Beer in hand, you’d make your way to the center of the audience to spot a group of men hard to not gawk at. A diverse mélange of hip, rainbow-haired Concordians, literature buffs, and rad retirees sat beside each other in bizarre juxtaposition. At the back of the room, volunteers manned a table covered in poetry collections and chapbooks by the reading’s three poets, as well as other emerging authors.

After a brief introduction, Richardson, the first poet of the night, sidled her way to the podium. Richardson delivered a mesmerizing performance with themes veering toward a charming, self-aware pessimism, even if her nerves sometimes made her stomp on the oral accelerator. “I’m just realizing now that, like, four of these poems are about plane crashes,” Richardson joked during her reading.

For those to whom cheerful conversation is a fearsome burden, light refreshments were provided to pass the time, including, thankfully, beer.

The second poet of the night, Kolewe, had recently released his debut collection of poetry, Afterletters. Kolewe showcased his broad thematic scope, from riffing on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the age-old question of love or lust, though the majority of the poems were predominantly critical of politics and government. One of Kolewe’s poems attacked the oil pipelines out west in bullet point form, and if the room had been more boisterous, the audience might have laughed a bit louder. But as it was, the solemn setting predisposed more contemplation than major emotional outbursts.

Then Howell stepped up to the microphone. The poet mentioned the release of Sharps, the first collection of poems published in autumn of last year. The title alludes to disposal boxes typically found in hospitals for used needles, the referrence coming from Howell’s hospital work. Before launching into the reading, the poet talked about “men, and other places,” After the first poem, the artist apologized, aware of the rapidity with which the reading was finished. The candor was captivating, and the poems touched on everything from hospital work to the criminal neighbour to San Francisco. Howell connected deeply with the students in the audience, and they gathered around the poet as the reading ended. “I came for Stevie Howell,” confided one attendee. “I just love [Howell’s] imagery.” While the event was mostly a space for emerging poets to recite their work, it also encouraged dialogue between artist and audience. Following the performance, the reading’s stragglers trekked to a nearby bar to talk poetry, a trend that will hopefully keep up during the length of the Atwater Poetry Project.

If you’re on the prowl for up-and-coming Canadian authors, or just looking for a way to expand your poetic horizons, the Atwater Poetry Project readings are for you. A final word of advice: as with most things, if you won’t go for the poetry itself, at least go for the beer.

The Atwater Poetry Project readings take place roughly once a month at Atwater Library. The next reading will be on October 1 at 7 p.m..

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Nilsen’s modern interpretation of our supposed classical heritage, along with the good ol’ Christian Bible, is nothing new. The gods have been making casual appearances in Western literature and art for centuries since, well, the printing press. Who does Dante meet in the eighth circle of Hell but Ulysses, that great Classical hero who sojourned oceans upon oceans and corrupt lands to return home, only to wind up in Hell? Who does Dante meet in the outermost sphere of Hell but Lucifer and Judas, and Brutus, et cetera, et cetera? Not to mention Dante’s well-versed tour guide, the Roman poet Virgil.

After Dante, there was Milton, raving on about Adam and Eve and Paradise. Then, a bit later, with the blossoming of mass media, there was Percy Jackson and The Passion of the Christ. Classical and Christian figures have been providing fodder for Western art and pop culture longer than the Greco-Roman world even existed. It seems more apt to say that we can’t escape Classical or Christian references, rather than that we’ve ever forgotten them.

The book is assembled with a precise attention to detail, from the crispness of the graphics to the pithiness of the copyright page.

What’s new in Poseidon is Nilsen’s fusion and critique, along with the book’s innovative format. Nilsen’s book folds out like an accordion, most likely because the book was first shown in a gallery as a series of panels before it was ever printed. The book is assembled with a precise attention to detail, from the crispness of the graphics to the pithiness of the copyright page. Even the paper quality is superior to the average office print-outs. The only problem, perhaps, is function: don’t fold out the pages too much, or they won’t want to fit back in.

The novelty of the format aptly introduces the irreverence of Nilsen’s work, which is a kind of fan fiction about Western heritage. Specifically, Nilsen chooses three stories about Greek gods, two about Christian figures, and two, paradoxically, that star everybody, with a healthy amount of conceptual inter-pollination in all seven. Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom, is used as a Christ figure, and the Christian God is shown “curled up in a ball in his bed […] in his underwear and just one sock,” blurring the boundaries of weak and powerful, moral and downright indecent. Nilsen’s creation is at once admissive of a Western tradition and reflexive of that very tradition. For example, he renders the Judeo-Christian God, generally portrayed as a benevolent and all-powerful being, as needy, sometimes careless, and maybe a little insane. Nilsen’s God is the image of the humans he created, instead of the other way around.

Nilsen’s creation is at once admissive of a Western tradition and reflexive of that very tradition.

Nilsen asks readers to alter their perspectives and put themselves in the place of the gods. Supposedly, they could answer our prayers if they wanted to, but are they really listening? Would you really care about you, if it weren’t kind of necessary? Nilsen assumes that gods are a universal (read: Western) form of identification, and he uses that commonality to show us the violence and tenderness of his philosophy on life and the grief that seems inherent to our lives. In his deceptively humourous depictions of gods and of humanity, we lose our religion a little, perhaps, but not our faith. Because, really, what else is there?

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