23 Mar, 2009

Campus reading at Brandon University

On the morning of March 3rd I read to Reinhold Kramer’s Canadian Literature class. Reinhold is the author of a really fine recent biography of Mordecai Richler, and we were in graduate school together near the dawn of time, although we can’t agree on whether we were both in Robert Kroetsch’s Can Lit seminar (we were).

I got carried away reading other people’s work (Franz Wright, Patrick Friesen, Marvin Francis), and as a result only read 4 of my poems. People seemed to enjoy my slightly scattered presentation though, and I do get tired of readings that are premised on the notion that there’s only one poet in the world, and lo he is here with you. I was pleasantly surprised that some students bought my book, since beer money is usually only for beer with the students of my (perhaps dated) experience.

It was great to be on a university campus, something that’s increasingly difficult for Canadian poets. Thanks to Di Brandt for arranging this reading as part of an ongoing BU series.