To contribute to the Ted Joans Lives! webpages, please email us.Pieces may be any length. All contributions received will be published online. You will retain the copyright to your work.

Please also see Ted Joans links & resources and Ted Joans books for sale.

Tanya Evanson:

I had a few chances to share a Vancouver poetry stage with Ted and he served as loving, poetic and cultural inspiration. What a sweet sweet mirror he is! I know that his energy has transfered itself elsewhere - but I will miss that streetwide smile, original honesty and surprise surrealism that poured forth from a True Poet. Love, thanks and salaam alekum Ted, next time I'm in Timbuktu, I'll read you.

ASHES

for Amiri and Ted

ashes ashes!
   once the product of combustion
   our energy is now low.
   no tarbaby broom would even do! to clean up our mess,
   sweep away crying moon fingernails slicing into chest.

ashes ashes!
   once the product of devouring,
   we is now sand through sheet, through warm earth fires.
   so i will go South to find me some heat
   and maybe even some Black people to eat.

ashes ashes!
   we are branching out! through hemispheres
   only, i remember the indigenous geography of lands of oceans of fears.
   of we / we of / di-cho-to-mize /      sweet grind, smooth pelvic grater
   and my cloven cunt becomes a musky metaphor for our future.

ashes ashes!
   how do i forget my category
   when it is sometimes i - who put me there.
   spanked outta my own rooms with your smooth glow of hand
   on the skin of my class.

ashes ashes!
   my s.o.s. is your breathing. that quick-split emotion.
   right under that swelled curve of neck into blade of yours
   the magic of you
   'the magic of me inside you like a lung'

ashes ashes!
   love is energy that does not die
     so i let it fly
           i let it fly
                 i let it flyyyyyyyyyyyy yy        y

ashes ashes!
what happens when we come to the last breath,
when the machine does no good.
how will i grip the event
when i can't even grip the coming.

click flyer above for a full-size view

I created this promotional flyer for Ted's book launch in June 2001 at Bukowski's here in Vancouver. Actually, this photo of he and Laura (so beautiful) also appeared on the cover of the Georgia Straight weekly newspaper. It makes me smile. YOU make me smile TED ! There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground and so I will hide in my poems to kiss your mouth as you read them. all of You
all of Them. thank you Ted.

Tony Roehrig:

This year was the first time I actually read a collection of Ted Joans' work (Afrodisia). I have read his work in various publications and poetry collections. I was disappointed in myself for not having read his works earlier. His path of play and exploration is a kick in the ass to the dull regimentation of society which seeks to extinguish and subdue the flames of each of us. Ted's flame was obviously too hot for even their best oven mitts.

CRACK THE CRACKER SCHEMES

Take it straight from the hip
Shoot the straight shit
Call the colors like it is
Call the all to order
then dismiss them to Adventure

Sweet Mother AFRICA
   I owe so much
The poison she endures
   infects all her sucklings
Like life in a zoo
   the bars attempt to diminish
   our desires and dreams

CRACK THE CRACKER SCHEMES

To Ted Joans (1-9-2003)
I wrote this after reading Afrodisia

Thank you for notifying me of his passing.

Long live the torch he carried to reignite the world's flame

In Solidarity!

Michael Hayward:

Ted Joans was a one-of-a-kind "hep cat" who will be much missed. I have a brief reminisence of Ted in a recent entry for my online web-log, at http://www.textsandpretexts.com/archives/2003/05/ted_joans_lives.html.

Keith Scotcher:

Hi, I was shocked to hear of Ted's death, having met him in Paris in March, first outside the Shakespeare and Co bookshop and later at his regular cafe in Blvd St Germain, he seemed in good spirits and looked well. He was looking forward to getting some income from a book he was preparing and hoped to use the money to visit the African countries he had not yet got to. he said then he 'would have a smile on his face' implying to die happy. He had flown to Paris on Concord having got some rich guy to pay for the tickets in return for a painting by him.

I have photos of Ted with me and my wife. Maybe they are the last photos of him. (see below)

Ted inscribed a book I bought off him that I will treasure. He was concerned about the auction of his friend Andre Breton's flat contents, mentioned the auction of Kerouac' OTR scroll and that he had once, when down on his luck, asked an agent to sell a letter from Jack to him to the highest bidder. He got $500!!

He said he would not sell any more of his papers and would leave them to an institution. He had a tear in his eye when speaking of a son in Gibralter, I now hear he had 10 children!

My link with him was that I knew a lady he lived with in the sixties when she was a student leader (of '68 days). Interestingly, Jack Kerouac gave up 'the road' just as he became famous in 1957, but Ted got on the plane! Going off to live in Paris, Morroco, Timbuktu, etc, a man of the world!!

A great man. TEDUCATE YOURSELF!!!

First pic is Ted in his favourite Cafe Laquette, Blvde St Germain, Paris, where he worked writing late afternoons every day, in this corner. This was in March this year. The other people are my wife Sveta and myself Keith Scotcher of London. (I've written a little, there's a play available on internet). The second is us when we met outside the Shakespeare and Co. bookshop a couple of nights earlier.

Ted Joans, Sveta & Keith Scotcher, March 2003

A line from Tuli Kupferberg's
GREENWICH VILLAGE OF MY DREAMS;

Charlie Parker & Ted Joans talking in Sheridan Sq Park
& its cold man!

WHERE'S TED?

We sat outside Shakespeare & co
March 2003, Monday evening, Paris
waiting for a reading to start
and there, sitting on a post
his throne he later said
a white bearded black hipster beat
complete with black beret
writing in a notebook.
(A TRUE HIPIKAT)
I kindov knew right away who he was
but he started to leave
and I dared to ask
'are you reading tonight?'
'No' he says, having already looked at the gathering
and he was right, it was boring
all Laurence Durrell and stuff.
We agreed to meet later at the Cafe le Rouquet
where we talked
and agreed to email.
So, THIS is Ted
who I'd been looking out for
for ten years, since French Olivia
had shown me his book and on the cover
this black dude, nude.
This is TED
who knew Kerouac and Ginsberg
and all those other angelheads.
Jack who had suddenly become famous
for On The Road, having just given it up
to find a home and commit SLOW self murder
while those who misread The Road
went looking for America
not realising Jack had told them exactly where it was
Meanwhile, Ted jumped On The Plane
not wanting to be part of a time-stuck cult
'specially it's token black,
and befriended Andre Breton in Paris
and Olivia
student leader of '68 CRS-CS riot streets
a girl who shocked her Bougival bourgeois family
by living with a wild black poet.

While in desolation America, Neal and Jack were dying
Ted was finding the world.

I had looked out for him
just missing him several times
Compendium Books, Camden Town
Shakespeare & co,
always he was there, just weeks before
even mentioned him in a play about the sixties
yeah, Ted Joans, JOANS with an A.
Now I had his email
Got back to London, proud of my new friend
and sent a message
No reply
Too busy I guessed, realising my own small importance
must be patient and wait
Still no reply
Where is Ted?
Paris, Seattle, Morocco, Timbuktu?
Then I heard the news.
Shocked, it sank in
Now I know where Ted is
he's flying
with The Bird

Hammond Guthrie:

AlphaRhythmicAfterBeats

At best, or at the very least,
Be - Bop - Beatnik and Beatitude
Concern subterranean acts
Divining the Ted Joans of things -
Everything else is straight no chaser.

Jake Lamar:

Paris 14 May 2003

I'm still in shock that Ted Joans has, as he would have put it, "gone on to the ancestors." I don't know what to say other than that he was like a father to me and I'm going to miss him forever.

These photos were taken at---where else?---the Caf� Le Rouquet during Ted's last visit to Paris on March 24, 2003. Ted and I were sitting and talking when the film director Bob Swaim just happened to pass by. As serendipity would have it, Bob was carrying an original screenplay written by James Baldwin himself, an adaptation of his own novel, Giovanni's Room. Ted reminisced about when he and Baldwin used to hang out at the caf� together. Bob also happened to have a camera with him. These might very well be the last pictures taken of Ted Joans at his favorite caf�.

There will be a tribute to Ted during Shakespeare & Company's Literary Festival in June. I'll provide more details when I can.