Calgary Extravaganza!

Which is not the same as the Blow-Out! It was more extravagant. On December 8th we were in Montréal in the morning and Calgary in the evening. Cara Hedley arrived with a carload of poetry-and-literature fans from Edmonton and we made our way down to the Lunchbox Theatre, which is a classy little space somewhat buried in the mall-like maze that is indoor downtown Calgary. 

The book table was very extravagant. The event was an evening of 5 minute (ha) readings from 12 Calgary-connected authors from our 11 books released this fall (Brea and I are two-for-the-price-of-one, skewing the book-to-author ratio– hey, we like to mess things up!) Our hosts were Paul Kennett and Mark Hopkins in matching velvet jackets, who were charming and suave to go along with those jackets.

My favourite readings were Cara’s Twenty Miles and Claire Huot’s The Prison Tangram– two first novels from two quite different writers. I read Cara’s book in about a day and a half (I’m a fan!) and her reading has prompted me to read it again, but only after I finish Claire’s.

We ended the night at the Bear and Kilt, and only left when I realized that if I stayed out much longer I would have been up for nearly 24 hours. Well, that and the last call. It was a wonderful celebration of the secret vibrancy of Calgary culture, and a big thanks is owed to Natalie Walschots, who is an amazing event co-ordinator in addition to being an excellent poet!

Booty in Montréal!

We had a terrific (and whirlwind) visit to Montréal to read at the Atwater Reading Series. It was very snowy– somehow between the downpour we had in Toronto and the Montréal visit, it became winter! Stepping out of the airport was a small shock– I haven’t seen that much snow since Winnipeg last year and it made us just a leetle late for the reading at the Atwater Library.

We stopped first at poet Angela Carr‘s beautiful Plateau Mont-Royal apartment to drop our two-night versions of the Hulk and the Punisher (see last post!) Mine, an exact copy of the Punisher but scaled way down, we dubbed  Mini-P, and Brea’s purple suitcase  we named Barney. We changed out of our rumpled plane clothes, downed a blanche de chambly, and promptly jumped in a second cab (oh the luxury to be able to get a cab by phone whenever you like– Calgarians, a less obvious reason to visit Montréal, but one of many small delights to be had…)

The Atwater Library is a great old building, the oldest lending library in Canada, and the hall they use for readings is filled with rows of leather-seated auditorium chairs. We settled in after greeting our host, poet and translator Oana Avasilichioaei to listen to Jon Paul Fiorentino read from Theory of the Loser Class. He also read some new work–great stuff Tino! Brea and I then took the stage, and you can listen to our reading here– Atwater is archiving their series, so there are many treats to be found at their site.

Although we were only in town for two nights, we were able to squeeze in an impressive amount of visiting, set to the tune of wine, bagels, coffee, more coffee, and Unibroue. After  two nights in Angela’s daughters’ bunkbeds (I’m a top if you are wondering), we had to get back into our Westjet seats to make the Calgary Extravaganza…