Don't the best ideas always happen over lunch? On a warm August day, at Cafe Flora, two friends and I were sharing new poetry finds. We lamented how hard it is to discover new poets (new to us) since our MFA days were over. Wouldn't it be great to get together and read poetry once in awhile? People formed book clubs around novels and non-fiction books, why not around poetry books? And so, COP'Rs was born. Community of Poetry Readers or COP''Rs. Here is our mandate:
As a group, we want to be exposed to new
poets, to read poetry deeply, and to create
community around the pleasure of poems.
It's that simple. We've met once already and the energy in the room was palpable. We were not the only ones hungry for such a group. Each month we meet and share individual poems that everyone brings in our "Poetry Presents" section and then move on to the full collection we've agreed to read. This month it is Deborah Digges' poetry collection Trapeze. The Trapeze link takes you to Poets.org where you can hear Deborah read the title poem. Feel free to read along. I promise to report back after our meeting next week. This is my first time reading her and I'm amazed by her work.
Susan, you knew that Digges died earlier this year, right?
ReplyDeleteYes, thanks. That's part of what makes hearing her voice reading Trapeze so powerful.
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