what does banff have to do with it?

I'm currently at the Banff Writing Studios, where my U of Alberta residency gives me a near-week at the Leighton Studios for a writing retreat (I return to Edmonton tomorrow). Thanks to my old friend Amanda Earl, I've been nominated for 2008 Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere (whatever that means). A number of people have already been campaigning on my behalf, which is awfully sweet, including Paul Vermeersch, Pearl Pirie, Warren Dean Fulton and Carmel Purkis, and there have even been some responses to same by a few people I don't even know, like here and here and even Pearl, here. What does it all mean?

Either way, here's what I've been working on since arriving in Banff on Tuesday, in between visits with Myrna Kostash, Greg Hollingshead, Laura Farina, Tim Bowling, Shelley Leedhal and Steve Ross Smith;

The Banff Sessions


a lovers place is often ambiguous

darkness like trees, smell a mountain failure
batch, how much

not of hunger but of heart, a trauma
paper-thin weight

is not enough of me blood in pages you
bare lifted hands another

note in pencil shipwreck, there you plied a written
, why you different I am

one spring day fundamental arguments,
through telephone disguise

falls out, pushes love

, you first




what your argument needed here these mountains

a lovers place is architecture, crows
, what that thing I said the wind
, or string the valley bow
tectonic plate a kitchen overlooks

same speech, a karaoke dog
was home for wayward girls

her purple thin a hand clip snow
or south a rapture

rocky mountain park

drawn spartan hood, do airplane then

slip of siding 29, a sulpher slide on rock,
debate or die the body muscle feeds &

break you tell me; hand in you my tongue




import swim mountain guides

the backdrop miss all I shall, shall begin with failure
letter-made, a pact made hollow

, worst imagined song

compile lists accumulate a point, you plied me
wonder slice on leg where shaved, a
reason lists

says war is over, where
the only left

how much I love I would not try
, as well, true buffalo hunt

for a poem that might, out of shower
I could count of cars not yours

even bridge construction becomes erotic
, abstract made of crows




the first to occupy an abstract, mountain passion
or a mountain lust

construction bridges gaps, the line groan
long beneath you, pub tomorrow

gone that I’m away; am naked, stolen
beach-head in the verve

crow, a linen shower, full force
swimming pools, olympic-shaped

calgary curves, a number of your poems
easy briefly door the stairs the stairs
, the eastern slopes

the head to one side there enough




giving out so readily, chase a buffalo milk
of course it tastes;

the siding 29 imported route

passing close to present day; I strip off concrete
clothing from your bones;

the last fall out of telephone, construction
bridge contains

is all I am a round, wide eclipsed moon,
your argument a needed

food your tear a tea




went on to ensue; the body muscle feels & breaks
into the cree, kootenay, blackfoot

tribes vulnerable, red football jersey
stolen & am halved, naked

daily in the south of you; would springs,
had many renovation

become the birthplace then of crows

I read a number of your lines today evolved
from spartan woodland but

to what you wrote a railroad, palatial structure

is office tower you a there?




leaving I would rather hand in you
& swimming, pools

the growing need to reside, I could count cars
& conifers, abstract of peaks & locals,

woodland to the core;

easily brief a sliding door, two fingers three
for that the body had enough

am left alone by glaciers
tongue inside the lure of falling, failure

clientele unmatched

desire breeds out fact; at present, urge
of anodyne or homegrown splash

for wayward digital girls,
a red red block




what tongue the mountains cougar, overlooking
kitchens; settlements of beans

, raw crow

a concrete sledge, trickery of eyes

power suggested trees, park
curves of stairs & conifers

poem number, the head one side

stick it into some; how well
I love, says thin hard blue

says shower full of needles, pins

elevators, liminal

rooms we would not break