Thanking Dave Brinks

First two photos by Bill Perrault.

It's funny how just a couple of weeks ago, I was raving to Stone Soup about my time in New Orleans and reading at the 17 Poets! Reading Series hosted by Dave Brinks. I even read from Brinks' journal, YAWP, to give people a taste of what I experienced at the open mike.


While I was down in N'awlins, Dave told me he was going to be in Boston for a couple of days in late June. We talked about meeting at Stone Soup, and he said he would definitely occupy an open mike slot. I didn't push for anything else, as I had a feature put in place for a month.

Then Monday the 29th came around, and my group feature, who came highly recommended, finally got in touch with me the morning before they were supposed to come to Boston. The only people available for the show did not own vehicles. I didn't take lonf for me to say screw it and call Dave to see if he'd be up to doing 20-30 minutes, thus completing another part of this poetry exchange program we had going on between New Orleans and Boston.

The timing couldn't have been better, as Dave was visiting his publisher, Black Widow Press, to pick up advance copies of his new book, Caveat Onus: The Complete Poem Cycle. A poetic chronicle of New Orleans after the Katrina disaster.

It was an amazing experience hearing these poems for the first time, and almost everyone wanted a copy by the time this unplanned reading was finished.





Caveat Onus is now available through the Black Widow Press website I linked to above. I predict that this not be the last time I see Dave Brinks reading in Boston. Anyone with common sense will want to book him, and I will post video to prove this.

There was no advance notice of Dave coming. There was no time, as work kept me from accessing any of my groups in Yahoo!, Facebook, or MySpace. And yet the audience was full of newcomers and regulars who obviously trusted me enough. I'm glad I didn't disappoint. This was easily one of the top ten readings I've ever hosted, and I can't thank Dave enough, or Susan Deercloud, visiting poet from 2008 who helped make this fortuitous connection.