today is my fifty-third birthday (sigh,

Happy (self) birthday! Over the weekend, I hosted my first in-person birthday gathering since Covid-19 lockdown began. It was an intimate gathering, but a worthy one. Christine re-ordered a variation on the same cake she ordered for my fiftieth, given we had to cancel that party within days of the event, some three years back [see my note on such here]. Might I actually, now, have to admit that I’m in my fifties, and not simply “forty-thirteen”? (I’ve been telling folk that my forties have entered their teen years, after all)

Birthday: a check-in. [see last year’s here; see the year before that] Honestly, I’ve felt breathless since the beginning of the year, pushing to work in numerous directions simultaneously. Christine was poem-ing at Banff Writing Centre for two weeks in January, as well, which had me solo with our young ladies; she worked on the edits for her next-year forthcoming third Book*hug title (a non-fiction blend of prose and poetry), and attempting to feel out the beginnings of what might come next (her fourth book, and third poetry title). On my end, I’ve been pushing on feeling out a book-length essay on literary citizenship, community and reviewing, etcetera, “Lecture for an Empty Room,” having first made scattered notes across those first two years of lockdown. The project was structurally prompted by a series that Wave Books has been publishing the past few years through The Bagley Writing Lecture Series, specifically Joshua Beckman’s 2018 duo Three Talks and The Lives of the Poems (Wave Books). I was seeking a form through which to articulate some thoughts I’ve had kicking around for years, and Beckman’s paired titles (which I’ve found enormously generative and influential since I first encountered them) allowed me the prompting through which to begin. Last fall I even started a substack to help prompt me further through the process (as well as post the occasional other non-fiction entry, including fragments of a fortyish-page essay on collaborating with Denver poet Julie Carr). I’ve already more than a half-dozen entries from the work-in-progress posted through such (among other entries) with another few still in-progress. I am curious to see where the project ends up.

I’ve a novel I started during that first pandemic summer as well, one that furthers a thread or two from a prior manuscript of short stories, itself following a thread from my second published novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press, 2009); might anyone actually follow that particular thread, once all of these pages and pieces are finished and finally published? I’m curious about that, although that level of engagement with each self-contained piece isn’t required. I’ve also been poking at a couple of stories across a further manuscript of short stories, although I haven’t been in any particular rush on that, wishing to at least place that first manuscript before I move too much further into a follow-up (although I think I already have nineteen finished stories and six in-progress in this second manuscript, and thirty-two stories in the prior manuscript).

I’ve been poking, as well, at what might be the ends of a poetry manuscript, “Autobiography,” following a thread that goes back as well, this one to the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022). And did I mention that the manuscript prior to that appears this fall? World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023): I signed a contract not that long ago, although I haven’t really told too many folk about it yet. I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out. I’ve also been working the past few months on a third ‘best of’ anthology to celebrate thirty years of above/ground press, out this fall with Invisible Publishing to celebrate the third decade’s worth of publishing. Thirty years, as of this July. And today, the third anniversary of the first post over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (I’ll be posting an anniversary editorial over there in an hour or two).

But poems, as I said. I’m circling what might be the ends, but also distracted by other projects the past couple of months. I spent a few weeks attempting a chapbook-length daily sequence of journal poems across the two weeks Christine was away at Banff, taking a following two weeks after she’d returned to get the whole of that sequence polished in a way I was finally pleased with. I liked the idea of playing a bit off Robert Kroetsch’s Letters to Salonika (Grand Union Press, 1983), composed during a period that his wife, Smaro Kamboureli, was away in Greece, visiting home and her mother. As she wrote what became the journal-poem in the second person (Edmonton AB: Longspoon Press, 1985) about being in Greece, Kroetsch wrote his own poems about Smaro being away. Otherwise, the manuscript of “Autobiography” moves, albeit through delay: by holding off, might I therefore extend it? A la Kroetsch himself, a perpetual delay that might allow the manuscript a further, extended life.

[dropping them off Monday morning to begin their week-long March Break forest school daycamp]

And our young ladies, of course. They are smart and clever and ridiculous, of course. I can’t even fathom where most of their thinking comes from, but they are utterly delightful. Rose is in the middle of the Percy Jackson novels at the moment, which she’s really enjoying. Aoife regularly makes slime from a kit she has, and I have discovered that I hate slime (messy, gross, always leaving little bits upon every surface) more than I’ve ever hated anything in my entire life. But she loves it.

Birthday, birthday. What is fifty-three? Gadzooks. Even if I live to one hundred and five (which has been the plan all along), I still have less ahead of me than behind. I’ve so much more to do.

As part of that annual checking-in, I’ve been scratching at a birthday-esque poem over the past few weeks, still feeling it out; here’s where a few of the fragments sit so far:

from : condition report

 

 

 

 

First you feel it. Then you bear             : the ache
of musculature, a tendon pull. Go back, eurythmic,
into ether,
                        certitude. Loud when I             dissonance.

A light falls, clatter. The slightest structure.

 

 

 

 

Could scratch my tibia. The white face, powdered.
Eyebrows                     , grift. They seek

            escape.

 

 

 

 

An ache. Synchronic: one dream

at any               given time.

 

 

 

 

Earth               , to earth. I am scratching this
from anecdotes,
                                    as my desire                 for echo.

What might      this hold. What substance.

 

 

 

 

Amid suspicion, reserve. Happy birthday. An engine
of extrapolation. Mirrors

                                                instances. Repurpose facts
to suit the language. The composition

of dictated terms, whether to capture
or contemplate.

 

 

 

 

To manoeuvre                         beyond fault.

 

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

Oh, and be sure to catch me zoom-reading today with Calgary poet Kyle Flemming: noon Pacific time / 3pm Ottawa time: a zoom-reading I’m doing from my house (as Kyle from his) for Vancouver’s Lunch Poems at SFU. Might we see you (virtually) there? And Ottawa’s thirteenth annual poetry festival VERSeFest begins this weekend!