I just saw Molly Peacock read at Vanderbilt. She’s tremendously expressive–one of the audience members asked about the performance aspect of her poetry and she said that somebody (a voice coach? I think?) had asked why she only uses the middle register of her voice when she reads, and it was like a light went on and now she uses all registers. It was pretty cool. She read “Aubade” (from which this post’s title comes, and which is one of my favorites) and talked about how “A Favor of Love” was a true story. She was very funny (sample quote: after being introduced by Mark Jarman, she said she was about to read us a sonnet, and we could judge for ourselves how holy it was).

Afterwards, I asked her how she found moving to Canada (she was originally American) from the point of view of adjusting to a different market, and she said it was awful. She said one of the reasons she started The Best Canadian Poetry in English series was to help with that adjustment, and advised me to “start something! Then they’ll have to come to you.”

Related Posts