photo© Geoff Cook

photo© Geoff Cook

The Who’s Who of the Montreal English language poetry scene was on hand at the Atwater Library on Thursday, May 13^th  to hear Montreal’s Susan Gillis and Lebanese-born Toronto-based poet Walid Bitar read from their work. The event, hosted by Katia Grubisic, was part of the Atwater Poetry Project’s regular reading series. Gillis, who teaches at John Abbott College, read from new work, some of which has been published in Poetry Quebec while Bitar read from The Empire’s Missing Links recently published by Vehicule Press. Among those who came out for the reading were Mary di Michele, Robyn Sarah, Carmine Starnino, Brian Campbell and Geoff Cook, whose author photos accompany this article.

 

Following the event, most of the 20 or so audience members proceeded to Miso, a Japanese restaurant on the corner of St. Catherine and Atwater, to partake in some fine food, wine and engaging conversation about poetry and poets. Overheard were interesting discussions about why several of the poets at the table were from elsewhere and why they chose to settle in Montreal in the first place. Some confessed they came for love; others for cheaper rent (as compared with Toronto). Still others revealed the need for a total change. These considerations, coupled with the feeling that there was/is a more congenial community here, seemed to outweigh the disadvantage of being an English language writer in a predominantly French city.  Other overheard discussions involved the usual literary gossip: who had published whom; whose book was up for what prize. Highlighting the talk was an engrossing debate on whose contribution was more important: Ezra Pound, the fascist, or Wallace Stevens, the racist.

 

All in all, it was engaging evening.

 

GODDESS OF SPONTANEITY   Having them is your new spectator sport: high and dry near-death experiences few and far in between because identity's impossibly watered down, then iced here   while you repeat what you said a tenth time, and I swear we are paying attention. Trouble is we bugged you learning lines that, redelivered, sound less from the heart. Spontaneity would be our goddess if she existed; we're certain she doesn't. Ever caught me making fools of myself, or even kings? The strain of this honesty disorients me until I fall under an influence originally exerted on you, poor man, who've let yourself go. I'd offer you a job as your new jailor, but some portfolios we never touch without the limits imposed by logic, the voice of the age's—you know which one: the larger it grows, the more often I lose it. Remember hunting our favourite beasts, then wearing their skins to prove conclusively they did our dirty work? I don't either. Agreeing with me's not always in your interest.   © Walid Bitar