On Public Readings

The public reading is one of those necessary evils in art. Like artist talks and gallery shows. There is something really vulnerable about the experience of doing one. Going to a reading is a bit like going somewhere to get high. 


Oral tradition is a drug. It gets the listener into a particular brain state. It's something near meditation but different still. A public reading is a shared dream experience. It is an act of performance that hinges on the power of voice. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in his book Poetry as Insurgent Art, advises the reader that one should never do a Q&A after a reading for exactly this reason: because it takes people out of the dream, it kills the high.
I have had the pleasure of going to several readings over this past semester, and have been lucky enough to host a few as well, but this feeling of luck and gratitude is not the way so many writers view the reading experience, and I suppose this should not surprise me considering that the most common fear among humans is public speaking. And it's true, I said it earlier, it is a seriously vulnerable experience. But that's what makes it great.




Most recently, I went to a book launch for one of my professors, Matt Rader. Matt has been published widely as a poet, in such magazines as sub-Terrain, Grain, Event, Malahat Review, Prism International, Broken Pencil, Geist, Fiddlehead, New Quarterly, Paradigm, Stylus, Riddle Fence, Arc, Stylus, Another Lost Shark, and Memewar. He has also published three books of poetry, The Doctor Pedalled Her Bicycle Across the River Arno, Living things, and Miraculous Hours. His most recent book, the one for which I attended a reading, is called What I Want To Tell Goes Like This. Matt`s new book is a collection of short stories about labour activism on Vancouver Island, some focusing on the life of Albert Goodwin, and activist for unions who was eventually shot and killed. 


The reading was set in the Alternator Gallery for Contemporary Art in downtown Kelowna, (a space that I am very familiar with, as I have hosted my own readings in that gallery and have attended many more, as well as art shows and things). The current show up in the gallery is the Red Dot members show. The November members show at the Alternator, is an annual event that is intended to showcase and sell member art, with a portion of the sales going to the gallery as a fundraiser.

The walls were lined with paintings, in seeming in-congruence. It was interesting for me, to see the juxtapositions of these paintings, some of which I recognized from other shows, fascinating that two things placed beside each other can make such a different statement from their meaning on their own. A friend of mine, talented artist and member at the gallery, Lucas Glenn, had a few of his collage pieces from an installation that he did at the end of last year called Goods for Men. The installation was an exploration of hegemonic masculinity. One of the pictures in question was that of a sailing ship with the word BRAVERY. The piece had a completely different feeling to it when placed next to a members gay rights activist piece, all rainbows and people holding hands. The patchwork feel of the installation made the reading feel a bit like being in someone's living room, homey, and the space was pack with people and chairs. The lighting was good, there was wine and beer, and two trays of sushi for everyone to enjoy.

Ashok Mathur, head of creative studies at UBCO, also read from a few of his books and introduced Matt. One of the things I love about these events is the feeling of the crowd, people drifting in and out of focus on the words, fidgeting and unsure of what to do with their hands. Matt got up and read two stories out of his new book, one about a boy who was killed, and then it was over, and people, myself included, were rushing to the book table to buy one of the writers books. He seemed relieved that it was over, and I think most writers are that way.

For me, I am always relieved once it has started, because I become as entranced by the voice as anyone in the crowd. It's like the world melts away and there we all are, dreaming the same dream, and I think maybe there is some connection here in the solitude of other peoples minds. A reading as a communal act, filling a hole where religion has failed us.

As for the open mics I go to on a monthly and bi-monthly basis. It seems to always be the same people that come out and the same people that read and the same people that go out afterwards, and I think these are the most important kinds of things, because you don't do it for yourself, you do it for everyone else. You do it for the community. If you are doing it for yourself, you're doing it wrong. The only way that we get anywhere is by being there and doing the thing and talking about our friends like the New York poets did because then you make a scene. You make a real scene and then people start paying attention when the scene is over and everyone wishes for those times to come back again and they become golden.

I think Elizabeth Bachinsky in her book I Don't Feel so Good, said it best:

sometimes the readers were great but most of the time they were our friends and most of us had books and that was fine we published each other in chapbooks and magazines and we thought no one was looking but that someday someone would look and then one day they did and it still didn't matter.