Nuala O’Faolain

on how poor sales of her books are ruining her life,
talked a little about the grim subject of her latest book
(a biography of 19" century prostitute and celebrity
crook Chicago May), criticized the parenting skills
and affected nationalist tendencies of her father, and
wrapped with a condemnation of the Catholic Church.
That might sound like a drag, but O’Faolain managed,
in a manner specific to the Irish, to make everything
she said funny.

The Poetry Bash on Saturday, a perennial favourite
of festival goers, was full of giddy audience
members, including a lot of authors from other

events who weren’t busy giving readings themselves.
Unfortunately, a noticeable portion of the audience
was either too drunk or too ignorant to realize that

not all that was on offer was supposed to be funny.
Several extended bouts of high-pitched laughter from
somewhere in the crowd threatened to derail moments
of sincerity and seriousness from a few of the poets on
stage. Though it is good to have fun at these events,
sometimes a little respectful silence is necessary.

 

Richard Siken

 

One reading was especially marred by ill-timed
hilarity in the audience: that of American Richard
Siken, a Yale Younger Poets Prize winner blessed
with an amazing deadpan reading voice and a
strange, meandering poetic style. He read a long
piece seemingly composed of unrelated one-liners
that gradually cohered into a manifesto on the
nature of love. Siken’s delivery was unlike anything
I’ve ever heard from any other poet. He seemed to
combine the disarming observational wit of comedian
Steven Wright with the ecstatic mumblings of Allen
Ginsberg. I nearly choked on my beer when he
uttered, “The entire history of human desire takes
about 70 minutes to tell. Unfortunately we don’t have
that kind of time.”

Other highlights of the evening included Barbara
Nickel, high and “euphoric” on painkillers for a
herniated disk, delivering poems from her lovely
book Domain with grace and energy nonetheless.

Then there was Danish poet Niels Hav, whose quirky,

bawdy snapshots of everyday urban life had the
house roaring despite some problems with the sound.

   

CHICKEN
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ANDREW WEDDERSURN

   

 

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Heather McHugh

Midway through the program a “surprise guest” made
her way to the stage: much lauded American poet and
translator Heather McHugh. Even with big-name
poets like Dennis Lee and Agnes Walsh in the room,
McHugh was astonishing. Her tough, concise, and
precise poems silenced all the laughers in the back
row. She managed, in just a few minutes, to be both
funny and political—often within the same poem.
She read “What He Thought,” about a bunch of poets
visiting Italy, arguing about the definition of poetry
over dinner. The argument is settled when one of
them recounts the tale of a heretic, burned at the stake
centuries earlier in a nearby square for saying crazy
things about God. McHugh’s final words (“poetry/is
what he thought, but did not say”) put a hush over
everyone. Perhaps it was the subtle reference to

the Bush government she made in her intro and the
historical correlation to the current political climate;
perhaps it was the just the mood finally sobering. I'd
like to think it was the poem itself—its sly statement
on the power of words, ironically enough, that kept us
quiet.

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78 KIN

 

BRENDAN mM CLEOD