My term as proud and she poet laureate, which began January 1, 2016 and ended December 31, 2017, was marked with one's little controversy, but near the end of my first year, it was October 2016, when I finally just got fed up with the way things were going. Because I had been poet laureate of Toronto 2012-2015 and I had been able to recite a poem every April National Poetry Month for the City Council. I thought that was very important and I had tried to inject myself as a poet into various public enterprises of one sort or another under the City of Toronto. And I got some pushback. I also got some acceptance here and there. And so I felt that I was the seventh parliamentary poet laureate. I thought, okay, it's time to make sure that we poets can actually have a real public role in this position. And I felt that I felt constrained. I felt that I wasn't being permitted to say what I really wanted to say or address things I really wanted to address because some functionaries believe that I could cause a controversy if I said something that would get the Library of Parliament or the government itself into trouble in some way, shape, or form. So it was better that I be as muscled as possible. And so I put up with that until October when I mentioned to a CBC reporter in Halifax, I was not having a great time as poet laureate because I wasn't being asked to write anything. Members of parliament, senators, ministers, nobody was asking me to write a poem. And I figured that as the parliament you poet laureate, I'm an officer of parliament. I'm responsible to parliament. So, yo, parliamentarians, you might want to make use of my talent here. I can always say no if I don't like what you're asking me to do or write, I can say no. But I'm here as your poet laureate. So you should be thinking about things I might want to address as your poet laureate. So the news broke on October 5th, 2016. It was national news. I happened to be in Good old Scotland on that date. In fact, I was giving a reading at the Scottish poetry library in Edinburgh, along with some other poets, British and American. And I was the sole Canadian involved in that particular moment. So I was out of the country when the news broke and it was a little tempest in a tea pot that the poet laureate is upset at the parliamentarians aren't asking him to write any poems. Well, on October 6th, the next day after this news broke, I got my first request from a number of parliament to write a poem that was read in parliament. I didn't get to read any poems in parliament. I had several poems read in the House of Commons and in the Senate, which for me was that's the gold standard. That's the gold standard. Somebody can publish a poem over here and publish a poem over there. But get a poem enhancer. Oh, come on. Come on. Now we're cooking with gas. Come on. That's public. That's being political. I got a member of parliament. You don't need to. I got the Queen's printer publishing it for crying out loud. I got a minister of the crown reciting a poem. Come on. That's power. That's power. I don't know. Gee, what is? Yes, poetry is marginalized in the ways that power moves in the ways that money moves and accumulates and gets disposed of here and there and so on. But poetry is that secret resistant art that never goes away. It's always the gorilla art. It's always coming at you. It's always coming out from somebody's mouth, somebody's boombox, somebody's stereo, somebody's iPad, somebody's smartphone. It's always there. It's always coming out because people always have a need to express.