Thank you, Hamilton's Lit Live Reading Series and everyone
who packed the room on a rainy Sunday evening in the astonishing Staircase Theatre cafe. The engaging host, poet Chris Pannell, guided the room, which held a lively and reverent tone, through the eclectic mix of writers.The roster of talent I also found daunting. Anita Dolman opened the show, excerpting from her short fiction collection Lost Enough, describing a young girl's rapport with a sentient house in the stunning piece, "Overgrowth". Kateri Lanthier vividly conveyed her entrancing poetry from memory and shared some pieces from Siren. Karen Smyth dazzled with nuanced selections from her novel This Side of Sad. Adam Dickinson read from Anatomic, his poetry about microbe experimentation and his feces (whom I last saw when I ran the Tree Reading Series in 2000-2006- Adam, not his feces, to be clear...). Award-winning journalist and novelist Trevor Cole closed the evening, but not before delighting the crowd with his wry (Or should I say rye? - the editor) description of Rocco Perri, an infamous Italian bootlegger in Hamilton in 1918, in Cole's excerpt from The Whisky King.
For my contribution, in slot number five on the docket, I read a poem, "Pitched", about my grandfather, who was a denizen of Hamilton for a time, and rode the rails. He informed my character Henry Tanner who, in my literary horror novel Town & Train, recounts his experience riding the rails during the Great Depression. I also shared chapter one of Train, about 17-year-old John Daniel waking by the railroad tracks in the summer of 1990, not knowing how he got there.
A highlight for us was having supper with Hamilton novelist Nairne Holtz and her friend Claudia beforehand. I hadn't seen Nairne since she read at Tree over a decade ago. I am happy to report that she is as engaging and fun as ever.
I am also happy to report that Hamilton's reading series is alive and kicking, even on a Sunday night. Our thanks again to the organizers. We met some amazing people, reached potentially new readers, and sold a few few books, all in a fantastic venue. This made our trip well worth it.
