Ongoing notes: early December, 2010

Do you remember when I used to do these? I’ve almost lost track. Watch for the seventh issue of ottawater come January, with a launch to (possibly) happen around the third or fourth week of the month; and even earlier, our Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party/reading on December 30, 7pm at the Carleton Tavern. Later in March, a reading at the Carleton Tavern with Aurian Haller (with a second (finally) poetry collection) and tba. Watch, too, for various new above/ground press publications over the next couple of months, including new chapbooks by Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Monty Reid, Ken Norris and Ross Brighton, among others. Isn't it about time you subscribed?

And terrible to realize, I've far more grey hair now than I did even four months ago; will this month be any different?

Hastings, East Sussex, England: How can anyone not read the poems of Fanny Howe and fall completely in love? A sequence of emergences, Emergence (Reality Street, 2010), exists as a scant selected of sorts, pulling a particular thread of ghazal-like wraps that come out through three more recent of her twenty-plus collections of poetry, picking pieces from The Vineyard (Lost Roads, 1988), The End (Littoral Books, 1992) and One Crossed Out (Graywolf Press, 1997). 

Part of the intrigue of Howe's work is in just how easily one piece fits into the other, even over a distance of years, and other books, connecting without any sense of uniformity. This small collection almost reads as a lovely (and even charming) Fanny Howe British sampler; is this a matter of titles not making their proper way across large bodies of water?

grow higher together. The approach

to February, this way always.

The Hancock building

contains the Hancock building,

the way the world appears complete,

and all sins hidden.

When you are gone, I go on

but when you return, I’m full of

questions, as if

I didn’t understand anything. (“Emergence”)

Toronto ON: It’s hard not to feel strange while reading Paul Quarrington’s posthumously-published memoir, Cigar Box Banjo: Notes on Music and Life (Greystone, 2010). Only the third or fourth book of his I’ve read, possibly the first since I’d been able to spend time with him, including a couple of Ottawa festivals and an Eden Mills, before lung cancer finally caught up. Quarrington, whose non-fiction I’ve always favoured over his fiction, writes in such a comfortable voice it’s impossible to not get caught up inside, hearing him talk about childhood musical influences, years of songwriting and touring, and the thread through the book of his final year, starting from a weekend spent in Ottawa, when he realized something was terribly, terribly wrong. Quarrington talks about the process of his illness, his years of performing, working up into songwriting and fiction, recording and touring as part of Joe Hall and the Continental Drift, various histories of music, and being produced by a very young Daniel and Bob Lanois, two brothers who ran a studio in their mother’s Hamilton, Ontario basement.

What comes through very clearly is Quarrington's human voice, one that suits his non-fiction far better than his fiction (admittedly, I have yet to read his Whale Music). And how could I not adore a posthumous memoir that mentions me in its opening chapter?

I made it through my address—I had to clip quite a few sentences, chop them up into tiny aspirated phrases—then went to the hospitality suite of the Ottawa Writers Festival. Hey, it was in my hotel. I stayed quite late and got drunk with festival fun-guy rob mclennan and some of his colleagues, sound poets jw curry, Max Middle, and Carmel Purkis. The poets performed some of their stuff in the wee hours of the morning, emitting strange inhuman noises.

Paul Quarrington: July 22, 1953 - January 20, 2010;

[Gregory Betts + Paul Quarrington at the spring 2009 ottawa international writers festival hospiality suite, crashing the party] Got into Toronto last night, in just enough time to hear about writer/musician Paul Quarrington, who died earlier in the day, after a long battle with cancer. Buddy, I thought we had more time? I must have met him around five years ago, through the ottawa international writers festival, Clare Latremouille and I in the hospitality suite, corralling him into singing Saturday morning cartoon theme songs with us (he knew quite a lot).

I didn't know him well, but well enough, but I'd see him at things here and there, including the ottawa fest, Eden Mills, and other literary haunts; well enough, that when he came to Ottawa for a conference last spring, he emailed me to ask what was going on, worth going to? I told him, festival, baby; gave him the hotel and room number, and he showed up that night, Greg Betts in tow, apparently both in town for a conference on literature and film at the University of Ottawa.

I didn't know him well, but he was always game for a conversation and a comfortable word, open to whatever might have been happening around, and seemed the most un-authory of any of those "famous novelists" I've met over the years. He was just Paul; any beer in the fridge? What have you been up to lately? Apparently he and Steve Heighton (I was witness to it at a previous festival) told each other bad (I mean, bad) jokes when they met at festivals or the like. Pretty entertaining, but like watching a train wreck at the same time; marvellous.

We were even talking of going over to his backyard for a bbq at some point, myself and my beautiful lady, once the weather got warmer (I thought we had more time...).

[I know, I should probably include less unflattering, say, photos, but this was a good night, and the only pics I have of him with me right now] Whenever I saw him, I was always reminded of the film based on his novel, Whale Music, and the great Rheostatics song co-writ by Quarrington himself, "the beast needs more torque," etc (unfortunately I can't find it online, but here's another lovely song from the same film by them Rheostatics). It might have been the author of Fishing With My Old Guy, his memoir on fishing with his father (pretty self-explanatory, I know) where I first connected with his writing, but boy, I'm going to miss the friendly casualness of the talented author of everything to do with Whale Music. I'm going to miss that guy, Paul. Tonight, sir, I will raise up a glass...

FESTIVAL NOTES, AGAIN & AGAIN

What have I been up to all week? Taking notes, certainly, writing reviews there and here, but nothing so far as far as a proper report until now. You takes what you can, my son. Previous highlights of the festival, I must say, have included Maggie Helwig reading from her new Coach House Press novel, Ottawa author Andrew Steinmetz reading from his first novel, published by Gaspereau, that John Ralston Saul event on Sunday, and the John Newlove Awards. I can’t write daily reports, but at least here is something from some of what happened last night:

Wednesday, October 22; Because they’ve been putting events overtop each other, I decided to forego “The Poetic Past” event with Douglas Burnet Smith and Troy Jollimore for “Moving Stories Film Festival,” co-hosted by Paul Quarrington, showing numerous short films based upon published books. Many of these seemed to be promotional shorts produced by the publishers and/or publicity machines that go along with the books, which I have no problem with, and found the mix of these against more “straight” films rather interesting, including a lovely piece, “No Bikini,” produced from a short story by Ivan E. Coyote, who has been Ottawa-based these past fourteen months (she returns to Vancouver, unfortunately for us, in November). Pieces included shorts from Andrew Davidson’s massively pushed novel The Gargoyle (he was the one who got that HUGE advance), Douglas Coupland’s JPOD, and a piece on a non-fiction title, Food, Sex, and Salmonella by David Walter-Toews. There was even one from a poetry collection, Randall Maggs’ Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems. I think one of the real highlights had to be the short film A Life’s Passion, where James McCreath talks about how he got to the point of writing his historical novel Renaldo, which mixed just the right amount of biography and book. It felt more like interview than film. How do we get to these places?

The following event was “Writing Life #3,” with Pasha Malla, Rebecca Rosenblum and Ivan E. Coyote, all working in the short story. It was interesting, how host Neil Wilson tried to bring in the recent controversy that John Metcalf and others have created because of the new Penguin anthology of Canadian short stories edited by Jane Urquhart. Part of the “controversy” is frustrating because Metcalf’s arguments seem not to be any more than “why aren’t these people in the book?” and arguing that the book has little or no merit because of it; what? What is the purpose of the short story, what is the purpose of an anthology? I’ve edited numerous anthologies over the years, and there’s always someone who yells, no matter what it is you do, what it is you are trying to do. Someone else always thinks the book a failure because of who you leave out, or simply don’t include. The conversation is good, but the yelling is not.

Pasha Malla read from his new short story collection from Anansi, and also had a new poetry collection with Snare, neither of which I’ve properly seen yet (despite all my requests to the respective publishers); why is it I still have to beg for books? It was good to hear Rebecca Rosenblum read from her Once (Biblioasis), her first published collection of short fiction, after meeting her at Eden Mills (I deliberately missed her reading there, knowing I would catch it here). There is something that comes out in her reading that I didn’t catch when I was reading the stories myself, something that helps as a more effective entry point, and the story she read was one of my favourite, “Chilly Girl,” from the collection. Ivan E. Coyote is just brilliant. Everyone should go to hear Ivan read. So there.

Today includes the Arc Poetry Magazine thirtieth anniversary reading, with Steven Heighton, Roo Borson, Sonnet L’Abbé and Mary Dalton, a performance by Paul Quarrington’s band, Porkbelly Futures, and a talk with Judith Keenan and Quarrington on putting literary works on screen. Will I see you there?