Nikki Sheppy, Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite

purl + the accretion of sound instead of you = pearl

i was knitting—as befits my gender—when i

realized i could hear my mollusk spinelessly

entombing its parasite—strata of horny

deposition—until there shone

a bead that had forgotten everything but its own

voluptuous light—at stuh times

i construe a mysterious pain in the yarn—wince

and pull—dive and hook

Last year’s winner of the annual The John Lent Poetry Prose Award, as run by British Columbia publisher Kalamalka Press, was Calgary poet Nikki Sheppy, and the resulting letterpress poetry publication is now available as Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite (Vernon BC: Kalamalka Press, 2014). It is good to see more activity through Kalamalka Press, however seemingly random, over the past few years. The press originally gained attention in the 1990s through an annual poetry manuscript prize, but for book, not chapbook, publication (Karen Connelly’s first poetry collection, among others, was produced through such). That contest has long disappeared, but, now three years old, the third winner of The John Lent Poetry Prose Award was recently announced as Montreal writer Nicholas Papaxanthos, and his chapbook Wearing Your Pants will be published sometime in 2015. 

WINDFALL is grrrrlhood. Bone of hair braided over and under the root system. That felled lock rocking its origin grew there without me. To go back is to fume quietly into the air, sound stolen by the gale-force spurred into lung. Of scent there is only chlorophyll (buds of a lost mitten, bathed organelles). It wakes like growth spurt. Bodes no futility, green verging on blue. I’m stippled with sense: voluble and inchoate. Not triste, no, but fire-breathing. Pit of the mouth scorched open, innards systemic with coal.

What strikes about Sheppy’s Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite is the brashness of her text, a daring series of forceful, bold and playful engagements with expectations of language, sound and the notion of “grrrrlhood,” portions of which are reminiscent of some of the electric lyrics of poets EmilyCarr, Christine McNair, Brecken Hancock and Sandra Ridley. As Sheppy opens the first poem, “GRRRRL”: “(n.) a style of primitive ape, sub-adult and / female, in ringlets and pluck, about to slip / her tongue into you without first seeking / permission [.]” Sheppy also manages to play with the language and concepts of mathematics, making some of her titles impossible to replicate in a form such as this. Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite is a smart and powerful mix of lyric extraction, mathematical formulae, angry questioning and Riot Grrl bravado, wrapped up in a striking accumulative suite of poems. I would very much like to see more from Nikki Sheppy.

MUST WE FOREVER PONDER

why the #cagedbirdsings?

rattling a few bars like the whetted

cry of a #loon, sculling into the ear canal,

#wingingit through the tympanic membrane

while #chasingsometale—there it goes,

all #atwitter—#beakingoff—#lettingfly

in a tempest of unintelligible caws

the mouth #spreadeagled

the body vacated

in taxidermy

Beautifully designed and produced, Sheppy’s new title, according to the colophon was “hand-set in Monotype Bembo with Centaur for display, then proofed, corrected, printed, folded, collated and bound in ‘The Bunker,’ Okanagan College’s letterpress print shop, by students of the Diploma in Writing & Publihing, 2014.” The list of the “Bunker crew” is listed as well, making quite a nice touch, and includes Jason Dewinetz, who is also editor, publisher and printer of Greenboathouse Press, one of the finest literary letterpress publishers/printers in the country. Produced predominantly by students, unfortunately, also means the impossible occurs, and the work includes a separate sheet of (rather charming) “Errrata,” that reads: “IF PERFECTION OFFENDS THE GODS, there’s no fear that our efforts in the production of this book will get on their nerves. Despite our best intentions, quite a number of typographical errors found their way into these fine pages. Our apologies to the author and reader.”

John Lent reviews my Songs for little sleep, (2012) over at Arc poetry magazine,

John Lent was good enough to review my Songs for little sleep, (2012) over at Arc Poetry Magazine. [see the original review here] Thanks, John!

rob mclennan. Songs for little sleep. Koriyama, Japan: Obvious Epiphanies Press, 2012.
~Reviewed by John Lent

Nothing is going to happen in this book. There is only a little violence here and there in the language, at the corner where eternity clips time.
–Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, 1977

I have been aware of rob mclennan’s poetry for fifteen years now, and aware, too, of the boisterous, clever and thoughtful presence he brings to discussions of contemporary poetics. Having said that, however, I will discuss only two aspects of mclennan’s poetics as I understand them in this new volume: faith in the banal and playful diction. To me, both aspects represent risk-taking that I admire in contemporary poetry, even though they carry with them the equal risk of initiating the poem’s collapse. In the end, I think mclennan succeeds in both taking these risks and delivering something rather wonderful in Songs for little sleep.

The first risk is mclennan’s faith in the ordinary. It seems silly, sometimes, talking about the material of poetry in this way—but it’s huge. By ‘ordinary’ I mean the quotidian, throw-away objects & situations & images & voices that mill around and populate these poems. mclennan exhibits faith that this material will open up on the wondrous, on a surprise of complexity maybe, on beauty, or whatever else we might want to name it. As Wittgenstein mutters cryptically in Tractatus, “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.” Over and over again in these poems—as their process of creation—mclennan is willing to run the risk of collapsing into the ordinariness he celebrates. As a result, the poems are redeemed by the elusive and resistant and inexplicable and not-to-be-reduced-or-articulated magic that is waiting to ‘show’ itself at the heart of this often-dismissed ‘banal.’ When I was in my thirties, I got a letter from P K Page in which she worried that my poems might suffer from being too “quotidian.” And though I loved P K Page’s wonderful poems (and still do) and seriously sought her approval, something innocent and stubborn in me knew she was wrong about the word. Reading mclennan’s poems carries me back into that moment of struggle with P K Page’s judgment—the wonder of the “quotidian” and the risk of expressing it.

When mclennan refers to the word ‘collaged’ in his end notes, he is referring not only to the first risk mentioned above—allowing the ‘ordinary’ to present itself as a field of juxtapositions, loosely unified—but also to the second risk—allowing ‘play’ in diction and syntax to support other surprises in logic through unexpected association. Again, this is not easy territory; it can readily backfire into a mediocre display of automatic writing (at best) or obscurantism (at worst). But when it works, when it really opens things up—as in Kroetsch, Bowering, bissett, Moure, Cooley, Jake Kennedy, kevin mcpherson eckoff, Natalie Simpson—it can create a true ‘rush’ of making and re-making for the reader. It can be breathtaking. In the context of this risk, mclennan is relaxed and confident and the poems are fascinating and exciting.

If I had been editing this book, I might have advised mclennan to subdue the communal bounce of the self-referential by removing the double-whammy of beginning each poem with a reference to another text (usually written by a friend), then compounding the situation with a dedication to another friend (another writer). In a sequence that is already so committed to the autobiographical, this effect can be a bit cloying. These poems do not need that busy-ness. They stand by themselves just fine.

fwd: CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: 13th ANNUAL POSTCARD STORY COMPETITION $750 PRIZE

The Writers' Union of Canada is pleased to announce that submissions are being accepted until February 14, 2012, for the 13th annual POSTCARD STORY COMPETITION. The winning entry will be the best Canadian work of 250 words or fewer in the English language, fiction or nonfiction. Are you up for the challenge? Can you create a dynamic, lean, and efficient piece in only 250words? You can use humour, poetry, dialogue. Anything goes!   
PRIZE  $750 for the winning entry. The winning entry will be published in Write, the magazine of The Writers' Union of Canada. The winner agrees that The Writers' Union of Canada will have non-exclusive publication rights to publish the winning entry in Write, for publicity purposes. Any publication of the author's story by The Writers' Union of Canada will include an authorship credit and a copyright notice in the name of the author. Copyright of the winning postcard story remains with the writer.    

JURY Clayton Bailey, John Lent, and Nerys Parry will serve as the jury.    

ELIGIBILITY This competition is open to all Canadian citizens and landed immigrants. Original and unpublished in any format (English language) fiction or non-fiction, no more than 250 words.    

HOW TO SUBMIT ENTRIES  * Entries should be typed, double-spaced, in a clear twelve-point font, and the pages numbered on 8.5 x 11 paper, not stapled.  * Submissions will be accepted in hardcopy only. 
* Include a separate cover letter with title of story, full name, address, phone number, e-mail address, word count, and number of pages of entry. 
* The author's name should not appear on the actual entry.
* Make cheque or money order, $7.50 per submission, payable to The Writers' Union of Canada. Multiple entries can be submitted together and fees can be added and paid with one cheque or money order. * Entries must be postmarked by February 14, 2012 to be eligible. 
* Mail entries to: PCS Competition, The Writers' Union of Canada, 90Richmond Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, ON M5C 1P1.

Results will be posted at http://www.writersunion.ca in May 2012. Manuscripts will not be returned.

Robert Kroetsch (June 26, 1927-June 21, 2011)

It was awful to turn on the computer to the news yesterday that Alberta writer Robert Kroetsch had died in a car accident on Tuesday night, returning home to Leduc from a reading, mere days before his 84^th birthday.

A mentor and friend to more than a few generations of Canadian writers, Kroetsch's influence was wide-reaching, not only through his writing, but through the generous attention he consistently paid to younger writers, a generosity he seemingly extended to almost every writer he met.

I first met him through Winnipeg poet and editor Dennis Cooley, during those Friday afternoon gatherings among writers and thoughtful readers at Boston Pizza, sometime during the last century. Boston Pizza, of all places, just down the Pembina Highway, not far from the University. Quiet Bob, sitting at the corner of the table, taking all of it in, commenting when required.

Later, as I toured through Winnipeg, reading with Laurie Fuhr, Kroetsch coming out to be part of our small audience. Robert Kroetsch came to hear us, I beamed. Who's that? Fuhr's blush in a subsequent email, discovering library shelves of his name.

Over the years, we would see each other in Winnipeg, and even Ottawa a couple of times, whether for a reading he was doing as part of the ottawa international writers festival, or later, when he returned for the postmodernism conference at the University of Ottawa. His reading as part of the conference had not one but two standing ovations: one before, and one after. He was there to be loved, and looked slightly embarrassed.

Sitting between Robert Kroetsch and Dennis Cooley, the admirers that slipped Kroetsch a pint or two he'd quietly slip over to me. A nod, and a smile.

His was a constant influence. In poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he worked in genres carved out for himself, that he'd managed to create, so the rest of us could explore the same, in our own works. A novelist who came into poetry, showing us just how it could be done.

In his decades of publishing, specifically poetry, he managed to remain active, and fresh, well beyond many of his contemporaries. He enjoyed, and engaged, wholeheartedly. With his whole heart. He was always asking for names of young writers that he should be reading.

It seemed he was constantly publishing, whether the occasional book, or odd little missives he somehow kept quiet about, until one would appear in your mailbox. Even now, he has a chapbook forthcoming with Jason Dewinetz's Greenboathouse, and another, through my own above/ground press, the small chapbook Further to Our Conversation, that includes:

Dear John Lent,

We wash ashore from our mothers wearing nothing but a few hairs. Our first cry is a poem that contains everything.

Strictly speaking, peanuts are not nuts. It was a wet night, so you rowed home. I suppose you could claim we have learned to walk without legs. That would be the short answer. Never mention the moon in a poem, that’s what I always say.

Cantilevers can cross a chasm from cliff to cliff. The converse is also correct. The Beowulf poet was onto something. Figs and apricots, set in the sun, could be said to be soaking in sunlight. Given that, then, the thought becomes a thong.

On bad days we are little more than road kill.

You were riding shotgun on your motor home when the thunder rolled. Coconut cream pie is just about the best thing going. If I had my way, giraffes would have shorter necks and longer legs, errant snakes would be hanged by the neck, Dewey Decimal would organize our highways once and for all.

You knelt too close to the fire. You might be a ruse, a reconnoitering. Icarus in a car, disguise the limits, pain.

Capitalists and other high rollers wear expensive shoes. Certainties are short-lived, and fallacies are, by and large, true, or somewhat true, or briefly true, or not untrue, with exceptions as noted. Poets might not have wings, but they have toenails. Your poems are catapults. Please unfasten your seat belts now.

A license plate has an odd destiny. It is not allowed to make words out of the ABCs.

There are probably, possibly others. There are hopefully others, including the book-length version of what I wrote about online at the Globe & Mail, possibly including this other as well.

During my Edmonton year, rereading a number of his books, including Alberta (1968), including A Likely Story: The Writing Life (1995), including The Crow Journals (1980). I reread The Studhorse Man (1967) and looked over that bridge, the High Level Bridge. During my Edmonton year, told by Cathie Crooks and Jeff Carpenter of the University of Alberta Press that I'd become “friend of the press,” meaning any books they'd published I could purchase at author discounts. I immediately picked up a few extras of The Completed Field Notes (2000), to hand out to others. Another copy, to keep my other copies from wearing down, completely. Repeated sessions of weeks, even months, I would carry around, dipping in.

Whole projects of mine over the years hold an echo of Robert Kroetsch, somewhere. A trace of a lemon, or the inevitable delay, delay, delay, the tantric hold of the long poem. The length of the line, or a sweet and lusty tribute to a beautiful woman, all the way back to beginnings.

Last spring in Edmonton, I was fortunate enough to be part of a trio of authors launching books published by the University of Alberta Press – myself, Alice Major and Robert Kroetsch [the photo comes from such, Kroetsch signing my copy of his newest, Too Bad]. In the two readings we did, able to watch a crowd show up to admire the man and his work, from George Bowering, Kimmy Beach and Lori Neilsen Glenn in Edmonton, to Aritha Van Herk, Nathan Dueck and Dennis Cooley in Calgary.

From the podium at the University of Alberta's Faculty Club, mentioning the woman he had to break a date with in 1948, just after his final year of university. Breaking their date to head north to learn, as he'd said many times, to become a writer. The woman there in the audience, the first time they'd seen each other since he'd broken the date, and his sly suggestion, perhaps, that he should make up for the loss.

And here too, we, wishing we could make up for such loss.

Those long threads of prairie roads that created him, and the last that he knew.

Last night, a small group of writers converged at the Carleton Tavern in tribute to Kroetsch, each lifting a glass.

Here, a new poem (draft) as tribute to Robert Kroetsch, taken far too soon. 

Dear Robert Kroetsch,

Like one speaks to the stone, like

you,

-- Paul Celan, Selections (trans. Pierre Joris)

The afterward constantly updates. Our stories have yet to begin.

Your home took you everywhere. So far, in fact, you had even returned. Home, addressing the mouth, and the eye.

Leduc, to your sister. There was always that part that remained, that had never taught Birmingham, never fathered, never taught Winnipeg, never retired. Had never walked beaches in New Zealand, or flown snowbird across the South Seas.

We revisit our own pasts to meet up with ourselves. We call this the future. We call the emptiness, wisdom.

I am heartbroken, sad. The words, before they even begin.

In Alberta, before you'd gone north, you grew into the name that was yours. We rewrite ourselves constantly.

Through your poems, you constantly warned me. Of what, neither of us were entirely sure. Perhaps you kept writing to learn, what you'd already discovered.

Steep your hands in the cosmos. Kroetsch, what can I tell you. Advice I would never presume. We get stuck on the word.

Your poems composed as conversations I didn't realize we'd had, immediately familiar once reading.

The day that I heard, raising a tavern-glass. Looking west, for the near future, and the most recent past. Why do we expect our teachers to never die.

Your handwritten updates. Your story has yet to begin.

ABUNDANCE: The Mackie House Conversations about the Writing Life by Robert Kroetsch and John Lent

This conversation between Robert Kroetsch and John Lent is guided by love – of the word, of stories, of reading, of teaching. And of the work of writing, which seems, to a young writer, to come naturally and easily to all who have gone before you. You feel as if everyone is sure of themselves but you.
-- Sean Johnston, “Introduction: ‘The traces could count…’”

As part of a month-long writers residency set up through Okanagan College in Vernon, British Columbia, the relatively-recently-revived Kalamalka Press (the same press who published Karen Connelly’s first poetry book, oh so long ago) produces a book after the fact, as part of that residency. The fourth in the series, the only one I’ve seen previously is the poetry collection by Dennis Cooley, Country Music: New Poems (2005) [see my review of such here]. Published as part of writer Robert Kroetsch’s residency, he and author/prof. John Lent had a conversation about writing that lasted days, edited and transcribed into a single volume. Abundance (Vernon BC: Kalamalka Press, 2007) reads very much as a conversation between two old friends talking about writing generally and fiction specifically in a casual, thoughtful way. In places they even return to the teacher/student or mentor/student relationships of previous years (Lent usually moving in this direction, there and here); it wouldn’t be a difficult thing to do, given Kroetsch’s years as an extremely generous and attentive teacher and mentor to so many writers over the years and years and years.

R: You’ve raised some interesting questions. First of all, writing is sound written down, and you want to recover that sound for the reader. That’s not easy to do, because the notion of accent and so on comes into play, and then there’s the question of audience, and the audience wants to hear accurately. The acoustics of the narrative have to work for the listeners and you were saying as a musician you check the acoustics of the building when you’re going to play, and maybe we have to check the acoustics when we’re going to write a novel or a poem or a short story. Where are we writing? Who are we writing for?

It’s interesting just how far-ranging Kroetsch’s influence has spread, moving across generations and across geographies, spreading through writers in various parts of the country for some four decades, and continuing, moving even into younger writers such as Jon Paul Fiorentino and Amanda Earl, for example. Introduced by former Ottawa resident and author Sean Johnston [see his 12 or 20 questions here], it must be said that such a piece is worth the price of the book alone (especially considering this fine piece is a mere ten dollars).

You begin your life as a writer alone. This aloneness is sometimes heartening, often frightening. Then you begin to realize you’re not alone, and this is by turns annoying and encouraging. You become overwhelmed by all the voices around you, angry at their insistence when you have so much writing to do and for writing you have to be alone, as you began. Then you are encouraged, because these voices have said these things for you and you don’t have to worry about saying them yourself. Then you’re scared again, because everything has been said. You feel alone again, because you are the one who has to come up with something new to say, because the voices have not said anything the way you would say it, or could say it.

And this is the life a writer lives every day, with the blank page, fighting voices and being soothed by them. Even if the voice they are at war with is the voice of themselves the day before. That’s the reason for Kroetsch’s ‘escape’ to the north, that’s the reason for his writing in the margins. Necessary, of course. And now you begin, yourself, and you begin in the margins of the literature of Kroetsch’s generation, to Lent’s, to your own and so on.
-- Sean Johnston, “Introduction: ‘The traces could count…’”

One thing that I do wonder, why didn’t the book actually acknowledge which days the five interviews took place? Labelled as “Day One,” “Day Two,” etcetera, does it matter which days were which, or if they happened consecutively or with a week or more in between? Was it as simple as a work-week’s worth of interview? And how does this conversation hold up beside that other publication from the 1980s (I can’t find a single reference to it online...), critical interviews with Kroetsch published by NeWest/Longspoon? And when will we see more Robert Kroetsch poems, a fiction? Where has the story gone?

R: Well, maybe this is a good place to try to wind up for the day…do we need a new story?...can we find a new story? Is there a new story?

J: I’ve thought about that a lot…because I think we’ve been moving towards a new story…or making new stories…in this last century…and they’re a different kind of story…I don’t know…maybe I’m just hallucinating…and romantically want a new story…I’m seeing evidence of it…certainly, when I read your work, I sense a new story…like a new design…and it’s a very comforting design...because at this point in this new century, when there’s such a terrible push back, politically, to some kind of, almost very rigid design, such extremes of nationalism and violence and certain male behaviour…I have this horrific sense that people would love to return to a simpler time when things were really clear-cut, and I don’t think I want to go back to that world because I think it was terrifying…so, in a sense, what is the antidote…and I think it’s imagining life, almost a hybrid kind of life, that’s different, that has a different sense of the family, of sexuality, of beauty, of love, of all those things…so you wonder, are these new stories…are they preliminary designs…some kind of indication?...I guess I’ve always felt that the stories do capture things, do mirror things…oh!...what am I trying to say?

related notes: The Crow Journals; Poet's Talk: conversations with...; The Snowbird Poems;