Gaspereau Reading, Ottawa

Two Gaspereau poets had a full room at the Plan 99 series for their April 17 reading. On May 29th will be the next book launches at Plan 99 with Jennifer Londry and other Hagios poet, Sandra Ridley

Johanna Skibsrud did the Ottawa launch of her book “I Do Not Think that I Could Love a Human” (Gaspereau Press 2010). Her previous two books, a novel and a collection of poetry she launched in Ottawa last year at Collected Works. (The Sentimentalists, Gaspereau, 2009) and (Late Nights With Wild Cowboys, Gaspereau, 2009).
I’ve heard her read twice before and this work resonated with me more than her previous two. She had some lovely turns of phrases using sound and play such as “the line of thought pulled taut” and observations of subjectiveness of time and times left behind saying something close to it is not the things that shrink but the spaces between that grow.
Whereas Johanna’s poems are more of the internal lyric personal journey, Paul’s are entertaining or poignant or both. He has a variety of poems in his collection, including an interesting reshuffled word poem. His subjects talk about “out there” in seriousness and with humour, of animals, creation, plants or late-life seniors.

Paul Tyler at the Ottawa launch of his book called A Short History of Forgetting (Gaspereau Press 2010). This is his first collection although many of the poems had found magazine placements over time and what is the first section was rolled out of his Rubicon chapbook a few months ago.
I always appreciate it when a poet reads a width of different poems like he does, rather than a tiny subset. There were only a couple poems overlapping from when he gave at the Factory reading a year ago. I think this is at least the 4th time I’ve seen him read. Possibly the 5th. Just as a factor of my going to so many readings.
At Plan 99 he was “on”, grounded in the words, present with what he was reading, and the room was giving back to him in a lovely palpable feedback cycle. He presented his poems well with a resonant relaxed voice — something I’ve been thinking on with three talks given on that subject of presentation from Tree lately.
In his poem on midges he described them as “pin pricks / in the fabrics of the air /which is joy.”
If I find time and figure out how and get clearance, I may be able to post a snippet from the reading.