The first of April, while perhaps better known as the day someone might fill your squeezable honey jar with dish soap, or the day you can perform “really advanced” google searches for rhyming slang, subtext, innuendo, grammatical faux pas, looping midi music, and other goodies, is also the start of National Poetry Month.
As Open Book Ontario’s official National Poetry Month blogger, I am here to help you make the most of the month TS Eliot dubbed “the cruellest.” Indeed, the month is rife with poetry book launches, readings, launch-reading combos, high school poetry recitation contests, directives to write thirty poems in thirty days, and workshops with titles like “Illegible Voices Perform Illegitimate Texts.” (Never let it be said that poets don’t have a keen sense of irony.)
Of course, as a poet, I have a soft spot for these events. If you are reading this, you probably do too. (Don’t try to deny that you are curious about that workshop. Not to mention the one after it, in May, called “The Laboratory of Unreasonable Attention,” led by the notoriously attentive and quite possibly unreasonable Adam Dickinson. Pity we’re too late for the one entitled “How to Write a Poem for the Queen,” which is about as national as these things get.)
So I will try to mention on this blog some of the April poetry events that intrigue me, ideally with enough lead time that you can lace up your moonboots, pause the polar bear video, and make it to the bar/café/conference centre/bookstore basement/canoe launch pad with enough time to order a drink.
Other things I consider fair game for poetry month blogging include good books, good poems, witty retorts to the nation’s poemophobics, tax tips, microphone tips, and updates on our National Poetry Ping Pong team (which, last I heard, really does exist).
