The 4th annual author’s day went off pretty nicely. I sold several chapbooks, an autoharp and chatted with a couple people about the Guatemala Stove Project.

We all checked out each other’s wares. I didn’t get a photo of everyone through. Who was there? Ruth Tabacnik with Beads of Awareness which raises money for artist partners in Uganda and for solar lights there. A pretty good sized crew from the Gatineau Valley Historical Society with their magazines, their books on history and canoe routes. Stephanie Boyer was there with her French and (soon to be English and Korean) children’s books. Workshop leader, poet and novelist Catherine Joyce was tabling as well.

Marieke rounded up an audience for readings and I opened followed by Alice Petersen, Brian Doyle, and Sandra Perron.

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I’m having a little trouble with my gallery images here in preview vs. what actually displays.

Below should be Brian Doyle and Marieke.

Sean Silcoff is shown below holding up the original Blackberry as he reads from Losing the Signal, (made into a movie).

Photo below is with Nicole Caputo closing.

Sean Silcoff is shown below holding up the original Blackberry as he reads from Losing the Signal, (made into a movie). Photo below is with Nicole Caputo closing.

Head’s up, I also put writing at substack where you can subscribe. And different stuff at Patreon where you can also subscribe.

Patreon tends to be shorter, poem drafts and quick, but not twitter-quick thought and Substack is more in depth. In the latest of the latter I look at what I’ve been reading and why.

ICYMI: Substack? why poetry?

“Pay attention. /Concern is the debt /We always owed each other.”

Amanda Gorman in Call us what we carry, (Penguin Random House, 2021)

Mike Way was an enthusiastic people’s poet at open mics. He was emphatic and politically engaged, a seeker and yet full of fun.

We started corresponding 6 years ago or so. (He nicknamed me Pearlster. )

He worked contracts for the CRA and as a “writer/editor” for the Canada School of Public Service, a journalistic assignment. In 2017 he wrote profiles of “spotlighted” employees, as well as cover and review “special events” happening at the School, such as “Overcoming Micro-biases and Microaggressions in the Workplace.”

He sent out yearly compendiums of his yearly poetry output, usually in January, except it was in February in 2020. He prefaced with, “I know, I know – this year I’m later than an LRT train in an Ottawa winter at rush hour.” Maybe it was fatigue? He said he walked “1296 KILOMETRES along the Rideau Canal from April 30 – December 5, 2020.  Yup – that ain’t no Trumpian typo – it’s the God’s honest truth AND it constitutes a shitload of walking.[…]So how’s that for an interesting saga of being forced into creating something from nothing due to the pandemic? You never know what lofty goal you’re capable of achieving until you actually try.”

In his poem of 2020 called “Life”

Is life reaching for you first?
Are you feeling well-immersed – enough to make it happen?

Or is life teaching you the worst
When you’re always seeming cursed – enough to leave you flappin’?

Is life screeching for your thirst?
Are you feeling well-rehearsed – enough to stop you nappin’?

Mike Way

He was big on Red Sox baseball and a big skater. In 2019 he logged on the canal a grand total of 443 kms. That year his poems included one of talking with Elders and entering a sweat lodge to” begin confronting his spiritual dearth”.

Being out of the poetry open mic loop myself for a few years, I stopped checking in.

This week news broke that he died of a heart attack.

He started signing off as Ekim Yaw. In January 2021 he sent a round up of his latest poems, including

I want to see you smile
And chase your clouds away
I want to see you happy
And bring sunshine to your day

I want to see you laugh at life
And always come out to play
‘Cause when you smile
I’m happy

And when you’re happy
I smile
And as long as we can laugh
There’s no need to ever say “Good-bye.”

Mike Way, “I want to see you smile”

This is the 4th year that the market is held. Look for it on the left parking area of the Meredith Center (on the side of the woods)

They generally have about 14 vendors including ready-made food vendors, to encourage picnics, plus live music each week. There will be about 5 tents of authors.