Recent Readings

Lately readings have felt like gifts. All kinds of little take-aways.

Erin Mouré reading from Pillage Laud, a ’99 new classic re-printed by BookThug this season.
In her AB Series reading she said something about her computer poems (from when it was a novel technique then, as opposed to now when we are all computers) — the McPoem has as a characteristic how it shifts from something giving the semblance of profound, of salient to sentences and phrases from the same method that are utterly meaningless.
Greg Betts at an interview in OpenBook:

I read a poem once at an open mic at Queen’s University, and a poli-sci student came up to me with an incredulous expression, saying, “That did something” as if she doubted language had the right.

Ken Norris (who I have to track down more books by sometime) is in interview with Kevin Spenst at Prism. The whole interview is fascinating but this among it:

I sat down and read Don Juan, all of it, and it is the best thing that I have read in the past twenty years. It is very different from all the rest of Romanticism, and funnier than just about anything. Unfortunately, I will never be able to write anything like it. But that is probably okay. It’s written, and we have it, so maybe we don’t need anything else like it.

The idea ricochets. 90% and upwards of my own life doesn’t need my intervention. Most of literature and life is not directed at me. It is ambient conversation and silence that I don’t need to leap into. I don’t need to stay on top of it all. There’s only one of me and millions of poets. Any poem that I witness doesn’t require an opinion, for or against. I don’t need to emulate or avoid emulating, nod to or worry if I don’t profess my noticing. It doesn’t have to be that complex. It is exists. Good.
I went to 4 poetry readings in as many days. And feel richer for it.
At each, thru each and afterwards feeling my energies better nor worse. That’s over 14 voices including open mic and I have no regrets. No winces. No please-just-kill-me-now-would-I-be-conspicious-if-I-snuck-out? Not once.
That’s pretty-near confusing.
I would attribute that to being in an uncommonly good mood except I’m a couple weeks into a funk-wrestle. Going to get groceries (among —gasp — people) looked less attractive than weighing the relative nutritional merits of boxboard lying around.
I would say it due to going to things that I’d predictable like except most were unknowns or uncontrollable.
I’ve never heard Catherine Owen read before. I’ve seen her books around now and then but never sat with, and whenever she was reading I was otherwise booked. Her poems resonated in a poem-shiver way. My undividable attention. I understand the experience and solace and grief with new depth for having witnessed one of her poems. Others were striking in a sit up and listen way as well.
I’m feeling supremely lucky in the word-casino.
Should I cash out and never enter another reading again?
Should Ieave on a high point?

Jim Larwill performing a set of incantations, the Bonepicker, the Raven and more June 12, Sasquatch.
It was utterly absorbing. I can stay in the moment without remembering there is anything except this moment of poetry. For my mind this rare. I can suspend critique, observations and be present.
That’s what poetry rarely does. It lets me stay within it. There is no other place I’d rather be. I am not thinking about mechanism or delivery or “taken out of the poem” as the saying goes.
Jim also made a sort of liturgical ephemera for the occasion. A sort of religion of poetry tract. That’s as best I can call it. An interesting little object in itself.
I missed the spoken word at WestFest. If given a map and set in a small wet paper sack with a flashlight, I still wouldn’t be able to work my way out of the paper bag. Ach. But I hear it was wonderful.
I got to WestFest Lit which, curated by Marcus McCann was a chance to hear Patrizia Gentile talk about the Fruit Machine and experiences of the closet of the 50s to 80s, hear from Gabriella Golinger’s novel about something of the same. An interesting take-away was Golinger mentioning her wish to have been in a place to write her novel earlier, when it would have been more cathartic, when people needed someone to break silences and yet, she realized, she couldn’t then. She needed time, perspective, experiences not experienced, to be led by a community and lead in a community before she could find articulacy.
I arrived late so I missed rob’s reading and part of Jon-Paul Fiorentino’s opening but caught most of the latter:

Interesting stories. The humour reminded me of David McGimpsy. It was fun to hear and feel the earthquake of laughter coming from hubby.
The interviews after were warm-spirirted as well. It seems I’ve managed to have serendipity in atmospheres of readings lately.
It isn’t just the content, nor the presentation, nor the people but the uncontrollable chemistry in the room that adds the final magical ingredient.
Should I leave on a crest?
It wouldn’t be the time. (It never is.)
There is my own reading this Thursday with Monty Reid and rob mclennan at Mother Tongue Books. It’d be awkward if I missed that, plus I try never to miss a reading by Monty or rob. Maybe see you there?