[Editor's note: Megaphone is a magazine sold by homeless and low-income vendors on the streets of Vancouver and Victoria. Recently, celebrated author Michael Christie led a group of vendors through four workshops in which they explored and wrote about the concept of home. Here, Christie describes what it was like to work with the vendors, and an example of their work follows. Megaphone vendors will be sharing these and other writings at a special reading tonight, Tuesday, Oct. 14, at Vancouver's Cottage Bistro (4470 Main Street) from 7 to 9 p.m. The reading is free for all to attend.]
In 2011, I published a collection of linked short stories called The Beggar's Garden, a book set in contemporary Vancouver and loosely based on my experiences working for many years in a homeless shelter in the Downtown Eastside. In the book, I tried to represent this city as a chorus of interwoven voices speaking at once, to portray it as a web of desperately lived lives, each teetering on the edge of some irreversible change.
This past September, it was my pleasure to teach a series of writing workshops to a group of Megaphone vendors. Though I don't teach often, this was an opportunity I jumped into with both feet. Here's why: I often pity the undergraduate creative writing students I've taught. Many of them are powerhouses of written fluency and technical ability, with literary ambition to burn, but sometimes I stare out into their fresh, eager faces and think, "What the hell are you guys going to write about? You're babies!"
The most exciting thing about teaching the Megaphone vendor workshops: there was never any shortage of material. The average vendor has enough life experience to overwhelm an entire library stack with books, so I focused my efforts on craft, on telling a good story, selecting a powerful image or a blistering emotional detail.
For this series of pieces you'll hear at the reading tonight, I chose the topic of home, leaving it as open-ended as I could. As I expected, there was a bounty of insight and experience brought to bear.
In my view, Megaphone has always been the best-named publication in the business. Because a megaphone is an amplifier -- and an inexpensive, accessible one at that. A megaphone can make an unheard voice audible, or a tentative voice commanding. It can lead a march, direct a crowd, sing a song, or blare out a warning.
The writers in that fine magazine do all of those things, and more. Here's an example by Peter Thompson, who sells Megaphone at Robson and Howe. You can hear more like it at a special reading tonight, Tuesday, Oct. 14, at Vancouver's Cottage Bistro (4470 Main Street) from 7 to 9 p.m. Free for all to attend.
Home
Home is
Like a little nest A place where friends and family Find peace and rest
Home is
Full of joy, happiness and life Push past the sad ugliness and strife
Home is
A place of love, laughter, and song Where everything is right And you wish no wrong
Home is
A magnitude of ups and downs Where you find seriousness and some clowns
Home is
A treasure of abundance of food Where you eat when in the mood
Home is
Like heaven, this I pray Where I will go one day
Learn more about Megaphone magazine here.
Read more: Rights + Justice, Housing
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