two poems for poetry month (plus another one);

I've had two poems posted in various places for Poetry Month: one on Amanda Earl's NationalPoetryMonth.ca site, and another on the Chaudiere Books blog. Exciting, yes? Another fragment of the same poem Amanda published also appears online in the all-new online Grey Borders.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Terri Favro

Born and raised in St. Catharines, Ontario and now living and writing in Toronto, Terri Favro writes fiction, creative non-fiction and articles that have appeared in Prism, Geist, Grain, Accenti, Riddle Fence and MORE, among others. Her novella, The Proxy Bride, co-won the Quattro Ken Klonsky Award and was published in fall 2012 by Quattro Books. Her short fiction has been anthologized in TOK: Writing the New Toronto, Vol.6 (Diaspora Dialogues) and Behind Barbed Wire (Guernica). She also collaborates on the “Bella” series of graphic novels published by Grey Borders Books. Favro has been shortlisted three times for the CBC Literary Awards and in 2012, was longlisted for the Vanderbilt-Exile Literary Prize. She blogs at terrifavro.ca

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

I woke up the day after my novella launch, expecting to be imbued with powers and abilities far beyond those of normal women, but the bathroom still needed cleaning and deadlines still had to be met. I would not say being a published writer has fundamentally changed my life.

Having said that, I occasionally receive emails from people who track me down through my blog (thank you, Google) to tell me they enjoyed the book. That’s a rush. I’ve been on the radio to discuss The Proxy Bride and Italian opera (enormously fun) and I met with a book club that ‘did’ the book (a bit surreal for me, but exhilarating). And friends in other cities have let me know when they’ve spotted the novella in bookstores; I was especially pleased when a friend in Montreal told me she saw the book in Indigo next to Faulkner. True, it’s all due to alphabetical order --  FAV follows FAU -- but it became an anecdote.

Despite all these good experiences, I feel a bit bereft. I spent long stretches of time immersed in the world of The Proxy Bride – an extremely emotionally intense period of my life. Now that the book is published and I’m back in ‘the real world’, I feel a little lost. My husband calls this my post-partum book depression. Ironically, I didn’t feel this sense of loss after my flesh and blood babies were born –– just the fictional ones.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
When I was about four years old, I had two imaginary friends who looked like the Campbell Soup Twins from the “Mm, Mm Good” TV commercials. Playing with them felt a lot like fiction-writing feels now. Fiction offers unlimited imaginative scope. I get to play god. Anything is possible: I like that.

I write creative non-fiction, as well, when I’m in the mood for truth-telling. As for poetry, I’m abysmal at it, but enjoy reading it, especially when I’m writing 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? 

First drafts come quickly. Revisions are slow and painstaking. My mentor at the Humber School for Writers, Bruce Jay Friedman, used to compare writing styles to military tactics. Bruce said that he liked to conquer a page at a time, ‘secure the perimeter’ through revision, then move on to the next page, once he was sure the defenses would hold. I, on the other hand, use what Bruce called the ‘General Patton approach’: I storm in with my tanks, cover as much territory as possible, as quickly as possible, then regroup, backtrack and revise.

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? 

Books announce themselves as books right away, but like icebergs, chapters sometimes ‘calve’ short stories. I’ve had two stories published that were based on characters in The Proxy Bride. I also wrote an earlier novel, which, although unpublished, led to two short stories (published in Riddle Fence and Prism). One chapter of that book also provided the story for the first Bella comic book. I seem to start big, then go shorter. Even The Proxy Bride – a novella – started as a much longer novel.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like doing readings. There is something visceral about them. Sensing warm bodies around me while I tell a story, hearing laughter or some other audible reaction, makes me feel as if, on some basic human level, I’m doing what a writer was meant to do. It’s part of the ancient, honourable tradition of oral storytelling.

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? 

What causes us to change? What stops us from changing? What happens to those who go through a massive transformation, such as immigration or the death of a spouse? I like to write about personal change played out against broader societal or cultural changes. I deliberately set The Proxy Bride during the summer of 1969 because the world was changing very rapidly: it was as if the process of evolution had been turned up to ‘11’. Change was technological (the moon landing took place that summer, and plays a role in the book); legal (Trudeau’s “the state has no business in the bedrooms of the nation” omnibus bill, also important to my characters); and social (the women’s liberation movement was starting to pick up steam). It was also the year that the Pill was legalized.

In some ways, it’s a similar situation to the TV series Mad Men: we watch the reality of life in the 1960s knowing just how much everything was about to change for all the characters. That’s even truer for my characters because they all went through the shock of postwar immigration; they had already experienced a very profound change in their lives but their new country, Canada, was changing around them, very quickly. They had to figure out how to adapt –– again.

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? 

Humans need to tell and hear stories. People are so desperate to stuff stories into the empty spaces of their lives that they will resort to almost anything to do that – not only books, but reality TV shows, soap operas, movies, magazines. Even gossip.

Everyone needs stories, but not all of us can write them. Writers are the ones who give stories shape and turn them into art.

A writer’s role can be as ‘big’ as driving societal change, or as simple as offering pleasure through stories and language. Both are important.

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

Both. Working with an editor is one of the most maddening, painful, frustrating, crazy-making processes I’ve ever been through. For a book to be as good as it possibly can be, it’s also essential because it’s so tough to see a novel in full – the canvass is so large – that you need an editor to help you see it through to its final and best form. You have to have another critical reader who is on your side, committed to helping you make the work better, even if it also makes you want to tear your head off.  Ideally, that’s your editor.

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

A mentor advised me: don’t be afraid to play with the writing without ‘burning your bridges.’ By that he meant, if you’re not sure whether something is working, play with it – experiment – knowing that you can return to an earlier draft. I find that writing that way takes some pressure off the revision process. An earlier draft might be the better draft –– a safety net, if the revisions don’t work the way you expect them to. Having said that, I’ve found that every time I’ve played with something I thought was finished, I wrote something better.

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

I write in all of these genres (and graphic novels/comic books) and don’t see them as fundamentally different from one another. Creative non-fiction requires the narrative structure and artfulness of a short story or novel. I write in whatever form suits the story 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 don’t like routines because I find that, as soon as something interrupts it, it becomes hard to keep going. I become more focused on the routine than the writing. Instead I write in whatever part of the day I can carve out time, wherever I happen to be. I write on the subway, in bed, while I eat, and between freelance assignments (my day job is copywriting and I work at home). I write obsessively and for long stretches of time, if I possibly can – the ‘General Patton’ approach. If I’m in my office, I listen to a music playlist that reflects the mood or time period of the story. Music is the common thread that pulls me back to the story, not my physical environment.

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

The best solution to stalling is to put myself in motion. I always do something physical: go for a long walk, cycle, or go to the gym. Magically, once I start using my body, my imagination stretches enough to get me past the roadblock.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home? 

Home is evoked by the smell of fermenting grapes. I grew up in a house that my father and grandfather built in a vineyard in Niagara Township (now the north end of St. Catharines). The smell of fermentation permeated our basement during wine- and juice-making season, lingering long after.

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? 

Music is a major influence. I listened to Opera, Italian pop, Vivaldi and late-sixties rock music while writing both Bella and The Proxy Bride. Also, early Springsteen –– songs like “Candy’s Room”, “It’s Hard to Be A Saint in the City” and “Thunder Road” caught the mood of my rust belt world, and blended with “Nessun Dorma” and “The Pearl Fishers”. It varies with what I’m working on. Every story has a soundtrack.

Historical events are a big influence, particularly lesser-known ones – for example, a short story published in Accenti magazine was inspired by the Hoggs Hollow disaster in the early 1960s, when a group of young Italian men died of the bends digging a subway in north Toronto. That event is helping shape a chapter of the book I’m working on now.

Science and technology also inform my work. My father was an electrician, later a plant engineer, and an amateur inventor. We were immersed in machinery. If you walked into my childhood home and picked up what looked like a magazine, chances are it was a catalogue of parts for industrial robots.

Although I’m a lapsed Catholic, the rituals and theatricality of Roman Catholicism continue to work their way into my writing. The rhythms of the church calendar regulated my life until I left home at eighteen. We lived next door to a church rectory and had a lot of contact with priests and nuns.

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

Certain books follow me around like a Greek chorus: Doris Lessing’s Children of Violence series, Alice Munro’s Lives of Girls and Women (and later books), Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, Jorge Amado’s Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides, Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints, and Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. (Erdrich comes close to goddess status for me.)

I grew up in a household where reading material included Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Scientific American and my brother’s hot rod magazines.  I also had a steady diet of the lives of the Catholic saints, science fiction, comic books, fairytales and Greek and Roman myths. All of these keep working their way back into my writing.

I also have to mention Sylvia Plath. That may sound odd, since my work is so entirely unlike hers, and I don’t write poetry – but the power and economy of her writing always struck me as something to aspire to. I re-read The Bell Jar, Ariel and her other poetry from time to time.

After the novella came out, I had two different readers tell me that The Proxy Bride reminded them of John Steinbeck. I was surprised to hear that, but it’s true that I had read all of Steinbeck’s novels by about the age of 15. Cannery Row made a particularly deep impression. Steinbeck may be in my Greek chorus too.

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

I would like to spend a winter in Venice after the crowds have left, hunting stories in the chilly, empty churches and flooded piazzas. All that history and mystery to explore!

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? 

Outside of a brief period when I wanted to be a nun (due to the influence of The Flying Nun and The Singing Nun, rather than actual piety), I’ve always planned to be a writer. But if I weren’t so lazy, I might have been a musician. Both my sisters are pianists, Royal Conservatory trained; one studied organ at St. Michael’s Choir School. I played guitar at folk masses, sang in choirs, and bashed away at the piano a bit. Apparently I have a good ‘ear’ and my sisters tried to take me in hand, but I just couldn’t face the hours of practice and study.

I would be happy as a wine sommelier. Or a bartender in a high-end hotel bar: I’d be the one with the up-do and black eyeliner, shaking the perfect martini and listening to everyone’s bullshit problems.

I would enjoy being a bicycle policewoman. I see them in Toronto, Amazons in shorts, cycling around downtown. I’d change my name to ‘Pepper’, like the Angie Dickinson character on the 1970s TV show, Policewoman.

Or I could be a card dealer. But not a legitimate one: I’d like to have the same job as ‘Tanya’ from the movie Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, who sits at a card table in the middle of a boxing ring and sets out the rules of the (rigged) poker game.

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

I never considered anything else (except the nunnery, briefly, as I’ve mentioned.) My family told a lot of stories. One grandfather, Giovanni-Battista Favro, told dark Italian folk tales and fairytales to me when I was little. He had a vast storehouse of stories in his head, similar to, but darker and a bit sexier, than the Canadian versions. And my family always told a lot of stories about things that had happened to a previous generation, back in Italy, in New York (where my mother’s family mostly settled) and in Niagara in the early days. Dad used to like to talk about the daredevils and ‘river rats' that did stunts at Niagara Falls but were also quite big-time smugglers during Prohibition.

By the time I’d started kindergarten, I was making up fairytales for the neighbourhood kids. By ten years of age, my tales of bloodlust were scaring my younger cousins so badly, my aunt had to have a ‘word’ with my mom. I was twelve the first time I was published -- a limerick about the Kellogg’s cereal processing plant in London, Ontario: the Star Weekly paid me (I think) ten bucks for it and published it as by “Mr. Terry Favro.” (It started to occur to me around that time that I should switch from “y” to “i”.)In high school, I wrote for the town’s daily newspaper, The St. Catharines Standard; I experienced my first writerly rage when an interview I’d done with Geddy Lee of a new band called Rush was chopped to make more room for basketballs scores. In grade 13, I received Honourable Mention in The Permanent Insurance writing competition, adjudicated by Margaret Laurence, which was the premier national writing contest for Canadian students in those days. At university, my short fiction won the McMaster Medal for the Creative and Performing Arts.

So, what happened? Answer: I graduated. It was 1979, stagflation was destroying all hope of jobs, and SkyLab was falling, which was a pretty good metaphor for my life at the time. I came home from one of my nasty short-term Hamilton jobs only to find a bunch of guys with sledgehammers standing around my flat, chuckling over the New Yorker cartoons taped to my walls. The house had been sold for demolition and no one bothered to evict me. Suddenly homeless, I considered getting some help from my boyfriend at the time, a tool and die maker who also came from Niagara, but he managed to break his neck in a motorcycle crash. (The relationship didn’t last.)

Writing suddenly seemed like a luxury. I needed to make a living. I was doing some freelance writing – mostly arts and music stuff – but it barely paid anything. I considered going back to St. Catharines, living with my folks, maybe getting secretarial work or a job at the plant where my father worked. (There was beginning to be interest in woman doing ‘line work’ in industry at the time.)

Then I spent a day with Milton Acorn -- a total accident: I’d volunteered to help out at an arts festival at McMaster that summer. Acorn was supposed to have a student chaperoning him around that day, seeing to his needs, but the eminent poet proved to be such a handful that his volunteer (spineless dweeb) panicked and ran. Someone asked me if I’d look after Mr. Acorn for the day; after what I’d just been through, with my flat and my boyfriend, it seemed like a walk in the park. Milton was a bit odd: he looked like he’d gone ten rounds in a boxing ring and he was prone to getting up on tables in the cafeteria to declaim poetry, frightening the med students. I made it my mission to get him through the day without accidentally hurting himself; I’d read I’ve Tasted My Blood and knew the guy was a genius, even if he was a bit scary. It was my “My Favourite Year” day. It ended with me sitting on a curb with Milton, in the middle of the night, pouring out my heart to him: where was I going to live? What was I going to do? How could I manage to be a writer and eat? I was twenty-two; he looked about a thousand. He was quite lucid, for a change, during this conversation; he told me that he wasn’t all that happy about living over the Silver Dollar Tavern on Spadina, either, but you never knew what life was going to hand you. And he told me that I didn’t have much choice about being a writer. I was already in it up to my neck.

So: I went to Toronto, slept on a lot of couches, worked a bunch of half-assed jobs, and fell into the advertising industry which welcomed me with open arms as a copywriter. It took a while to come back to actual creative writing, but I'm trying. I’m trying.

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

For ‘great’, I’d go back about a year, to when a friend presented me with Louise Erdrich’s The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse, published in 2001. The book tells the story of a woman in Minnesota in the early 20th century who lives her life disguised as a man –– more specifically, as a priest. About halfway through the book, I closed it, had a little cry and thought – why am I even trying? This is just so fucking good.

Last great movie: The Secret in Their Eyes, a 2009 film from Argentina. On one level it’s a police procedural; on another, a psychological thriller; on another, a love story; on another, a political film. Three years on, I still think about it. The only other movie that comes close is the 2008 Italian film about the Calabrian mafia, Gomorrah.

20 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on two things: a novel-in-stories called “A Pagan Marriage”, which is a sequel to The Proxy Bride. I’m slowly getting back into the lives of Marcello, Ida and Bum Bum: they are all in danger, because the villain dispensed with in the novella had some criminal friends who are determined to revenge his loss. Studio 54, circa 1977, will make an appearance. Quite a lot of this book is written but requires substantial revision. (See: ‘General Patton’.)

I’m just beginning to work with my illustrator-partner-husband, Ron Edding, on a graphic novel that will either be called “Providence” or “House of Providence”. Set in Toronto during the Depression, it’s based on an actual unsolved murder from the early 1930s. The name comes from the House of Providence, a Catholic institution for orphans and indigents that stood in Toronto for about a century. We are in the research phase now.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Another weekend in Sainte-Adele (with Lemonade

After the small press fair on Friday and Saturday, we left town on Canada Day for two nights in the Laurentian Hills, slipping out into Christine’s mother’s cottage in Sainte-Adele. Between the SOCIAL, various readings and small press book fair stuff, it feels as though we’ve had far too many events lately, escaping into the hills simply to breathe. Simply to breathe, except with cat in tow, a weekend Christine thought Lemonade should come along. Two and a half hours in the car, he was breathing shallow, uncertain if the heat or anxiety (probably both). We stopped for hamburgers at a chip truck (who, as we know, always have the best hamburgers) somewhere along highway 17, most likely Clarence-Rockland. Off the highway so the cat could breathe again, by a convenience store/gas station called Oops, and logo of a squirrel scrambling for nuts. Really? Their whole business model is one of poor planning?

Once at the cottage, Lemonade sniffed for hours, running running running to see what he could see, poking through all the corners. An indoor cat, we let him run outside on the harness; I know, how can a harness not be seen as offensive? But there you go. He didn’t care for the open space, kept running back to the house. The texture of the lawn confused him.

Christine worked on various things, but mostly breathing; I worked on a review or two, an article or two, a short story and even an interview, up soon at Canadian Poets Petting Cats. I wanted us to get some work done on our collaboration, since we’re reading from it soon at Dusty Owl (and producing a small chapbook of such), but there wasn’t enough time (we really need to come back, already).

All the while, listening to Warren Zevon and Momus. It was that kind of weekend.

Recently, those nice people at Grey Borders Books produced a chapbook of this poem, for the Niagara Literary Arts Festival, in an edition of fifty copies. They’re already long gone.

Lemonade, polydactyl (or,

                        the cat with twenty-two toes,)

                        Maps on the soles of their feet.

                                    Michael Ondaatje, The Man with Seven Toes

1.

this new kitten;                                    bone-cleave,

            hindrance; to de-claw

is to pick out bone; inhumane,

they tell us,

                                    , litter-box, his smile

round, rounded; sprouted,

only then, begin

white snowshoe, mitten-toed,

2.

congenital abnormality                        tree-flesh,

thumb cat, six-fingered

combinations of anywhere                         from four

to seven toes per paw; a fallen crayon,

one hour out of twenty-four,

                                    at variable speed,

3.

commonly found on front paws only

            fur-speed;           sleeps,

sleeps; tears through the house,

Hemingway-cut           sentence-short,

spread wide, from Boston

                        , sleeps in unknown corners

ship-cats, ported trade; their offspring saw

the world

4.

in Key West, Florida,              fifty cats

                        or more; sub-genre,

descend                       misplaced, neither

holy, Roman, empire,

this, our cat-house; Lemonade,

some sailors considered them         extreme

good luck           ; below deck,

            tilts his collared head,

Jordan Fry reviews my grief notes: (BlazeVOX, 2012)

Jordan Fry was good enough to review my most recent poetry collection, grief notes: (BlazeVOX, 2012). Check here for the link, and here for a report on the last time I read in his city (if you are so inclined).

Watch out, I'm back in St. Catharine's in June, as part of the second annual Niagara Arts Literary Festival, for the sake of a reading on June 15th and another small press fair on the 16th.

Exactly 12 questions for rob mclennan; an interview by Cassie Leigh, October 2011

An interview with me by St. Catharine's ON writer Cassie Leigh, anticipating my reading on Friday (launching my new BuschekBooks poetry title, A (short) history of l.) at St. Catharine's ON reading series Grey Borders, with Liz Worth and Tim Conley.

rob mclennan reading in St. Catharines, ON with Tim Conley + Liz Worth, October 14, 2011

Grey Borders Reading Series presents...
rob mclennan,
Tim Conley,
& Liz Worth

Friday October 14, 2011 @ 7pm
at Mahtay (241 St. Paul Street, St Catharines, Ontario)
free event, donations encouraged

for further information, contact Eric Schmaltz at schmaltzeric@gmail.com

rob participating in The Niagara Literary Arts Festival, June 3, 4 + 5, 2011; 2 readings + a book fair,

THE NIAGARA ARTS LITERARY FESTIVAL, 2011;

JUNE 3 Friday
7pm
Reading With
• rob mclennan• Monty Reid •Kees Kaptyn • James Takeo •
Sami’s , 87 East Main Street, Welland

JUNE 4 Saturday
10am-5pm
"A Book Affair"
• Heronwood Enterprises •The Book Band •Alexandra Fic •Kevin McCabe •rob mclennan (Chaudiere Books + above/ground press)• Catherine Owen •Warren Dean Fulton •Monty Reid •Thee Hellbox Press• Brock Creative Writers Group• Bygones Publishing• •Cormorant and Dancing Cat Books •Pedlar Press•Proper Tales/Mansfeild Press •Grey Borders Books •Steve Fulton• Precipice • Greald Archambeau•And More!•
The Niagara Falls Public Library
4848 Victoria Avenue, Niagara Falls

JUNE 5 Sunday
3pm
The Virus Reading Series Presents:
• rob mclennan • Catherine Owen • Warren Dean Fulton •
Dani’s Bistro, 176 St Paul Street St Catharines

email editors@greyborders.com for further information, or check out the website here;

Pearl Pirie + rob mclennan read with Gregory Betts + James Millhaven in St. Catharines

On November 10, 2010, I did a reading in St. Catharine's, Ontario, with James Millhaven, Gregory Betts and our very own Pearl Pirie, the second in a series of launches she's got going on for her first trade publication, been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010). I predominantly read from new and/or unpublished, including a poem published in the brand-new third issue of Lana Turner: A Journal of Poetry and Opinion, received in my mailbox only the morning before.

Reading at the Niagara Artists Centre, did you know they did a series of banners two years ago around the city, artists from town including Linda Evangelista, Neil Peart and the late great Dennis Tourbin (his widow still lives in their house on Armstrong, just by the Carleton Tavern)?

He ran Ottawa's Gallery 101 back in the 1980s, produced artwork, poetry and non-fiction, and even had an early above/ground press chapbook. How often does one see late friends on banners in other cities?

After a near-crowd of seventy people for Pearl's book launch the Sunday before at the Dusty Owl Reading Series, it was great to see her succeed as well in a venue outside of her comfort, even bringing her "launcher" to St. Catharine's, sending small packets of candy into the unsuspecting crowd.

She read a few of her "plunders," something she picked up from Gregory Betts, who might not have invented the form, but named the current iteration of such.

Part of what entertained, as my first experience in the Niagara Artists Centre, was seeing an artwork by former neighbour John Moffatt, who moved from an apartment on Bronson Avenue just north of Somerset West nearly a decade ago, to allow a yard behind a house in Perth instead of nothing, for their growing toddler.

There were the months when he used to visit in the late 1990s, my spot in the Dunkin' Donuts on Bank at Gloucester in my daily writing space, sometimes alone, sometimes son in tow, sometimes artist John Boyle or even Tourbin. When he told me he designed his paintings to go 80km an hour, forced to strap them to the roof of his car for transport. Do you think he might have a truck or van by now? And the Niagara Artists Centre, apparently a gallery even co-founded by Tourbin himself.

Here's a photo of Pearl herself, reading alongside the Moffatt piece. It's almost as though she's begun to turn her performance space into a space of small ritual, small tokens, much the way of Ontario poet Phil Hall; do you see the oddbits she's collected to place on the podium ahead?

a little interview with me on the grey borders blog;

to publicize the reading I'm doing with Pearl Pirie on November 10th in St. Catharine's, Ontario;

Rapture Red & Smoke Grey, Sarah Gordon
2003, Turnstone Press, 72 pages
isbn 0-88801-285-3, $12.95

if I get to the base of things, of desire, all I really want to do is sing,
and run. to sing well and loud, to run tirelessly, to be thoroughly
exhausted with good work done.

this is what I want.

to know who God is, and how he works, and what his hands and eyes
look like, and fire.

p 16, Winter in My City

Winnipeg poet Sarah Gordon’s debut collection, Rapture Red & Smoke Grey, is written in five sections of sequences: Winter in My City; Outgoing Mail, a series of postcards; Poems written mid January; Pilgrimage to Kansas City; and First Breath of Spring. A pilgrimage, between religion and stories of pioneers, Gordon’s collection is a book about searching, and the importance of the search. Where questions remain as important as the answers.

What I wonder is, despite the amount of poets currently writing and publishing in Canada, how is it that two western female poets are both making references to painter Egon Schiele? (Vancouver poet Catherine Owen did too, in her first collection, Somatic: The Life and Work of Egon Schiele, Exile, 1998.) As in the reference left in the first sequence, writing, "Today is cold and damp in the bones as I was walking downtown the / air was reaching through my jacket and sweater and I was prompted / to write an essay on Egon Schiele’s hands." (p 6, Winter in My City), continuing, "How odd to mention Vienna here, in the middle of a prairie winter / location is everything."

And then God said to me

[...]

you are made of restraint, and
unrestraint, the space that breathes
between walls that heave and buckle.

p 9

Amid the violence of the elements and the beauty of the earth, Gordon situates herself, grounds herself, and puts a flavour in the first section of her Rapture Red & Smoke Grey that resonates throughout, as the place she is in, is from, part of what she sees as she looks inward.

The second section, "Outgoing Mail, a series of postcards," is literally a series of postcards written to Christopher Pratt, Anne Carson, Michael Ondaatje, Robert Motherwell, partygoers, Jane Urquhart and Anthony Hopkins. "Firelight is wasted on / burning your mistakes." she writes to Pratt (p 23), in a short piece on striving too hard for perfection; suggesting instead, to accept it as it comes. To Montreal poet Anne Carson, she writes, "Dear Anne. I am writing in response to the Afterward you wrote for / part three of Plainwater. You are right, and I thank you for directly / addressing me." (p 24).

The third section, "Poems written mid January," is the least prose-like of the pieces in the collection, nearly ghazal-like in their execution, as each line is another opening into a further direction.

cold is made of beauty and fear
and thaw is made of aching.


the pain in your own hands,
blood surging sore in them

like yanking red ribbons.

p 35, Poems written mid January

There is a lot going on in this small collection, deceptively so, using simple language to do complex things.

on a pilgrimage everything counts, everything that happens is a kind
of omen. there are secret messages in cities, well designed in signs
and street names. today I walked down Perishing Road, heard an old
man muttering about elevators except he kept calling them Lifts and
Downs.

p 49, Pilgrimage to Kansas City

Through all the searching, I would like to know what she finds, where she ends up. There is a wisdom to her lines, a keen and naive awareness of the kinds of things she’s looking for and finding along her way.

originally appeared in Grey Borders (Niagara Falls, Ontario)