Heard many poetries over the past few days. First the flywheel series on Thursday evening, where I was particularly impressed by Wakefield Brewster, a sound poet with all kinds of slam poetry chops, he's an incredible performer with some really great lines (not that I wrote any down...) I was pretty pleased with my reading as well, I think it was a bit calmer and controlled than the last couple of times I've read, and my new writing seemed to go over okay. My new favorite poem to read is "a long and fitful sentence accumulating grace", basically because it's a really long sentence that tests my lung power, and I think any grace it accumulates is through sounding out loud.

Then on Saturday afternoon, I attended the Just My Type reading at the Palette Coffeehouse in Art Central, featuring derek beaulieu, Paulina Constancia, Emily Carr, Glen Dresser, Emily Elder, Stuart McKay, Samuel Garrigo Meza, ryan fitzpatrick, and Natalie Walschots. I love going to Art Central, although I didn't stay to look around after the reading, mainly because I wanted to go home and hide from the cold. The Palette coffeeshop is a great place for a mid-afternoon poetry reading, full of brightly coloured art and comfortable couches, and a wall-sized window overlooking the C-train line, part of the Telus Convention Centre, the Regis Hotel, and the empty lot that used to contain a gorgeous brick building, no idea how old it was, I just remember noticing the intricate brickwork around its roof last summer and thinking it wouldn't last long. Anyway, it was fun to watch the poets decide how to relate their writing to the theme of "love": my favorite was Samuel's series of bear poems, and I also enjoyed Stuart's observation about male poets' hairlines (hardly specific to Calgary). Two things maybe we need more of are afternoon poetry readings, and themed readings.