Welcome home.

Legendary nights are called into being.

What reading elicits is, on neurological imaging, difficult to distinguish from experience itself. We read the word lilac or chai and the olfactory cortex flares. The phrase I pulled the cloth strip through the wire fence will spur the reader’s motor cortex as if it were the movement. Or, as Dionne Brand wrote:

Books leave gestures in the body; a certain way of moving, of turning, a certain closing of the eyes, a way of leaving, hesitations. Books leave certain sounds, a certain pacing; mostly they leave the elusive, which is all the story.

Immersive reading, that collaborative solitude, shapes our consciousness — so we do live what is written.

– Sadiqa de Meijer, Fieldwork (Fieldnotes & KFB 2025)

It’s not about the size, the numbers, or the “likes.” The networking, insta-moments or “to be seen.”

But, it is about the setting, creating/holding a space for poetry to be read, received, savoured.

When Maureen Scott & Peter Harris offered up their home to celebrate our new KFB/Fieldnotes titles — Sadiqa de Meijer’s Fieldwork, Jacob Alvarado’s I Can Make It All Up to You, and Maureen Scott Harris’ KFB broadside, Unnamed — we knew it was going to be special.

What we got was exactly what we wanted. An intimate night of poetry, well served.

Walking up the sidewalk to the porch, the home of “WELCOME” I will never forget.

And, the poetry.

Not the “rigmarole,” of an “event,” (though there was considerable planning to “set the table,” thanks to Eddie, Maureen, Peter, John Levy and the poets). Poetry was/is the reason we gather/ed.

And these three poets:

The mastery of Maureen Scott Harris.

The fresh vibrant green of Jacob Alvarado.

The open inquiry of Sadiqa de Meijer.

There are different occasions that indeed call for a largess of the moment, each their own vision, version, wants, means. All are celebratory in this literary landscape we live in, create.

But, this. This will forever be our hearth. Old school, baby. KFB-style. Home. The place of welcome.

Thanks to all who continue to make it so.