Woke up on my second day in Cobourg from dreams of taking down ninjas in Vancouver. Elsewhere in my dream someone was about to be killed on a roller-coaster because they knew too much. Further action ensued with a conspiracy to remove Vancouver monuments physically as well as from the city memory. “There are so many plot points in the air. We must be getting close to the season finale,” I thought to myself in the midst of the dream.
For some reason, Vancouver has become an action-adventure series. I’ve been on the road for seventeen days traveling through Victoria, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston and Cobourg. I’ve been writing poems most every day and then reading them to both expectant and unsuspecting audiences ranging wildly in number from one to thirty. Everyday has been an adventure in learning to work my way around a new map into vastly different venues. Perhaps, my subconsciousness is trying to convince my conscious self that Vancouver needs me. That it’s more exciting than anything I can experience on the road. Something deep inside is homesick. Or, it might just have been the MSG from the Chinese buffet that Stuart Ross and I went to the night before.
“How about you go over to that table and make it venue number 67?” he asked under his great shock of white hair, nodding in the direction of two men and a boy at a table.
I’d overheard them speaking Korean, so I went over to sing them a Korean lullaby to help speed the mellowing powers of the MSG.
“That’s what I sang to him when he was young,” the bespectacled father said nodding to his eight or nine-year-old son.
I didn’t count that as a venue because I didn’t have a poem for them. I’d already done my readings in Cobourg. One of them was at the Human Bean; another was at Meet at 66. The former reading had some up and down moments, the latter reading left me energized. “Wow! You just wrote that? What a beautiful poem,” was one young woman’s flabbergasted reaction.
“Hello, I’m the Poet Laureate. I’ve never heard of you,” was my initial welcome earlier in the afternoon from someone at the Human Bean. To be fair, I’d never heard of him, so I suppose that made us even. Cobourg is an interesting place with some great stuff going for it. (There are some avid supporters and creators of the literary arts – the principal one being Stuart Ross.) It’s a great little town and I recommend that you head there if you’re in the Toronto area. It’s not news that small towns are dying, but the shining examples of people who are fighting this trend makes their efforts all the more lustrous.
The Impresario is doing vital work in building community and providing a venue for performers and artists. I showed up to hear a duo from the north of England play an hour and a half of English folk songs. While listening to Arrowsmith’s ditties, which by turns were somber and sprightly, I jotted down some lines. During their break, I approached them with the proposal to read a poem. Without a moment’s hesitation, they agreed. (This audience was more appreciative than the one I’d read to earlier in the day – the stragglers leaving Shrek the Musical at city hall. I suppose it was a disappointment to get a poem about a sleepwalking Queen Victoria while waiting for an encore.) . It’s a wonderful place run on a spirit of openness, but as a small business in a tiny town it is not an easy undertaking.
Kingston’s downtown is larger than Cobourg’s, but many businesses are also suffering. The Wayfarer is a perfect secondhand bookstore. Old-school DIY in its hand written signs, bookshelves reaching up to high ceilings, and balconies built on the sides for additional space all create a playground meditation on knowledge and the printed word. The Verb Gallery is a large room at the back where there are sometimes art exhibits. Walter Cipin, the Wayfarer’s owner since 1987, admits that times are tough. We chatted for a while and then I read him a poem.
If you do go to the Wayfarer be sure to check out the Sleepless Goat next door. I read to an attentive audience of about twenty for venue number 60. The main bookstore in town is Novel Idea, where I read with Michael e Casteels (a micro-press powerhouse) and the talented S.E. Richardson.
Seventeen days of travelling, reading and writing. It is a dream come true and any fatigue is offset by the unstoppable energies of people doing important work in the literary arts.
Tonight I read at Hamilton’s Epic Books with Amy Kenny & Benny Langedyk. This has been organized by that whirlwind of creative wonders Gary Barwin. Come out if you’re in Hamilton!