness album notes, heard in Shadowland)

Small Note on Sarah's Second Book of Poetry

Recently the Current Magazine published a cover article and interview with Sarah. Some good questions were posed, including with regards to her second book of poetry. Unlike Raven's, Sarah has decided to "focus this time on keeping this book very much about the text and I'm not going to put any paintings in it, I'm going to try to separate those two worlds."

There is no mention of the release date of this book or any other side projects. A side comment is made about completing her musical someday or a symphony.

You can read the full article here in PDF Format on page 13 or as unformatted HTML.

Read a New Poem by Sarah Slean

Previously we posted about Lucy Rupert's dance titled the Abcedarian inspired by Sarah's poem of the same name.

The video of the dance has been available on YouTube but now for the first time the poem has been published in its entirety.

You can read it here on Lucy's Blog.

Watch the dance inspired by Sarah's Poem, The Abcedarian

In November we wrote to inform you of a poem Sarah had written for the inspiration of a dance routine. The poem titled, The Abecedarian, was danced by Lucy Rupert.

You can now see her performance here:



The words of the poem are not spoken and I can not tell with certainty that the music is by Sarah. The voice in the last few seconds of the clip does appear to be her's.
Publish Post

At the time of posting, the words to this poem have not been published.

Update: 2008-03-04
Lucy kindly advised that the music is Arvo Part, a section of a piece called Lamentate and the words spoken are not by Sarah, but by Lucy herself. Sarah's poem was projected overhead but not visible in this video. The poem may still be published at a later date.

Sarah provides Poetry to Dance Work

Sarah wrote a poem, "The Abecedarian", for dance choreographer and artist Lucy Rupert's. The work was premiered as part of Wrecking Ball IV shown November 8-11 at the Theatre Centre

The Abecedarian (world premiere) choreographed by Lucy Rupert
Award-winning artist and artistic director of Blue Ceiling Dance, Lucy Rupert uses email, webcasts and film footage to create a duet from afar with dancer Kyle Abraham (New York/Pittsburgh). Songstress and poet Sarah Slean provides the words which are captured along with Abraham’s dancing in projected images which provide the sound score for Rupert’s live dancing. - The Wrecking Ball (retrieved Nov 13, 2007)

An entry from Lucy Rupert's blog seems to indicate that words to the poem might be added to sarahslean.com at some point in the future. At the time of publishing, no updates were noted to Sarah's official website, blog, or myspace.