Sunday, May 25, 2008

Seraphic Encounter


Last night I had the good pleasure of meeting Seraphic Single, the author of one of my favourite blogs “Still Seraphic”. The event was Seraphapalooza, held at The Majlis in the artsy Queen West area of downtown Toronto, and Seraphic read from her book The Widow of Saint-Pierre.

I especially enjoyed the humourous dialogue in Seraphic’s final excerpt, and the jazz accompaniment (Alisha Ruiss singing, Susan Eichhorn Young playing keyboard) interspersed between readings was quite divine!

My friend M. took a while to get there – she’d written down the address incorrectly and headed towards 63 Walnut instead of 163 Walnut – fortunately, surreptitious text messages between us eventually led her to the reading.

Being there took me back to my undergrad English student days at the University of Toronto, when poetry readings and book readings were the order of the day. Often, a few of us would get together at one of the numerous local pubs and, over a glass of port, we’d talk about Very Important Things, quoting our favourite philosophers and writers.

I still like to imagine that there’s a cozy little pub in heaven where we’ll get to share a carafe of wine (or whatever one's favourite beverage is) and break bread with those folks we’ve always admired but never met. Thank you, Seraphic, for giving us the opportunity to see and hear you in person! I must plan to attend more events like this.

3 comments:

Seraphic Single said...

Thanks for coming, Belloc! There are lots of Spoken Word events in Ontario (esp. Toronto) every month. If you're feeling brave, some of them have an "Open Mic" session where YOU can read your own poems or super-short stories. For more information, find "Word" magazine on the web.

And thanks again for the port. Now I understand why it was port!

Anonymous said...

I'm glad you could make it!

I'm going to try to make the space more obvious in the future, maybe some little signs with arrows...

Alisha said...

Thanks indeed for coming - glad you liked the singing!