Hot Ottawa Voice, Tree reading

It takes a composed mind to make a composed image and since we were reading the feature set as Hot Ottawa Voices (as upcoming poets without a trade collection), nerves meant I wasn’t taking any photos.
This week Mike Blouin read from his intriguing new series on the life of Johnny Cash and two other fellas, not including the ghosts, which practical country folks who don’t broker nonsense, believe in. Jim Larwill sang some poets and had his new chapbooks on hand. Claudia Coutu Radmore shared more of her revisioning of Christ in modern context, in one case in black boots, black gloves and riding the subway. Marcus McCann read 2 from his chapbook, which still has a few copies left if you act soon. Don Office, Rod Pederson, and at least one other lady (whose name will come back to me any minute now) were also in the open mic on Tuesday’s Tree.
We each had 10-15 minutes to read, a fairly long chunk of time to think about in advance but it went quickly. Amanda read from the last half of her chapbook The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman, getting laughs peppered thruout the litany of lovers for her comic pivots and timing. I read from a mixture of various manuscripts, (tangentially) trains and fur and a sestina that had as end rhymes (very slant) regret and duodenum and a few from the chapbook from last year (Better Ways to go than by Aspartame). Roland read dramatically from his Metafizz, Whack of Clouds and treated us to some new stuff in the works for a new chapbook.
People were really encouraging. It’s such a warm community of friendly people. The new venue is an airy cafe seating room, pin-drop quiet (bring pins, conversations usually well-stocked) and with a concession stand of snacks and drinks in room.
It was a good night, as Tree tends to be. (The next one in two week, a mid-summer’s tree falling a little later than usual, all open-mic night.)
Lit links: The poet/translator with the pen name Red Pine