Toonies and Toques

Biographie de glenda higgins

Cafe's are great places to get a start as a poet. Vancouver, B. C. Canada has some wonderful ones. I remember sitting in the audience in La Quena, listening to the poets. Poetry read on-stage takes on a dimension of human communication unseen since the early storytellers. Looking at the poet's body language struck a chord in me. Quite often I would take out a pen and paper and write furiously. One day I was at the Glass Slipper in Vancouver and Gerry Gilbert, a well-known poet, was doing his "Radio Free Rainforest" radio show live.
At intermission, he came down from the stage and asked me if I'm a poet. I said, "yes" and was put on the radio a couple of weeks later. We became good friends and he would show up on his bicycle and call up to me in poems. We'd go for long walks around the seawall, talking poetry. I ended up accompanying him on my flute at poetry readings. One day he did a set of poetry about fireworks. He blended my flute playing with a soundscape of the fireworks celebration on Sunset Beach and used it as a backdrop to his poems at the Glass Slipper.
Someone in the crowd must have been inspired a bit too much. Next morning we learnt that the Glass Slipper had been burned down, unfortunately, in the night after the poets left. They say words are more powerful than swords.....maybe they start fires too. Here's to starting the fires of the mind and heart .