By Michelle Medford
bill bissett was giving a reading at a library in downtown London, Ont. in the early 1990s and Jay MillAr wanted to be there. MillAr was then a student taking his first English Literature course at The University of Western Ontario. He’d never been to a poetry reading and his course had just begun tackling contemporary Canadian poetry. When he arrived at the library, everyone was sitting in chairs arranged in a circle. MillAr took a seat and tried to spot the poet. “I picked out the guy that had a mock turtleneck on and a tweed jacket with patches on the elbows,” he says. As it turned out, this was the man who stood up to introduce bissett. “Then, this crazy looking guy, with his orange sunglasses on, got up and pulled a maraca out of his back pocket and started shaking it around,” says MillAr about bissett. MillAr was both a bit frightened and amused, but even more so intrigued.