Stratford poet to launch new book, Essays of Light, with musical performance at Revival House Nov. 25

Stratford poet and performer David Stones holds his new poetry collection, Essays of Light, ahead of the launch of the book at Stratford’s Revival House Nov. 25.

To launch his third poetry collection, Essays of Light, award-winning Stratford poet and performer David Stones is joining forces with a trio of celebrated local musicians and vocalists to perform a selection of poems from his new book at Revival House Nov. 25.

Stones, who has been performing his poetry, often to music, for more than a decade since the launch of his first poetry collection, Infinite Sequels, will join local keyboardist and vocalist Kelly Walker, actor and vocalist Marcus Nance, and cellist and composer Ben Bolt-Martin for the show beginning at 7 p.m.

“Some of my work has been turned into song,” Stones told the Times in a recent interview. “Marcus Nance is a great Shakespearean and Festival actor. Kelly Walker, I do a lot of shows with him … and I have performed with Ben Bolt-Martin before. I had a show, WordSong, we did together a year ago. Kelly and Ben wrote three songs based on my lyrics and Marcus was the singer, so I sort of recruited them back to launch Essays of Light and a new show called Essays of Light.

“Hopefully we can turn it into something more than just the one-off and we can spin it into something a bit larger. We can do clubs, wineries; that’s what Kelly and I do. … I like to perform poetry to music. It really brings the words off the page for people. Cello is wonderful with my work, as is the piano.”

Essays of Light is a collection of 80 new poems Stones wrote over roughly a year and a half. Already, the book is gaining high praise from some of Canada’s most renowned poets including former poet laureate and a friend of Stones’, George Elliott Clarke, who says in a blurb at the beginning of the book that Stones’ latest poems “are marvels, effortlessly luminous, so tender in compassion, so trenchant in elegance. … David Stones is so deft a poet that even the white space between stanzas seems to sing and then echo melodically once a page is turned.”

Stones said his poetry in this collection is themed around 13th century Persian poet Rumi’s perspective on light, which Stones said can be best summarized by lyrics from Canadian singer, songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen’s song, “Anthem.”

“Rumi very famously said, ‘The wound is the place where the light gets in,’ and I contend Leonard Cohen maneuvered that into ‘there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.’ It’s the same expression. You need to be wounded or cracked or broken; that is what moves you forward. It’s almost like learning from your mistakes – it’s all the same kind of notion.

“So, I started building these poems. I write about the three L’s of life: love, longing and loss. Loving what you have, including people, so there are love poems in here. Longing, sort of lusting after the things that we don’t have and wish that we had. And certainly mourning – sometimes tragically, sometimes reflectively – the things that we’ve lost. So, the poems are, generally speaking, about those three themes. You can apply any one of those three themes to any poem in the book.”

Stones hopes poetry lovers and those who may not appreciate the art form as much will consider seeing him perform, if not at his Stratford book launch then at one of his other performances in nearby cities like London and Toronto. He says by putting his poetry to music, building theatrical sets for his readings and having some of his work turned into song, his work tends to appeal to people who otherwise may not appreciate spoken-word poetry.

To purchase tickets for Stones’ book launch at Revival House, visit www.ticketscene.ca/events/49707/.