HAVE A HEART

Pumping Irony since 1947

Dear POETCHRY community.

I have endured a few months of diagnostic pokes, prods and punctures in Cobourg, Port Hope, Oshawa, and Peterborough. I imagined the cost of the health care system to keep the creativity fresh and alive; thousands of dollars and counting.

I will be getting a triple bypass for sure, and a possible fourth bypass if the doc decides, while I am on the table, that I can handle it. The date for my slice and dice is tentatively scheduled for Friday, February 20. In the meantime, I have to do a lot of carcass preparation. I will be hospitalized for five to seven days, with a few weeks of rehab to follow.

This has provided me with enough clarity to actually dream about continuing the Picnic On Poetry project. POP! Last year, we went on a binge, producing nine tables for Canada’s National Poetry Month. 2025 was a good run, ending with the unveiling of a special table at Word On the Street, Canada’s largest literary festival. That was the year when everything for me felt like a weight, not knowing anything about my heart’s true condition, other than taking it for granted.

Then came the angina attacks this fall and several more days back in Cobourg emerg, with only days to go before the surgery date announcement. Hang in there, I said to myself multiple times, you have poetry work to do. And the poetry didn’t stop.

Tubes in both arms, electrodes all over my body, wires here and there, what a tango of tangle, and these lines came to mind:

Hospitals are for broken bodies.

Asylums are for broken brains.

Taverns are for broken hearts.

I lay there imagining the fresh gush of blood fueling my body post-surgery, and of gradually being busy again, implementing the Prime Policy of Poetry Proliferation of the glorious Imagine Nation of the Peoples Republic of Poetry; Picnic On Poetry.

April is National Poetry Month. My Poemtown, Cobourg, has the opportunity to apply for govt arts grants if it holds a Poetry Month event for two years in a row. I want to meet that requirement the best that I am able. I feel confident that I can ease into that, but not with the binge of last year.

I promised a lot of tables for 2026. Certainly, I will not be able to get them all done in 2026, but there is always 2027, and they will be completed then, with many more when my health becomes robust and ambitious.

The first table that I will work on will be Cobourg’s Poet Laureate Emeritus, Ted Amsden. Some of his poetry will be exceedingly challenging format-wise, and I look forward to that. So does he. I have a profound respect for his poetic talent, and it will be a pleasure to work with him to produce a triple AAA class table to showcase his intense wit.

I recommend everyone in Canada’s Poemtown purchase his recently published book, The Golden Handshake Club, available at the Book Nook in downtown Cobourg. This is better than Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Small Town. Amsden’s book has rapid-fire wit as it tells the story of a showdown between the denizens of Sloburg and Port Promise, an intense funshine sketch of our neighbourhood.

Talk to you after I am hoisted up on the repair shop at Toronto General to change my oil, rotate my tires, lube me up and send me back to my wonderful Poemtown to assault mediocrity in all its forms.