Public reading – clubbing it

Nearly a year ago I went to a small presses event at the Starlight which was excellent. Last night there was another evening of readings. It’s the kind of clubbing I like – book clubbing. The event was well organised and reasonably well attended (okay, I’m not sure why there weren’t people lined up outside banging on the doors trying to get in, but whatever, maybe reading books is an exclusive club thing). This year the presses were Coach House Books, ECW Press, and House of Anansi. Fab local bookstore Words Worth Books was also there in force. And there were also free cupcakes.

There were also 6 authors/poets reading; two sets of three with an intermission so that we could refresh our glasses at the bar or perhaps nab another cupcake. Did I mention the cupcakes? Each author read for between 5 to 10 minutes, so the whole thing wound up by shortly after 9, which is probably fine for a Monday night. I would have been just as happy (no, actually much happier) if each author had been given an hour or more, though I can see the logistics don’t really work if you do that.

The six readers were: Gary Barwin, Dorothy Ellen Palmer, Natalee Caple, George Murray, Sheila Heti. Evie Christie was also advertised but seemed to have transformed (without mention) into Cordelia Strube, which was a delightful surprise.

All of the authors were excellent (even if I didn’t get to hear each of them for an hour). Cordelia Strube was at last year’s event so I won’t single her out for special praise other than to say that I have read Lemon and it is indeed a very good read. Everyone else was new to me. I especially liked Dorothy Ellen Palmer’s When Fenelon Falls, and Sheila Heti’s How Should a Person Be? But I heard others near me enthusing about Natalee Caple’s poems from her The Semiconducting Dictionary.

The only downside is that I’ll probably have to wait another year to go clubbing again.