From Brenda and Valerie:
Arriving early around 6:30 put us in the front of the line, and in the front row. The show started on time, and Viggo was the first poet to read. Dressed casually in jeans and an orange-red shirt, he was nervous and relaxed at the same time. He talked a bit first, telling us that he had some works picked out, but would sort of be spontaneous and ‘talk until they told me to shut up’. He read Meet, then Home, and then a new work, Communion, which had us weak in the knees. It was rather long, and he commented that it would most likely be edited down before being published. Then he read another new work, shorter than Communion. We did not, unfortunately remember the name of this work as we were still rather blissed out from Communion.
He was very attentive to the other poets, and seemed rather impressed by many of the Youth Speaks and Slam poets (who were truly amazing!). Henry was there, and sat beside his father for the duration of the reading, borrowing Viggo’s legal pad to doodle/write/? on.
After the reading, we spoke with him briefly before he was deluged by the crowd.
We waited, and finally got to spend some time with him. He was great about taking the time to speak with each and every person who waited. He took pictures, signed autographs, and even drew the White Tree of Gondor in someone’s copy of FOTR. When we got to converse with him, we mentioned how much we had loved Communion and that our opinion was that it should be published unedited. He told Brenda that the young poets from Youth Speaks had inspired him to write more. (yay!)
Brenda also spoke with him about Eomer. She mentioned being a Karl Urban fan, and his comment was “You are going to be blown away by his performance.” This caused much excitement in us.
We thanked him for his work, spoke about his former movie roles, and talked about “Elendil” (his painting). He was very soft spoken, but very attentive to each person he spoke to, taking time to focus completely on that person. It was an intense and wonderful experience, and very personal. We were very impressed.
