With the volume turned up to 11 and the syllables trimmed down to 17, Spillious and I performed a series of three heavy metal haiku. This was my favourite part of the feature set I performed at Vancouver Poetry Slam last month.

Thanks to Spillious the Ridiculous One for joining me onstage and providing the ear-shredding, face-melting sonic counterpoint to these short poems. We’d collaborated like this once before, several years ago at the Cottage Bistro. Spillious came to me with the idea to restart the project – and I’m glad he did. Entertainment shouldn’t be a dirty word in the poetry scene. The audience was cracking up throughout the entire piece. They’d never seen anything like it before. Was it wrong that everyone had so much fun – listening to poetry?

#heavymetalhaiku