So, Mr, Pickersgill, your dream has been realized: How does it feel?

The success of the POW! Festival makes me feel very happy. It is great to be happy but it seems less significant than the fact that many other people are telling me that it was a really good weekend.

What were the highlights?

One of the perqs of being the Festival organizer is I got to attend every single minute of POW!

I love poetry. I love discussions of poetry. I was excited by every moment of the Festival.

As one of Cobourg's biggest poetry enthusiasts, I experienced the 4-day event as moving from one highlight to another.

I have this impression of myself going to the microphone on stage to make myself appear ridiculous by repeatedly uttering one superlative after another. That was not false. People doing the Poetry Readings and the other presentations got a real boost from the fact that a Festival was organized to present what they love to do and over 90% 'rose to the occasion' giving outstanding performances of their careers appearing in public.

An impressive aspect of that was: it held true whether they were in front of one of our better audience draws or one of our lowest. The people on the bill definitely made the weekend the success that it was. That is so for the poets and other performers but it also 'spread' to our emcees and other people involved.

The Festival fostered excellence from everyone involved. I am not trying to be phoney about spreading the praise around equally; it is genuine when I say I could make a list of 'lows' quicker and easier than a list of the 'highs.' Not every single person 'rose to the occasion.' That is likely impossible but most people did.

When you get people who have published a lot of books --as many as 18 books in certain cases-- and have read publicly many, many times and they bring their best performance, that is a true highlight.

At what might be called "the other end of the spectrum," we had people who have never published a word and never read in public before show up for our Open Mike sessions. That in itself is a highlight. Both Open Mike events were very lively and hugely entertaining.

One of the amazing moments in POW! was the book launch of Paul Brown's "Wolf Pack of the Winisk River." Between The Avid Reader bookstore and the POW! book table, we sold 50 copies of that book alone. Paul's book is very good and he should hold this book launch close to his heart for a long time to come. A representative from the world of publishing who was there commented that if that kind of sales record could be sustained, we were into best seller territory.

The publishers who were in attendance during POW! or who sent poets to read at our Festival have all definitely sat up and taken notice of the success of Paul's book launch. I feel certain that if the poetry festival is repeated, more than one of them will want to time the release of a book so it falls during "Poetry Weekend in Cobourg."

Were you pleased with the attendance? Any numbers?

About a third of the events had a packed house. One third had the usual numbers of people we see on average when we hold regular monthly Poetry Readings in Cobourg. The other third had disappointingly low numbers; that is my responsibility. I realized as the weekend unfolded that there were certain events that I simply did not know how to stage properly in terms of advance promotion to our target audience and so on.

I was told in advance that I had been too generous with my ticket-pricing. People attending told me the same thing. The low numbers at some events in combination with the low ticket prices for all events means that we did not bring in as much revenue as we could have.

One of the things I have learned is that it is difficult to come up with an absolute total number for the weekend because as it evolved, there were 4 streams that acted as tributaries for the whole "Poetry Weekend in Cobourg." There were a number of unpaid events: the Poetry Reading that regularly happens the 3rd Thursday of every month, 3 separate Poetry In The Schools sessions and 3 book-signing / Meet the Author events at The Avid Reader bookstore, plus, there were our 6 paid admission events. I leave out of our count the people who stopped at the book-signings because that is difficult to count properly. For the rest, the number of people who experienced our poetry readings and other presentations is approximately 400.

What was the most well-attended event of the weekend?

The Saturday evening event, which had 3 major parts covered by the cost of one ticket, was definitely the big draw. That said, it only marginally outdrew the Friday evening event, which was a powerhouse Poetry Reading right after our Official Opening Reception.

I learned a lot of things throughout POW! that I never had an inkling ahead of time were things that were there to be learned. One of those came from my observation that although we were getting the same number of people out that we regularly see, we were not getting the same faces out. There were many faces I usually see at our 3rd Thursday Readings that I did not see even once throughout the POW! weekend. So, even if that number is usually 30 people in a room and this number is 30 people in a room, half were people I am used to seeing but half were people I had never seen before. That was interesting, indeed.

Then a similar cycle was in evidence during the weekend itself. Even if the number for Friday evening was similar to the number for Saturday evening, only half the faces were people coming back for both. So, we had a lot of separate individuals who attended just a single POW event each.

Any thoughts about next year?

After a huge and varied peak-experience such as organizing the POW! Festival and then attending all its events, it is probably wise to ride out 'the valley' that is bound to follow before carving any thoughts in stone.

I guess my main thought is to ask: should it be done again? If the answer to that is "Yes" my next question is: should I do it again?

I wanted to be the one to give close attention to every detail of this year's Festival because it was important to me to prove it could be done successfully. I think we did that. We also proved it can be done even more successfully if it is repeated.

For me, personally, the whole weekend was like an intensive immersion-workshop in how to run a Festival. Unfortunately, in some cases, that meant learning from mistakes. In some instances, I said to myself, "We got this wrong, how can we get this right next time?" I was happy that in most cases it was more a matter of: "How can we make this successful part of the Festival an even bigger winner next time?" That is always better.

If a festival happens next year in Cobourg to mark National Poetry Month, that will be great.

However, it won't happen if it is so-much a matter of "just James." I would do it along with other people. Many folk forsee ways it can be bigger and better. It won't happen unless I can off-load about 2/3's of what I, myself, had to do in the advance organizing this year to a group of people next year.

For this year, I started off with the knowledge that some people can see what is not yet there and ask, "Why can't we make that a reality?" while some people only see what is in front of them as an already existing reality.

So, I made my vision a reality everyone can see. Now, I hope the members of that future group, whoever they are, see that it can be done. More, see that it should be done again. A lot of people are saying just that to me. I'd like a few of the energetic ones among them to step up and join me in doing it.

Having said that, it dawns on me that I sound like I am saying I did it all by myself this year. That is not true and I don't mean to sound that way. I had other individuals helping out who did a lot of work. I don't think any of those people would claim they did the same amount of work that I did but they did a lot. I appreciate their efforts so much and don't want to sound like I slight their efforts. I am saying, they, too, need to lay off about 2/3s of what they had to do onto a bigger committee or whatever it is to be called.

Anything you'd like to add?

Cobourg is a place that gets behind new initiatives like POW!

Cobourg did. We had local people as audience-members sampling a poetry event for the first time. We had advance support from the Town Council, from Northumberland media, from local businesses. We drew in townspeople to participate who had never partnered with us before to do everything from putting up posters, to selling tickets, to being guest M.C. for one of the events.

That level of community support cannot be underestimated in its impact. Cobourg is a great place to live. It's amazing to be in a Town that shows such a level of support for something like POW!

I think every single out of town visitor we drew commented to me on those two facts: Cobourg is a beautiful Town and it is incredible that the community gave such strong support to a poetry festival.

Though it is not the only motivation, it is true to say that a big motivation for me in organizing POW! was I knew I would enjoy being a poetry festival audience-member. Ahead of time, I thought, "I'm really going to enjoy every event of the poetry festival." I did. Others did, too. I think it was totally awsome.