Joy Is So Exhausting featured on The Book Book

Despite spending a considerable amount of energy pumping poetry, and particularly Canadian poetry, I avoid readings like the proverbial plague. Cue Susan Holbrook.

For entirely unrelated reasons, I happened to attend Coach House Press's launch of its fall titles. Joy Is So Exhausting was one of the titles released, and Susan Holbrook was one of the authors reading. The evening was progressing pretty predictably: the Coach House staff hosting the event revealed themselves to be charming individuals, and various authors read from their excellent and recently-published books.

Then Susan Holbrook came up to the microphone. She's probably not you'd think a poet rock star would look like: she's a short-haired, nice looking, lady in maybe jeans and a button-up shirt. I can't quite remember, but my view in the crowd was not great. A drunk lover of literature was standing on a chair for a good view and kept falling off it, right next to me. Apologizing profusely each time, but climbing up again undaunted. He would know, if he could remember, what she was wearing. Suffice it to say, there were distractions for my memory reel.

Regardless of this, and of her unmemorable Clark-Kent-airs, Holbrook is a poet rock star, or maybe just a comedienne extraordinaire. In about thirty seconds, she had the packed barful of literary types in stitches of laughter and didn't let us relax until she had finished her reading.

(Read more at thebookbook.blogspot.com)