Hi all,
I know I’m a little late, but I wanted to take a second to shout out my feature reading at Common Readings TOMORROW (Monday, May 27) at Toronto’s Campbell House Museum. Common Readings has become one of my favourite series in the city; aside from excellent curation and great hosting by Daniel Renton and (tomorrow night) Alexandra Prochshenko, the series boasts one of the better venues in the city’s poetry landscape. I mean, who wouldn’t want to listen to poetry in a furnished and fancily wallpapered 19th-century historic house and museum? (I also heard there’s a photography exhibition mounted in the very room we’ll be reading in tomorrow. Plus wine and beer.) In any case, the Common Readings’ May Edition features Kern Carter and Claire Kelly alongside li’l old me, so it promises to be a good show. Again, it all goes down tomorrow night (Monday, May 27) at 7pm (although we tend to start a little late) at Campbell House, right by Osgoode Station.
Last month, Shane Neilson invited me to read with him at the Guelph launch of his new poetry collection, New Brunswick, and I think the whole mini-trip really reawakened my live reading itch. Aside from feeling the modest thrill of being on stage (or at least in front of an audience), seeing my friends and colleagues from Guelph and London reminded me of the importance of building community around poetry…. Though I also realized it can’t just be any community; it has to be a community that reflects and refracts my own approaches to the medium, which means it has to be a community I contribute to with my own voice. I’ve been pretty cynical about the arts and literary scenes recently, but I’m hoping I can bring some of my more affirmative energy to tomorrow’s reading. At the very least, I hope to inch a little closer to fearlessness.
I also hope to see you there. But either way, happy reading, and happy listening!
John Nyman 