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Namra told me about a poetry reading he thought I might want to go to. It turned out to be a reading for the winners of Poets & Writers’ Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award.

I was told about Jill Osier by Namra, whom though isn’t a big fan of poetry, thought her an awesome person; he had met her. So I looked up Osier and found her poem “Dear” which was what  convinced me to rush downtown to the McNally Jackson book store to listen to what else she had written.

Her poems are beautiful, and she read them beautifully.  She told a little back story to one of them: a girl had stuck a stick into the snow and declared that location the North Pole, and when her brother had disagreed with her, she had declared that anywhere could be the North Pole. I really liked that story.

There was a winner for fiction too. My prose and poetry listening skills being still rather weak, it is hard to follow readings without a physical copy to follow along. A good reading is hence very important to me,  otherwise it feels like listening to a scratched record. The fiction reader didn’t do a very good job of his reading. So my ears kept feeling violated. It’s such a bummer because his prose had something and I wanted to hear it.

-J