It wasn’t long ago that Wakefield Brewster virtually owned the Toronto spoken-word scene.

After years of wowing slammers and literati alike with his hip-hop-influenced, quick-as-lightning rhymes and metaphors, the Lyrical Pitbull moved to Calgary in 2006 to live with his wife and two children. But he’s coming back for one night, this Monday, for his second engagement with the annual Scream in High Park literary concert.

“I’m standing tall and feeling good, and I can’t wait for Scream,” Brewster says on the phone from Calgary. “I’m excited, thinking about coming back and blasting the mic.”

Brewster has plenty of new material to share with Toronto fans, but plans to pull out a few old standards. Popular poems from his Toronto years include “Rebound” and “Luna Her-story”.

Arriving in Cowtown, Brewster found the poetry scene radically different from Hogtown’s vibrant community, he explains. “Venues were leaning more towards bands. I had to do a lot of searching for places fostering live spoken word. The biggest influence was ‘cowboy poetry’ – for many people, their only exposure to live poetry.”

But Brewster has been busy changing that. “Slam wasn’t on the radar when I came. But I’ve been pioneering different avenues of poetry out here. People were sparked by my presence. I influenced them to up the ante. Now, Calgarians are more into the dynamics of poetry.”

He also regularly gets speaking gigs at local schools. “That’s what I’ve found most satisfying,” he says. “I’ve been brought in to speak on poetry, slam, diversity, even environmental issues. The educational system here takes me quite seriously.”

Moving to a very different province – where people tend to be more conservative and less worldly – has deeply affected his perspective of Canada, Brewster says.

“People are so frightened out here. You can walk through Calgary’s entire downtown core in ten minutes, but if you mention ‘downtown’, people go pale and start sweating,” he says, laughing. “The nightlife is all 20-year-olds getting drunk in bars – and people here drink and drive in abundance. Some people here still have a frontier mentality.”

Brewster is currently working on a new CD project, Two Too Many, which will combine spoken word with jazz music.

“I’ve earned a lot of respect from the community out here,” he says. “They don’t compare me to anyone.

“I do poetry not because I can, but because I love it. And people here now love it more.”