90-Year-Old Poet ‘Surprises,’ Makes 'Cameo' at Reading

There had been hints that Moira Bailis would show up at her own poetry reading Sunday, but given her medical condition, it wasn’t a certainty that the 90-year-old Fort Lee poet would be up for an appearance at "Moira Bailis at 90 - A Lifetime in Poetry.”

Bailis’s longtime collaborator, publisher and friend David Messineo, publisher of Sensations Magazine, which co-sponsored the event with Rhode Island publisher The Poet’s Press, said last week, “The odds of [Bailis] attending … what could be her final public poetry reading  … are good,” adding that “Moira continually surprises.”

Son Peter Bailis had previously said in an interview with Patch he wouldn’t rule out what he called a “cameo appearance” but that it was “unlikely” his mother would be able to attend the reading, which represented the public launch of two books, The Antidote to Prejudice and It Has To Do With Seeing, recently published by The Poet's Press, collectively bringing together 98 percent of Bailis’s poetry in print for the first time.

“She does have her good days, like anyone with dementia,” Peter Bailis said at the time. “We’d love to get my mother there, but unfortunately at the age of 90, she’s in the latter stages of dementia. She’s aware of the books, but I have to keep showing them to her to spark her memory that they’re there.”

But as it turned out Moira Bailis did surprise, she did make that cameo appearance and she didn’t disappoint. Bailis turned up at the Fort Lee Library at the end of the 90-minute program, which featured readings by Messineo, Brett Rutherford of The Poet’s Press, friends and family of just some of the 450 poems from the two volumes interspersed with video segments of Bailis reading her work at different Sensations readings over the years as well as of her reading poems from the new books for her sons and a few private guests at her recent 90th birthday party.

But the true highlight of the program, in addition to Bailis’s sons, Peter and Stefan, reading poems their mother had written either about or based on them, was Bailis herself, who read several poems from her recently published collected works: “It Has To Do With Seeing,” “The Farm at Derry, N.H., 1991,” “Reflections” and “Fir Tree.”

Bailis even declined to sit at a table that had been set up for her to read from in case she were to show up, choosing instead—in yet another surprise—to stand at the podium and proudly recite her work. She even introduced some of the poems with background and anecdotes and did an encore reading of a poem chosen by Messineo after her two sons had read.

Messineo encouraged people to order The Antidote to Prejudice and It Has To Do With Seeing online by going to the Poet’s Press website, clicking on the "catalog" button, and scrolling down for "Moira Bailis,” pointing out that Bailis “will receive royalties on each book sold” that way.