Calgary’s iconic Caffe Beano brings city’s arts community together with new anthology of local poetry

Caffee Beano manager Emily Pohorelic, Meghan Mendes, Charlie Roe and Eugene Stickland all worked to create a book of poetry and illustrations featuring over 50 Calgary artists. It's the third volume published by the iconic 17 Ave. coffee house over the past 18 years.

Over 50 local poets and one cool coffee house are holding a book launch Friday -- all at Caffe Beano.

The beloved Beltline cafe at 17th Avenue S.W. and Ninth Street is the site of the launch party for Beano Poetry Anthology, Vol. 3, a collection of poems, illustrations and graphic art from multiple generations of Calgary artists with some connection to the coffee house.

There’s a bunch of familiar names, including past Calgary Poet Laureates Sheri-D Wilson and Wakefield Brewster. There’s also work from Kirk Miles, Tyler Perry, Wayman Chan and Joan Sarro, who hosts “The Spin Evolution” on CJSW.

The book is a collaborative effort financed by Caffe Beano owner Keaton Baay. Cafe manager Emily Pohorelic recruited Eugene Stickland, who has been a fixture in Calgary literary and theatre circles for over 30 years, to work with a cast of Gen Z artists including Charlie Roe, who designed the book and Meghan Mendes, who shot the cover, to create the new anthology.

This volume comes 15 years after Vol. 2, which came out in 2011 and Vol. 1, which arrived in 2008.

All of them were edited by Stickland, the publisher of B-House Books, author and playwright with 19 productions of his work staged around the world, many in Calgary where he was the playwright in residence at Alberta Theatre Projects for 10 years.

Stickland has also been a Caffe Beano regular off and on for 30 years.

‘Why did you stop doing it?’

Since Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 arrived in the world, Caffe Beano expanded, opening a second location at Uxbridge Drive, near Foothills Hospital -- where that location’s manager, Danny, discovered both earlier volumes and thought they were kind of cool.

“Danny and I were talking about it (one day),“ said longtime Beltline Beano manager Emily Pohorelic, who has managed the 17 Avenue location for about 20 years. “He said, why did you stop doing it?

“So we decided to do it again,” she said.

Pohorelic employs a lot of emerging artists in the cafe, some of whom are working with Stickland on Vol. 3.

“It’s a solid community (at Beano),” she said, “but coming out of the pandemic, we lost it a little. We still lost a lot of (community) connection.”

“Something like this (book) creates opportunities for mentorship from older artists like me and younger artists trying to find their way in it,” Stickland said. “We get to lead by example.”

Stickland is the glue that bridges the older generation of poets such as Miles, who was one of the co-founders of One Yellow Rabbit back in the early 1980s, with the new generation of artists such as Roe, who not only designed the book but contributed a poem and will perform some music at the book launch Friday.

Roe is a graduate of the Alberta School for the Arts, where he created a number of zines such as Sticky Label, which he says featured art drawings, playlists, illustrations, drawings, collages and sketchbooks.

“It’s random,” Roe said. “Pretty DIY.”

He brought the same zine sensibility to the Beano Poetry Anthology, including any number of fonts for all the different voices of the poets being showcased in the book.

“Fonts have different personalities,” Roe said. “They each have their own character.”

All of which begs the question: if Caffe Beano was a font, what font would it be?

“That’s a good question,” Roe said. “I’d have to think about it. Avenir maybe?”

‘A whole culture forms around Caffe Beano lineups’

All of which brings it back around to what makes Caffe Beano, which only recently introduced Wi-fi after 36 years or so of being a Wi-fi free zone, so special.

Stickland discovered Beano, which has always drawn an outdoor crowd that almost matches the number of people who gather inside, around 1994, he says.

“I think I was walking by,” he said. “Loved this part of 17th Avenue. Stumbled on it. It seemed like a group of like-minded people I could relate to -- people with books who were writing and reading.”

What makes this edition of the Caffe Beano Anthology of Poetry more poignant is that several beloved Beano regulars have died recently. One was Norm Johnson, who had a habit of buying coffee for everyone. The other was Darcy, a BMX rider and artist who spent years experiencing homelessness -- and who became good Beano pals with Johnson.

Johnson died recently, and then Darcy died too, prompting Stickland to write the poem that appears in the book called, “When Friends Die.”

That prompted Roe to write a companion piece to Stickland’s poem, which is also part of the anthology.

As for working with designers and photographers and poets four decades younger than he is?

“We’re in synch despite our huge gap in age,” Roe said. " We have inter-generational energy. Completely unique.

“We love Eugene,” he added. “If you understand him. It’s unique diggage. He’s not trying to be hip to your parade. He has his own parade.

“Also he’s just a swell person,” he adds. “(We have) mutual respect for one another.”

“I love watching these two work with each other,” says Pohorelic, who has always treasured the ways in which Caffe Beano brings unlikely characters together.

“There’s a whole culture that forms around Beanos lineups,” she says. “It snakes around the corner. You don’t know who you’re standing beside. Could be a billionaire, could be a street person.

“Norm and Danny could become friends.

“You only have one objective (in a lineup): to get a coffee.”

‘A gift’

Stickland says he’s grateful to owner Keaton Baay and Caffee Beano for supporting the project -- and hiring artists.

“What Emily and ownership did was give us (Calgary poets and artists) a gift,” he says.

“We’re creating something from nothing -- intergenerational connections and this beautiful little book comes into the world.”

The launch party takes place Friday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Caffe Beano, 1613 9 St. S.W. at 17 Avenue.

For more about Caffe Beano, go here.