Last night I did my first poetry reading as a part of Livewords for the advance launch of Carousel #31. The place was packed. It was amazing.

It was also Colin Brush’s first reading, who I kind of know through Broken Pencil. We were pretty psyched for each other, and he was great. And super brave – his first reading and he took the first spot of the night. Incredible.

I was in the second set, after intermission. I opened with “Domestic Secrets” which appeared in the previous issue of Carousel, #30, and followed with a few funny poems I thought would read well. People laughed at the right places, and I got cheers for my zombie apocalypse poem, so that was pretty nifty.

If anyone else has shots from the evening, I’d love to see them because I’m vain.

A big thanks to Mark Laliberte for publishing my poem and inviting me to read, thanks to Edward Nixon for hosting Livewords, thanks to the other fabulous readers, and, of course, thanks to everyone who showed up – you guys were a great audience!

That was definitely something I’d like to do again.

April is National Poetry Month in Canada and the United States.⁽¹⁾ Founded by the Academy of American Poets in 1996, they’ve come up with a list of ways to celebrate poetry. For instance, April 14th is Poem in Your Pocket Day, and another suggestion is to read interviews and literary criticism about poets and poetry. To that end, I offer the following:

• Open Book Toronto is running a series, Poets in Profile, with interviews from various poets.
• The CBC‘s Canada Reads has expanded, launching a new version: Canada Reads Poetry. Very exciting.
• In “The New Math of Poetry“, David Alpaugh discusses the meaning of overabundance of poetry available today, and what we might be missing.
• Every year Tightrope Books puts out an anthology of the best Canadian poetry in English. A blog is maintained with posts written by various poets included in the anthology, and it’s excellent.
• On a related note, Michael Lista argues that literary magazines should fold. It generated responses from a number of people, most notably Laurie Fuhr, Michael Lithgow, and Vox Populism.

If you’re in Toronto, also check out Toronto Poetry Vendors, vending machines which issue brief poetry collections for a toonie — such a neat idea.

I have a few poems forthcoming in various journals, and I’ll let you know when and where they’re published once they become available.

Footnotes:

1. The UK celebrates their poets in October. [↩]