A manifesto on the poetics of Asphodel Twp.

 

for Michael & Suzanne Wilcox,

I have forgot / and yet I see clearly enough / something / central to the sky / which ranges round it.

William Carlos Williams, “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”

1.

If Heaven, river. What greeny something. Shine, Kawartha Highlands. Lake, and early hum. Once, in the shadows. Glowing outwards, temperate. Ontario syntax. Reassuring this, and self. A revelation, you. I see the world. Claw, in architecture. Bipolar lift, a tongue. A peace the mind can breathe. Although the dark remains, small lights in favour. Celebration, soar.

2.

The mouth, at Cameron's Point. An acid-free layer. Craft: a promise, fold. Is this all nothing? Repair, a situation. Sorrow, and a cock-eyed grin. In this room, this other room. A complicated, binding. This morning, Highway 7. Double-binding, surface of a still. Lovesick Lake, meeting hip to shape to shore to night. A glacier, made. Such frozen light.

3.

Asphodel, greeny flower. Surveyed in 1820, Richard Birdsal. To warm up, bottles under covers. All the uphill way. If it is, repeated. Notes, and highway. Hummingbird feeders, to keep from ants, from black bears. An empty bench, among. Back and forth, snow-scribbling. Some other star. The metaphor: cast iron, photo-legal. Walking. John Becket and his wife, five children.

4.

You left your mark. Combination of industry. Vaguely seen, but can't cross. Waterskin. Go, central-eastern. The shores of Rice Lake, frequent. Burned away. Big Cedar, smoke. Yours, truly. Tell, no other story. Picked up, by useless clouds. Such well-bred manner, brush. Such lovely liquid. A leather casing, isolation. Those that have the will.

Wayde Compton, After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region

The essays herein speak to multiple issues: the fallacious language of mixed-race; the historical scrutiny of black discourse; the experience of a hostile urban renewal; elegies to cultural producers who resisted racial categorization; the literary potential of hip hop; and an examination of the Obama phenomenon as it transforms language. These essays were originally written between 2000 and 2010, often for various journals and conferences, but some specifically for this volume. The common spirit binding them is, I hope, a cultural recovery and advocacy that is, in Paul Gilroy's phrasing, “the restoration of political culture” as opposed to “raciology's destructive claims upon the very best of modernity's hopes and resources” (2000, 30). Rather than the old narratives of escape, uplift, and redemption—which need to be re-thought and freshened—I hope to contribute to the projects of multiculturalism-from-below and counter-canonicity. Where I am agnostic about the spirituals—that golden inheritance—what I put my faith in here is the empowerment subject formation that comes after strategic essentialism and unreconstructed identity politics. (“Introduction”)

From Vancouver poet and editor Wayde Compton comes his first non-fiction title, a collection of essays titled After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp, 2010), an continuation of more than a decade of work exploring Black history and culture in and around Vancouver, from his poetry collections 49th Parallel Psalm (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp, 1999) and Performance Bond (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp, 2004), the anthology Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp, 2001), and his work as founder of Commodore Books and the Hogan's Alley Memorial Project. Compton's work as a whole can be seen as expanding and continuing, and even rediscovering, a rich conversation about writing and history, focusing on exactly what the subtitle of his essays suggest.

Through seven engaging and thoughtful essays, Compton works through various conceptions and misconceptions, and opens up whole layers of discourse with strict attention on his immediate region, spotlighting differences in Black history not just between Canada and the United States, but in British Columbia and Vancouver specifically, compared to the rest of the country. In “Seven Routes to Hogan's Alley and Vancouver's Black Community,” Compton explores the lost history of a predominantly Black Vancouver neighbourhood deliberately erased through secret schemes in local government a few decades back, and of the work currently being done to acknowledge that history, nearly erased in every possible way. In the essay, he recovers a lost space, and humanizes a tarnished and scattered community, writing:

For example, in “Hogan's Alley Fate at Stake,” journalist Jack Stepler introduces his subject by writing, “To the average citizen, Hogan's Alley stands for three things—squalor, immorality and crime,” and he goes on to describe some of the neighbourhood's most sensational and gory murders (1939, 29). The presence there of honest labourers, small business owners, families, and a church community that would last for more than six decades was swept aside in this sort of crime-obsessed journalism.

After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region is an important work, and possibly even essential reading, as Compton delves into territory that for so long has been pushed aside, ignored and deliberately overrun. Wayde Compton writes some damned intelligent and thoughtful explorations on the conflux of various points along historical and cultural lines. If you haven't paid attention to his work so far, this is where you need to begin. But one wonders, what is it about Vancouver, considered even by itself a relatively young city, that causes so many of its literary residents to explore such levels of critical exploration, from Compton to Michael Barnholden to Sachiko Murakami to Roy Miki to Douglas Coupland? And why aren't other cities pushed to do the same?

This Canadian/mixed/black/white witness views the spectacle and sees in Obama a US version of Pierre Elliott Trudeau—the youth cult, the charisma, the aura of a personality containing his nation's contradictions. In Trudeau's time—national unity; in the Obama pehnomenon—the embodiment of a possible American answer to division. In this comparison, Obama's “A More Perfect Union” speech was Trudeau's 1968 St Jean-Baptiste Day parade, the one where separatists threw bottles and rocks at him and his entourage, and he refused to move, somehow never getting hit by the volleys, forming an instant media myth of a leader who might similarly will the nation through the social crisis. It is sympathetic magic—electing leaders who seem to personify compromise, regardless of their actual policies and the material roots of the conflict—but there is the shape of truth within the illusionists' tricks. Both moments, Obama's speech and Trudeau's parade, were spectacular disavowals of their identification with perceived radicals of their own minority ethnic backgrounds. Obama's speech, and its remarkable polyvalence, suddenly made both American cable news and hip hop seem even clumsier in their handling of race than we already knew they were. An era of dispassionate consideration regarding identity seemed surprisingly at hand. Then he won. Then he ceased to speak about race. Then the backlash whipped the discourse back to 1961 standards—or thereabouts.

12 or 20 (second series) questions: with Hailey Higdon

Hailey Higdon is the author of the chapbook How To Grow Almost Everything (Agnes Fox, 2011) and the book-blog The Palinode Project. She runs What To Us (press) and is publishing several chapbooks by emergent female poets in a series called THE DIMES. Some of her recent poems appear in cannot exist. Her home is currently some middle earth between Nashville and Philly.

1 - How did your first chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I made my first chapbook by myself. The process endowed me with a nice sense of power. But what is it Peter Parker’s uncle says? With power comes great responsibility? I say, sometimes power comes with a great addiction to control, which is a hard thing to be rid of sometimes. I guess that’s why it’s difficult for me to speak to that work now. The book was part one of the Palinode Project, the latter part of which appeared only on the web. The entire set of poems was an education. By the end of it, I was taking risks that I never would have considered before. Deciding not to put part two into a book allowed me to relinquish some of that control.

The poems I am writing now are very different than those earlier ones, though I feel a little too inside the process to say how. I suppose in the early poems I was setting the stage for a poem to happen when I set down to write. Now, I feel like I’m just an old plump berry on a tree. My favorite mockingbird will come along and kick me, noodle with me, peck at me, and eventually I’ll pop and everything inside will spill out.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I have been writing poetry more naturally than fiction since I was quite young, however I studied both in college. In the early 2000’s I was living in Madison, Wisconsin and trying to write a novel after dropping out of grad school. I worked at hat shop, lived in a coop, and tried my damndest to write a linear novel. Only, it didn’t interest me. Straightforward narrative has always felt pretty boring for me to write. Eventually, I moved to Philly and started to break down the novel into patchwork—to try to see it geodesically, instead of on a linear plane, but it was hard, mostly because the text began as sequential. All this time I was writing poems, probably with more success than the fiction, though I didn’t considered it my medium. It took a while for me to stop drawing lines between poetry and fiction as if they were land blocks. Once I began to do that, I began to consider myself more a poet. Also, my poems include a lot of fictions, which helps.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
Lately I’m a more piecemeal writer. I find time to write often only in times of transit or transition. These scribbles often carry over in complete sections to a bundle document of words and jibberish that all feel related. Most of these notes stay exactly as they were written. Still, I sit down and read them to myself over and over again, editing out the parts that don’t belong, saving them for another poem, and adding more words or sounds. Lots of the transitions in my poems are initially sonic. The language begins as a part of one community, but is not restricted there. Words or phrases travel to other poems, also things mutate, get killed off or born. It’s very biological. Though I am always taking notes, it takes me a while to feel like I have enough material to gather into a poem. Of course, this is not a static answer, this is just the way I write right now.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Right now, I write mostly discrete poems that eventually end up bonding with other poems so I can see some sort of shape around them. The boundaries can be nebulous though. Sometimes one shape can blend into, combine with or overshadow another. For better or worse, it’s like a lot of big banks.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
They are very important for me. I love and fear them. I fear them with love, probably. And yeah, they definitely help me edit and really hear what I’ve made. Currently, I’m trying to overcome my self-censorship with reading though. It’s slight, but I can feel it and it bothers me.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
Well, I’m not that deep in the theoretical aspects of writing or poetry mostly because I prefer to deal in real materials. If the question is modified to say, “what concerns are behind your writing” I can point clearly to my chief concern—WOMEN.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I think the writer’s role is no different than the role of any other person, to live purposefully and not be a chicken-shit.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I haven’t had many people edit my poetry. Friends maybe, which is hard, and often I have to wait until their back is turned to accept the changes. I’m stubborn, very stubborn. I imagine if someone else were editing my poems they’d be a lot shorter (the poems, not the person). Also, I am incredibly sensitive, and my feelings get hurt when someone so much as walks too quickly past me.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
A couple of things come to mind.

“Don’t drink cheap beer” is one of them. My dad told me this when he dropped me off at college. Of course, I drank A LOT of cheap beer. But now that I’m too old to just shake off a hangover, I really appreciate that advice.

On a more artistic level, I heard someone once define art as, “something that is more than the sum of its parts.” This has been one of the most informative guidelines I’ve had as a poet.

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I do a million other things besides writing. I wish I were a diligent writer who prioritized poetry, but the truth is, a lot of other things take precedence sometimes. So my writing time is never planned anymore. I write when a feel a certain feeling that prevents me from doing anything else. Often this is during times when my mind is truly not occupied by other things—on the train or the bus, while walking, waiting in line, trying to get to sleep at night, or doing the dishes. I usually hoard away snippets of text in my mental storage space until I can get my hands on some paper.

11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Usually when this happens it’s because I haven’t been alone in a while. I put on the Hall & Oates song “One on One” and stay home and try to write a short story. This is always a failure. But I am really good at writing opening paragraphs. I usually come running back to poetry.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
All my favorite flowers—peonies, lilies of the valley, hyacinth, honeysuckle. Also some foods, pork chops, pot roast, mac and cheese with garlic salt on it, like my grandmother used to make.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Oh yes, very much so. The truth is, I am a troublesome reader. I read very slow, start too many books at once and give up on many of them about a third of the way through. So lots of other things seep in. I love to watch modern dance. I just filled out a survey at a dance performance and had to rate myself as a “dance fanatic” because I’d been to so many performances in the past year.

In the fall I’m going back to school full time to get my masters in Speech Language Pathology. Studying neurolinguistics, aphasia and observing speech therapy treatments has really really changed everything about the way I think of language and syntax. Plant and animal biology has definitely informed my use of language too. There is a lot of talk about the close parallel between grammar and DNA sequences because both are discrete combination systems. I am currently reading a Steven Pinker book that goes there. Also, I am heavily influenced by my environment and location. I think every love poem I’ve written in the past five years has been addressed to Philadelphia. You can gather language everywhere in this city. I am nosey and often transcribe conversations I hear on the bus onto scraps of paper that end up crumbled in the bottom of my purse. Usually when I find them again, I can’t read them, so I have to gather the information I can and rewrite them. This really gets me going.

14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I love what other writers do. A lot of people come to mind, but probably the most important influences for me have been Joanne Kyger, Juliana Spahr, and Alice Notley.

15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I am embarrassed to admit this, but I’ve never been to the Pacific Northwest. Never been to San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, anywhere near there. It’s domestic to say it, but I would really like to see that part of the U.S.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I wish I were a brilliant scientist doing innovative research on the brain. Funny, I have a very good friend who IS a brilliant scientist doing innovative research on the brain. I’m not certain, but I imagine she’d probably pick “poet” as her alternative occupation. Perhaps we should freaky friday this shit.

17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I was much better at it than anything else. Also, I never could feel truly creative in any other medium, and trust me, I tried a lot of them-- years of dance, piano, theater, ceramics, etc. The only other art form I feel creative in is gardening.

18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Eh, let’s see, some of my recent favorites are Lesley Yalen’s The Beginning In and Rachel Glazer’s Pee On Water. I am really into some of the stuff that’s coming out of the Northampton crowd these days.

I just saw The King’s Speech and enjoyed it. I watched Altman’s 3 Women again not that long ago and sickly love it.

19 - What are you currently working on?
For the past year or so I’ve been collaborating with a painter named Nicole Donnelly. We travel through Philadelphia, and I take notes and she sketches, then we separate and make poems and paintings. We have a free poetry hotline you can call to hear the poems, though I definitely need to make some new recordings. We call the whole thing The God-damn Placefulness.

Lately, I’ve been preparing to move to Nashville for a couple of years and all the details of the move are taking over. I am going to spend some time in the country writing before going back to school though. I’m not sure what I’ll write yet, but I have some feelings toward things. Maybe I’ll write a children’s book or start a YA novel. Or maybe, some poems.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

The Factory Reading Series: A reading/talk with Janice Williamson,‏

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:
The Factory Reading Series
 

A reading/talk by Janice Williamson (Edmonton)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan

mother tongue books, 1067 Bank Street (at Sunnyside), Ottawa ON
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
doors 7pm, reading 7:30

link to facebook event here; 


Janice Williamson: mothers a teenager, writes, and teaches at the University of Alberta's Department of English and Film Studies, latitude 53, Edmonton, Alberta.

Her blog/website: the pomegranate (http://pomegranatewomenwriting.wordpress.com) is devoted to Canadian women writing nonfiction and issues of equity.

She is at work on a series of linked creative nonfiction essays. Her story "Fu: the turning point" about adoptive mothering was published in Dropped Threads 3. "The Turquoise Sea,"an essay about suicide and mourning, was originally published in AlbertaViews Jan/Feb 2010. The essay won a Silver Medal in the 2011 National Magazine Awards and was a finalist for the Jon Whyte Essay Prize in Alberta.

She is completing an interdisciplinary and multi-genre anthology about the case of Omar Khadr (see http://omarkhadranthology.wordpress.com). This explores human rights, torture, Canadian domestic and foreign policy, writing in a state of exception, the limits of tolerance, anti-racism, Islamophobia and the culture of fear.

Two of her five books are image/text works. Through family photography and memory work, a memoir Crybaby! investigates trauma, infertility, and a father's suicide. Tell Tale Signs used found images and engravings to tell cryptic stories. Her chapbook a boy: named won the national bpNichol Chapbook Award.

Over almost three decades, she lectured widely and published innovative essays on: mothering and adoption; twentieth-century Canadian women's writing including hybrid genre-blurring work; feminist cultural studies (women's trauma narratives, feminist performance and women's film); nonviolent civil disobedience & peace activism; and popular culture including written and video readings of West Edmonton Mall.

Some notes on Sachiko Murakami's Project Rebuild

What is a poem but a rental unit of language?

Recently, Vancouver ex-pat Sachiko Murakami (currently living in Toronto) launched Project Rebuild, an ongoing collaborative writing project open to anyone willing to participate in renovating any of the existing poems on the site, each one tracing back to the original poem, her own “Vancouver Special.”

VANCOUVER SPECIAL

Not failed attempts at beauty or stating.
Unique answers to specific questions.
How may I fit my family into the equation?
How will we make the mortgage?
How much land will be allotted,
and to whom? What can't I afford?
How may we state the look
of elsewhere? How can I make myself less
abstracted? In the house but not of it.
Grace of a front lawn, stucco sophisticate.
All that glitters stuck in the surface.
Sheet shocks sense into reflection.
Wood sliced into beam better becomes
the forest. Can't see the trees for the city.
Could you move to the east? A little further?

As she writes to introduce the site:

The Vancouver Special is a house particular to Vancouver, and particularly vexing to its residents. Its style is represented in nearly every neighbourhood in Vancouver. Built mostly throughout the 1970s, and designed to maximize usable lot space and to provide a legal and livable ground-floor secondary suite suitable for extended families or mortgage-helping tenants, the Specials are large, plain, and commonly considered ugly in comparison to their mock Tudor, Craftsman, and West Coast Modern neighbours.

By the 1980s, homeowners became so alarmed at the creeping advancement of the Specials into their neighbourhoods that bylaws were enacted to preserve the “authentic” character of neighbourhoods - notably in Shaughnessy, an affluent westside neighbourhood analogous to Toronto’s Forest Hill or Montreal’s Westmount. Design guidelines were drafted at City Hall under pressure from property owners to designate that new houses should “be relatively in proportion to its neighbour, be enriched with interesting detail, texture and colour, and be partially screed from the street in a manner that is characteristic of the area. The massing of the principal building should not overwhelm the site.”

According to Wikipedia: “Vancouver Special is a term used to refer to houses built in a particular architectural style in the period from roughly 1965 to 1985 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and its suburbs. They are characterised by their "box-like" structure, low-pitched roofs, balconies across the front of the house, and brick or stone finishes on the ground-floor level of the facade with stucco elsewhere. Vancouver Specials have similar floor plans with the main living quarters on the upper floor and secondary bedrooms on the bottom, making them ideal for secondary suites. These homes were favoured by new Canadians, often from Hong Kong, for their spaciousness and "tacky" design which have proven to appeal to many Chinese and were often a first house purchase.” Certainly, Vancouver isn't the only city that seems insistent on overwriting its own history and neighbourhoods; Toronto's waterfront comes to mind, written of in Michael Redhill's novel, Consolation (2006), or even Ottawa's enormously frustrating Lebreton Flats project of the 1950s. Vancouver, much like Montreal, also shares a history of the Olympics spreading out over neighbourhoods, “improving” by replacing not only buildings, but in many instances, the people themselves as well. There are other histories too, of total erasure, such as Africville, and similar Black histories erased in Southwestern Ontario, as well as Vancouver's own Hogan's Alley. Without community, without history, sites lose their meaning, and Murakami has invited anyone to come into her project to rebuild, revamp and renovate. In an interview I conducted with her, “Invisible Participants” (posted February 8, 2009 at Agora), she ends with:

Is it surprising that poets feel friction in their environment? I'm not sure that writing preoccupied with place is unique to Vancouver. But it is a compelling environment, at least to me. Maybe it's because Vancouverites in general feel that friction too -- being Canadian without Winter, being in a city dwarfed by Nature... And maybe it's because Vancouver is still quite new, and the building of the city -- and the idea of the city, what Vancouver means -- is still happening all around us. Maybe it's that newness and the feeling that we are all participating in that project, that what Vancouver means/looks like/is isn't yet set in stone (or stucco, or glass, or cedar) is what compells us to write about it. I suppose that's what I'm writing about... that project, that negotiation. Maybe it's less emotional because the subject is a building rather than a person, but I've yet to see a building that wasn't meant for a person to inhabit it. I guess it's still a similar strategy I'm using, though. It started with the question: What can a person's reaction to a Vancouver Special (and Vancouverites have very strong reactions to Vancouver Specials) suggest about the person, and that process of city-building?

What kind of legacy does such a ubiquitous design leave, and how does it impact Vancouver's complicated relationship with home ownership? It's complicated even further, given the incredible costs associated with home and/or condo ownership, and the ongoing legacies of Japanese internment camps and aboriginal land claims. It's one thing for Murakami's poems to respond to such, but what does her invitation bring? Further on the Project Rebuild site, she describes the particulars of her collaborative project:

Project Rebuild began with a single poem about the Vancouver Special. That poem was renovated through mechanical means; I ran the poem through Google Translate and back again through four languages of people I have known who have lived in Vancouver Specials – Cantonese, Italian, Portuguese and Serbian – and back to English again. The result of these flash inhabitations was a sameness with subtle differences. These four poems appear in Rebuild, my upcoming book, which as a whole considers the possibilities for renovation in poetry, and the tendency of Vancouver, Rebuild’s site of inquiry, to tear down and rebuild itself every few decades.

The question of inhabiting a poem persisted.

I then sent the poems to poets in Vancouver, and invited them to move in as tenants of the poems, to paint the walls, change the faucets, knock down whatever walls didn’t fit their visions. These poems became the first houses in Project Rebuild’s neighbourhood.

The idea of extending the community persisted.

As Murakami writes, the site began with a single poem, taken from the manuscript of her second poetry collection, due this fall, a collection originally titled Vancouver/Special, but appearing as the renamed REBUILD (Talonbooks, 2011), a collection she discusses in a recent interview with Jeff Latosik, “Make It New: An Interview with Sachiko Murakami,” posted at Open Book Toronto, where she discusses her complicated relationship with Vancouver housing:

If I could afford to own a condo in Vancouver, I'm not sure I would say no to one. I actually was trying to buy one at one point, but with the (what I thought was) substantial money I had for a down payment (after the death of my grandfather) and a relatively okay-paying job, I could afford about 400 square feet - if I spent nearly all my income on a mortgage. I don't really have any idea how people manage to own property in Vancouver. I know there are ways to do it, involving flipping properties, and making grown-up money, and renting out basement suites, but if I had to do that it would likely take up most of my psychic energy.

Real estate takes us enough of my psychic energy in Vancouver as a renter - you talk to anyone, really, any demographic, and eventually real estate comes up in the conversation in one form or another. It's an easy topic for Vancouverites - after the rain, real estate. It's a bit of an obsession, really. That's what interested me in writing about it.

Then there's my own family's relationship to real estate and homeowning. My father was born in 1944 in an internment camp for Japanese-Canadians in New Denver, BC - far from Salt Spring Island, the largest of the Gulf Islands between the mainland and Vancouver Island, where his family's farm had long been sold off by the government to pay for their internment. His family would eventually work their way back to the west coast and re-establish themselves as a prominent family on Salt Spring.

That treatment had a huge impact on my family, and one of the outcomes was a real drive to buy land on the island. (As an aside, my uncle and aunt just opened the first non-profit housing project on the island.) Yet my father did not own the home we grew up in. So I come to real estate with a bit of baggage, you see. And I like to work with my baggage as fruitfully as I can.

The resulting reconstructions, the resulting community of responses, has been impressive, with rewritten and reimagined works by poets from Vancouver and beyond, including Meredith Quartermain, Larissa Lai, David McGimpsey, Jacqueline Turner, Angela Hibbs, Pearl Pirie, Christine McNair, Justin Million, a. rawlings, Jake Mooney, Gary Barwin, Rita Wong, Fred Wah, ryan fitzpatrick, Roger Farr, Soma Feldmar, Nikki Reimer, Jennica Harper, Jason Christie and Ray Hsu, as well as a growing number of others, all bringing in their own renovations. At least one author claims, in her subsequent bio, to not even have (yet) set foot in Vancouver. What does this mean for renovation, for Vancouver as a space? Is Murakami actually creating an abstract Vancouver, one that can be renovated, added to, rebuilt, by anyone, anywhere?

I Enjoy a Few Things About This Neighborhood

But, every time I go there,

Relic steals my log.

Every time I go there,

Relic steals my log.

Every time I go there,

Relic steals my log.

Every time I go there,

Relic steals my log.

Every time I go there,

Relic steals my log.

Every time I go there,

Relic steals my log.

Sha la la-la-la.

Sha la la-la-la. (David McGimpsey)

12 or 20 (second series) questions: with Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews [photo credit: Carol Loewen] is the author of five novels: Summer of My Amazing Luck; A Boy of Good Breeding, the Governor General Award-winning, Canada Reads-winning, much loved bestselling novel A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, which won the Rogers Writers Trust Award for fiction, and, most recently, Irma Voth. The author also penned one work of non-fiction: Swing Low: A Life. She lives in Toronto.


1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book was Summer of my Amazing Luck, which I wrote in my late twenties and which was published in 1996. I wouldn't call it my best book but getting the letter in the mail informing me that it would be published was probably one of the most exciting moments in my so-called career. I find it difficult to compare my books because they all seem to be different pieces of some continuous query. I like to think that with each book I get a little closer to some emotional truth, but that's a moving target anyway.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I was actually working as a freelance journalist before I started to write fiction. I was making radio documentaries and eventually it occurred to me that I was more interested in making things up than in sticking with the facts. Again, it was a question of being able to develop characters and get closer to some essential truth which is, in my opinion, just as often accomplished through fiction.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I take a lot of notes for months and months, maybe even years, before I sit down to write a book. When I look back at my notes I can see themes developing, ideas and obsessions that I've been circling around and around and trying to understand. Then when I do start writing it comes pretty quickly. The first draft isn't dramatically different from the final book, usually, but of course there are changes and additions and subtractions.

4 - Where does fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

Yes, I work on a "book" from the very beginning. I take everything and throw it into one large pot, rather than um...several smaller dishes. Sorry for the lame cooking metaphor.


5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I do enjoy them. It feels good to get feedback from readers and to make that actual tangible connection.


6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

That's such a hard question! The only answer I have is, you know, just the meaning of life and all that jazz. Seriously, I want to know how to survive in this dark place, and maybe not just survive but to somehow achieve a type of grace, moments of joy, clarity, connection with others...how to love, how to think, how to be happy...that fine line between staring, clear-eyed, into the abyss and acknowledging that the world is a cruel and absurd place and stepping back, walking away and embracing it anyway.

7 - What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

The role of the writer is to take the reader by the hand (or throat, depending on what kind of a writer you are) and lead them from one place to another. It's not easy.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

It's absolutely essential to work with an editor, and if you have a trusting relationship it's a beautiful thing, just seeing your book get better, tighter, pared down to its essence or beefed up to its potential...

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Write as honestly and intelligently as you can. Make every sentence in your book as good as the best one.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (fiction to memoir)? What do you see as the appeal?

I prefer to write fiction. I only wrote the one non-fiction book, about my father, but that was very necessary for me to do. A novel is a free and often messy enterprise that suits me best.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?


I get up pretty early, drink coffee and read the newspaper, tell myself not to start the sudoku, wrestle with myself in every way and eventually convince myself to get to work. Then I work for a few hours which is all my brain can handle.


12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Well, there's a dark, womb-like bar on my corner which I have a habit of returning to time and again. Seriously, I give myself pep talks, I talk with other writers about the agony of being blocked, take comfort from knowing I'm not alone, I make some notes...I read the type of books I'd like to write, or the very opposite so I'm not struck in the face with my own short-comings...I don't know. Writers block is a form of hell, what can I say. It requires oceans of patience and faith to move through. I'd rather walk barefoot on broken glass.

13 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?

What?! Halloween is a sin in my culture. Okay, well I think I was a suitcase or something. Kinda conceptual though...I'm not good at costumes.


14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?


Yes, all of those things, mightily, everything in life, and films!...with all due respect to David W. McFadden.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

There are so many. I don't know where to begin. Like every other writer I read constantly... everything. Well, not everything. I've been travelling a lot lately, doing book stuff, and have begun to wake up in a cold sweat with this recurring nightmare...that I'm on a plane, a long trip like five or six hours, and I don't have a book to read. Somehow I forgot to pack one and I run wildly up and down the aisles asking everybody for a book, any book, and nobody has one...they're not sympathetic either. They turn away mumbling, embarrassed for me and afraid I'll storm the cockpit and take everyone down. Eventually I'm restrained and gagged and told to shut up about the books already or I'll be arrested when we land.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Grow old gracefully.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Some day I'd like to drive a cab. It's similar to writing, getting people from one place to another, including myself. I don't know what I would have ended up doing if not writing...I don't want to think about it. Probably something unhealthy and short-lived.


18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

Overhead is very cheap. I can't dance. I don't mean to be flip but you know the answer already, I think. The thing that every writer says over and over...something about making sense of the world, re-ordering the world...it might have something to do with being a control freak, although we don't say that so much. It's a need, a black hole that needs filling...it's not pretty. It's not a noble pursuit.


19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa and Ten by Abbas Kiarostami.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A novel.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Diane Woodward: Fancy Art

FANCY ART

ART FANCY

ART Rental and Sales, The Ottawa Art Gallery

2 Daly Avenue (Arts Court)

Tuesday to Saturday, 11am-5pm, Sunday 12-4

Anyone paying attention to Madoc, Ontario artist Diane Woodward's work has noticed, over the past decade and a half, a series of small shifts, accumulating their way into a larger, longer arc of development, some of which has been quite astounding. For years, the Ottawa artist was producing expressive animal paintings, calling herself a “maximalist,” with detailed foregrounds and backgrounds. Since then, Woodward has expanded to painting Hindu gods with minimal foregrounds and backgrounds, woodworks, decorative frames, wooden sculpture with painted bottecaps [see my note on a show in 2008 she had at the Mud Oven of such], furniture and now, the most lovely and evocative stained glass I've seen, essentially a lyric expression of glass that looks nearly liquid.

She continues to work her animal motif, but mixed with various other elements, adding constantly to the flow of some thirty years of painting in and around Ottawa.

The show continues until Saturday, July 9, with a Closing Tea Party with Diane Woodward from noon to 5pm.

the end of history: Ridgemont Avenue,

Perspective comes at a cost, and the cost is distance.

Words for snow. I don’t know yet who I born to, but know from whom I became. At St. Timothy’s Church on Alta Vista Drive in Ottawa on September 9, 1967, a Scottish Protestant dairy farmer who married a city girl of English and Irish decent. Or, considering capital at the time, perhaps she was more of a townie. My father and mum. They step out of her family home, she out of her job in the meat department as a cutter at Rideauview IGA, commuting west, over to Prince of Wales at Meadowlands; newly minted, married.

Her family home; one made out of familiarity, comfort. The 1970s, a house that included two of six siblings. Third in the line, Patricia, two years older, and the seventh, Robert, over a decade younger. Sour Aunt Pat, who returned home with daughters not much younger than Bob, himself married, finally moved by 1981. Porcelain Red Rose figurines that occupied spots along small kitchen window ledge, just above the sink. White near-sheer curtain that half-hid, nearby cupboard that held, of all things, Tang. What only astronauts, and, I discovered, my grandmother, drank.

From the Page family bookshelf, Better Homes and Gardens FAMILY MEDICAL GUIDE, copyright 1964, 1966. My grandmother’s name and address writ into the flyleaf. Scraps of paper inserted as bookmarks, underlining “Infectious Mononucleosis,” highlighting “Hiatus Hernia,” “Middle Ear Infections.” Between her own children, foster children, eventual grandchildren, an essential reference book for the household. The stories of neighbourhood kids invited over for Christmas, Thanksgiving. A household community.

Lymph Nodes and Spleen
infectious mononucleosis (“mono”) : white cell count ; differential ;
heterophile antibody test.
Hodgkin’s disease : chest x-rays ;
White cell count ; differential ; lymph node biopsy.
sarcoid : proteins ; calcium ; lymph node biopsy.
leukemia: see Blood.

Imagine: as my father recently informed, I hadn’t realized the highway that connects Ottawa to Montreal still in construction during the late 1960s, theirs the last stretch of 417. What now a forty-five minute drive from capital to homestead once took more than two hours navigating backroads, the period my parents were courting the distance, 1965 to 1967.
 
It reinforces, not necessarily revealing, a strong will, dedication. A steady hand. This girl he courted for months, driving multiple hours each way.

This second half of my life so far, composing books. What these years have taught I already knew, perfecting new kinds of patience.

The single day spent clearing material from grandmother’s Heron Road one-bedroom, the brief period between placing her in a nursing home and quick downturn, July to August to September 2000. My mother in armchair beside sister-in-law, Shirley, reminiscing, perusing photo albums as the rest of us toiled, stripped apartment archive of decades down to parking level rental. What had to be done.

Two months to pack and move, and my mother wouldn’t allow until the final day, scrambling. Control she wouldn’t relinquish but wouldn’t do anything about, either. Stalemate.

In each household, books held as reference, I pour. Seeking clues that might not exist. Putting more weight in these items than they deserve. Perhaps received as a gift, slipped on a shelf and forgot. Seeking clarity through fragments. I grew up in a house that included books, but not a house of books. Is there a difference? Left for reference or sentiment.
 
As younger teen, earlier still, a book I never opened but the most glorious cover, full frontal woman from hips up, the most beautiful breasts. Home had only Sears catalogues. The Penguin paperback of Edna O’Brien’s A Scandalous Woman and other stories. Slipping into grandmother’s living room for a quick peek, a reminder. Slightly disappointed now that when she died, I didn’t try to retrieve. A youthful staple, standard, I’d often anticipate.

A boy never forgets his first glimpse of breasts. Innocent-sweet, and perfect.

The Shining Material, Aisha Sasha John

SELF-PORTRAIT GRADE 12

ck one, bus tickets, some mother's car, frozen orange juice crystals

spooned into the slim neck of a vodka bottle, bomb scar

shiny, taut on the shoulder of one boy

another boy's

penthouse

inside of which I

was a tourist, passing

and these boys aren't full even: stuttering, wet, timid

with control.

and these boys strum, nod, elasticate, convince,

bury, these boys drum kits in their nose hairs

freshly beaten asses waving to a tender vancouver night from

a white convertible, expletives fingered in dust, okay?

the boys sat treasuring, malignant, filing cabinets full

one year younger

one lap around the block, me “holding” their cigarettes

a drag is three, buzzed from one drag, thanks you can

have it back

There is something rich and lovely in the voice Toronto poet, performer and playwright Aisha Sasha John writes in, her writing/speaking voice, in her first collection of poems The Shining Material (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2011). In a collection of poems-as-address, John writes out shouting and singing and thinking and arguing unafraid, even as the fear comes through, in places, only to be beaten back by her lines. These are poems written very much to be read aloud, and her voice is here, insistent, coming through, as the back cover claims, to “work against the language of the banal.”

SELF-PORTRAIT WITH YOU

proving to ourselves we

know how to

feel good

What I find interesting about these poems is in how they are composed, nearly as notes written to the self, quickly written down, quickly caught, with such wild energy, barely contained even as the poems become shaped. Hers are poems fighting against the dark but not caught or trapped there, in pieces fighting to be heard, rippling between cultures, between English and French, between self-doubt and so much everyday bullshit. Given her past few years working in theatre and writing plays, the peformative element of the poems are immediately clear, giving her lines added weight, and a wonderful energy and immediacy.

One of my favourites of the collection the first poem, “SELF-PORTRAIT SELF-HUGGING,” perhaps the best example of a poem that deserves to be heard, written nearly to be sung or shouted. Here is a section from the middle of the piece, that writes:

and to resist makes the tension mountains, so

I'm valley elegant

I'm rolling green and billowing breezes

short flowers, lost petals: there's elegance to a small flower half-bare

its stem bent elegant and elegant it's okay it's fine

I won't end

up like her

I'm much more, modes more elegant

moving with gobs, dripping wet

grace.

he can't take that from me.

elegant he frustrates, switching

shit around

ignoring me inelegant, so

may I Lord please have some grace?

and if he's not there can I so elegant move unawkwardly

and if he is I'll drink the juice of that sight

mister, don't say anything please inelegant. don't be inelegant.

maybe, I still want you everyday.

[Aisha Sasha John reads as part of The Last Scream: The Scream in High Park in Toronto on Monday, July 11, 2011]

12 or 20 (small press) questions: Amanda Ackerman and Harold Abramowitz on eohippus labs

eohippus labs is a literary micropress located in Los Angeles, California.


Amanda Ackerman and Harold Abramowitz are co-publishers and co-editors of the press eohippus labs. In addition to their individual works, they also write collaboratively as part of the projects SAM OR SAMANTHA YAMS and U.N.F.O. (The Unauthorized Narrative Freedom Organization). Their collaborative work has appeared in a variety of publications including Area Sneaks, String of Small Machines, A Sing Economy, Source Material: A Journal of Appropriated Texts, Abraham Lincoln, and as an Arrow as Arrow chapbook, Sin is to Celebration. In 2011, Harold and Amanda, as part of U.N.F.O., co-organized Explanation as Composition, a collaborative audio text project, at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions.

1 – When did eohippus labs first start? How have your original goals as a publisher shifted since you started, if at all? And what have you learned through the process?

 eohippus labs started in 2006. The original goal was to give writers we knew a venue for work outside of their normal practice. Our goal has not shifted since then. We’ve learned that asking people to access or articulate another part of their thinking can be a difficult task.


2 – What first brought you to publishing?

 The desire to publish work that we love and felt would have no other home.


3 – What do you consider the role and responsibilities, if any, of small publishing?

 We can only speak for ourselves, but see the above answer. We also try to work with different economies to make our work more accessible.


4 – What do you see your press doing that no one else is?

 We’ve been doing a a pamphlet series, a greeting card series, and most recently an innovative narrative series.


5 – What do you see as the most effective way to get new chapbooks out into the world?

 In our experience, chapbooks get out into the world in grassroots way: at readings, through word of mouth, the internet.

6 – How involved an editor are you? Do you dig deep into line edits, or do you prefer more of a light touch?
 We can be very involved as editors, depending on what the work calls for.


7 – How do your books get distributed? What are your usual print runs?

 A usual print run is about 120 books. We also feel it’s important to keep books in print, so we do reprints.

8 – How many other people are involved with editing or production? Do you work with other editors, and if so, how effective do you find it? What are the benefits, drawbacks?
 The editing involves just the two of us. We’re lucky because we get along and work well together. We could imagine it being a very difficult process if we didn’t.


9– How has being an editor/publisher changed the way you think about your own writing?
 Being editors/publishers has made us more sensitive to understanding the need for communication throughout the publishing process. Nobody likes to have long periods of silence when waiting for work to be published.


10– How do you approach the idea of publishing your own writing? Some, such as Gary Geddes when he still ran Cormorant, refused such, yet various Coach House Press’ editors had titles during their tenures as editors for the press, including Victor Coleman and bpNichol. What do you think of the arguments for or against, or do you see the whole question as irrelevant?
 This issue depends on the goals of each individual press. The idea for eohippus labs actually got started because Harold wanted to publish a piece of Amanda’s writing that he thought was great.

11– How do you see eohippus labs evolving?

 The bottom line is that eohippus labs will evolve along the lines of what we can afford to produce.


12– What, as a publisher, are you most proud of accomplishing? What do you think people have overlooked about your publications? What is your biggest frustration?

 We are proud of everything we have published and love that these pieces of writing exist in the world. Our biggest frustration has been learning how to design and make the books. Also, we’d love to devote more time to the press, but the day jobs do get in the way.

13– Who were your early publishing models when starting out?


We were inspired by our friends’ presses in Los Angeles – Insert Press, Les Figues Press, and Make Now Press.


14– How does eohippus labs work to engage with your immediate literary community, and community at large? What journals or presses do you see eohippus labs in dialogue with? How important do you see those dialogues, those conversations?
 Engagement with our immediate literary community and the community at large is integral to everything we do. We think those dialogues are crucial and ongoing. There would be no reason to engage in this project otherwise.

15– Do you hold regular or occasional readings or launches? How important do you see public readings and other events?

 

Yes, we do. Readings are very important.

16– How do you utilize the internet, if at all, to further your goals?

 

We don’t what life is like without the internet.

17– Do you take submissions? If so, what aren’t you looking for?

 Right now, we solicit work and do not take submissions. However, we are planning to change this process in the future. The one thing we are not looking for is pieces or excerpts from larger projects. We want the press to be part of a generative process for writers: either by publishing small, self-contained pieces that they would not have been written otherwise, or by seeding what might become bigger projects.

18– Tell me about three of your most recent titles, and why they’re special.
 Recently we have published a pamphlet by Cara Benson titled The Secret of Milk, and an innovate narrative piece by Allison Carter titled Sum Total. They are both great writers and their work speaks for itself. We think you should read them.

12 or 20 (small press) questions;

four new poems now on-line at Stride magazine (UK)

British online journal Stride recently posted four new poems of mine, here, from a work-in-progress manuscript, "Miss Canada." Thanks, Rupert Loydell!

rob's new editing service: poetry manuscript reading, editing, evaluation

For a few years now, I've offered a one-on-one poetry editing/evaluation service, and have decided to expand.

I'm currently offering, to anyone interested, evaluation, editing and otherwise help with shaping a poetry manuscript for potential publication. I'd be thinking a series of back-and-forths, including notes, questions and revisions. $200 for a manuscript up to 100 pages, or $250 for up to 150 pages.

If you are interested, send me an email at rob_mclennan@hotmail.com.

It has been a while since I've run poetry workshops at Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeebar, but I've run nearly a dozen poetry workshops at the store over the past decade, and run other workshops and manuscript evaluations through my Writer-in-Residence position at the University of Alberta (2007-8), through Encounters with Canada, and as part of the (late, lamented) Ottawa Valley Book Festival, as well as editing numerous books over the years for Broken Jaw Press, Vehicule Press, Insomniac Press and Black Moss Press, and my own Chaudiere Books and above/ground press.

There's always a possibility that I might offer another poetry workshop. Keep an eye either on this space or http://www.bywords.ca/ for future announcements.

Robert Kroetsch tribute/memorial reading, Ottawa

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents: 

a tribute/memorial reading 
for Robert Kroetsch (June 26, 1927-June 21, 2011)
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan

Friday, July 15, 2011;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs) 

As many have already begun talking about, we are organizing a small tribute/memorial for our friend and mentor, Robert Kroetsch, at the Carleton Tavern, a venue he most likely would have approved of.

Consisting of informal readings of work for and by Kroetsch, if you wish to participate in the event, please send an email to rob_mclennan@hotmail.com. Readers, friends, admirers, former students, etcetera, are welcome.  A list of readers already confirmed include Anita Dolman, Natalee Caple, Christine McNair, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Monty Reid, Pearl Pirie, Colin Morton, Stephen Brockwell, rob mclennan + Amanda Earl.

There are already a number of tributes to Kroetsch posted, including:

The University of Alberta Press
http://holeinthebucket.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/sad-sad-news-robert-kroetsch/ 

Laurie Anne Fuhr, filling station
http://www.fillingstation.ca/in-the-pump/2011/6/22/goodbye-dear-mister-kroetsch

Todd Babiak, The Edmonton Journal 
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Author+brought+prairie+magic+this+city/4991852/story.html 

As well as my own
http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2011/06/robert-kroetsch-june-26-1927-june-21.html

There are plenty of others.

Here is a statement from Linda Cameron, director, University of Alberta Press.

********
Almost every western Canadian writer (and many from around the world) can tell you a story about how Robert Kroetsch could make you feel as if you were the only person in a room full of people. It was his gift to encourage aspiring writers while offering tremendous insight into the work of established writers-his colleagues and friends.

And storytelling is what is what it was about with Robert Kroetsch. He could tell a story! He knew how to connect with his readers and listeners.After receiving the Golden Pen Award at the Alberta Book Awards on June11, he regaled the audience with a tale about how fitting it was to be a dinosaur attending a function at the Calgary Zoo. This self-deprecating humour was one of his hallmarks. And certainly all there enjoyed the joke.

As Robert's publisher, his visits stood out and were a highlight of theday. He was always polite and generous in his response to our questions and appreciative of our work. He was the kind of author publishers dream of working with.

He lived life more fully than anyone we know. He will be missed.
********

link to facebook event here:
https://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=197170517001984 

Happy Canada Day!

Hooray! One hundred and forty-four years since the enactment of the British North American Act, this day once known as "Dominion Day" (before Trudeau got that Constitution thing signed). One hundred and forty-four, which means Vancouver's Centennial baby, Pamela Lee Anderson (yes, that Pamela Lee Anderson) is forty-four years old today as well (why do I know that?). Happy Birthday, Pam. Anyone else?

Will we make it to David Scrimshaw's infamous Canada Day brunch? Will we wander over to Parliament Hill for various festivities and then fireworks, or simply hide out at the Dominion Tavern (a personal Canada Day favourite)? Will we make it to Pearl + Brian Pirie's get-together at their Byword Market-overlooking apartment? (This last one is the most likely)

Happy Canada Day. Oh, what a country.

Here's a quiz you can take.

I can't wait to start celebrating the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 (what the Americans referred to as "Madison's War," which was unpopular in parts). Canada, the only country to have successfully (to my knowledge) rebuffed American invasion. No, you can't have Montreal. Or Toronto. We can burn down your White House again, you know.

President James Madison, who, among others, simply presumed (without asking) that we required "liberation" from the British. Who doesn't want to be American? (Apparently, all the English speaking and French speaking residents, as well as the Aboriginal groups.) War Correspondent Benjamin Franklin sending missives back from the occupied Montreal, shocked that they weren't greeted as liberators.

With 2012 approaching, I'm thinking of forming a group. We can walk south, and take something. An anniversary present, a gift to ourselves.