Shane Koyczan works backwards and listens to peoples\u2019 conversations (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n <\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re a musician or a poet, because everyone has to start somewhere. And he started at the bottom, just like most of us have to.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to start out selling out theatres. When I first started, I was doing shows for two people in a cafe and that\u2019s like any art, unless it\u2019s manufactured, like Usher discovers you in a basement somewhere,\u201d says Koyczan.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, for all talented people out there, being discovered like that doesn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I write a piece, I kind of write backwards,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019ll start with the ending and then work to the beginning that way I\u2019m driving the metaphor all the way through.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
One of his latest poems was written about a waitress he encountered, proving that sometimes telling someone else\u2019s story is far more powerful than any we could make up ourselves.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like listening to people\u2019s conversations,\u201d he says. \u201cPeople say crazy shit; they really do. There are things that are said that are far more poetic than what I write.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shane Koyczan
\nFriday, March 27
\n$25, Alix Goolden Hall
\nshanekoyczan.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10407,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-march-18-2015"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10408,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10406\/revisions\/10408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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