Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
Performance poet, Shane Koyczan, was the highlight for me. He was brilliant - unexpected and passionate.
- New Zealand Herald
"If the festival had a Supreme Award, Canadian performance poet Shane Koyczan would have won it, packing out the lower theatre and receiving a standing ovation. Koyczan played heartstrings like a brilliant fiddler.'' - New Zealand Herald
"Homer must have sounded [like this]… or Ginsberg or Kerouac."*
"The energy in Koyczan's work is not generated just by his impressive delivery but by his intense, quick-fire progression of images, quirky as a Tim Burton film, yet controlled as metered verse must be."*
"I wouldn't say that Shane Koyczan is the best poet in the world, but I will say that he is the most impressive that I've ever seen. New Zealand has no one like him, or if we do, we're not encouraging them. Poetry in New Zealand is far less about performance than about pages in journals, restrained readings at galleries and the occasional musical-literary collaborations."*
"A refreshing, if bizarre, surprise at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival."* - Lumiere Culture & Art Magazine, Auckland, New Zealand
"Were was also pleased to have introduced Sydney audiences to a 27-year-old Canadian performance poet, Shane Koyczan, who was a surprise hit. His raw poems about love, sex and cancer made the audience laugh and cry. Along with O'Hagan and Hirsi Ali, he received one of the festival's passionate standing ovations." - Wendy Were, Artistic Director, Sydney Writers Festival
Discography
* Visiting Hours, House of Parlance Media, Inc. 2005 (3rd printing, 2007). Note this is Shane's first book of poems.
* Pretty Good Cape in My Closet. CD with the Short Story Long. 2007.
* Crickets Have Arthritis. CD. 2006.
* American Pie Chart. CD. 2005.
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Shane Koyczan is one of the world's premier spoken word performers. His book, Visiting Hours, was hailed as a Books of the Year Selection by The Guardian (UK) and the Globe and Mail (Canada) newspapers.
Born and raised in northwestern Canada, Shane was the first poet from outside the USA to win the prestigious USA National Individual Poetry Slam.
Shane is launching the second season of Heart of a Poet on Bravo TV, Thursday, September 6 at 8PM. The Bravo poetry series airs every Thursday at 8pm.
He has performed to full houses around the world - from university amphitheaters to the most respected music and literary festivals. He has rocked the stage at the Edinburgh Book Festival, the Vancouver International Writers Festival, the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the 2007 Canada Day Celebrations in Ottawa.
Acclaim for Shane's poetry and performance has come from many diverse and respected sources - from renown rockers Gordon Downey, Joel Pott & Dave Bidini to David Robinson, Literary Editor of The Scotsman, and Patrick Neate, winner of the Whitbread Prize and host of London's Bookslam.
Shane brings enormous vitality and virtuosity to every performance. His warmth, wit and sincerity are a hit with crowds of all ages. His lyricism inspires audiences and readers alike because Shane's poems speak directly to the heart.
...and so, a whole new generation of rhyme readers will be born. - David Bidini, Globe and Mail Newspaper, 2005.
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