I don't really have much use for the "page" & "stage" designations but one of the best readings I ever got to do was one of those planned pairings & the poet I read with brought a folder with most of their work to the stage & so I scrambled for every poem I had on me.

in this setting, one person reads a poem & then sits down while the other person reads a poem. So, my first poem used roadkill (a deer) as a central image. The poet sat for a second, calmly flipped thru their folder, & read a poem that opened with the image of a deer in the woods

that poem was also circling these things about grief and parenthood and so I picked up on what we were doing and got up with a poem about my mother & fried chicken. The other poet grinned, nodded, and had a poem with a chicken feather image in it.

I'd never met this poet before, only admired from afar. I knew their work fairly well, but I'm not sure they knew mine as well. We were of different generations/backgrounds/etc. But the reading went on like that for nearly 40 mins. With some reaches, almost every poem connected.

and it wasn't a competition -- it wasn't about one-upping each other or trying to top one poem with the other poem. It was about generosity and exploration. Kinda like "oh shit, I got something that speaks to this too?" it was an exciting way to be in real-time conversation.

Anyway, I was thinking about this in the context of these times. How the reading I almost always want to see is two poets with different styles/work, bringing all the poems they can find to the table & building out small connections to each other's work for an audience.