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Trains of Winnipeg

© Paula E. Kirman

Trains of Winnipeg (CD)
Clive Holden
Cyclops Press/Signature Editions
ISBN 189417710-X

Winnipeg poet Clive Holden's project Trains of Winnipeg, is a multi-media work of art. A CD of Holden's original spoken word poetry set to haunting music by composers Christine Fellows, a well-known Winnipeg-based musician, and Jason Tait and John K. Sampson of The Weakerthans. The result is Holden's deep, moody voice rhythmically mixing with the music to create a performance that is not quite songs but also not spoken word in the traditional sense of the lone poet reciting solo.

"I was sitting on a bench by the Assiniboine River, not far form where it meets the Red River, about a year ago. I heard this really beautiful sound the rusty wheel's brakes were making as they went across the bridge. It was echoing down the river. It just popped in my head, the phrase 'Trains of Winnipeg.' I went home and the next day and wrote the poem, and the rest started coming together," says Holden, who is a filmmaker as well as a poet.

When Holden decided to put the poems on the CD, he collaborated with his musician friends to add another dimension to the project. "It went back and forth. I presented the poems and they would come back with musical ideas and we would have rehearsal sessions where we'd play our ideas for each other," he explains.

Trains of Winnipeg is very much a multimedia project, with a Web site at http://www.trainsofwinnipeg.com featuring related art, film and video, audio in MP3 format, pictures and other links relating to trains in Winnipeg and throughout Canada. The CD is at the center of the project. "I think this is a powerful medium," says Holden, who has produced CDs of other poets' work. "I love being able to hear a poets' voice doing his or her own poetry."

Although some of the poems would make very good songs sung in the traditional fashion, particularly the title piece which has all of the rhyme, rhythm and flow of a good song lyric, the fact that Holden recites rather than sings adds a certain feeling to the poems that only the spoken word can capture. "It seems to me that it works as it is, and it is mysterious as to why it does," he says. "I did a spoken word poetry column for CBC Radio's Definitely Not The Opera for about three years. The last thing I did for the show was a documentary on Leonard Cohen for his 65th birthday. One of the things that really struck me listening to his work, was that every time I heard him reading instead of singing, I thought, 'The singing is great and is very powerful, but I want to hear more of him just reading the poetry as well'."