Poetry reading framed the on-being gathering this year, and we are so happy now to share

these slices of beauty, elation, and contemplation with you.

Here's how David White opened for us on Friday night.

Thank you very much, Christa.

It's a little touch of her virtuoso articulation.

It's always a pleasure to...

Well, I've only had the pleasure once, but it was an immense pleasure to be interviewed,

where one is made to feel articulate, interesting, debonair, swav, and somewhat intelligent.

She's... I always feel that at the bottom of a real conversation is a real invitation,

and Christa makes the invitation in a really marvellous way, so thank you very much for this

invitation tonight, we'll give her another round of applause.

And speaking of invitations, this place also is a marvellous invitation, not only to us,

but to a future that we want for ourselves.

And Churchill said, we make our...

we shape our buildings, and then they shape us, and these buildings have been shaped

in a beautiful way.

You look at the woodwork, the subtle greens here, the blacksmithing in the light fixtures,

it's just really marvellous good work.

So let's give a round of applause for the builders who made this place.

And that's it for tonight, you've done enough applauding.

But I wanted to make a series of invitations to you through a few poems.

And this is a piece that is the title poem from the book called The Bell and the Blackbird.

...