You never know with a drop-in workshop how many will attend. Sometimes 4, sometimes 20 by serendipity. This week’s session was led by LM Rochefort on the Imagists, the principles, the legacy, examples and DIY time. (Oct 23rd is time to share what you’ve worked on and talk about how to voice your poems effectively.)
There was also an assignment for those willing to take it to read 5-20 poems by imagists and spend 15 minutes a day for 2 weeks reading/absorbing poems by the imagists such as Pound, Wallace Stephens, WCW, H.D., etc.
The open mic was full and diverse including this silent piece of road sign trips by Daniel Lehan.
There was a tribute to John Newlove by Steve de Paul ending with God Bless the Bear.
The double-bill feature was Méira Cook who also read at Collected Works on Wednesday from her novel.
Her poetry collection sold all copies, which is always nice to see. It is about walking into Winnipeg and into citizenship. She described the development of the collection which was to be in her voice before a young brash braggy female elbowed in and then joined by an old male curmudgeon, a perhaps washed up poet. Then plot started weaving in. You never know what a book will do.
It had some striking uses of language, such as “each breath like a snap of knuckles”, “o, father with a face like a fist in a pocket” “thawing winter with each zinc white breath out”. I’ve put the book on order.
She described herself as a warm-up act for Zwicky. Zwicky, gracious in turn, described herself as the cool down act for Cook.
Jan Zwicky, who is also an essayist and has books on philosophy read from poetry and from her novel,
The Book of Frog. The sizeable stack shrunk fast after her reading in comic style from the surrealist scenes. Hint: Al is an invisible albatross who emails the keyfob-sized cement fob who gives advice to his human companion.
For the moment i”m deep into another novel, The Path to Ardroe by John Lent. It’s absorbing poetic stuff.
The next Tree will have Lisa Downe and Peter Sanger which unfortunately I’ll have to miss since I’ll be out reading in London and in St. Cats.