Northern Town Girl Really Knows How To Write Poetry

I was at Rosanna Deerchild's launch tonight for her brand new poetry book "this is a small northern town." It was fabo (as I thought it would be).

Rosanna is such a great person. Very energetic and exciting and...crazy. Yeah, a little bit nuts. ;-)

Her poetry is really, really good. Very visual. It can be hard or sweet. I love hearing poetry read aloud - I get a lot more out of it than just reading it myself. Maybe that's just me.

Jane Munro, a visiting poet at THIN AIR 2008, said that she doesn't feel like her poetry is "finished" until it's been read out loud - truly delivered, to the audience. That's how I feel about poetry. I love hearing it.

Rosanna and I met through the Writers Festival, THIN AIR 2005 to be precise. My first festival, when I was a lowly Advertising Assistant (with lots of production lacky thrown in). I was volunteered to drive Rosanna and Marty Chan up on the Rural Tour that year - heading out to Portage la Prairie and Minnedosa.

Basically, the short of the long is, a few weeks before the festival Rosanna was unsure if she would be able to make the tour at all. I emailed her a few times, and to my recollection (I'm sure she would disagree here - heh!), I was sure she said she wasn't coming.

Well, the early early morning of the tour comes, and I meet Marty at the hotel, and we load into the car, and take off. We're like 10 minutes past the perimeter when my cell phone rings and Tavia is shouting "You forgot Rosanna!"

WTF?!? What do you mean I forgot her?!

Well, I felt kinda bad, obviously! Luckily it all worked out - Charlene jumped in her car and drove Rosanna out to meet us at Portage la Prairie, and we took it from there.

It was a great drive, and great to hang out with her, and hear her poetry for the first time. It's cool to hear some of those poems now, again, in their "final" form, in her new book.

Congratulations Rosanna!!