We all want our voices and stories to be heard and, after a lot of hard work, award-winning poet, author, and performer Shane Koyczan has accomplished just that.
Koyczan grew up in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories and was raised by his grandparents. All through school he was bullied, but despite the discouragement, Koyczan says he kept on writing.
“I’ve been told a lot throughout my life that nothing you say has value or meaning, so I took a creative writing class at Okanagan University, and from there they got us to do an open mic night,” he says. “The response was really supportive.”
After feeling like his voice was welcome, Koyczan started up his own reading series in Penticton, BC and eventually moved to Vancouver to get involved in the spoken-word scene there.
Koyczan says for any kind of art that you just have to start doing shows. Get your paintings in a gallery or cafe, or go to open mic nights if you’re a musician or a poet, because everyone has to start somewhere. And he started at the bottom, just like most of us have to.
“You’re not going to start out selling out theatres. When I first started, I was doing shows for two people in a cafe and that’s like any art, unless it’s manufactured, like Usher discovers you in a basement somewhere,” says Koyczan.
Unfortunately, for all talented people out there, being discovered like that doesn’t happen often. In most cases, success is the result of practice, hard work, and really finding your own groove, which are all things Koyczan has done and continues to do.
He developed a groove early on when he discovered the awkwardness of the awkward pause. He never wanted that to happen, so he developed a strategy that doubles as a strong writing technique.
“When I write a piece, I kind of write backwards,” he says. “I’ll start with the ending and then work to the beginning that way I’m driving the metaphor all the way through.”
More important than process, however, is the inspiration behind his writing. Koyczan was bullied and angry, but turned his pain into poetry. He says his inspiration comes from life and actual experiences, from the jerks at school, or even eavesdropping.
One of his latest poems was written about a waitress he encountered, proving that sometimes telling someone else’s story is far more powerful than any we could make up ourselves.
Koyczan says he has no idea what this life is like for somebody else, and how difficult it would be, and it got him thinking.
“I like listening to people’s conversations,” he says. “People say crazy shit; they really do. There are things that are said that are far more poetic than what I write.”
Shane Koyczan
Friday, March 27
$25, Alix Goolden Hall
shanekoyczan.com