I'm back from seeing Jason Camlot and Marcie Frank's joint launch for their books: Attention All Typewriters and How To Be An Intellectual in the Age of TV: The Lessons of Gore Vidal. It was a little weird to be at an event with so many of my professors and former professors in attendance however the evening was all about fun and celebrating the two writers.

The Green Room was packed, seemingly moreso than last week when I went to see the Coach House Fall launch. Which was definitely nice to see. I'm always happy when these type of events have large turnouts. Gives me that warm fuzzy feeling inside.

Dave McGimpsey took care of the hosting duties and had the audience in stitches as usual. That man even made the Avian Flu funny (I'm not going to go into details, you just had to be there.)

Marcie Frank didn't read an excerpt but had a prepared speech detailing many of the ideas found in her book on Gore Vidal which examines his private and public persona.

Jason Camlot shared some excerpts from his book and I was really impressed. He has a great reading voice and his poetry is witty, poignant, and well-crafted. At times one might feel lost among the many literary and pop-culture references but that doesn't take away from the strength of his poems.

I've read some of Camlot's poetry online from nthposition and you can see how much literature from the Victorian period influences his work - although Attention All Typewriters focuses more on contemporary themes like the office space. And while he has an academic side (he teaches Victorian Literature at Concordia University), it was great to see him show off his other passion: music.

Camlot picked up a guitar and sang one of his poems to end what turned out to be a very memorable and enjoyable evening.

By the way, it turns out he's got some mad punk-rock cred! Urban Myth Records is going to be releasing a compilations of his songs in January 2006 called Blemish Years: 1994-1997. These songs heave reached legendary status on the Canadian indie-rock underground scene and if they're anything like the haunting song he played this evening then it will definitely be something worth keeping your eyes open for.

To find out more about Jason Camlot's upcoming album release, check out this site:

Welcome back, Camlot