Poetry Night at Cadboro Bay Book Co.

It was a fine evening at Cadboro Bay Book Co in Victoria on February 9. Owner Patricia Jutra was the gracious hostess for the store's first Poetry Night, featuring E.D. (Ted) Blodgett, Susan McCaslin and me.

In the process, I launched my new Selected Poems collection, Drawing Back to Take a Running Jump.

Ted and I have a passing acquaintance from our days, way back in the early 1980s, as founding members of the Writers Guild of Alberta. It was great to catch up on Ted's work and to discover Susan's.

Ted read from Apostrophes VII, an ongoing sequence (the first book of which won the Governor General's Award for Poetry in 1996). Susan read from Demeter Goes Skydiving, a collection that explores mother-daughter relations in the context of the Demeter-Persephone myth. Our three readings were very different which, we hope, made for an interesting evening for the audience.

If you are in north-east Victoria or near the University, stop by Cadboro Bay Books - it's a very cozy and friendly space, with a strong collection of high quality work. As one visitor noted on Thursday evening, it's the kind of store where an excellent pre-selection has been done for you - no need to paw through thousands of releases to find some great writing.