Jem fidgets in his chair, his body seemingly unable to sit still, needing to keep up with the speed at which his brain ticks over. Jem has toured the Canadian fringes for eight years, and his name is synonymous with one of the circuit’s top performance poets. “The thing is, for my show, I’ve given away the story in the title. It’s called ‘How I stopped worrying and learned to love the mall.’ In a convoluted, slightly extended way, that’s pretty much all that happens. I was going to call the show ten thousand words about shopping - but people told me I shouldn’t. I’ve done the show once in Edinburgh, when it was nine-and-a-half thousand words - I lost a thousand words crossing the Atlantic, and I lost a thousand words before that.”

Jem’s previous works have been more standard slam-poetry fare, but for his latest show, he’s taken a new approach. “It’s the first time I’ve ever done a poem - a show - that’s all one piece. Every other time I’ve just taken a bunch of pieces I wrote, that I like the most, and put them together in an order. But this one is actually a distinct piece, an eight thousand word poem, not something I’ve done before. I’m doing it partly because I’ve done fringe for quite a while and it’s quite good to try something different.”

“The core of the piece was effectively ready last year, but it was so big, it took the show out of shape. It was a bit of a monster, it sat in the middle of the show, sort of - it was sort of a raging animal, actually. I’ve effectively taken that ten-minute piece, and made a whole show out of it. The style of the show - a lot of boiled-down one-liners, one after another, cheap gags, kind of poetic, is the style of mine I like best.” Jem premiered the show last week, at the Montreal Fringe.

Jem’s style has changed as he gained experience on the fringe circuit. “I’ve become much more theatrical. The first time I did a show, it was basically ‘Title - Poem! Title - Poem!’ For an hour. There was no real talking, no real movement, it was just very fixed-minded. I’ve learned a lot from the clowns. Clowns are really, really free, and one of the things about being a performance poet is that you’ve got your face, your voice and your body - there’s a touch of mime - your body is your canvas.”

Jem has had particularly good luck with the press over the years, earning top praise from the papers in Vancouver, Winnipeg and Montreal. Jem was particularly supportive of the Canadian fringe experience. “The thing about the fringes is that you can do whatever the hell you like. This is effectively my eighth year doing Canadian fringes. There’s no bull, the audience gets a lot of things they don’t expect, you can be as adventurous or as bold as you like.”

Jem Rolls: how I learned to stop worrying and love the mall plays at The Mercury Lounge (56 Byward Market), June 20-29.

Tags: interview, jem rolls, montreal fringe festival, poet