Jill Zmud was the next of the evening’s entertainment for Oct 25th at Writers Fest. Her beautiful voice will be coming to her second album next spring. She was the music for the Bywords portion of the evening.

Amanda Earl read a John Newlove poem (Then, If I Cease Desiring) and announced the honorable mentions for the 10th annual John Newlove Award (those poems are linked at that link). Each reader brought a Newlove poem to the audience as well.

JC Bouchard reading his poem, The world ended seven months ago. And Newlove’s Driving.

James, who was pale and American by JM Francheteau was an honorable mention. He read Newlove’s God Bless the Bear.

Arrowheads of Andre Narbonne was read on his behalf by his daughter Aeriana. She also read Newlove’s The Weather.

untitled for John Lavery (December 31, 1949 – May 8, 2011) by Nicholas Power packed a punch as did the Newlove poem he chose. (Shakespeare’s Sonnet?)

Rob Thomas read Newlove’s Poem with Ravens. The 2013 John Newlove Winner, Rob Thomas won with this poem as judged by Alice Burdick. Thomas also was in the decade old tribute chapbook to John Newlove, Moments not Monuments. Thomas will have a chapbook of his poems developed with the editors of Bywords for next year.

2012 winner Jenna Jarvis launched her Bywords chapbook with her vocal stylings. The Tiger with the Crooked Mouth already has a review since it went on pre-sale at the small press fair. She read Newlove’s Gross Masks.

The Plan 99 BookThug launch on Oct 26th was definitely standing room only. (The best seat in the house might be someone’s shoulders, if you’re short enough.) But if the crowd being spellbound and the lineup to buy and have book signed lasting what seemed like hours, indicates anything, it was a popular event too. (Did we break past double-digits? Almost I bet.)

Mike Blouin did part of his story of stuntman from memory. The story mixes script, fact, fiction, poetry, and anecdote. He nails local valley dialect among his snippets of two timelines, the events of the stuntmen and the making of a film about it decades later. Here’s the trailer for his book I don’t know how to behave.

Sandra Ridley read from Counting House which is the opposite of linear thinking in a different direction. Poems arranged in grids sometimes allow the reader to make the combinations in her characteristically dark landscape of transience and almosts. But you knew that we wouldn’t be for forever, right? she asks at one point in the text. (I paraphrase from laziness of finding that actual page with trick-or-treaters almost upon us.)

Andre Alexis’ A, in contrast to both, is a novel that goes ambling forward following a sort of Walter Mitty book geek who adores a secretive poet. The foibled fable of the fellow who is a protagonist fantasizes about tracking down the famous poet, perhaps leaving his bibliography of all his works, in a sort of break and entry gift, should he ever figure out where the writer lives. What happens when you do meet your literary idol? To the idol or to idolator?

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.