Festival-goers who gathered at Westville’s neighborly Aquila Motors during the opening of Friday’s 16th Annual Artwalk, were not there for a lube job or car repair.
Instead of the aroma of fresh ground coffee that usually accompanies their cafe readings of prose and poetry by local talent, the scent of oil and garage wafted in the air as New Haven Review, the local publisher that highlights content by Greater New Haven area writers and those far beyond, offered a a mash-up of literary readings and musical performances, all set in a mechanic’s workplace.
Amid the rows of new tires lined up high on racks, fan belts, tool chests, and oil-stained floors, an audience received a literary and musical “tune-up” they will long remember. Presenters will have performed in what may be a new first with the garage-bay venue — a further expression of the creativity that continues to mark Westville’s annual ArtWalk festival.
Dr. Caterwaul’s Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps s performed.
At dusk, bay doors were raised to the wonderfully quirky folk musings of Dr. Caterwaul’s Cadre of Clairvoyant Claptraps. They did double duty as entertainers and musical collaborators, sprinkling in spontaneous musical passages during, and between readings.
New Haven Review Publisher Bennett Lovett-Graff was on hand to help boost the Review’s brand, while co-host and Review editor Mark Oppenheimer added several short readings taken from his “Class of ’92” high school yearbook.
The open mic format saw several seasoned reader-performers. It also provided an opportunity for first-time readers who were exploring the delights of the spoken word before an audience.
Pediatrician Marjorie Rosenthal read from her essay about the joys of shepherding new parents (and her med students) through the predictable stages of child development, juxtaposed with anecdotes about her father’s decline through the stages of Alzheimer’s Disease. “I can predict the future, but I do not want to,” she read, a passage which the audience understood was not a clinical observation, but a painful and personal one.
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
Event goers mingle after the program at Aquila Motors.
Joanne Wilcox, a New Haven photographer with a nationally touring gallery exhibit, stepped up to read her homage to life in New Haven — a flowing list of places, events and people that have given meaning to her life and the joys of living in the Elm City. Hamden resident and author Sarah Pemberton Strong brought along a satchel of her newly minted book, The Fainting Room. Asking the band for a “moody and menacing intro,” she followed with a passage from her book, that afterward, was selling like proverbial hot cakes. Strong appears to be having a “strong” month with the addition of Tour of the Breath Gallery, a book of poems to be released later this month.
After readings by Donald Brown and Nicole Gleisner, who recited a piece in French followed by her own English translation, Oppenheimer made a last call for “readers.” Tanya Andraskohttps, who modestly said she has “done some of this before,” ambled her way to the microphone. With a brief cue to the band she began reciting an original poem about her brother Joey. The performance, which drew broad smiles across the room, evoked the Beat Sound of the ‘50s and early ‘60s that has heralded much of today’s spoken word genre. “I was at a Leonard Cohen concert two weeks ago” she noted after the program, still experiencing the reverberations of that experience.
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