“A Gesture That Warms”

Mat Laporte and Brenda Whiteway want you to dance for poetry.The Tenth in a Series on Toronto Literary Readings.In this series of articles, the focus has been on formal events and series in the city, but more informal literary events also make up a good portion of the literary community. “There's a different behavioural code in a rented public space,” Brenda Whiteway, an avid supporter of the community and an occasional writer, told me via email. Whiteway and her partner, poet Mat Laporte, have been organizing a house reading series called braingang since 2012. “Inviting people into your home is a gesture that warms the tone of the whole endeavour and opens up possibilities.”I welcomed Mat Laporte into my home to discuss the readings and a University of Toronto reading group that Laporte founded this year, The Contemporary Poetry Reading Group. To Laporte, it’s important for a writer to contribute to the community in whatever way he or she can. “I think it is important to just do something. Coming to Toronto, I never thought, ‘Oh, I should have house readings,’ but then, when I met Brenda, she had a place that was conducive to having people over. She likes having people over. Often if you’re racking your brain for something to do, it’s sometimes hard, but then you look around and see what you have to offer. That’s kind of like the reading group: it was something that never even crossed my mind. But it seemed kind of obvious, that I’m always sending people links and talking about books, so I might as well organize that.” Hosting house readings, for Laporte, has its origins in house shows, due to his background in music. Often when venues are scarce or too expensive, or musicians want control over the venue, performances pop up in house basements and living rooms. “In Edmonton, I had some events at my place, and shows. I had my own house with some friends. It was a band house for a while, and then when I started getting into poetry, we had some events there.”The first show at Whiteway’s Parkdale apartment in September 2012 was, according to Whiteway, “the result of a scramble to have Kevin McPherson Eckhoff and Jake Kennedy do a reading in Toronto.”“I was talking to them and realized they were going to be here, and I thought of having a reading and Brenda was really into it,” Laporte told me. “It was a bit more formal, and I kind of regretted that and changed it afterwards.” McPherson Eckhoff and Kennedy asked Laporte to read, and he was excited to participate, but also didn’t want it to feel as if “I invite all these people over as well as these poets I really like, Jake and Kevin, and then I read to them. It felt a bit weird.” Laporte asked fellow poet, Liz Howard, to open the show for McPherson Eckhoff and Kennedy with him. “They were really great and fun, and we had a little dance party afterwards. For the subsequent ones, the idea was just put out an open invitation to come over and anyone can read anything they want, within 15 minutes, so we could fit everyone in.” The material read often includes a mix of genres and includes originals and work read by other writers.Having a dance party has been a staple of the braingangs, which have now moved to Whiteway and Laporte’s new Corso Italia apartment. Whiteway mentioned that dancing was one of the possibilities that a house reading can offer and can be a bit difficult in more traditional venues. Laporte agrees that house readings offer a more relaxed atmosphere. “Yeah, it’s more intimate. It’s usually mostly people that you’re familiar with, so it feels more like a party or something like that. Ever since I met Brenda, dancing has been an important thing to her, and it’s even how we met. So that just naturally became part of it. And Brenda makes an awesome dance list, so it’s easy.”For Whiteway, “spontaneous happenings” are what make a reading event special. For Laporte, “sometimes it’s a complete mystery to me why I enjoy some and don’t enjoy others. I’ve had great experiences going out to a reading and meeting someone I didn’t know, and that feels really nice. I feel like at a house reading, you’re more inclined to stick around a bit longer, have some conversations, meet some people you don’t know; whereas at a bar, with my personality type, I might just show up, feel really anxious and want to leave as a soon as possible. Or, if I do end up sticking it out, ending up wedged in a corner and talking to people that [I] came with. You don’t feel as free to circulate.”One house reading in particular stands out for Laporte. “David Peter Clark had [a reading] when I first moved here. Eric Foley invited me. I had just met Eric through a Toronto New School class, and he said, ‘Oh, my friends are having this reading, you should come out.’ So I showed up and went into a house where I didn’t know anyone, and I left having made multiple friends that I’ve been friends with for four or five years now. It was one of the best readings and the best reading experiences I’ve ever had. That’s a big reason why I wanted to have house readings too.” By the time you read this, Laporte and Whiteway will have built on this tradition by featuring poets Alli Warren and Stephanie Young.I asked Laporte whether his particular poetic preferences form a connection between the type of work read at braingangs and The Contemporary Poetry Reading Group. “I guess so, in the case of Alli and Stephanie. A lot of the poetry we’ve been reading in the Contemporary Poetry Reading Group is from the Bay Area of California. That’s just because I’ve been reading a lot of work from there and am interested in it, and wanted to show it to people. So it’s related in that way.“But in terms of braingangs, it’s always been set up so people can bring whatever they want. It’s pretty diverse in comparison to the reading group, which has so far all been stuff I’ve brought to people’s attention. It’s not a democratic thing, for better or for worse. I set it up like I’m going to be curating this. I’m doing this to read through things that are on my mind and to get people’s opinions on things and also introduce people to things they might not be familiar with. In a broader sense, a lot of the stuff we’re reading is addressing the social and political issues in different ways and thinking about readings and reading groups as well as being involved in the social world and being engaged with the social. I feel that’s something I need to do and figure out how to do better. What’s possible to do and what’s not, and having readings and having a reading group has been part of that too.”Laporte mentioned The East Bay Poetry Summit as being a source of inspiration for him. “They had some poets to the city, and it was all house readings. And they did a few publications and ephemera and chapbooks associated with it.”One of the goals of The East Bay Poetry Summit, according to Alex Taitague of East Bay Express, was “to bring poetry into the real world—out of stuffy university reading rooms and fluorescently lit bookstores and into homes where the social environment is more conducive to building a community of poets.”Laporte and Whiteway certainly have been making strides to instill a similar sense of community here in Toronto. “I just thought that sounded really exciting and fun, and I wondered why people don’t do stuff more like that, not just in Toronto, but I just don’t hear about stuff like that very often. I would love to be part of that, and I want to be part of that here, as much as possible.”Editor's Note: Mat also mentioned that Skanky Possum, a reading series run byHoa Nguyen and Dale Smith out of their house, was also an inspiration to have house readings.