You
know that poem, don’t you? From
Dennis Lee’s classic Alligator Pie (Toronto
ON: Macmillan, 1974). If you don’t have a copy, you should certainly get one. I
doubt the book has been out of print since it originally appeared. Over the
weekend, I made my way to Winnipeg for a quick overnight to
launch my latest poetry collection,
World’s End, (2023), a collection that immediately pre-dates my University of Calgary title,
the book of smaller (2022). The publisher, ARP Books, had set up a
group launch for a trio of their recent poetry titles, including
Ottawa poet natalie hanna’s
lisan al’asfour (2022) [
see my review of such here] and
Vancouver poet Nina
Mosall’s Bebakhshid (2023), both of which mark their full-length debuts.
Oh,
Winnipeg. It has been a while since I’ve been this way. The prior weekend I was
at a festival in Corner Brook, Newfoundland [
see my report on such here]. In
December, I launched
my Mansfield Press pandemic essay collection in Toronto
with Stephen Brockwell and Amy Dennis, etc [
see my report on such here] and
another Toronto reading last July through Larry Sawyer/milk magazine [
see my report here]. Remember all those? Before that, nothing back to February 2020, when Christine and I read
in Vancouver as part of Lunch Poems at SFU [
see my report on such here]. Did I ever
do a report on my prior reading in Winnipeg? Going back through my posts, it
does look like I toured a full thirty days back in 2006, posting all sorts of travel
nonsense during that time [
landing in Winnipeg;
being in Winnipeg;
leaving Winnipeg]. Has it really been that long since I read there? I know I’ve been at
least once since to meet up with some of Christine’s aunties and Oma. Either way, I think
my notes make more sense now.
natalie
and I met at the airport at some ridiculously-early time for our shared flights
(a brief stop-over in Toronto), as we shared hazy conversation until boarding
(we were seated rather distantly on the flights themselves). I deliberately
brought no reading material with me to force myself to finish the final edits
on this forthcoming collection of short stories,
On Beauty: stories (University
of Alberta Press), supposedly scheduled for next fall, if I can complete these
edits in time.
We
landed, we made for the hotel, we lunched. We sat for a moment, to breathe. She
caught her room prior to lunch, mine wasn’t ready until after. Once we were
finished our lunch, she went to crash for a bit and I wandered, ending up at the
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, an artist run centre almost directly
across the street from our hotel, where I saw some really interesting shows
(that I would completely recommend).
Farah Al Qasimi’s work, The Swarm, is quite
stunning. Ultimately, I was heading to the big ridiculous Winnipeg sign at The
Forks, which led me more than a kilometre of walking (repeatedly asking locals
if I was headed the correct way), wandering in, around and through downtown in
a zigzag. I caught the Portage Place mall (where I spent many hours writing in
their food court, during prior visits), and saw the march of some hundreds of
people protesting Israel’s bombing of Gaza, which is devastating the
Palestinian people (everyone needs to stop all the bombing, please). I wandered the corner of Portage and Main for a selfie,
none of which captured either sign for proof. I walked through the train
station, one of the few of those original train stations still functioning
across Canada (Calgary is shuttered; Edmonton and Ottawa stations relocated
years ago). Once I found it, two tourists from Philadelphia were kind enough to
capture the photo of me at the sign.
Once
done, I headed straight back, another kilometre-plus back into the Exchange
district for the sake of
Red River Books: this is one of my favourite used
bookstores in Canada, and I easily mailed boxes of purchased books home from
this store across those years of touring from 1997 to 2006. I made the store by
4pm, just in time to realize it had already been closed for an hour. What! And being
Saturday, there was no point attempting the ArtSpace building, which houses
Turnstone Press,
CV2 magazine,
Prairie Fire,
The Manitoba Writers Guild, etcetera (I used to spend half a day on each trip wandering the
building, visiting). This is when and were I first met Todd Besant, who
currently runs ARP Books, during his tenure at Turnstone. Instead, I sought out
a seat somewhere for the sake of some food, perhaps, and possibly a drink,
landing at the
Amsterdam Tea Room and Bar. I mean, I needed to be at the
reading venue by 5:30pm, and it was only a couple blocks further, so there was
no point in wandering back to the mall for the food court (which I did consider).
The
Amsterdam was curious: a fancy bar for tea-flavoured cocktails (their menu for
such was extensive; I ordered a stout, avoiding all of that). While there, I wrote
postcards for the children, only to have a younger couple nearby stunned that I
was writing postcards. It’s a lost art! he said. Can I take your picture
writing postcards? she asked? Um, I suppose?
And did you see this? En route to the gallery: a building with a restored original front for that whole block, and new back. Completely lovely.
The
reading itself was glorious! It was a small crowd, but quality. I don’t think I’d
seen A.J. (Adam) Levin since 2004, when we read together at the Windsor
Festival, when I launched my Palimpsest Books title (I still have copies, despite it being out of print). K.I. (Karen) Press looked
no different than she had ever done. Why doesn’t she age? And it was great to
finally meet (in-person) Winnipeg poets Julian Day, melanie brannagan and above/ground press author Melanie Dennis Unrau. Dennis Cooley, as well, was his usual self, his pulse of electrical energy
just there beneath the surface. The benefit, also, of those latter four being above/ground press subscribers, I was able to hand them three envelopes each, which did
lighten my load considerably. And did you know cam scott [did you see my review of his latest?] is part of aceart as
well? I hadn’t met him yet, either. Oh, he's
so good. We’ve been discussing doing a chapbook together for some time now.
Christine’s
two maternal aunties were also there! They live in Winnipeg, after all. It was
lovely to see them.
The
last time I was at aceart, Winnipeg’s glorious artist-run centre, it was in a
different location. For reasons unknown, Sylvia Legris thought I should be part
of an art auction they were running back in the fall of 1999, and, given I’d
recently won the Canadian Authors Association Air Canada Prize for Most
Promising Writer (in any genre) in Canada under 30 (their only non-cash prize,
but included two free tickets to anywhere Air Canada flew), I was able to use
one of those tickets to fly into Winnipeg for the sake of that auction. I stayed
with Dennis Cooley, brought along terrible artwork and spent the evening
working the bar at the event. At least when Karen Connelly won the same prize nearly
a decade earlier, she used her tickets for a bit more purpose: flying to
Thailand, where she spent a year composing her Governor General’s Award-winning
travel memoir, Touch the Dragon (Winnipeg MB: Turnstone Press, 1992).
natalie
hanna does occupy an interesting space in Ottawa literary circles: despite this
being her full-length debut, she’s been active for years (with a break mid-way
for the sake of law school and articling), even back to the second half of the
1990s, when she was involved with running readings at Mother Tongue Books (a
series, if I recall correctly, organized with Stephanie Bolster) and
above/ground
press even published a chapbook-length long poem of hers as an issue of the
long poem magazine STANZAS. The reading was straightforward enough (and
we were all amazing, I’ll have you know), but what was intriguing was Andrew Lee
prompting a panel conversation between the three of us at the end of the event.
He opened with a question, and then asked if we had questions for each other (I
didn’t realize we’d had homework).
Nina, on her part, immediately jumped at the
opportunity, and pulled out a whole list of questions she’d prepared (citing
that, as a librarian, this was something she was quite good at). Her questions
were interesting, although I made a point of prompting her to answer each one
as well, after natalie and I had. After a handful of Nina’s questions, I pointed
out that all of her questions seemed to be structural (ie: variations on form, as
opposed to questions around content), which prompted me to ask her how her
poems begin. She hadn’t even realized her direction. I feel seen! she said,
startled.
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K.I. (Karen) Press
|
All
in all, a very fine event, a very fine trip. Thank you, co-readers, and to
everyone at ARP Books: Todd, Irene (in absentia) and Andrew. Thank you.
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myself reading! photo by Andrew Lee, ARP Books
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