After more than a season and a half of London Open Mic Poetry Night events, over half of the local poets who satisfy our original criteria -- having had at least one book of poetry published --have read as featured poets. 

The following list (in alphabetical order) includes most of the remaining poets who fit that category. Most will read during Seasons 3 and 4. Only two have yet been booked into actual event dates for Season 3. 


Madeline Bassnett
Julie Berry
Patricia Black
Don Gutteridge - National Poetry Month, Season 3, April 2015
Martin Hayter
David Hickey
Debbie Okun Hill
Penn Kemp - National Poetry Month, Season 2, April 2014
John B. Lee
Monika Lee - June 4th, 2014 (2nd season ender)
Gloria Alvernaz Mulcahy
Roy MacDonald - Oct. 1st, 2015 (kicking off 3rd season)
Dorothy Neilsen
Erik Martinez Richards
Peggy Roffey

If I’m missing anyone, please tell me. 

Obviously there are not enough poets in this list to feature for more than two seasons. Assuming we will be enjoying an existence beyond that, and there seems to be no reason why we won’t, then we have a problem. 

I knew from the beginning this would have to be solved somehow, at some point, and so by December of Season 2 I began to loosen up the criteria for featuring, letting the occasional poet from elsewhere read, the first being UWO’s then Writer-in-Residence NourbeSe Philip Soon I had a few more poets from outside the area booked in, all for seemingly good reasons.  However, it is becoming obvious that this is threatening to erode away our ideal of supporting and promoting the local community. So in future this will only happen if it’s not possible to get a local poet to feature for an event. 

Where will local features come from when all the poets on the above list have read? 

Some will feature a second time, especially if they have a new book out. Frank Davey will be the first to do this early in Season 3. Anyone who publishes a new book and wants to re-feature, just ask. 

We will be widening our local area somewhat. The list above includes the first two from this enlarged region: John B. Lee of Brantford and Debbie Okun Hill from Sarnia. Others will follow.

Also we will begin featuring poets who don’t have any books published, some of whom are very good. As the number of poets has increased and the number of publishers of poetry books has decreased recently, many of our best poets have given up on publication, or are paying for it themselves. We haven’t decided yet how to select which of these poets to feature. 

Occasionally we will feature something different than a single poet. For instance, in February we had four senior UWO English students with something written for the occasion. If anyone has a good idea for a special feature, something locally oriented, there’s no harm in asking. 

Stan
burfield@live.com

Our videographer, Erik Martinez Richards, has found that preparing the videos of the poets at our first event, like any first attempt at anything, is much more time-consuming and difficult than expected. 

Erik had to install and learn how to use new editing software, just for starters, and then discovered that all the videos had to be put in a different format for YouTube, which takes forever, and then there`s all the detailed hassle of creating website pages, posting everything on them, writing blurbs and on and on it goes. 

It makes me smile. 

Now at least one other person is beginning to get a small taste of what it takes to keep this boat sailing. 

Anyway, have patience. The videos are well worth waiting for. And in future events, Erik will have it all down and be as quick as...as....as Erik.

This will be a wonderful addition to the open mic. In future anyone who liked a poem someone read, but maybe it was read too fast for them or they got distracted and missed a couple lines, will get to see it all over again, assuming the poet allowed it to be taped.

Beginning this season, we are going to publish an annual ebook. It will be an anthology of the poets who have read during the year, including both the featured poets and the open mic readers. 

The ebook will then be available on Amazon at the end of the season, and will cost only a few dollars. 

It will contain one or two poems by each of the season’s featured poets and at least one from each open mic reader. Of course, inclusion in the ebook will be up to the poets. 

Some open mic readers read at a number of events. They can give us as many of the poems they have read as they wish to, and we will select from them for the ebook.  Or they can choose a small number themselves. The number of poems we select will depend on their length.

Of course, all poems that are included must have been read at the events during the season. 

A cautionary note: Some poets may not want certain poems to be included in the ebook because it would make them unacceptable for later publication in certain poetry journals. 

The ebook will include a short biography (up to seven lines) of each poet. This must be included with the poems. We may also add a photo of the poet reading at the event. This hasn’t been decided yet.

To keep transcription errors from creeping into the poems, the preferred way to get them to us is by email. Those who don’t use email can give us a copy at the events.

 Erik Martinez Richards will edit and publish the anthology. His email address is erikf1944@hotmail.com

The Erik Martinez Richards Blog will be launched any day now. It will be the fifth blog on the London Open Mic Poetry Night website.  
 
By way of introduction, here are some personal impressions of Erik. 
 
It's not an overstatement to say he excels in all the mental traits most basic to human beings: language use, social ability, empathy, creativity and intelligence. Those of us who have worked with him have watched these in action.  
  
Erik is fluent not only in Spanish, his mother tongue, but also in English -- not just fluent but deeply fluent. His day job since 1987 was  English/Spanish and French/Spanish translation for the Translation  Bureau  of Canada. He has used his translation skills on poetry as well, both his own and others, a formidable task to say the least. His intense focus on language also comes into play in listening to poems read aloud during our events, and in various workshops. He hears poems as if he were reading them.  
 
As much as we value Erik's role at the open mic as its chief photographer, he performs an even greater function due to his sensitivity to social situations. He is quick to see and prevent potential blunders, since his empathy for others is always turned on. I for one have learned an important lesson from Erik, in observing his behaviour with others, that there is nothing more important in life than preventing the hurt of other people, no matter how small it may seem.  
 
Erik is serious about life, and especially about the life of emotions, which has always been central to his poetry. 
 
 Born in Santiago, Chile (1944), Erik studied Spanish literature at the Universidad de Chile and participated in the editorial board of 'Orfeo' a prestigious poetry journal, together with his friends from the 'Santiago School', an active poetry group at the time. After Pinochet's military coup, his position as a lecturer terminated, he witnessed the ugly side of the military intervention in his faculty  and saw the magazines where he had worked closed, so he decided, as many of his generation, to go into exile. He rushed to the Canadian Embassy in Santiago to present his application to migrate to Canada which in January 1974 started a fast track procedure for Chileans affected by the military regime. He was allowed to emigrate to Canada in February, 1974. He obtained an M.A. in Spanish from Queen's University (Kingston), graduating with a dissertation on Altazor, a long poem by Vicente Huidobro, which is considered one of the greatest achievements of 20th Century Latin American poetry.  
 
In 1985, Ediciones Cordillera published Erik's book of poems, Tequila Sunrise (Ottawa, 1985), and he has been included in several anthologies of Chilean poetry in Canada. Around 2003, he joined the El Dorado Poetry Collective in Ottawa which organized, among other events, an international poetry reading series. 
 
He has published translations and poetry in Canadian and international journals. Presently, Erik has just completed his second book of poems, The Sun Never Sets, a great effort because he felt it was time to start writing in English, not an easy job for someone with a pragmatic but rather limited knowledge of the language at the moment of his arrival. He moved back to London in 2009 where he lives with Violetta, his wife.   
 
Erik Martinez Richards was one of the founding members of London Open Mic Poetry Night. He, Martin Hayter and I, Stan Burfield, drove to a reading in Sarnia in June 2012. We three Londoners read in the open mic at the end of the reading and on the way back wondered why there was a monthly open mic in Sarnia but none in the much larger city of London. The result was the founding of London Open Mic Poetry Night.

You may have noticed the extraordinary beauty that comes with the wide, horizontal photos at the top of these pages, as compared to their square versions in the gallery page. Why should that be? Why should a narrow strip, essentially a smaller picture with less content, contain more beauty than the original?
  
I have a theory. Linda and I were sitting in the Keg the other day and I noticed that, even there, practically everything in my view that was of any importance or interest (until the food came) was in a narrow strip around me. Even most of the lights were hanging down into that strip so you didn’t have to look up to see them. So what I’m beginning to see is that when our eyes leave the steak they normally look just about exclusively into a narrow horizontal strip! Of course, when we’re involved in something very close, like food or words, that doesn’t apply. But nearly all things in the middle distance, from say 10 to 100 feet away, pretty much have to be inside that narrow horizontal strip around us, the centre of which is pointing at the horizon. We’re used to focussing on that strip because, in practically every situation we find ourselves, most things are inside it. Why? Because things in the intermediate distance have to be inside it. The angle below it, from the bottom of the strip to our feet, is mostly floor, or the table-top only a few inches from our eyes. Close objects, closer than the intermediate distance, are either blocking our view totally or we have to look down at them. Things in the
far distance, on the other hand, unless we’re standing out on the prairie in Saskatchewan, are up in the sky. Which, in any case, is usually blocked by a boring ceiling. And who but a jailbird studies a ceiling.

So we have developed a horizontal-strip aesthetic. We like them because that’s where the good stuff is. What we look down at we already have. What we look up at is beyond our reach. What’s in that horizontal strip is what we want. 
  
Proof of the beauty of horizontal strips is on the top of each page of the  website. 
 
All photos were taken by Poetry Night co-founder Erik Martinez Richards.

Everyone who reads at Thursday’s London Open Mic  Poetry Night at the Mykonos Restaurant will have a nice photo of themselves taken at the mic, unless they tell us not to. 

We’ll put them all on our Facebook page and our website, named and tagged. Our staff photographer, Erik Martinez Richards (left), will do his best to eliminate all weird expressions, closed-eye shots, and tongues sticking out. On the contrary, the men will look like Superman and the women Mona Lisa. To some degree.

With two hours of open mic, there is time for roughly 24 readers. If that many don’t show up, we will have a second round for those who brought more poems. That’ll make a nice big album.

Erik is also looking into videotaping our featured poets reading in a studio setting for a CD and our internet sites. 

As well as being handy with a camera, Mr. Martinez Richards is one of Poetry Night's organizers and founders.

The event is from 6:30 to 9:30, with live Celtic harp and vocals for the first half hour, followed by featured poet John Tyndall reading, with Q&A, followed by two hours of open mic. The Mykonos Restaurant is at 572 Adelaide St. N., London, with parking, also overflow parking across the side street, plus one block N. in front of Trad’s Furniture. Cover by donation. 

The terrace is enclosed and well-heated from above, but in cold weather there can be cool air at floor level so wear warm footwear.