Poetry I wrote in English class...

The act of conducting an experiment on something invariably changes the results of the experiments. You can never see something in and of itself.

You can never really know someone as you are because as soon as you get to know them they change because of knowing you.

You bring your own experiences to everything you interpret.
The fourth wall is a fiction.

I have ordered lunch from paperchase.

1 avacado melt - no cheese w/ corn bread
1 strawberry banana smoothie

I woke up this morning at 8. Shuffled piles around my room until 9ish. Called and woke up Shannon. Got dressed, combed my dirty hair, washed my face, brushed my teeth. Then I went to breakfast.

Ive been at PaperChase since 9:30 today, it is now 12:30. I've seen several of the halifamous of this town. Including Tanya Davis.

I talked to Melissa about an hour ago as she was getting ready to go to work, she just woke up. The time change makes me feel incredibly productive when I talk to friends out west and they are just waking up when I have been working for a couple of hours already. I'm not sure if it's a false sense of productivity, but it is quite a good feeling.

Exam stress is not a good feeling. I've reached the sick anxious point now. The combination of packing and studying is quite a lot to manage. Plus the three exams I have in the next few days are not making life any easier. I am hoping to rock my french exam, soci I don't care about, and English I must do well in, but it shouldn't be terribly hard.

This is probably the last you will hear from me for a bit, packing, exams, Stephen Lewis Benefit Concert, family visiting, departing. It should be a rollercoaster ride at top speed from here on in.

Today is a good day.

I need to begin reading fiction again. I need to being reading McSweeney's again. I need to think about things that I am reading about. I have to stop shutting off my brain when I close the book.

my. first. cover.

Something very exciting happened last week. I walked past the video store window and noticed that my favorite spoem creator Tanya Davis was featured on the cover of the Dalhousie paper. Then I realized, I wrote that article.

Tanya Daivs blends words and Music
Local Poet performs at Writer's Festival

Tanya Davis was born to write. As a little girl, she wrote. She writes in groups and alone. She has presented her literary works from Nova Scotia to Ontario, and she’s about to perform at this year’s Halifax International Writer's Festival.

Davis is slated for March 30 at the Lord Nelson Hotel where she will be joined by poets Lorri Neilsen Glenn and Agnes Walsh.

Davis’s career is just beginning to blossom, but she says she had a head start.

“My mom always wanted me to be a writer. Always, when I was little girl, the first thing I said I wanted to be when I grew up was a writer,” she says.

With her love of writing came a love of reading.

“I was one of those kids who read all the time, I read a book a day,” says Davis. “I'd go to the library and I could only get one book at a time, so I went every day and got a new book. I really liked Roald Dahl books, like the BFG, and Beverly Cleary books.”

She says her enthusiasm was put on hold after high school. At university, she stopped reading because she was supposed to read so much. But with her passion for writing, Davis says her disenchantment couldn't last.

“Writing, I feel, is a thing that writers can't get away from,” she says. “It's this thing we can't not do."

“I love reading books by writers about writing. There's just something about the fact that there's all these other people sitting there, at desks or in their room or in coffee shops. It's so solitary, but at the same time there are so many other people who have to do this, too.”

Davis mixes poetry with more participatory arts, such as music, spoken word and performance. She's always felt drawn to both music and words, and she feels she combines the two without sacrificing her identity.

“I remember it was really frustrating when I was first being recognized as a poet, before people knew that I played music,” she says. “I wasn't frustrated with them, I was frustrated with myself because I wasn't just a poet and I couldn't walk away from that part of myself.”

Davis rarely reads poetry alone, often performing her written art to music. Sometimes she plays a cappella, but often she performs solo with instruments, and sometimes with a band.

Davis will also perform at the upcoming Bringin' It Home Tour in Dartmouth. Her show on April 13 at Port Wallis United Church includes musical accompaniment by Jenn Grant, Dan MacKinnon and Thom Swift.

Devon Strang of inHouse Publicity says Bringin' It Home was created by Music Nova Scotia and the Nova Scotia Department of Tourism, Culture and Heritage to encourage small communities around the province to host local musicians.

“This was fours years ago and the program is still going strong,” he says.

Davis's work is brazen. She laments on lost loves, religion, growing up gay and the loneliness of sleeping alone, and says she's not apprehensive presenting her personal odes.

Davis is a bit nervous about performing lyrical spoken word poems in front of a literary crowd at the writer's festival, and hopes poets in the crowd will perceive her differences as benchmarks of originality.

But people are there to see the poetry, she says.

She learned to adapt her performances to different crowds, while touring Ontario with her musical partner, Catherine MacLellan.

“We were playing a lot of older folksy crowds where acoustic guitars seemed more acceptable,” she says. “I had my little electric [guitar], and I felt a little like, 'sure they might like my voice or part of my songs.' And that was the first time I thought maybe I shouldn't play this song or that song.”

Fellow Bringin' It Home performer Jenn Grant says Davis is a “contant source of inspiration and comfort.”

“Her songwriting blows me away and takes me to a special place where there is art and beauty and love,” says Grant. “Her voice is equally soft and strong. The way she speaks, it is like there are ribbons and drums behind her. What a magical wonder she turned out to be.”

The third annual Halifax International Writer's Festival runs from March 28 to April 3 at locations throughout the city. Davis is performing Friday, March 30 at the Lord Nelson Hotel at 7 p.m. with Lorri Neilsen Glenn and Agnes Walsh.