On the poetry front, it was a packed and happy room with chairs to the back for a triple bill on the 25th.
David O’Meara launched his first book in 5 years, A Pretty Sight (Coach House, 2013). Those happening across the right open mic, Tree or The Reading Series, heard sample poems from it over the last few years.
David O’Meara’s poems are known for being well wrought, tight, fusing heart and mind and language in an exceptional way. You can preview 29 pages of it here. Here’s a review.
Paul Griffin, Adam Saikaley and Michael Dubue of Hilotrons did a sort of improv ambient theatre music to go with the reading with electronica hum and blip, piano and cymbal. (Blip being a technical term by someone who knows nothing of music.)
One of them performed part of the Sid Vicious vs. Socrates dialogue poem on the nature of life, fame, perception and drugs. If all stays on track, you can hear some excerpts of that track tonight on Literary Landscape, CKCU fm, 93.1 at 6:30pm EST.
As an added bonus, free finger puppets of Sid Vicious and Socrates (who both make appearances in A Pretty Sight) were on many fingers, handed out by tall-tyke Aiden at the door.
Like the 2011 concert of ghazals at writers fest, it can be considered a crowd-loved success. Applause popped up among the pieces.
Dave and Ian on sound made sure everything ran ticketyboo.
Next up Sean announced was another of Canada’s best poets, Stephen Brockwell. He’s also known for his craftmanship of words.
In the introduction Sean related how years ago, when a writers fest was just a nice idea, Sean attended a Factory reading series where Stuart Ross and Michael Dennis read and Sean thought to himself, Ottawa would benefit from having more of this, yes, and it spurred on the beginnings.
Michael Dennis was hosting. He has a poetry review site here if you haven’t seen it, and a list his collections.
In interview, they talked about what’s next including for Brockwell, Savage Firearm, a long poem that’s taking shape on the trajectories and lives around the bullets that left the gun.
In comments afterwards, Deborah Tunney said, “Pretty amazing stuff. I wonder at the maleness shown here, the viewpoint of being male. I wonder how it makes the perception different from my own, and yet my reaction destroys that distance. Which is one of the wonders of writing.”
His poems have a tightness and intensity as well as humour on the human condition. See Notes Towards an Alternate world in Ottawater 5.
Some of the poems cut to the bone but are honed more like surgery than blurt, butchery or battery. There’s an attention to disparity in our culture, the inequities and the impossibilities of how we are blinkered to our class.
Here’s 2 poems from Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books. November 7th he’ll be the guest on Literary Landscape.
The core of the fall writers fest programming is over but there are 3 more events in the next 2 weeks.
What did you miss? The writers fest blog has a few event summaries by attendees such as Michael Winter and Joseph Boyden discussing narrative and Lynn Coady, Cynthia Flood, and Kelli Deeth talking about short story.