A Hundred Poems about Flowers – the first twenty-five

Encounter Stories

My new book’s out, in case you didn’t get a notice.

With the initial print run the number of complimentary copies an author is obliged to provide can become staggering. But all were happily given, and the remainder are selling well, especially through our classy & wonderful local florist Mostly Roses. In fact it’s now time for a second print run. I’m about to do another reading & signing event – Sat. July 19^th at 4 p.m. in Brantford, Ontario, at Mostly Roses, if you can come. Reading flower poems in the ozonous fresh air of a flower shop is as good as reading gets, believe me.

You might know that this book results from the first of four planned public exhibitions of art & poem text + poem audio. This one found life in January 2012 at the Ingersoll Creative Arts Centre with artists Cathy Groulx & Rita Milton.

Next 25 will happen spring 2015 in the gallery of the Masonville Branch of the London Public Library with artists Adriana Rinaldi & Gabby Tutak.

Some of the best experiences for me of publishing & selling a book are what I call the Encounter Stories. These are what happens after browsers pick up a book & start leafing through…and don’t just put it down again. The Mostly Roses folks know that I love Encounter Stories, so they kindly pass on what they witness. One concerns a mother & teenager, & the poem ‘Dandelion’.

(‘Dandelion’, Cathy Groulx)

The bored teenager was in the florist with Mother, moody, scoping for something to do, when she opened the book at this poem. She burst out laughing and said something derisive – possibly she thought dandelions ridiculously out of place in a flower book let alone in a florist’s. But apparently from there a conversation ensued – in which the Mum also looked at the poem, then reminisced with the girl about childhood dandelion bouquets she’d picked and presented. The pair’s mood renovated. An altered teenager left the shop, mother and daughter more in sync.

My gratitude for this kind of return is big.

Another time a browser opened at the poem called ‘Pansies’. She read it through – and burst into tears. Not sad tears, I was told. Tears of what I would call Big Feeling.  Being Moved.

To be moved enough to write a poem is one kind of reward; that someone else might be moved is another reward entirely.

More recently a woman interested in the book got an extra jolt of happiness when she saw its accompanying audio CD. She could play it, she said, for her elderly parent who has gone blind.

Women often buy this book, if not only. They buy it as gifts for themselves, for their mothers, girlfriends, or daughters. Men, it appears, buy it for wives or partners, just as they buy floral bouquets. My own mother calls it a ‘mini coffee table book’, and tells me that’s how she reads it – one or two poems at a time, while enjoying the pictures. She keeps it ‘displayed’ in her kitchen.

Alone as artists, we undertake certain creative actions that seem necessary, even as they carry risk; we follow further practical, sometimes challenging, steps in order to carry through on the full original vision; we never know where it might land us.

I’ve learned that such wonderful small human stories always come in response to any attempt at fulfilling a vision. And maybe, as I’ve begun to feel, these stories are actually the bigger point – a collection of riches that, when it’s all over, we can take with us.

(‘Whatever Bloom’ Rita Milton)