Reporting on Poetry

The heavy-wooden-door painted a chipped royal-blue was nestled between an arty cafe and a dilapidated storefront window. It was unassuming yet strewn with leaflets and flyers promoting the Dub Poet's Collective.

I was late and perspiring for my interview. The chaotic construction on St. Clair forced our bus driver to give us the boot well before the blue door.
I gave an assertive knuckle wrap and peered in the small window to see nothing but a flight of stairs climbing to the office of the Collective-- strange becuase office space is not synonymous to creativity and poetry in my mind.

I exhaled and thought about wrapping again but some movement at the top of the stairs signaled someone knew I was outside.

The door opened and I was welcomed by my subject, Mr. Klyde Broox. As he stood in the doorway, I stuck out my hand and introduced myself. His hand was large, strong and coarse; a worker's hand, not a poet's hand.
We negotiated the narrow doorway and I headed up the steep flight of stairs before me. The "office" of the Collective was a converted apartment with sparse furnishings. It opened into a living room with one cheap IKEA lamp in the corner. Two salvation-army inspired sofas lined the walls and a small bookcase functioned as the epicenter of the room. It housed various publications from the poets who called this apartment home.
On the top shelf was a wooden carving of a man in with immaculate dreads in profile, book ended by two posters for previous International Dub Poetry Festivals organized by the group.

Mr. Broox took a seat in a plush rocker and I moved closer to him to try to close the space between us. He wore a simple sweater and scratched his navy Dodgers toque while he waited for me to begin. The space felt infinitely empty but we eventually managed to close the gap with conversation.

Mr. Broox believed in the revolutuon. I think I believed him as well because of, rather than in spite of, the Dodgers toque, his coarse hands and IKEA lamp. He was not a politician but a politicial poet who was optimistic about the future of his city.