Tonight's poetry reading

Tonight was the second of the poetry readings I've organized as Cafe Poet at Yours and Owls. It was a blast. There wasn't a huge crowd there, but the ones who were had amazing poetry and amazing stories, and everyone was interested in and respectful of everyone else's work, and as far as I could tell everyone had a good time.

There were older people and younger people (is it a sign of my own aging that they looked impossibly young?) and people in the middle. There were funny poems and sad poems and introspective poems. There was nice wine and nice beer and a nice place for the event (thanks, Balun and the rest of the crew at Owls!). And I felt glad that I could be with people who really care about the power of language to move and inspire and draw people closer.

How much better could life be? I got the chance to bring a bunch of poets together to cheer each other on and take joy in each other's work. I'm loving being a Cafe Poet.

What a day — Dancing Mice AND Cafe Poet

Wow. What a day, yesterday. First (after spending the morning working virtuously), I headed up to Sydney to meet with Houston and the tenor who has graciously agreed to be part of workshopping our opera, The Dancing Mice and the Giants of Flanders. Okay, it's pretty intense to hear your words being spoken onstage. It's almost unbearably intense to hear them sung. By an opera singer. A really good opera singer, at pretty nearly full voice. I sat there, immobilized by both the horror of having the text — my text — so frighteningly, starkly exposed and the joy that someone so bloody good thought it worth his time and skill.

Luckily I had the trip back to Wollongong in which to recover, because it wasn't long before I was setting up at Yours and Owls for the first poetry reading I'd ever run. It was a themed night for science-fiction and fantasy poetry, and there were about 20 people there, which was great! The readings were fascinating and fun — many thanks to Kyla Ward, Leigh Blackmore, Margi Curtis, and Richard Harland!

Inspired by the readings, two people actually wrote poems as the event progressed. One read hers out, a really nice little piece involving fish and the desperate need for human communication; another handed me a scrap of paper at the end of the night with his poem on it. I asked him if I could blog it, and he said yes, so here it is:

What caused this curious happenstance;
Tell me, could it be, perchance
An alien message caused the spaceman's trance,
And caused the Martian folk to dance?

Or, could it be divinity
That bent their will and moved their feet?
The answer could quite prove to be
Elusive for eternity.
— Michael Hanney

The next poetry event I'm running at Yours and Owls is an open-theme open mic on April 23 (in honor of Shakespeare's birthday). Show up at 7:15 to put your name down if you want to read on the night!