Entre Ville
Entre Ville was commissioned in 2006 by OBORO, an artist-run centre in Montréal, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Conseil des Arts de Montréal. J. R. Carpenter writes: "Although I had lived in Montréal for 15 years at the time of the commission, Entre Ville was my first major work about my adopted city. It took me that long to learn the vocabulary. I don’t mean French, or Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Yiddish or any of the other languages spoken in my neighbourhood. I refer, rather, to a visual, tactile, aural, sensorial vocabulary. My home office window opens into a jumbled intimacy of back balconies, yards, gardens and alleyways. Daily my dog and I walk through this interior city sniffing out stories. Poetry is not hard to find between the long lines of peeling-paint fences plastered with notices, spray painted with bright abstractions and draped with trailing vines. Entre Ville is web-based heat-wave poem presented in the vernacular of my neighbourhood, where cooking smells, noisy neighbours and laundry lines criss-cross the alleyway one sentence at a time." Entre Ville was launched at the Musée des beaux-arts de Montreal April 27, 2006.
Altars of clutter, hanging gardens of sound - the back balconies buckle under the weight of high summer Saint-Urbain Street heat. All the kitchen back doors stand open - sticky arms flung open - imploring, a heat-rashed prayer: Deliver us unto the many gods of Mile End.
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