persons met, personalities encountered

I will keep a log of the (literary) people I've met through my travels. They have such strong personalities, and the amazing ability to focus that personality so precisely and so finely into their work.
 
PK Page (Patricia Kathleen)
 
Her name is revered among the poetry crowd in Canada. She won the Governor General's Award for Poetry all the way back in the 1950's, so that shows how long she's been here with us. I read a book on the publishing history of Canada, and PK was one of the originals. She was working on her poems back when there was no Canadian Literature, and Vancouver, back then, was probably just a small sea-side town, with no cars and no skyscrapers to speak of.
 
I met her at the Victoria Lit festival, where she had to sit at her couch, and field questions from readers and writers. She read her poem, Alphabetical, and the poem, as well as the poet, had more than enough strength to wield power. As she read the poem, I could see her remembering all the inflections, the time spent honing each word and each punctuation, the thoughts spent idling on past lovers and old friends who have died, the silence she spent in seeking the father, son, and holy ghost.
 
She is modest. Claiming that all the attention is overrated, she nevertheless still revels in her accomplishments. Speaking ironically, and quite evasively about her art, she has strength in spades: the strength to conquer her personal demons, to face a world that can be cruel, to delight a public who no longer reads poetry, and to turn it all around in the corner of her smile.
 
She holds her cane, and walks slowly off the stage. Rather than relying on it as a crutch, she uses the cane as a stick, pointing this way and that, saying hello and goodbye with a wave. I feel that she asks herself this question: after all this time, all this effort, is this all that there is? She is old, but she is still as stubborn as the day she was born. She wants the answer, and will not settle until she finds it.
 
At her signing table, the lineup is shorter than the younger writers'. Privately confiding in anyone who will listen, she said that all her art is and must be imaginary. Without her imagination, her writings are nowhere.