The AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) held their 2005 conference in Vancouver last week. This was the first time that it had been held in Canada, and it appears that it will be quite a while before it comes north again (2006: Austin, Texas; 2007: Atlanta, Georgia; 2008: New York, New York; 2009: Chicago, Illinois). It was apparently quite a bash, with a stellar lineup of writers in attendance: Anne Carson, Wayson Choy, Lorna Crozier, Alistair MacLeod, W. S. Merwin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Michael Ondaatje, and Susan Musgrave among many others. That’s like a half-dozen Vancouver Writer’s Festivals’ worth of talent, compressed into a mere four days.

Most of the conference events were open to registrants only: a wealth of panel discussions (“After Survival: Where is Canadian Poetry?”; “Editors Discuss the Modern Sonnet”), workshops (“How to Find — and Keep — The Right Agent”) and daytime readings. But there were also a series of evening readings open to the general public.

With hindsight I regret not having booked off some holiday time in order to attend and in the end I managed to make it to just one event: the Saturday evening reading by Canadian poet Anne Carson and honored American writer W. S. Merwin. Held in the Vancouver Hotel’s huge British Columbia Ballroom the event was packed, with every available seat (and then some) filled.

Anne Carson opened the evening, and was simply amazing. Funny and thoughtful, she had me literally closing my eyes and leaning forward so that I could better engage with the pieces as she read. Her poems were complex but she made no apologies for that fact, and read them with a self-assurance that carried the audience along. One poem was made up entirely of conditionals (“If such and such” without any “then” clause following); it would, she announced calmly, “seem interminable”, and for our benefit she gave some bearings: the reference to horses would mark the half-way point; the reference to Freud would mark the 4/5ths point (“which will create for some of you a most unfamiliar sensation, associating Freud with a feeling of hope”); the next reference to horses (“specifically their manes”) would be in the second sentence from the end.

I was more familiar with W. S. Merwin’s work — his prose pieces mainly, with The Lost Upland being a particular favorite. He is now in his seventies, a senior figure in American letters, and he stood at the podium looking regal and patrician, crowned by a shock of snow-white hair. He took a moment to acknowledge the death of acclaimed poet Robert Creeley, who had passed away on Wednesday at the age of 78. I had not yet heard this bit of sad news; it came as a distinct shock, for it seemed such a short time ago that Creeley had visited Vancouver to give a reading. Merwin laughed as he recalled an incident when he’d been on an Illinois highway in a snowstorm with Creeley — one-eyed, gesticulating — at the wheel; he then read a poem by Emily Dickinson in tribute.

At that moment, and before an audience packed with fellow writers, it felt as if this is what poets are too often called upon to do: write elegies and pay tribute to their fallen companions in letters. And perhaps this is one reason why writers made their own commitment to the writing life: in order to be deserving of such accolades when their turn comes.