| Brendan McLeod | |
|---|---|
Brendan McLeod performing in June of 2009 at Cafe Deux Soleils | |
| Born | 1979 Ontario |
| Occupation | spoken word artist, musician, novelist, poet |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Website | |
| Brendan McLeod | |
Brendan McLeod is a Canadian spoken word artist, musician and novelist. His work often deals with the exploration of social and political commentary, family histrionics, surreal love poems, obscure adventure stories, and powerful personal stories.
As a spoken word artist and slam poet, he has earned the honours of Canadian SLAM poetry champion (2004), Vancouver SLAM poetry champion (2005), and finished second at the 2005 World SLAM championships, held in the Netherlands. In 2006 McLeod was winner of the Three-Day Novel Contest and consequently his first novel, The Convictions of Leonard McKinley was published by Arsenal Pulp Press. The novel has been called both "creepy but...good" [1] and a work of "buoyant irony". [2]
Spoken word is a performance art that is word-based. It is an oral art that focuses on the aesthetics of word play such as intonation and voice inflection. It is a "catchall" term that includes any kind of poetry recited aloud, including poetry readings, poetry slams, jazz poetry, and hip hop, and can include comedy routines and prose monologues. Although spoken word can include any kind of poetry read aloud, it is different from written poetry in that how it sounds is often one of the main components. Unlike written poetry it has less to do with physical on the page aesthetics and more to do with phonaesthetics, or the aesthetics of sound.
A poetry slam is a competition in which poets of all ages perform spoken word poetry. Poetry slams began in Chicago in 1984 with its first competition designed to move poetry recitals from academia to a popular audience when American poet Marc Smith began experimenting with existing open microphone venues for poetry readings by making them competitive. The performances at a poetry slam are judged by a panel of judges, typically five, and usually selected from the audience, or sometimes judged by audience response. The judges usually give each poem a score on a scale of 0–10. The highest and lowest scores are dropped and the middle three are kept. The highest score one can receive is 30 and the lowest is zero.
The Three-Day Novel Contest is an annual Canadian literary contest conducted in September of each year. The contest, which is open to writers from anywhere in the world, gives entrants three days to write a novel. Writers are permitted to plan and outline their novel in advance, but the actual writing cannot begin until the contest's opening date, which is traditionally on Labour Day weekend.
McLeod is also a member of The Fugitives, a "wildly talented spoken-word-cranked" [3] Vancouver-based band also including Adrian Glynn and Steven Charles. Notable former members of The Fugitives include C.R. Avery, Barbara Adler, and Mark Berube. The group has been classified under many guises including slam folk, folk hop, [4] and spoken word cabaret.
The Fugitives are a Canadian Folk music group formed in 2004 in Vancouver. The members of the band are Brendan McLeod and Adrian Glynn(vocals, guitar, lap steel, balalaika). Former members of the band included Mark Berube, C.R. Avery, and Barbara Adler who left the band to pursue other artistic ventures. Although C.R. Avery is not a member of the band anymore, he still plays with them occasionally, most recently in 2011 at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver.
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2016 census recorded 631,486 people in the city, up from 603,502 in 2011. The Greater Vancouver area had a population of 2,463,431 in 2016, making it the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada. Vancouver has the highest population density in Canada with over 5,400 people per square kilometre, which makes it the fifth-most densely populated city with over 250,000 residents in North America behind New York City, Guadalajara, San Francisco, and Mexico City according to the 2011 census. Vancouver is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada according to that census; 52% of its residents have a first language other than English. Roughly 30% of the city's inhabitants are of Chinese heritage. Vancouver is classed as a Beta global city.
Barbara Adler is a musician, poet, and storyteller based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a past Canadian Team Slam Champion, was a founding member of the Vancouver Youth Slam, and a past CBC Poetry Face Off winner.
