Subject: TDR's interview with Paul Vermeersch

Dear Editor, 

I happen to be a Paul Vermeersch fan. He's a great writer, and my kids will probably study his works in school. Whenever Paul gets interviewed by somebody I always read it because he is so funny about the cultural wasteland that was his childhood home. But mullets and bingo halls are not just found in large quantities throughout Sarnia, I'm afraid. You want mullets? Come to Hanover. Women and men sport them here. There are so many towns in this country where the mullet, as well as monster trucks, wrestling and car racing, and Budweiser tank tops and mesh backed ball caps are king. But in these rural areas we've also got those long strands of bulrushes growing everywhere that Paul has written about. We've got rolling farm land, and the hard-working, occasionally troubled, occasionally colourful, but always fascinating families who live and work those lands, too. Those are the kinds of things that seep into Paul's work every now and then and have inspired some of, what I consider to be his best poems. Read Rural Elementary or The Skaggs Boys and you will laugh, but there is so much pain there, too, in what he is bringing to light. That is small town life - complex, and not placid or peaceful, really at all, if you get beneath the surface, which is what any good poem should do. And what is it that they say about farming folk? That the best, most concise and clever writers cannot write as well as the farmer speaks. There is a lot of truth in that. And that is where Paul comes from, too. 

Love your publication, Sincerely, Kathleen Lippa