Poetry is in the air !

This morning at 7:30 a.m. I posted the Emily Dickinson poem on my blog, completely unaware that the international literary festival of poets and authors started today. This evening I rang up my friend, Monique, and asked her what she was up to this weekend.

“I’m going to the Maison de la Poésie,” she said.  The House of Poetry happens to be located directly across the road from her apartment and one of her favourite poets, Dany Laferrière, is giving a reading there this weekend.  Laferrière is a Haitian-Canadian novelist and journalist who lives and writes in Montreal.

So I got onto their website and saw that Michael Ondaatje will also be giving a reading and sharing the stage with Dany Laferrière.  As everyone knows, poet-novelist Ondaatje, who resides in my hometown of Toronto, is one of Canada’s best-loved writers. Sri Lankan-born, he won the Booker Prize for his novel The English Patient, which was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film.  He’s also won a ton of other literary prizes and awards.

So now I’m going too!  I purchased a ticket for myself on-line.  

All this is in honour of the international literary festival taking place in Paris right now, a collaboration between New York’s Columbia University and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.  World-renowned authors will meet their fans at various venues around Paris:  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, John Banville, Richard Ford, David Grossman, Ma Jian, Amin Maalouf, Petros Markaris, Catherine Millet, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, Edmund White, and many others.

Festival des Écrivains du Monde: September 20-22, 2013

Take a gander at this comprehensive site below.  Did I say “gander”?  Where did that come from?

http://globalcenters.columbia.edu/files/cgc/Program-World-Writers-Festival.pdf

http://www.maisondelapoesieparis.com/