Readers Salon Event #14 How to Read a Poem

Do you blanch at the sight of lines that don’t stretch all the way across the page? Noted poet and dynamic presenter Paul Vermeersch discusses some of his favourite poems, deconstructing their basic poetic forms, explaining how each poem can change the way we read, and discussing how these poems have informed and inspired his own writing. William Carlos Williams famously described a poem as “a small (or large) machine made of words.” Yes, says Vermeersch, but it’s the reader who operates the machine!