Friday, July 29th, 6:30pm – 7:30pm @ Chapters (South), 1037 Wellington Road, London.

What is "Couplets: a Collaborative Reading Series"? Each episode of Couplets features a pair of poets who write (or have written) in London, Ontario (or the surrounding region): an established ‘anchor’ poet and an emerging ‘wildcard’ poet. A month in advance, the anchor and wildcard poets begin collaborating on an evening of alternating readings, response poems, renga, duets, live interview, writing exercises, arguments, and general poetic tennis (net optional). Their episode is the culmination of this collaboration, a bespoke performance sparking in the gaps between two poets.

Monika Lee is a Canadian writer and literary scholar awarded an Ontario Arts Council grant for poetry in 2010. Her collection Gravity loves the body was published by South Western Ontario Poetry Press (2008) and her chapbook slender threads appeared from EBIP and the Canadian Poetry Association (2004). She has published poems in dozens of literary journals and anthologies, including Canadian Literature, Vallum, Scrivener Creative Review, Windsor Review, Dalhousie Review, Nashwaak Review, Harpweaver, ARoom of One’s Own, Event, Atlantis, Fiddlehead, Antigonish Review,Ariel, Quills, Qwerty, Ascent, and Grub Street Literary Magazine. Monika graduated with distinction from the Humber College School for Writers in 2008. Her play “The Petting Zoo” was performed as part of the Playwrights Cabaret at the McManus Theatre. She’s also published a book of literary criticism,Rousseau’s Impact on Shelley: Figuring the Written Self (1999), and scholarly articles on Shelley, nineteenth-century literature, Canadian literature, and creative writing. A full professor in the English Department at Brescia University College, she teaches nineteenth-century British literature, creative writing, and other courses in English literature.

“gravity loves the body… offers us rich, tactile images of a woman, mother, and lover: ‘[w]e are the petals of one flower.’ Lee never strays into easy summary or sentimentality. She refuses to hide behind language or obscure literary allusions. …Along with her, we nurse a baby in the bath, visit Marrakech, and lose a mother to death. Her humor, wit, and unflinching view make us trust her, and want to live in the richness of this book as long as possible.” —Emily Wall, Canadian Literature
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Lee was the featured reader at the London Open Mic Poetry Night on June 4th, 2014. On the London Open Mic Poetry website, you can read an interview with Lee and four of her poems.

Shelly Harder is a poet, teacher, gardener, student of literature, occasional tickler of piano keys, and dabbler in philosophy. Some of her work may be found at hardershelly.wordpress.com.

“skin to skin is a collaborative text documenting our reading for Couplets. After juxtaposing and splicing together selections from our work during an evening of poetic improvisation, this conversation became a poem which was caught in paper and ink. Some of the poems stand whole, but they are diversely shadowed and tinted by coming into each other’s light. Others are grafted with lines we chose from each other’s work. The title piece merges two previously unacquainted poems, which immediately interlocked. These interweaving lines and poems form counterpoints from which new and surprising harmonies have coalesced.” —Monika Lee and Shelly Harder

Lately, I've grown to love the way good ideas can spontaneously grow out of social interaction. I've been an idea person all my life, but before becoming a social organiser nearly all my ideas were solo affairs, by myself for myself. Now, though, I'm relaxed enough with others that I'm able to think with them, as part of the group. It's a revelation to me, and a thrill. The latest social light bulb lit up last night.

I was attending the launch of our spin-off reading series held at Chapters bookstore, which its organiser, Andy Verboom, calls "Couplets: Poets in Dialogue" (as it includes a more senior poet, Laurie D. Graham, and a less-published one, David Huebert, playing off of each other). Sitting there watching and listening was exhilarating to me, I kid you not, partly because it really was a wonderful event, something totally new, but also because this time I didn't have to do anything to make it happen, just hand it all to Andy! How easy is that? No stress, no anxiety. And Andy's a genius at this kind of thing. (Actually, at pretty much anything he turns his hand to, I think.) Well, everything I heard from people in attendance last night, as well as later, indicated the packed audience of 35 was definitely not disappointed either. (Stay tuned for summary, photos and a video of the whole thing.)

Anyway, one of our new members, Brittany Renaud, and I had been planning on coming back to Chapters later to see the events manager, Alex Corbitt, about starting a guerrilla poetry series there, which I had gotten him excited about earlier. (A bunch of us poets would read poetry on a busy day just to the browsers, our only audience, the idea being to take them unawares, to get them to listen to poetry, and appreciate it, possibly for the first time.) Well, last night I saw Alex watching the event, of course (since we had set it up through him), with evident satisfaction, so it occurred to me that we may as well meet with him right then, after the event. Which we did. As the audience was getting up and chatting, Brittany, I, Alex, and Koral Scott, another new member, one with tremendous energy and enthusiasm for every aspect of our organisation, moved into Alex's office to sort it out.

We were mulling over the practicalities, like whether we would need chairs set up, whether it would need promotion, that kind of thing. I told Alex how our initial version had worked out at the central library downtown, and then that the librarian had asked if we would like to do one at a children's event in the library as well. (They hold little ComiCons etc.) Then I remembered that Chapters has a children's section and said, "Why don't we have one here in the bookstore too, on a busy day". That got everyone thinking, Brittany especially, who will be organising the main guerrilla series in the store for us, but who also had earlier mentioned we should do guerrilla events for children, to try to get them excited about poetry while they're still in their formative years. Well, somebody said, "We could get the kids to bring in their own poems and read them", but of course mistakenly, because by definition for a guerrilla event you can't tell them about it in advance if you're going to catch them unawares. And then somebody else said, "We could get the kids to write their own poems right there". Okay, I could see people were getting away from the idea of guerrilla poetry entirely, so instead of getting frustrated I decided to switch directions myself and go with the tide. I said, "Okay, why don't we do a real poetry event for kids here. Advertise it on social media, get them to bring their own poems and so on." So then everyone became even more excited. Koral said, "Maybe we could have a workshop for them, to really get them into it". Brittany said, "We could show them what a poem without rhyme is, and how to write it". And then this whole new idea began to solidify as something wonderful. I said, "We could hold a series of events like this for kids at the library as well, not just guerrilla poetry".
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Whooooohoo!! Another great idea takes off!! And I don't have to do a darn thing myself! Brittany is going to be the main organiser of all the children's events. I'm sure she's going to get a lot of enthusiastic help from the others. We may need more people as well. I'm sure we will. Every idea like this brings more people into our excited little group. If you want to help, email me and I'll pass your name to Brittany. I'm Stan. burfield@live.com