Further to my adventures in Victoria, British Columbia [see part one here]:
Friday, April 24: I was to meet up with
Steven Ross Smith for coffee around noonish, just prior to my early afternoon reading, so headed that way first thing to settle, read a bit, capture some notes. Coffee, naturally. Blossoms everywhere, again. Isn't it snowing in Calgary right now or something? The cafe was good enough to allow me to leave my large bag of books for the event in their space so I could walk the block or three over to the
Emily Carr House, the birthplace and childhood home of the Canadian artist
Emily Carr (1871-1945). My niece Emma is an artist, so I texted her a photo or two of the space [
much as I had when we were in Owen Sound three years earlier, and saw Tom Thomson's grave]. I've long been intrigued by such spaces, and the stories of how well-known creators (writers, filmmakers, painters, actors) manage to get through those struggles of getting to the point of actually making. How does one make anything? Culture seems to want us to have created, but don't necessarily want to help get us there, so there's always that struggle, well beyond any specifics of family push-back, or any other hurdles that might exist. How do any of us get anywhere?
Interestingly, the house structure reminded me of
the historic site Christine and I had caught a year-plus prior in Vancouver, the Roedde House Museum, "the restored 1893 home of Canada's first bookbinder," also I suspect that the Carr house lands more traffic.
There was a tour happening, started a few minutes before I arrived, so I tried to stay out of their way, work my own self-tour. One room held excerpts of a journal that Carr's father kept, some of which was quite a compelling read. When did folk stop keeping journals? I'd give anything to see further volumes of journals by
Elizabeth Smart, certainly. Is this a nineteenth century hold-over, by the wealth class? I did peek into one of the rooms held by tour group, and who did I see but Ottawa poet (and relative Ottawa South neighbour)
Susanne Fletcher?
She won the 2025 John Newlove Poetry Award, if you might recall (so her chapbook as part of such will be out this fall). Apparently she and her husband were in town on holiday, unrelated to anything I was doing there. We talked for a bit around history just by the gift shop (where I'd already collected some postcards, naturally), where the Emily Carr House offers visitors a cup of tea (from their own house blend, a small box of which I did pick up for Christine). Apparently the Emily Carr House also offers painting classes; if you were interested in painting, I think that would be extremely cool, to be able to attend classes in her childhood home, akin to a writing class or residency in the former home of a well-known writer. Such as the
Elizabeth Bishop House, for example (
which we did wander by back in 2014).
Once done, I returned to the cafe, another coffee, my bag of books, and waited for Steven Ross Smith (I've since accepted work by him for the next issue of
Touch the Donkey, by the way), who soon accompanied me across the street to the James Bay New Horizons Centre to where I'd be reading, via Planet Earth Poetry (a series now three decades old, you know). It was an interesting reading, with an open set, including a woman who said she used to live in Ottawa, and attended readings as part of The TREE Reading Series during the late 1980s and into the early 1990s, before relocating west. It suggests we were most likely at at least one or two of the same events, possibly. She hadn't written in moons, so she read one of the pieces she wrote during that particular era. Did a full half an hour reading, which gave my reading a bit of space to breathe. Opened with
the book of smaller, moved into
the book of sentences. A good event, overall, including meeting
Allegra Kaplan (current
Yolk editor, and copy editor of
Misha Solomon's recent debut [
see my review of such here]), a poet recently relocated from Montreal. A far way to meet a Montreal poet, but there you go.
After that, Steven Ross Smith was good enough to offer to hold onto my huge bag of books for the evening event, and dropped me off at the
Royal BC Museum, a natural history museum comparable to Ottawa's Museum of Nature. It was interesting seeing some of the coastal BC exhibits of ecosystems and animals, plants and other things, so used to my eastern Ontario sense of landscape and geography, so attending the details of these landscapes were entirely new, and extremely engaging. Unfortunately, about a half-hour into my wander, I realized I hadn't actually had lunch or food of any sort yet (it was around 4:30pm by this point), so I realized, however much I wanted to explore the museum further, I really needed to deal with that.
So, I walked. It seemed to make the most sense to head closer to the evening's reading venue and find some food in that area, find a place to sit and just be for an hour or two. Lots of stuff to look at along the edge of the water, as well as a statue of
Emily Carr, once more. Is she following me? Possibly.
Some food, a pint, a back issue of
The Paris Review and a place to sit for a couple of hours. Mother-in-law did gift a subscription to the journal a couple of years back, but this issue lands prior to that. The interviews, really, are my favourite part of any issue, even if with authors I haven't heard of prior,
and this issue is no exception.
A mostly-empty pub by the water, with a slow trickle of young people to an eventual thumpy-loud music and screen coming down for the hockey game. At least by that point, I was heading out to the reading venue.
The evening reading was at
Russell Books, a store I realized I should have spent a couple of hours wandering before the reading began. There was no time, for which I am disappointed. It had a remarkable selection, although the store was technically closed during our event. Most of the lights were out, which made me presume the space most likely had at least one ghost.
Hosted by
Kyeren Regehr, Victoria's seventh and current Poet Laureate (through
Planet Earth Poetry), the crowd was stellar, and included
Maleea Acker,
Melanie Siebert,
Chris Fink-Jensen [
I did publish an essay by him, some six years ago, fyi],
Sara Cassidy,
Lorne Daniel,
David Day,
Patrick Friesen,
Eve Joseph (I brought along my copy of her latest [
see my review here], for her to sign),
John Barton,
Terese Svoboda, and a whole bunch of other folk. A really good crowd, and
Anna Yin and
Phoebe Wang gave good readings! Wang's mother was there as well, taking photos, which was quite charming (the one time my mother heard me read, as I launched my second poetry title back in April 1999, she actually heckled, if you can imagine, which delighted the audience; I was less pleased by it). After, I sold a bunch of books (and handed out chapbooks); the post-reading crowd lost a track of each other, with Anna Yin and Kyeren and I in one direction, for a drink, and others in another direction. After Anna and Kyeren retired, I did manage to figure out where Sara, Maleea [
I've since published a poem by her, by the by], Chris and Melanie had landed, and hung out there for a bit. Into my (hosted) bed around 2am, so the days this way are long.
next up: Mile Zero, and podcasting with Kyeren,
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