Monty Reid at Dusty Owl

I think my record stands in still not getting a good picture of Monty Reid. He was the feature reader at Dusty Owl.

He did a retrospective of poems from the last 25 years, with a concentration on Owls, given the venue. He read samples from The Life of Ryley from 1981 and Dreams of Snowy Owls to manuscripts in the works to be published next year, ones fresh off the press this year from BookThug and a selection from a year ago, Disappointment Island which I rather liked and it was short-listed for the Ottawa Book Awards and won the Lampman-Scott Award.

You know poetry works when each reading and re-reading or re-hearing the poem still works. You go back to it years later and it still works. He traced some poems that were the start of themes and his first series of poems.

His newest book, with art by Roberta Huebener. Over a series of poems the woman in the long dark coat climbs to an observatory platform, sees owls in the snow. As the darkness closes the woman in the long black coat reasons with herself that since she arrived, there was an entrance, there must also be a way to leave. The evidence, her senses, report that her tracks are all erased.

The open mic was fairly full after the break with 8 or 9 people reading (including a number from both Stephen Brockwell‘s class and rob mclennan‘s classes. Gulp, even me. Since the Brockwell contingent will read again Dec. 7th at Rasputin’s I should get practiced up.)