The Year 2008 is going to be one of predictions.
My first public prediction is that poetry is making a resurgence.
I’ve just returned from Alexis Kienlen’s poetry reading for She Dreams in Red and I’m most certain that poetry is on the rise.
Here’s the thing: Poetry needs to be read aloud. People miss out on poetry because they try to read it silently to themselves. There’s no poetry in that method. Find your voice.
Here’s the next thing I re-discovered tonight: Poetry can be made by 3 year olds. By the time we’re 18, we forget that we can use words to do more than order fries.
My follow up thought was that publishers are going out of business. Poetry has never sold well, unless you count 500-1000 copies as spectacular. BUT, micropresses are coming back into fashion.
I received a Miranda July book as a birthday present. It’s spectacular. I love it. A friend showed me Actualities by Monica Kidd from Gaspereau Press. This is a beautifully crafted book.
Book as objet really works with poetry.
I’m in the middle of reading Alison Cader’s book of poetry Wolf Tree from Coteau Books. It’s brilliant.
John Maxwell at SFU told me 2008 is his year for rediscovering poetry.
Something is happening.
Poetry is on the rise.
She Dreams in Red is published by Frontenac House, which has a great, new website (fairly new, last year). David Scollard, publisher of Frontenac House, gave Alexis an incredible introduction. I wish he’d publish it. He said something about why they publish poetry and that it is the pursuit of higher intelligence driving them. He seems like a man entirely clear on why he’s publishing books.