The renowned award-winning poet Susan Holbrook led her merry band of poets to Biblioasis Books Thursday night (March 16) to read from their newly-minted book Radish, the result of work in the University of Windsor’s English Department creative writing course #498. This impressive chapbook, released by Biblioasis as No.5 in its South Detroit Chapbook Series, employs a novel approach with each student contributing a poem. In each case, however, the poem underwent an “erasure” procedure, whereby another student would remove words from the original in an effort to create yet another poem. The result, says Holbrook in her introduction, was a collaboration of sorts: “Some of these crystallize the original; some answer, playfully undermine, or hold hands with it…These works reveal the voices within our voices.” Fascinating. I was particularly impressed with Abigail Roelens’ piece They Worked Ninety Years Side by Side and Never Spoke A Word:
their mother had a silent womb/even the doctor said so and/he had put his head up to her/held his breath/didn’t even hear a ping of a pitchfork tine/”voter uterus eat come uno tomb”/—spring, 1925/to belgian farmers/it was a fair assumption/after that/ their mother and her still belly/ came in with extra vowels/birthed her twins in a cornfield/on county rd 8
Terry Dang reading from his poem
It was a delightful evening, hosted at Biblioasis here, with Yanik Gallie as the emcee introducing some 16 writers. Among this talented bunch were Kaitlyn Benjamin, Terry Dang, Joe Rowley, Victoria Sinasac, and there was a neat piece by Ellie Hastings, who performed her poem side by side with Holbrook. Here are my photographs of the event.
MARTY GERVAIS 