international guitar month's got nothing on us

Following up on last week's post about "Poetry Month" activities around the internet (speaking of which: Harriet, what's with going from 0 to 500 bloggers in one day? Pace yourself...), here are a few more:

Open Book Toronto's Poets in Profile Series

OBT is celebrating poetry month by interviewing a whack of poets with books coming out from Toronto presses (hint - you know one of them). All the poets' answer the same seven questions, and most of the poets have given short, sharp answers. My favourite so far came from Sam Cheuk, who in answer to "What is the best thing about being a poet?", said:

Having access to the religious experience without necessarily being religious, and then having the tools to articulate it.

Thoughtful and to the point. If you prefer your Q+As wandering and long-winded (and feat. the occasional laundry joke), then look no further than my profile, which went up yesterday. You can read it here.


Canada Reads Poetry

An online Canada Reads! For poetry! With no Debbie Travis! Sonnet L'Abbé, George Murray, Susan Musgrave, Jacob McArthur Mooney, and Anne Simpson will be stumping for books by Rita Wong, Dionne Brand, Alden Nowlan, Erin Mouré, and Anne Carson.

Man, if Carol Shields was too "literary" for the last Canada Reads panel, I can only imagine what Georges, Debbie and the gang would have to say about this bunch. I mean, accordion books? Accents aigus? It's all too much.

It should be a fun couple weeks. Here's hoping it descends rapidly into name calling and thinly-veiled threats of panelist-on-panelist violence. It wouldn't be a good Canada Reads without it...


The Book of It

Not a "Poetry Month" project, per se, but Daniela Elza's first foray into writing an eBook (and my first foray into downloading an eBook) has just been released! One long poem, it is available from Amazon.com for less than the price of one of those ridiculous cups of coffee with whipped cream and chocolate goo on top.

I've only started reading The Book of It, but I can already tell that it's not simply a print book slapped into an eBook format. Instead, the elimination of length limits has allowed Daniela to stretch the book out - pages range from multiple stanzas to single words, and stanzas rise and fall like waves from page to page.

I hadn't yet been tempted to take up using an eReader regularly because it didn't seem worth the bother for a poetry fan: I didn't think there was much out there, and what was out there seemed of inferior quality to their print alternatives. The Book of It has got me rethinking all of that.