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poetry readings

Sales talk for poets

Dear me, where does the time go. Since my last entry I’ve attended two poetry readings, one of them my own, and had a restful time up-island. Here then a few notes in a quasi-chronological order.

At the Black Stilt last Friday we were treated to Yvonne Blomer reading from her first collection from Ekstasis – A broken mirror, fallen leaf – telling us she has another two manuscripts up her sleeve already. A nicely done reading of a new poem for two voices with her husband, and a small lesson in Japanese contained in the rest of her reading from the new collection. And swiftly followed by veteran fellow reader Barry Dempster who said something that triggered another thought about That Book I’ve Been Reading, 101 Ways to Make Poems Sell.

Dempster spun one of his many entertaining tales around a recent media interview, in which he was asked “that question all poets dread: what’s your book about?” And indeed we do dread it, and indeed we could stop fearing the question, or being irked by it, and turn it to our advantage, as he did, by having an answer ready to pull from our back pocket. Chris Hamilton-Emery terms this the one-sentence hard sell (as distinct from the longer 30 second sell), and it’s standard sales & marketing stuff.

If you have time to engage your prospective buyer, readings booker, interviewer, you can expand it to the Thirty-Second Sell, about 90 words that will convince others to buy your book, because “people have very low attention spans and, where consumption is concerned, great filters for working out what does gain their interest and, eventually, their money and time.” In other words, figure out what your USP is and come up with a short speech to explain it.

Meanwhile, back on Vancouver Island, on Wednesday we headed north and stopped in Lantzville to collect some books from Oolichan. Up the road and across the street we spotted a sign promising local food at the Black Dog Cafe and headed inside for some sustenance. There was a roasted garlic and tomato soup served with a dollop of pesto: sublime. And some potato and pesto quiche which was less sublime but did the trick. The lemon meringue pie we passed on our way out the door looked wonderful but we had to sprint on up the road to our destination at Fanny Bay. We dined out that night at a place we hadn’t tried before, the Monte Christo in Courtenay. The food was a bit on the unremarkable side – they seemed to specialise in a few too many cuisines to be master of any – but the setting was good and on a sunny day would have been gorgeous.

Day two we headed to the Kingfisher spa for necessary repairs to our nerves and everything else. I declined to buy the six or was it nine quality skincare products they specially selected just for my problem skin, and after a steam and a wallow we finished the job with an excellent lunch in the restaurant there. Peg had the foresight to order a bowl of the Indonesian vegetable soup for us to share – we waded into a fantastic lightly spiced pureed vegetable combination that would certainly have been too much for us single-handed with all that followed. My Ahi Tuna Salad was divine – nicely seared and seasoned and served on mushrooms and artichokes, prettily ornamented with fried lotus root rounds and cherry tomatoes. I was so enthused I ordered the chocolate mousse which was perked up with nuggets of chocolate. Wished I’d brought my camera when Judy’s tower of brulee arrived – a bit of a misnomer but impressive, a brulee-like substance larded with ginger and mango and then arranged in bricks with a crunchy mortise of what looked like brandy snaps.

Last night I read with a delightful Newfoundlander poet and film maker, Marian Frances White to a large and largely unknown (to me) crowd. With Mocambopo’s move to the Black Stilt has come a new, young and enthusiastic following, and you have to arrive very early for either a seat or a place at the open mic. As it should be. Wendy Morton officiated, and proclaimed the success of the latest round of Random Acts of Poetry.

WOTS happening

Spent last weekend across the water in Vancouver, a long way to go for a nine minute reading, but we do what we can to help the cause. Anyway I was lucky to be first and actually get my nine (and I did count ’em) minutes; as too often happens with multiple-reader events, those at the end of the program got squeezed for time. I was appearing with the Poets In Transit gang at the Word on the Street, and what a spectacular day we had for it. I read with Jen Currin, Marya Fiamengo, Kevin Roberts, Gena Thompson and finally Elise Partridge – who graciously but very sadly for us only read two poems. A wonderful thing this PIT program, and, we learned really only in existence thanks to the hard work of poet and anthologist Sandy Shreve, who introduced the event.


My poem as it will appear on better buses near (some of) you. Don’t know who is mr grumpy on the left or what he has to do with it all.


Packing them in at the Poet’s (sic) Corner (Lynne Truss, where are you?)


The Oolichaners (Hiro Boga and Ron Smith) brace themselves as another mob of book buyers approaches. I pushed my way to the front of the crowd and came away with a gorgeous new cookbook, Just Chicken: 100 Easy Recipes from India by Sharda Pargal.


Lots and lots at WOTS. Cool library building, huh?


Rhonda Batchelor holding the latest – hot, hot, hot! – issue of Malahat Review.


A stylish Heidi Greco stars at the sub-Terrain stand with some local autumn foliage. Next door neighbour Anvil Press had wonderful news about the shockingly good novel Stolen, by Annette Lapointe: she has just been nominated for a Giller Prize.

Malaspina and banana bread

It seems the Curse of Blogger is upon me once more: I’ve spent three days trying to post a few more snaps from Feast of Fields but Blogger leads me down the garden path and then just refuses to let it happen. And then I got to the end of today’s snappy, entertaining and endlessly erudite posting and Blogger quit on me again. Grrr. So I try once more, from memory.

I read last night at Malaspina College where I was delighted to see a number of my former classmates from Kate Braid’s form in poetry course in the audience. One of them, Gabriola Island’s own Audrey Keating, did a terrific opening reading, or more accurately recitation. Brave and well delivered.

I was also delighted to receive as part payment for my reading, a hand crafted banana bread from the organiser, the lovely and talented ev nittel. It was wrapped in brown paper and warm from the oven. It was crunchy on top and springy in the middle, laced with chocolate, pebbled with walnuts and scattered with caramelised and chocolate coated almonds. To die for. Or at least to drive to Nanaimo and give a reading for! I will see if I can pry the recipe from her, but I fear she simply has a flair for baking that might not be possible for most of us to duplicate.

In keeping with my latest time-wasting activity (and you need lots of these when you’re getting ready to go away for a year!), namely keeping track of which poems I read where, here’s the evening’s playlist:

White Dresses (from Hour of the Pearl, read in honour of the surprise appearance of my long ago pal and fellow boarding school survivor Pamela!)
Leaving the Refuge (from new manuscript)
Suitcase (from Cartography)
Vegetables
Journeys
Tales
The Thirteenth Fairy Bites Back
The Rhonda Poem, or the Madness of D
Vegetable Kingdom (one for the vegetarians, written at Wired a couple of years back)
Ghost in the Machine (new manuscript)
Hard Cold Realty
London Plane
Ache and Pain
Boston School of Cooking Cookbook (Old Habits / Crosswords)
Another Life to Live at the Edge of the Young and Restless Days of Our Lives (Creating the Country / Crosswords)

Black Stilting


Susan and the Angels


All kindsa poetry fans…

The official launch of Planet Earth Poetry last night brought forth a monster medley of poetry lovers — all shapes, sizes and ages — and some fine musical accompanyment by Flat Lightning (half of which is Rick Van Krugel of Mandolirium). Susan Stenson was on hand selling AIDS Angels to raise money for medical relief to Africa, in lieu of admission charges. And then there were the readings – 20? 30? of them? An alarming number anyway. I thought I might fall in a swoon under the coffee table by the end, but things moved along at a good clip, made merciful by the evening’s rules: one poem only, by someone else. Our new hero, Dave Crothal, the owner of the Black Stilt, even read a poem.

Wendy Morton closed the evening with one of my favourite all time poems, Forgetfulness – click that link to find a fabulous animated version by the author, Billy Collins (I understand this is also available as an iPod download – now there’s technology I can get behind!)

Ekstasy in Fernwood and home made ketchup

I was shocked to find myself at a poetry reading in fabulous Fernwood last night, on a balmy summer’s eve; one of the early events offered by local publisher Richard Olafson in celebration of the 25th anniversary of his press, Ekstasis Editions. George Melnyk was in town, reading from his Elegy for a Poem Garden, poems and photographs inspired by a visit to Ian Hamilton Finlay’s original. Yvonne Blomer read from her new poetry collection, A Broken Mirror, Fallen Leaf; and Eric Miller read from his collection of essays, The Reservoir.

Summer’s put me in the mood for bbq foods like smokies and hamburgers, and as I checked my condiments I realised I had no Ketchup, so whipped some up from a recipe I’ve had and tinkered with for years. It beats anything you can buy and is infinitely adjustable to suit all tastes ‘n flavours.

1¼ cups crushed tomatoes (12 oz can) or tomato paste
1 c water
¼ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
¼ tsp mace
pinch cloves
¼ tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp salt
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/3 c cider vinegar
1 tsp molasses
1 tbsp sugar or honey

  • Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and simmer until thick, about 40 minutes. Store in fridge and freeze any surplus.

To guide you as you aim for the right consistency, let us give the last word to that prolific author Anonymous:

Tomato Ketchup

If you do not shake the bottle
None’ll come and then a lot’ll.

London in the sun

I’ve been checking London’s pulse and it’s still bashing away long into the night, particularly hot steamy nights as we had last weekend. That got the sirens going late into early. The plane trees are in full leaf, the sidewalk cafes are heaving and the natives are unveiling the precise pearly shade of the Anglo Saxon post-winter skin, at least the Anglo Saxon natives are. And it’s football madness of course, as the World Cup draws alarmingly near.

But down in the cellars of the Troubadour on alternate Mondays, all is reassuringly still poetry (not to mention accordion music by mega award winning poet C.L. Dalat). This week’s ensemble was Sans Frontieres I, “celebrating the breadth of contemporary European poetry”. First up was Valeria Melchioretto, born in German-speaking Switzerland to Italian-speaking mother and writing compelling poetry in English. Nisia Studzinska was also very fluent, not surprising with her UEA MFA out of the way. Polish born Maria Jastrzebska was raised in Britain and read from her third poetry collection, Syrena, and some new poems as well. Practically a British literary landmark herself, Lotte Kramer has just published her tenth collection, Black Over Red, with Rockingham Press and read us the title poem (about Mark Rothko’s paintings) as well as some of her signature pieces drawing on her German heritage and dramatic pre-war move to London in 1939.

Andras Gerevich was quite a showstopper. Hungarian, he’s lived in five countries and though fluent in English, writes still in Hungarian. He had interesting things to say about translation. He likened it to a favourite recipe (my ears perked right up) which in the hands of a dear friend may produce a similar dish to the one you love, but it will taste different. Likewise he says, although he’s blessed with excellent translators (including no less than George Szirtes) he doesn’t recognise the translations as his own words, so much: the meaning may be right but the prosody is off, for example, and there’s nothing you can do. Start changing the words, he says, and you violate copyright. He remarked as well that because Hungarian is a genderless language, his love poems in his native tongue were androgynous, which had always grieved his gay friends, and he was bemused to discover his poetry had been outed by the English translations, where “he” vs “she” had to be specified.

On Sunday I visited another of my many spiritual homes here, the London Review of Books Bookshop, near the British Museum, where Marilyn Hacker was speaking about form in American poetry. The talk attracted a hearteningly full room despite the £9 ticket price and the perfection of the weather. Hosted by Fiona Sampson, Hacker was flanked and cheered by a good audience of local formalists which included George Szirtes, Mimi Khalvati, and Ruth Fainlight. To me, her most interesting comment was that she preferred form because she never knew where the poem would take her within its constraints: “the collaboration of form and language will take me somewhere freer than free verse, where the conscious mind has to tell you something.” She also observed that “rhyme is fun, but meter is the skeleton” and concluded the afternoon with a short reading from Squares and Courtyards ( a couple of complicated 15 line sonnet-like paragraphs whose form was invented by and results dedicated to Haydn Carruth) and Desesperanto (“Talking to Apollinaire”) .

Afterwards I joined Meli and friends for supper at The Duke, a gastro-pub in Clerkenwell. Meli’s pea pancakes were quite amazing – literally green peas within a pancake, topped with haloumi cheese and sweet roasted tomatoes, garnished with shallot marmelade.