Guest Poet

Last night I was one of the two guest readers...at a monthly poetry session...in a large book store...in Vancouver. Despite the beautiful tropical evening outside...there was a good nucleus of an audience. The reading went well...helped by the fact that the audience was a listening one...not distracted by waiters taking orders...or glasses and dishes clinking and clattering. Choosing which poems to read...is always the hardest part for me. For me anyway...I read some of the poems I have copies of...rather than toiling on...trying to find ones that would represent me in a "comprehensive" way. However...frm a substantial stack of poems I arrived at the venue with...I found myself winnowing them down to ones I could live with reading this night. It's a highly arbitrary process...but perhaps...it satisfies the editor in me...always doing some culling. The actual reading of the poems...I don't find difficult...the way I did when I first started reading poems in public. Over the years of doing it...I think...I may have arrived at a way of reading what is before me...so that it communicates something to those listening. Anyway...it was a good night all round...and I headed home feeling...I'd "delivered the packet" I had set out to deliver......................Quester.