Faye Estrella, Steve Sauvé’s girlfriend, recites his poem Heart beside a candle created in his memory. Sauvé, who passed away in January, was an inspiration to many in Ottawa’s poetry scene for his comedic style and self-deprecating humour.
The death of a lively wordsmith remembered for his wit, unique turns of phrase and relentless ability to make people laugh has left a hole in Ottawa’s tight-knit slam poetry scene.
Steve Sauvé has been a fixture at the mic for several years. His poetry was laced with insight, self-deprecation and social commentary. But it’s his humour friends and fans will remember most.
“I became a fan of his poetry immediately,” says Rusty Priske. “I’ve never heard a Steve Sauvé poem that was a downer, he just didn’t do them.”
Priske is a member of the Capital Poetry Collective, the group behind the twice-monthly Capital Slam events held at the Mercury Lounge.
He encountered Sauvé’s work about three years ago when he attended his first poetry slam in the city.
He credits Sauvé for turning him on to slam poetry, a kind of literary performance art made famous in the 1950s by Jack Kerouac and other beat writers.
Sauvé died in hospital Jan. 17 following an aneurysm caused by a lengthy heart infection. He was 33.
Priske says the outpouring of local support for Sauvé after he went into hospital on New Year’s Eve has been dwarfed by the reaction to his death.
Condolences have poured in from across the country and to a Facebook page set up in Sauvé’s honour.
There was a tribute performance of one his poems at a recent poetry slam in Vancouver, while audience members at a reading in Toronto paused for two minutes of silence.
Here in Ottawa, there are plans for a tribute show where many of Sauvé’s friends will perform his poems.
“He had such an uplifting effect on everyone around him that losing that is a hard blow,” Priske says.
He pauses for a moment when asked to describe what his friend looked like, then finds the words and lets out a short laugh.
“He was the skinniest dude you’d ever meet,” he says, adding that at six-foot-three, Sauvé might have weighed 130 pounds soaking wet. He wore glasses and was a self-confessed geek.
But Priske says Sauvé revelled in that part of himself, making it the subject of one of his most-loved poems, Clarion Call (The Geek Poem), and naming a CD of his work, Steve Sauvé Does It With His Glasses On.
It was a sign Sauvé was comfortable in his own skin, says friend Greg Frankson.
The co-founder of Capital Slam met Sauvé in the summer of 2004 and a friendship soon blossomed. Frankson found in Sauvé a good listener, someone who was laidback and a bit shy. That is, until he went on stage and grabbed the mic.
“It was a really great way for him to put his truly insightful ideas out there in a way that was funny and it had so much more impact because he made you laugh and he made you think and he made you cry.”
Priske agrees, and adds Sauvé wanted to leave audiences happier than he found them.
“Once you were friends with him, he loved to make you happy. By doing poetry, he got to spread that on a wider basis because otherwise he wasn’t the guy who’s entertaining a big group of people that he’s hardly ever met, so by going up on stage, he got to do that, he got to reach all these different people and just try to make their day a little better.”
Faye Estrella began dating Sauvé soon after she met him at a poetry slam in 2005. That was the night he performed his poem, Heart, and stole hers in the process.
The poem recounts the three months he spent in hospital in 2004 for an earlier heart infection. Where the poem could be maudlin, Sauvé is instead modest, philosophical.
Sauvé was studying advertising at Algonquin College and hoped to combine it with an interest in social justice.
He was born in Windsor and moved to Ottawa soon after graduating from the University of Windsor. Estrella says, like her, he came here to re-invent himself.
“He used to tell me, ‘This is the first time ever I feel like I’m finally accepted, that I have some place that I belong, that people can recognize me for who I truly am instead of just dismissing me because of how I look,’” she says.
“The stage gave him a chance to show all the things that he was thinking inside that he used to be too afraid to do and people just accepted him and loved him for it,” she adds.
There is an immediacy to slam poetry, a tendency to be in the here and now.
It is temporary and great works can sometimes be lost or forgotten. Not so with Sauvé’s work. In addition to his CD, much of his poetry is recorded on paper or on tape.
There are initial plans to put his complete works on CD.
“His words won’t die with him,” Frankson says. “He has left behind a tremendous body of work.”
About a year after becoming friends, Frankson and a team of Ottawa poets including Sauvé went to Vancouver to compete in the national slam poetry championships. The team finished third overall.
Four years later, Frankson still thinks of it as the best trip of his life. “It was a really powerful time we spent together,” he says.
Frankson says Sauvé’s performance of his poem, Heart, during the finals was masterful and moved the audience to their feet for a standing ovation.
“It was easily the most powerful spoken word performance I’ve ever witnessed,” Frankson recalls, adding he and the other poets huddled around their emotional friend when it was all over.
The heart inside Steve Sauvé’s chest may have stopped beating, but the pulse of his poetry has not.
“Steve’s continuing to talk to us through that poem,” Frankson says. “Steve doesn’t shut up, his words are insistent—‘live every day as if it were your first.’ A very simple and powerful message. I know that through the words of that poem and through his other work, Steve will continue to live on in the hearts and minds of everyone who’s been affected by him.”
A tribute to Steve Sauvé is scheduled for Feb. 13 at the Mercury Lounge, starting at 7 p.m.
Heart
By Steve Sauvé
i almost died last year
spent over three months in the hospital
in which time they had to repair my heart twice
it was by far the most horrible experience of my life
some of my fellow poets have been urging me
to write a poem capturing these events
a serious piece about mortality
but i don't want to write a poem that brings everybody down
see, the reason most of my poems are comedic
is not that it's all i'm capable of writing
it's that i want to use my time on stage to uplift people
if you walk out of here with a smile
then i feel like, in some tiny way
i've improved the quality of your life
and that means more to me
than winning some competition ever could
so if i'm going to write a serious poem
it's sure as fuck not going to be about pain and suffering
know what tomorrow is?
tomorrow is the one year anniversary
of the day i got out of the hospital
they may have carried me in on a stretcher
but i walked out on my own two goddamn feet
stronger and wiser from the experience
i've heard it said that you should live your life
as if each day might be your last
what the fuck kind of morbid bullshit is that?
now, i've got a two foot scar down the middle of my chest
that says i probably know more about these matters than you
so take it from me:
the secret of life is to live every day
as if it were your first
when every day is your first
you free yourself from all the cynicism you've built up over the
years
you allow yourself to see beauty in all it's forms
and trust me, it's fucking everywhere
from the hurried commuter pausing to hold a door open for a
stranger
to the room full of people who spent ten dollars on a friday
night to see a poetry show
that's beautiful
every day
i awake to the sun hitting my face for the first time
i breathe my first breath and it's intoxicating
every day
i walk out into a world where no one has ever judged me
i look up at the sky and remember how fascinating clouds are
and every day
someone will be the most beautiful woman i've ever seen
when every day is your first
love has never let you down
you've never been rejected or abused
and you realized that love has got to be
the most ridiculous fucking thing to be afraid of that there is
i'm not afraid anymore
death tried to take me and i kicked its ass
i'll be damned if love is gonna finish me off
once you allow yourself to love and be loved
to love who you are 'cause (heh we've already covered this)
you're all beautiful
it's like flipping a switch:
everything changes instantly
it changes from a matter of “if”
to a matter of time
see, love is a commodity that's in constant demand
and there's an infinite supply
all you've gotta do is learn how to manage it
i'm sure to some of you this sounds like preachy nonsense
that you'll immediately dismiss:
“oh shit, steve's gone all new age-y on us”
but if you take nothing else away from this poem
then at least take this:
don't run from love
and smile
you're so beautiful when you smile