blogs & angela rawlings
The last thing I've been interested in as anyone working a blog (or any other public forum, including Open Letter, filling Station and whatnot) is to use any of it as a place for attacks, gossip or personal business. I think a good general rule is keeping your shit off-stage, off-line, off-page; no one needs to hear that stuff. Because of that consideration, I've been reluctant to get into the mess going on the last little bit on various blogs concerning who said what where about Toronto writer angela rawlings (who has very wisely stayed out of the whole business). The straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak (until I read Toronto poet Gregory Betts' post, I was personally unaware of previous comments maliciously directed at rawlings), was an event in Ottawa of various BookThug authors, hosted by Jay MillAr, where things were said that really didn't need to be said, public or otherwise. So much of the detail of what was said, and said since, isn't terribly important, but it stands that a number of comments have been directed as attacks on rawlings, whether as public comments at events or posted online, being not only comments considered completely offensive, but that work to dismiss both her personally and her work in such a way that is counter-productive for any consideration of what we think of as "community" (Betts, who was also part of the Ottawa event, says it far better here).
Yesterday, on the lexiconjury email list, Toronto writer and community activist Maggie Helwig sent out this email and list of names in support of rawlings as both human being and community worker. I include it in full, and add my name at the end. I can only hope that those who feel the need to make such comments will think first before they speak, and try to gain some maturity where community, the public, and certain individuals are concerned; I can only hope that angela rawlings (a worthwhile poet and, through this mess, an entirely graceful human being) and BookThug publisher Jay MillAr (who, sadly, seems to be shutting down his own blog as a result of fallout) can see the light at the end of the tunnel after all of this nonsense and get back to the serious business of writing and publishing and living. What was that line in the Margaret Atwood novel, The Handmaid's Tale? Don't let the bastards get you down. As the following writes, "Those voices do not speak for us."
rob
10 May 2006
In response to recent events in which Angela Rawlings has been publicly slagged, we the undersigned wish to vehemently express our love and respect and admiration, both personal and professional, for Angela and our opposition to personal attacks against members of our literary community.For all of us, the lexiconjury reading series and the lex list have been vital elements of our Toronto writing community. The labour, vision, connectivity, and generosity donated by Angela over the past many years have touched all of us personally and contributed greatly to our practice as individual writers.Angela, we love and respect you, your community-building impulse and pro-activism, and your brilliant, brave, truly inspired writing project. You inspire and teach us how to build positive community and to lead an integrated artistic life.Angela deserves our thanks and protection when some among us engage in misguided bitter shallow sarcastic and often sexist behaviour which seems aimed only at finding negative attention and inflicting cruelty.
We also wish to commend Jay Millar, who has found himself in a difficult position as publisher and blog host, for navigating what has been a confusing week.
We realize this letter may provoke general curiosity and concern from those in our community whose backs instantly go up at injustice. We would like to confirm that recent defamation against Angela by specific individuals in the experimental writing community is the tip of an iceberg that we've all observed melting down for some time, and that there have been other targets of abuse as well.This defamation has taken the following forms, among others: Colleague writers have mocked and/or attacked other writers maliciously and ongoingly in public spaces -- including at readings, and on blogs and websites; and, Colleague writers have colluded in the sexist parodying of the body and private person of female members of the literary community, including at a public reading and on blogs and websites.Let's ask that we all pay attention to how we treat each other, and if there are future occasions on which we see our colleagues being slagged, that we stand up to it and challenge it directly and openly and quickly. The lex list can be a space of discussion and social justice, which does not mean that we reduce our critical polylogue. Perhaps it means we take ourselves more seriously as writers and humans, read each other's artistic production and, instead of lampooning the generalized idea and quality of our artistic projects, we give it the substantive consideration it deserves.The below list of signatories is not intended to be exclusive. We believe and know that our concerns are shared by many others in the community. We welcome responses and further dialogue, and we invite you to post this Open Letter on your blog and website to publicly support Angela and others who have recently experienced harassment and to promote equity and collegiality in our community.
Signed,
Sandra Alland
Gary Barwin
derek beaulieu
Gregory Betts
Christian Bok
Brea Burton
Stephen Cain
Margaret Christakos
Jason Christie
T.L. Cowan
James Dangerous
Beverley Daurio
Carmen Derkson
Kate Eichorn
Chris Ewart
ryan fitzpatrick
Jay Gamble
Jocelyn Grosse
Nadia Halim
Sharon Harris
Jill Hartman
Kevin Hehir
Maggie Helwig
Neil Hennessy
Bill Kennedy
Jani Krulc
Sandy Lam
Camille Martin
Colin Martin
danielle maveal
Lynn McClory
Jordan Nail
Katherine Parrish
Andrea Ryer
Jordan Scott
Natalie Simpson
Natalie Zina Walschots
Alana Wilcox
Rachel Zolf
rob mclennan
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Monday, May 08, 2006
Purdyesque, or dear Al
This year's conference, on the late poet Al Purdy, was extremely interesting for a poet that has been argued as "the most Canadian poet" (George Bowering), "the first great Canadian poet" (Dennis Lee), and "the last Canadian poet" (Sam Solecki), making him, as someone suggested, potentially making Purdy represent all of Canadian writing. David Bentley, one of the most perceptive critics in the room (although two centuries behind where I am, which must make me "strange and confusing" to him…) talked at the end about the notion of "greatness" for someone who was extremely uneven, wondering if perhaps another consideration could be offered about Purdy; one that doesn’t collapse under its own weight.
Part of what made the conference interesting was the fact that his widow, Eurithe Purdy was in the audience, graceful and demure through all of the papers. So much of the conference itself, since Purdy dead but a few years, felt very personal, even in the papers by those who had never encountered or met him. Pilgrimages to his infamous A frame house in Ameliasburgh have nearly become a Canadian staple; I remember when Toronto poet Paul Vermeersh did his a number of years ago, with other attempts by poets Andy Weaver and Gwendolyn Guth since. What is it about the poet, you might ask; what is it about the man? Some of the finest papers came from old friends and poets Doug Beardsley (who was one of the few who actually did the Purdy impression,despite the fact that Kingston writer and James Dean lookalike Steven Heighton has one of his own, which is quite legendary; ask him, too, when you see him next, about his impressions of bill bissett and John Metcalf...), talking about the weekly meetings he had with Purdy to collaborate on an editorial project, and George Bowering, who talked mostly about Tish and the alienation of west coast poetics (wonderfully put together as a letter to Al, along the lines of the ones they spent years back and forth writing their good natured arguments with each other about poetry), but in the end managed to say more perceptive things about the work and considerations of Al Purdy than most of the others (which shouldn’t have been surprising, since Bowering has not only been engaging with the work since the early 1960s, but wrote the first monograph on Purdy's work in 1970).
Since I enjoy the work of Purdy (his Poems for all the Annettes from the 1960s is still my favourite) but I'm not an enthusiast of more than a couple of the collections from the 60s and 70s (and I'm not an academic), what I took from the conference was more general; other presentations came from Solecki, Dean Irvine, Robert Stacy (from York University, who just got a job at U of O), Michael Hurley (who did a fantastic presentation on the "Ass-Over-Electric Kettle Crazy Wisdom of Al Purdy, Buddhist Mediator, Zen Fool & Sufi Mystic," David Bentley (suggesting that Purdy worked "not a poetics but a grammar…") and piles of others. Another highlight had to be Solecki (after I sang parts of the song "Volare" to him, replacing "Vo-la-re" with "So-le-cki," for him to sing it back to me), telling me that, thanks to her particular and repeated rhythms, all of the poems of Emily Dickinson can be sung to the tune of "The Theme from Gilligan's Island." He had easily made my day; Brockwell cringed, saying that it had ruined his (how is it those two things so often get paired?). Something that once heard, you cannot un-hear…
Here's a poem I cobbled together from lines and phrases heard during the run of the conference. It reminds me somewhat of the Andy Weaver quote I included in that review I did of his book, about calling himself a "cobbler of words," with the follow-up by Newlove, that "the arrangement is all." Those who were there might recognize a few things, but maybe not.
"I am no man because this is not a country"Over the weekend at the University of Ottawa was their annual conference, run through their English department, that prevented me from doing such things as email and sleep. With previous conferences on the works of Margaret Atwood, Canadian Modernists, Marshall McLuhan, Margaret Laurence and other topics (with an eventual book appearing from each, published by University of Ottawa Press), this year's conference, organized by the charmingly modest Gerald Lynch, was "Al Purdy: The Ivory Thought." Over the years, I've quite enjoyed the conferences I've been able to attend at the University, starting with the long poem symposium in 1996, which introduced me to the works of poets Dennis Cooley, David Arnason, Andrew Suknaski (topics) and Meira Cook, Andrew Stubbs and Karen Clavelle (presenters), as well as the book by critic Smaro Kamboureli (who was at the University of Ottawa for a whole other conference; Bowering introduced us, right after we discovered her in the pub late Saturday afternoon...), On the Edge of Genre, The Contemporary Canadian Long Poem (Toronto ON: University of Toronto Press, 1991). I remember a couple of the papers taking issue with parts of her book.
— Alfred Wellington Purdy
"The real show of power is restraint."
This year's conference, on the late poet Al Purdy, was extremely interesting for a poet that has been argued as "the most Canadian poet" (George Bowering), "the first great Canadian poet" (Dennis Lee), and "the last Canadian poet" (Sam Solecki), making him, as someone suggested, potentially making Purdy represent all of Canadian writing. David Bentley, one of the most perceptive critics in the room (although two centuries behind where I am, which must make me "strange and confusing" to him…) talked at the end about the notion of "greatness" for someone who was extremely uneven, wondering if perhaps another consideration could be offered about Purdy; one that doesn’t collapse under its own weight.
Part of what made the conference interesting was the fact that his widow, Eurithe Purdy was in the audience, graceful and demure through all of the papers. So much of the conference itself, since Purdy dead but a few years, felt very personal, even in the papers by those who had never encountered or met him. Pilgrimages to his infamous A frame house in Ameliasburgh have nearly become a Canadian staple; I remember when Toronto poet Paul Vermeersh did his a number of years ago, with other attempts by poets Andy Weaver and Gwendolyn Guth since. What is it about the poet, you might ask; what is it about the man? Some of the finest papers came from old friends and poets Doug Beardsley (who was one of the few who actually did the Purdy impression,despite the fact that Kingston writer and James Dean lookalike Steven Heighton has one of his own, which is quite legendary; ask him, too, when you see him next, about his impressions of bill bissett and John Metcalf...), talking about the weekly meetings he had with Purdy to collaborate on an editorial project, and George Bowering, who talked mostly about Tish and the alienation of west coast poetics (wonderfully put together as a letter to Al, along the lines of the ones they spent years back and forth writing their good natured arguments with each other about poetry), but in the end managed to say more perceptive things about the work and considerations of Al Purdy than most of the others (which shouldn’t have been surprising, since Bowering has not only been engaging with the work since the early 1960s, but wrote the first monograph on Purdy's work in 1970).
Since I enjoy the work of Purdy (his Poems for all the Annettes from the 1960s is still my favourite) but I'm not an enthusiast of more than a couple of the collections from the 60s and 70s (and I'm not an academic), what I took from the conference was more general; other presentations came from Solecki, Dean Irvine, Robert Stacy (from York University, who just got a job at U of O), Michael Hurley (who did a fantastic presentation on the "Ass-Over-Electric Kettle Crazy Wisdom of Al Purdy, Buddhist Mediator, Zen Fool & Sufi Mystic," David Bentley (suggesting that Purdy worked "not a poetics but a grammar…") and piles of others. Another highlight had to be Solecki (after I sang parts of the song "Volare" to him, replacing "Vo-la-re" with "So-le-cki," for him to sing it back to me), telling me that, thanks to her particular and repeated rhythms, all of the poems of Emily Dickinson can be sung to the tune of "The Theme from Gilligan's Island." He had easily made my day; Brockwell cringed, saying that it had ruined his (how is it those two things so often get paired?). Something that once heard, you cannot un-hear…
Here's a poem I cobbled together from lines and phrases heard during the run of the conference. It reminds me somewhat of the Andy Weaver quote I included in that review I did of his book, about calling himself a "cobbler of words," with the follow-up by Newlove, that "the arrangement is all." Those who were there might recognize a few things, but maybe not.
conference
false creek a print, a salty fishtail
of geo, a perfect count of lonely
or paint a child w/ toys
how darkness turned into dark velvet, light
a doorway of touch; who will offer
w/ the cupped hand, deep
whether or weather, the sleep of the almost
whatever gravity I have not discovered
an intimate, down to the pulled
like a testicle, ground; a burned house
if a ghoulish shirt a spirit posture
if he knows I; it is only your words
a landing voice, cool-bell & ivory
the potentially digress, yours
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Ongoing notes: early May, 2006
Did you know that the Carleton League of Supervillains stuff that ___ ________ did back in 1996 is all still on-line? & here are a bunch of links I've been finding lately: someone reviewed the STANZAS issue by Rachel Zolf that I published, moons back. Apparently someone wasn't a big fan of my collection stone, & here's someone who took parts of the Montreal book & read them out loud (can you say permissions, anyone?). Someone out there thinks a poem of mine is sexy (& i agree); a review of a publication I'm in; a poem I wrote a while back; a repeat of my Shift & Switch review. We all know who this Australian Rob McLennan is, but who the hell is this Rob McLennan (hint: neither of them are me)?
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my technical support, Jennifer Mulligan, including a counter on this blog of mine, with over 31,000 hits since we started keeping track; that just seems crazy. & congratulations to Vancouver poet & Nomados co-publisher/editor Meredith Quartermain, who won the Dorothy Livesay Prize (BC Book Awards) for her collection Vancouver Walking (Edmonton AB: NeWest Press, 2005); sometimes it is about the winning.
& did you know that above/ground press is seconds away from publishing its 500th item? & did you know I'm involved in that Purdy conference this weekend (on the late Canadian poet)? I've even made a publication for it: purdyesque, with poems by George Bowering, Stephen Brockwell, Gwendolyn Guth, Steven Heighton & myself, to go with the poetry reading in the middle of the conference. its free if yr part of the conference / otherwise $5.
Listening to Martha Wainwright all day. Doing work to avoid doing other work.
Montreal QC: Recently the editors of Vallum magazine (published by the "Vallum Society for Arts and Letters Education") started producing somewhat-elegant looking chapbooks out of their Montreal base, starting with a chapbook by New England based Fanny Howe, with her long poem Tramp (2005), and Eleni Zisimatos Auerbach's Ariana's Threads (2005). I've been a fan of Howe's work for some time, but find it rather strange that there wouldn't be someone closer to home that they would have been interested in publishing (see the Vehicule Press list of Montreal authors, complete with photographs). Paired with a chapbook by one of the two Vallum founders/editors Eleni Zisimatos Auerbach, the chapbook series apparently works to pair an established writer with an unknown, soliciting and publishing two poetry chapbooks at a time. Still, Auerbach has been publishing in journals and as chapbooks for a while now (it would have been nice to have a list of such in her bio, or some other information on what she's done previously; I know she self-published a couple of chapbooks a while ago, and then there was that STANZAS issue a while back…).
Built in seven sections of numbered fragments, Howe's Tramp continues the movement of her writing being part of a grander scheme of fragments embodying a larger whole made of pieces; as living and the world exist in parts that sometime connect and sometimes don't, so do Howe's poems, working through and through themselves in marvelous array.
i
Before the star bowl tips
And I can fall without fear
How will I support a bed,
A candle, the chilly sheets, the thoughts of a planet
Girdled by rust.
I've been twelve winters
In this auxiliary star-drome
Spaces dominated by ice.
Heat-resisting contacts, chilled to shrivel.
Like diamond mines spanked
On the bosoms of the idle
And the sparkle of sweat in the creases of the rest.
This is such an old story, listen.
The poor are hard-working
And the rich get more through talking.
Money has always
Been huge and out of sight like God
Who does not exist but is. (p 35, VI)
Howe is one of those few poets that reads as though everything she writes is an extension of all that has come before, as she is able to make not only connections to and through her own previous work, but in a way that extends her range instead of limiting it. "What is shorter than a step? / An indrawn breath." (p 28).
Seeing the chapbooks side by side, there seems very much a resonance that Auerbach's writing in Ariana's Threads has been informed by reading Howe's work; her pieces are fragments with a thread running through them far tighter than what she has previously done, but still along similar lines to her previous works.
Dahl has generated axioms & axial cables
he has planted flags on the moon
and trailed moving devices on the planet Mars
has accidentally set off reactors
agony, incense & the spoiled body
how to heal himself
the sewage all around,
islands then & now
different, accustomed to shearing sun
how casually dismembered, flies biting feet
how mesmerizing the tenor of death
but really only in anticipation,
not dead yet (p 14, "Horizon," pt. ii)
Moving through sections built out of fragments, such as "Lost, For Love," "Signals," "Horizon" and "Desire," the thread is the character Ariana herself, working through the poems as the poems work their own ways through her. I know that she has been working on a first trade collection for some time, and it will be interesting to see what she makes of the form, after years of producing her writing in smaller units.
Copies are available for $6 each and produced in a run of 150 coipes; they can be found through their website, writing Vallum, p.o. box 48003, Montreal Quebec H2V 4S8 or by emailing vallummag@sympatico.ca
Ottawa ON: Poet Charlie Greg Sark and I were supposed to meet up for a drink at Pubwells the other night; what happened? A poet I haven't met yet, he apparently moved here some time ago from parts east, along with his chapbook kitpu apteket (Charlottetown PEI: Saturday Morning Chapbooks, 2005), published by the now-defunct Saturday Morning Chapbook series (edited/published by Hugh MacDonald, David Helwig and the late Joseph Sherman, other poets published in the series included Zachariah Wells and Shauna McCabe). Writing about his background as Micmac, it sure would have been nice to find out more about him (the chapbooks never include biographical information, which I always find frustrating). Here's the first poem from the small chapbook:
Sourquois
jesus was born on the pow wow trail
he was brought up on Indian
tacos, soda pop and tobacco
his mother learned to dance,
before she could walk.
her father learned to sing,
before he could speak.
they fell in love
while an Indian man, in a cowboy hat
called the dancers forward.
he fell in love with a dancer,
she fell in love with a singer,
and
they fell in love with a song.
they had affairs with
white dreams, blue skies and
pink cadillacs.
while Indians danced like white people,
with celtic fiddle music and japanese sound box
and residential love carried off pre-teen ambition
to leave, for good.
before he was born, jesus followed the pow wow trail
all his life
his mother, her father―they still do.
but, now they sit in shade
on elders' row
while jesus emerges from the land
beneath the water, soars above the dancers,
their dreams
cleansing them with the shadow
of salt water people. (p 3)
Part of his poem reminds me of the recent show at the National Gallery of Canada by Norval Morrisseau, the first aboriginal Canadian to have a full show in the Gallery space; an artist who was able to bring in multiple and diverse aspects into his artwork, he even had a series of paintings of "Indian Jesus" and "Indian Virgin Mary," making the ideas and images his own. But what of Charlie Greg Sark? Will we ever hear from him again?
Chicago IL: One thing I got in the mail lately that I've been quite taken with is William Allegrezza's Ladders in July (Buffalo NY: BlazeVOX [books], 2005). Allegrezza seems to be one of those "go-to" guys down there in Chicago, where poetry is concerned (although another publication without biographical information; what is it with you people?).
treadles & looms
mammoth
i will take you to hotels covered in red
do no do it for me
jelly donuts are skin bags for snakes
teeth are casts for bridges
i come from a family of weavers
our valleys are barren
though life remains in microscopic flecks
despite the distance our trap was a loss
a cuerpo
ahì
floor
what about the floor
welcome to the tour
today we will explore washington's grounds
i offer this large women for wildlife (p 5)
There is something about the flow in Allegrezza's poems that I quite like, the way they simply move one step at a time down the page almost intuitively. Really, it’s the leaps between lines that impress; almost ghazal-like down the page, jumping from line to line to line in seeming disconnect.
a levertov
the ache of the arch of it
is propaganda intended to destroy
fireflies multiplying in summer heat
alongside stacked numbers for bricks
an ordered harmonic existence as plato assumed
yet he never met lao tze or the periodic table
a deed that no car window can right
with metals from cold country runs (p 59)
Victoria BC: Even though it's probably long out of print, I finally got a copy of Canadian poet and New York resident Sina Queyras' chapbook Still & Otherwise (Victoria BC: greenboathouse books, 2005). Originally, their plan was to keep themselves on track, and release two chapbooks side by side, delaying Shane Rhodes' tengo sed by a year (2004) (see my review of this in the first issue of ottawater), and Queyras' even further, with various bits of life, living and working getting up in the way. The good news is, editor/publisher/designer Jason Dewinetz does claim that he and co-editor Aaron Peck will soon be producing a new run of chapbooks in their award-winning series of limited edition chapbooks.
I'm not entirely sure if the pieces in this collection are included in her third trade collection, Lemonhound (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006), but they might easily be (a good review of such has already appeared here). There is something absolutely elegant and lovely about the prose of Sina Queyras, flowing on the page as easily and deliberately as water.
ON THIS WAY TO THE SWIMMING HOLE
She passes the watch repair shop with its grandfather clock
door. No one goes in or out but a dog barks. She wonders if
the repairman has ever heard of Dali. Buttercups wave and
bob. They are so yellow they shine a halo six inches around
each pinky-sized flower. They are so good she wants to eat
them, but they are singing, all along the roadside, and she
cannot eat anything that sings. (p 18)
There is something about the pieces in Still & Otherwise that seem far more sure of themselves than the pieces in her second trade collection, Teethmarks (Roberts Creek BC: Nightwood Editions, 2004), a follow-up to her most remarkable Slip (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2001). As much as I am enjoying this, what I'm really waiting on is her new collection from Coach House Books, simply knowing that these are all probably in there; but when will I know for sure?
Ottawa ON: It's been interesting, over the past year or two, to watch the poetry of Nicholas Lea (no, not the guy from X-Files…) and his pal Jesse Ferguson develop (both have pieces in the second issue of ottawater). Both are from Stormont County, eastern Ontario, ten years behind me, and current residents of the City of Ottawa (Ferguson from Cornwall and Lea from Norman Drive, a road just near Tayside off the 138 highway); both came through Seymour Mayne's creative writing workshop at the University of Ottawa during the 2004-5 school year. Both are working their sides of what they see as Don McKay's pastoral, with, as Lea puts it, bits of Barry McKinnon line breaths and breaks and surrealism. With a lot of potential between the two, here's a poem from Lea's first chapbook, light years, published recently by above/ground press:
night version love #
the aperture-open night might
serve by dint of
movement’s liaison, treasoning tonight
‘s folded over street moves, through
a sound, or a vehicular meld, down
some other east or east-western type
or trap, or mapped out trick, sick with a
feeble thought sought out sought out sought
out bar music, a “common” thru it. bought
beer and dance and the fevered dreamy sequence
of love’s new seed, planted like.
Did you know that the Carleton League of Supervillains stuff that ___ ________ did back in 1996 is all still on-line? & here are a bunch of links I've been finding lately: someone reviewed the STANZAS issue by Rachel Zolf that I published, moons back. Apparently someone wasn't a big fan of my collection stone, & here's someone who took parts of the Montreal book & read them out loud (can you say permissions, anyone?). Someone out there thinks a poem of mine is sexy (& i agree); a review of a publication I'm in; a poem I wrote a while back; a repeat of my Shift & Switch review. We all know who this Australian Rob McLennan is, but who the hell is this Rob McLennan (hint: neither of them are me)?
Tomorrow is the first anniversary of my technical support, Jennifer Mulligan, including a counter on this blog of mine, with over 31,000 hits since we started keeping track; that just seems crazy. & congratulations to Vancouver poet & Nomados co-publisher/editor Meredith Quartermain, who won the Dorothy Livesay Prize (BC Book Awards) for her collection Vancouver Walking (Edmonton AB: NeWest Press, 2005); sometimes it is about the winning.
& did you know that above/ground press is seconds away from publishing its 500th item? & did you know I'm involved in that Purdy conference this weekend (on the late Canadian poet)? I've even made a publication for it: purdyesque, with poems by George Bowering, Stephen Brockwell, Gwendolyn Guth, Steven Heighton & myself, to go with the poetry reading in the middle of the conference. its free if yr part of the conference / otherwise $5.
Listening to Martha Wainwright all day. Doing work to avoid doing other work.
Montreal QC: Recently the editors of Vallum magazine (published by the "Vallum Society for Arts and Letters Education") started producing somewhat-elegant looking chapbooks out of their Montreal base, starting with a chapbook by New England based Fanny Howe, with her long poem Tramp (2005), and Eleni Zisimatos Auerbach's Ariana's Threads (2005). I've been a fan of Howe's work for some time, but find it rather strange that there wouldn't be someone closer to home that they would have been interested in publishing (see the Vehicule Press list of Montreal authors, complete with photographs). Paired with a chapbook by one of the two Vallum founders/editors Eleni Zisimatos Auerbach, the chapbook series apparently works to pair an established writer with an unknown, soliciting and publishing two poetry chapbooks at a time. Still, Auerbach has been publishing in journals and as chapbooks for a while now (it would have been nice to have a list of such in her bio, or some other information on what she's done previously; I know she self-published a couple of chapbooks a while ago, and then there was that STANZAS issue a while back…).
Built in seven sections of numbered fragments, Howe's Tramp continues the movement of her writing being part of a grander scheme of fragments embodying a larger whole made of pieces; as living and the world exist in parts that sometime connect and sometimes don't, so do Howe's poems, working through and through themselves in marvelous array.
i
Before the star bowl tips
And I can fall without fear
How will I support a bed,
A candle, the chilly sheets, the thoughts of a planet
Girdled by rust.
I've been twelve winters
In this auxiliary star-drome
Spaces dominated by ice.
Heat-resisting contacts, chilled to shrivel.
Like diamond mines spanked
On the bosoms of the idle
And the sparkle of sweat in the creases of the rest.
This is such an old story, listen.
The poor are hard-working
And the rich get more through talking.
Money has always
Been huge and out of sight like God
Who does not exist but is. (p 35, VI)
Howe is one of those few poets that reads as though everything she writes is an extension of all that has come before, as she is able to make not only connections to and through her own previous work, but in a way that extends her range instead of limiting it. "What is shorter than a step? / An indrawn breath." (p 28).
Seeing the chapbooks side by side, there seems very much a resonance that Auerbach's writing in Ariana's Threads has been informed by reading Howe's work; her pieces are fragments with a thread running through them far tighter than what she has previously done, but still along similar lines to her previous works.
Dahl has generated axioms & axial cables
he has planted flags on the moon
and trailed moving devices on the planet Mars
has accidentally set off reactors
agony, incense & the spoiled body
how to heal himself
the sewage all around,
islands then & now
different, accustomed to shearing sun
how casually dismembered, flies biting feet
how mesmerizing the tenor of death
but really only in anticipation,
not dead yet (p 14, "Horizon," pt. ii)
Moving through sections built out of fragments, such as "Lost, For Love," "Signals," "Horizon" and "Desire," the thread is the character Ariana herself, working through the poems as the poems work their own ways through her. I know that she has been working on a first trade collection for some time, and it will be interesting to see what she makes of the form, after years of producing her writing in smaller units.
Copies are available for $6 each and produced in a run of 150 coipes; they can be found through their website, writing Vallum, p.o. box 48003, Montreal Quebec H2V 4S8 or by emailing vallummag@sympatico.ca
Ottawa ON: Poet Charlie Greg Sark and I were supposed to meet up for a drink at Pubwells the other night; what happened? A poet I haven't met yet, he apparently moved here some time ago from parts east, along with his chapbook kitpu apteket (Charlottetown PEI: Saturday Morning Chapbooks, 2005), published by the now-defunct Saturday Morning Chapbook series (edited/published by Hugh MacDonald, David Helwig and the late Joseph Sherman, other poets published in the series included Zachariah Wells and Shauna McCabe). Writing about his background as Micmac, it sure would have been nice to find out more about him (the chapbooks never include biographical information, which I always find frustrating). Here's the first poem from the small chapbook:
Sourquois
jesus was born on the pow wow trail
he was brought up on Indian
tacos, soda pop and tobacco
his mother learned to dance,
before she could walk.
her father learned to sing,
before he could speak.
they fell in love
while an Indian man, in a cowboy hat
called the dancers forward.
he fell in love with a dancer,
she fell in love with a singer,
and
they fell in love with a song.
they had affairs with
white dreams, blue skies and
pink cadillacs.
while Indians danced like white people,
with celtic fiddle music and japanese sound box
and residential love carried off pre-teen ambition
to leave, for good.
before he was born, jesus followed the pow wow trail
all his life
his mother, her father―they still do.
but, now they sit in shade
on elders' row
while jesus emerges from the land
beneath the water, soars above the dancers,
their dreams
cleansing them with the shadow
of salt water people. (p 3)
Part of his poem reminds me of the recent show at the National Gallery of Canada by Norval Morrisseau, the first aboriginal Canadian to have a full show in the Gallery space; an artist who was able to bring in multiple and diverse aspects into his artwork, he even had a series of paintings of "Indian Jesus" and "Indian Virgin Mary," making the ideas and images his own. But what of Charlie Greg Sark? Will we ever hear from him again?
Chicago IL: One thing I got in the mail lately that I've been quite taken with is William Allegrezza's Ladders in July (Buffalo NY: BlazeVOX [books], 2005). Allegrezza seems to be one of those "go-to" guys down there in Chicago, where poetry is concerned (although another publication without biographical information; what is it with you people?).
treadles & looms
mammoth
i will take you to hotels covered in red
do no do it for me
jelly donuts are skin bags for snakes
teeth are casts for bridges
i come from a family of weavers
our valleys are barren
though life remains in microscopic flecks
despite the distance our trap was a loss
a cuerpo
ahì
floor
what about the floor
welcome to the tour
today we will explore washington's grounds
i offer this large women for wildlife (p 5)
There is something about the flow in Allegrezza's poems that I quite like, the way they simply move one step at a time down the page almost intuitively. Really, it’s the leaps between lines that impress; almost ghazal-like down the page, jumping from line to line to line in seeming disconnect.
a levertov
the ache of the arch of it
is propaganda intended to destroy
fireflies multiplying in summer heat
alongside stacked numbers for bricks
an ordered harmonic existence as plato assumed
yet he never met lao tze or the periodic table
a deed that no car window can right
with metals from cold country runs (p 59)
Victoria BC: Even though it's probably long out of print, I finally got a copy of Canadian poet and New York resident Sina Queyras' chapbook Still & Otherwise (Victoria BC: greenboathouse books, 2005). Originally, their plan was to keep themselves on track, and release two chapbooks side by side, delaying Shane Rhodes' tengo sed by a year (2004) (see my review of this in the first issue of ottawater), and Queyras' even further, with various bits of life, living and working getting up in the way. The good news is, editor/publisher/designer Jason Dewinetz does claim that he and co-editor Aaron Peck will soon be producing a new run of chapbooks in their award-winning series of limited edition chapbooks.
I'm not entirely sure if the pieces in this collection are included in her third trade collection, Lemonhound (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006), but they might easily be (a good review of such has already appeared here). There is something absolutely elegant and lovely about the prose of Sina Queyras, flowing on the page as easily and deliberately as water.
ON THIS WAY TO THE SWIMMING HOLE
She passes the watch repair shop with its grandfather clock
door. No one goes in or out but a dog barks. She wonders if
the repairman has ever heard of Dali. Buttercups wave and
bob. They are so yellow they shine a halo six inches around
each pinky-sized flower. They are so good she wants to eat
them, but they are singing, all along the roadside, and she
cannot eat anything that sings. (p 18)
There is something about the pieces in Still & Otherwise that seem far more sure of themselves than the pieces in her second trade collection, Teethmarks (Roberts Creek BC: Nightwood Editions, 2004), a follow-up to her most remarkable Slip (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2001). As much as I am enjoying this, what I'm really waiting on is her new collection from Coach House Books, simply knowing that these are all probably in there; but when will I know for sure?
Ottawa ON: It's been interesting, over the past year or two, to watch the poetry of Nicholas Lea (no, not the guy from X-Files…) and his pal Jesse Ferguson develop (both have pieces in the second issue of ottawater). Both are from Stormont County, eastern Ontario, ten years behind me, and current residents of the City of Ottawa (Ferguson from Cornwall and Lea from Norman Drive, a road just near Tayside off the 138 highway); both came through Seymour Mayne's creative writing workshop at the University of Ottawa during the 2004-5 school year. Both are working their sides of what they see as Don McKay's pastoral, with, as Lea puts it, bits of Barry McKinnon line breaths and breaks and surrealism. With a lot of potential between the two, here's a poem from Lea's first chapbook, light years, published recently by above/ground press:
night version love #
the aperture-open night might
serve by dint of
movement’s liaison, treasoning tonight
‘s folded over street moves, through
a sound, or a vehicular meld, down
some other east or east-western type
or trap, or mapped out trick, sick with a
feeble thought sought out sought out sought
out bar music, a “common” thru it. bought
beer and dance and the fevered dreamy sequence
of love’s new seed, planted like.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
lives of the saints
Taken from the essay "Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil Tell God" from her collection Decreation (New York NY: Knopf, 2005), this deceptively simple line is part of a longer quote from Carson that reads:
Spending more time on the quote in full (and the essay as well, which I would highly recommend), other considerations that come to mind come from poet-bloggers including the expat Canadian (in New York) Sina Queyras and American Jessica Smith, who have both made references to the comparative lack of literary activity by women, whether as poetry, critical or small press publishing. Ottawa poet, Bywords co-editor/publisher and reviewer Amanda Earl, on the other hand, has recently started a project of interviewing Ottawa-area women poets to rectify such a matter. What is it about the volume of work by women against the volume of work by men? Taken as such, it seems unbalanced; as an editor and publisher, I've noticed for years that the percentages are off. But at the same time, the writing I get in the mail by women is usually far more polished, and more often, worth waiting for, unlike the uneven confidence of writing by men. Is there a difference?
[…] saintliness is an eruption of the absolute into ordinary history […]This line struck me immediately after I read it, and I wrote it down in my notebook various times, in various places, in the three weeks that followed, sending me in a series of directions. First off, what about the late great Toronto poet bpNichol and his long poem The Martyrology? Said by some to be the great Canadian long poem of the second half of the twentieth century, the ongoing piece also is but a small part of what Nichol's lifelong work was all about; somehow much of the attention, critically and otherwise, gets focused on the six volume longpoem, even in the years & years after his accidental death in 1988, at the young age of forty-four.
― Anne Carson, Decreation
Taken from the essay "Decreation: How Women Like Sappho, Marguerite Porete and Simone Weil Tell God" from her collection Decreation (New York NY: Knopf, 2005), this deceptively simple line is part of a longer quote from Carson that reads:
Society is all too eager to pass judgments on the authenticity of women's ways
of being but these judgments can get crazy. As a case in point, the book for
which Marguerite Porete was burned in 1310 was secretly preserved and copied
after her death by clerics who transmitted the text as an anonymous devotional
work of Christian mysticism, until 1946 when an Italian scholar reconnected the
Mirror with the name of its author. At the same time, it is hard to commend
moral extremism of the kind that took Simone Weil to death at the age of
thirty-four; saintliness is an eruption of the absolute into ordinary history
and we resent that. We need history to remain ordinary. We need to be able to
call saints neurotic, anorectic, pathological, sexually repressed or fake. These
judgments sanctify our own survival. By the same token, Sappho's ancient
biographers tried to discredit her seriousness by assuring us she lived a life
of unrestrained and incoherent sexual indulgence, for she invented lesbianism
and then died by jumping off a cliff for love of a young man. (p 180)
Spending more time on the quote in full (and the essay as well, which I would highly recommend), other considerations that come to mind come from poet-bloggers including the expat Canadian (in New York) Sina Queyras and American Jessica Smith, who have both made references to the comparative lack of literary activity by women, whether as poetry, critical or small press publishing. Ottawa poet, Bywords co-editor/publisher and reviewer Amanda Earl, on the other hand, has recently started a project of interviewing Ottawa-area women poets to rectify such a matter. What is it about the volume of work by women against the volume of work by men? Taken as such, it seems unbalanced; as an editor and publisher, I've noticed for years that the percentages are off. But at the same time, the writing I get in the mail by women is usually far more polished, and more often, worth waiting for, unlike the uneven confidence of writing by men. Is there a difference?
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
peanut butter & jellyfish
(for diana hartog
(for diana hartog
That's why I thought, music. Sharps and flats on paper, but in the air, floating, what harm?
— Diana Hartog, Ink Monkey
apart from the suggestion
of what should or shouldnt
a mountainside compels
adhesive, a clarity freshens song
radio waves a breath through water, air
at the long sault, drowned trees would waterlog,
free the roots, to send them shooting
straight up (buoyant) missiles
through boats, ste lawrence seaway
for those who cant sleep at night
or tween cartoons, commercials, the butterknife
so busy in the field
supposedly love, scaffolding & mason
just standing there; a prop
of floating still
would be home often be
peanut butter mark & jelly
on the surface of her belly
or on the surface looks so calm
Monday, April 24, 2006
festival notes, day last (or, so begins the long festival hangover)
A fantastic end to another spectacular festival; I wish I had the energy and notes to write about everything that happened (and perhaps, shouldn’t have happened) over the week, but there are only so many hours in the day. As it is, I spent nearly an hour cleaning up (as Max Middle looked on), and left the hospitality suite just after 4am to jump into a cab (I still have to return to the outside of the hotel to collect my rainy bicycle), to collapse home under the weight of a week's worth of bags and books, exhaustion and papery bits.
Yesterday at noon, Paul William Roberts talked for two hours about the ideas and background in his book Journey of the Magi: In Search of the Birth of Jesus (Raincoast Books), the new and expanded edition of which came out last year. A close reading of the Bible (and other books surrounding) in the original Greek (and various translations since), the book came out of reading a copy of Marco Polo's Travels, and worked out from that point into just about everything else, including the early days of Christianity, fire-worshipping Zoroastrian priests, how no one considers Jesus a historical figure, but they do his brother James, and the complicated politics of the area over the past two thousand years. Roberts (we were dressed frighteningly alike through the day; I felt like the 2nd girl at the prom with the same dress…) is easily the most interesting human I have ever met; the sheer amount and breadth of detail of information he carries around in his head is almost terrifying. So much of his talk centred around the fact that so much Bible information we carry around with us culturally has very little to do with the actual text, and are merely add-ons by later writers and considerations, or are amalgams of various stories shoved into a single for convenience. My favourite example of the lack of reading was the fact that one of the apostles told the story of the arrival of Jesus mentioning Mary's first-born as virgin birth beside the fact that Jesus had the bloodline of King David through his father, Joseph (wait a minute; aren’t those conflicting ideas?). Another was that the original text of the King Solomon "the wise" story gives the baby not to the mother you would think (how did that story get shifted around?); it's almost as though the powers that be would really prefer that Christians don’t read the Bible at all, especially not in the original form (Greek, actually, not Latin). Spectacular.
The second last event included three fiction writers with first novels, lovingly hosted by our own Elizabeth Hay (one of the sweetest human beings alive), with young authors Alayna Munce (When I Was Young & In My Prime), Alison Pick (The Sweet Edge) and Leah McLaren (The Continuity Girl). McLaren's novel, what someone else called "chick-lit," wasn't really my thing, but her reading was entertaining enough (she fumbled a bit at the beginning). For me, it was the other two that really caught my attention; Pick's novel had that edge, and perhaps it was the fact that the two were poets who moved into fiction, making more of the language than the plot-driven fact of the McLaren book (though what do I know; the McLaren will probably outsell the other two put together, right?). Still, it was Munce's novel that I really loved and couldn’t get enough of, written in fragments, where the language itself is the thing that moves you through. Heart-wrenching and break, broken as we watch the narrator witness her grandparents decline. I simply couldn’t tell her enough times how much I enjoyed her reading.
The night before last, Irish poet Paul Muldoon gave a lecture on the Beckett novel Watt called "Watt Now" (previously called "Watt Ho," when he read it a few weeks earlier in Dublin), going ninety minutes of information and wordplay through the most wonderful assault of every form of the senses (Watts in a name?). The "Muldooniest" of anyone I have ever met (a new word I invented for his benefit; he now personifies the very word for me, although he argued that I was perhaps coming up as a close second), Paul was utterly charming. The last event of the festival included Muldoon giving a poetry reading with Toronto author George Elliott Clarke and poet A.J. Levin, lovingly hosted by our very own Stephen Brockwell. Until the festival, I had been aware of Muldoon in name only, and Stephen was nice enough to give me a copy of Muldoon's Moy Sand and Gravel (New York NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). He read a mix of published and unpublished pieces, including one he wrote on the native Ottawans, and their battle with Pontiac. The third of three readers, the event opened with A.J. Levin, who came to us from his new home in Winnipeg (he and partner K.I. Press are formerly of Toronto); he also read from a selection of new poems, which I found made a considerable leap forward from the pieces in his first collection, Monks' Fruit (Roberts Creek BC: Nightwood Editions, 2004).
Of course, who can talk of any part of last night without mentioning George Elliott Clarke, who arrived last minute (thanks to shifting plane schedules) with his usual warm, wonderful and enthusiastic energy to read parts of his new poetry collection Black (Polestar Press). (I had a copy of the collection when I got there, but unfortunately, someone managed to lift it from the stack of books I had at the back of the room; now I have to go out and purchase the damn thing so I can review it…). A former Ottawa boy, it is always a joy to have him in town, and he remains one of my favourite readers of all time; he even had his seven year old daughter with him, who recently was named the official poet of her grade two class (unutterably charming; something George proudly announced from the podium). His new book, from what I can recall, is something I would recommend highly. George has been a busy boy lately, what with his poetry collection Illuminated Verses (Toronto ON: Kellom Books, 2005) out a few months ago, and the novel George and Rue (HarperCollins, 2005) out last year. Check out the first issue of ottawater to see some of the poems that made it into his Black (a follow up to Blue). (check out Amanda Earl's version of same here)
And then there was the most stunningly beautiful blonde woman... (that I won't say anything else about here).
If anyone can even stomach the idea of more readings, Brick Book authors Jan Conn (Jaguar Rain: the Margaret Mee Poems) and Diana Hartog (Ink Monkey) read at the TREE Reading Series on Tuesday from their new poetry collections (8pm, Royal Oak II, open set + featured reader, free); another event, on Wednesday night, various BookThug authors arrive from Toronto to converge on Richard Fitzpatrick Books (including Gregory Betts, Daniel f. Bradley, Rob Read, Gustave Morin and Jay MillAr himself as they "read and/or launch"...) at 8pm, in his new space at 1098 Somerset Street West, just where it is about to turn into Wellington (map here). Otherwise, check out regular Ottawa-area literary events, calls for submissions, new publications etcetera at Bywords.
Otherwise, tonight I will sleep the sleep of the almost (very close to the "just"); and not put a drop of the drink anywhere near. Tomorrow, perhaps then, back to work.
A fantastic end to another spectacular festival; I wish I had the energy and notes to write about everything that happened (and perhaps, shouldn’t have happened) over the week, but there are only so many hours in the day. As it is, I spent nearly an hour cleaning up (as Max Middle looked on), and left the hospitality suite just after 4am to jump into a cab (I still have to return to the outside of the hotel to collect my rainy bicycle), to collapse home under the weight of a week's worth of bags and books, exhaustion and papery bits.
Yesterday at noon, Paul William Roberts talked for two hours about the ideas and background in his book Journey of the Magi: In Search of the Birth of Jesus (Raincoast Books), the new and expanded edition of which came out last year. A close reading of the Bible (and other books surrounding) in the original Greek (and various translations since), the book came out of reading a copy of Marco Polo's Travels, and worked out from that point into just about everything else, including the early days of Christianity, fire-worshipping Zoroastrian priests, how no one considers Jesus a historical figure, but they do his brother James, and the complicated politics of the area over the past two thousand years. Roberts (we were dressed frighteningly alike through the day; I felt like the 2nd girl at the prom with the same dress…) is easily the most interesting human I have ever met; the sheer amount and breadth of detail of information he carries around in his head is almost terrifying. So much of his talk centred around the fact that so much Bible information we carry around with us culturally has very little to do with the actual text, and are merely add-ons by later writers and considerations, or are amalgams of various stories shoved into a single for convenience. My favourite example of the lack of reading was the fact that one of the apostles told the story of the arrival of Jesus mentioning Mary's first-born as virgin birth beside the fact that Jesus had the bloodline of King David through his father, Joseph (wait a minute; aren’t those conflicting ideas?). Another was that the original text of the King Solomon "the wise" story gives the baby not to the mother you would think (how did that story get shifted around?); it's almost as though the powers that be would really prefer that Christians don’t read the Bible at all, especially not in the original form (Greek, actually, not Latin). Spectacular.
The second last event included three fiction writers with first novels, lovingly hosted by our own Elizabeth Hay (one of the sweetest human beings alive), with young authors Alayna Munce (When I Was Young & In My Prime), Alison Pick (The Sweet Edge) and Leah McLaren (The Continuity Girl). McLaren's novel, what someone else called "chick-lit," wasn't really my thing, but her reading was entertaining enough (she fumbled a bit at the beginning). For me, it was the other two that really caught my attention; Pick's novel had that edge, and perhaps it was the fact that the two were poets who moved into fiction, making more of the language than the plot-driven fact of the McLaren book (though what do I know; the McLaren will probably outsell the other two put together, right?). Still, it was Munce's novel that I really loved and couldn’t get enough of, written in fragments, where the language itself is the thing that moves you through. Heart-wrenching and break, broken as we watch the narrator witness her grandparents decline. I simply couldn’t tell her enough times how much I enjoyed her reading.
The night before last, Irish poet Paul Muldoon gave a lecture on the Beckett novel Watt called "Watt Now" (previously called "Watt Ho," when he read it a few weeks earlier in Dublin), going ninety minutes of information and wordplay through the most wonderful assault of every form of the senses (Watts in a name?). The "Muldooniest" of anyone I have ever met (a new word I invented for his benefit; he now personifies the very word for me, although he argued that I was perhaps coming up as a close second), Paul was utterly charming. The last event of the festival included Muldoon giving a poetry reading with Toronto author George Elliott Clarke and poet A.J. Levin, lovingly hosted by our very own Stephen Brockwell. Until the festival, I had been aware of Muldoon in name only, and Stephen was nice enough to give me a copy of Muldoon's Moy Sand and Gravel (New York NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). He read a mix of published and unpublished pieces, including one he wrote on the native Ottawans, and their battle with Pontiac. The third of three readers, the event opened with A.J. Levin, who came to us from his new home in Winnipeg (he and partner K.I. Press are formerly of Toronto); he also read from a selection of new poems, which I found made a considerable leap forward from the pieces in his first collection, Monks' Fruit (Roberts Creek BC: Nightwood Editions, 2004).
Of course, who can talk of any part of last night without mentioning George Elliott Clarke, who arrived last minute (thanks to shifting plane schedules) with his usual warm, wonderful and enthusiastic energy to read parts of his new poetry collection Black (Polestar Press). (I had a copy of the collection when I got there, but unfortunately, someone managed to lift it from the stack of books I had at the back of the room; now I have to go out and purchase the damn thing so I can review it…). A former Ottawa boy, it is always a joy to have him in town, and he remains one of my favourite readers of all time; he even had his seven year old daughter with him, who recently was named the official poet of her grade two class (unutterably charming; something George proudly announced from the podium). His new book, from what I can recall, is something I would recommend highly. George has been a busy boy lately, what with his poetry collection Illuminated Verses (Toronto ON: Kellom Books, 2005) out a few months ago, and the novel George and Rue (HarperCollins, 2005) out last year. Check out the first issue of ottawater to see some of the poems that made it into his Black (a follow up to Blue). (check out Amanda Earl's version of same here)
And then there was the most stunningly beautiful blonde woman... (that I won't say anything else about here).
If anyone can even stomach the idea of more readings, Brick Book authors Jan Conn (Jaguar Rain: the Margaret Mee Poems) and Diana Hartog (Ink Monkey) read at the TREE Reading Series on Tuesday from their new poetry collections (8pm, Royal Oak II, open set + featured reader, free); another event, on Wednesday night, various BookThug authors arrive from Toronto to converge on Richard Fitzpatrick Books (including Gregory Betts, Daniel f. Bradley, Rob Read, Gustave Morin and Jay MillAr himself as they "read and/or launch"...) at 8pm, in his new space at 1098 Somerset Street West, just where it is about to turn into Wellington (map here). Otherwise, check out regular Ottawa-area literary events, calls for submissions, new publications etcetera at Bywords.
Otherwise, tonight I will sleep the sleep of the almost (very close to the "just"); and not put a drop of the drink anywhere near. Tomorrow, perhaps then, back to work.
Sunday, April 23, 2006
Elizabeth Bachinsky's Home of Sudden Service
Another young Canadian poet with a second collection is Vancouver resident Elizabeth Bachinsky, with her Home of Sudden Service (Roberts Creek BC: Nightwood Editions, 2006), after her Curio: Grotesques and Satires from the Electronic Age (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2005). More straightforward than her previous collection, the poems in Home of Sudden Service give voice and breath to growing up in the wilds that exist from the suburbs to almost rural, in small town writing of teenage hijinks, failures, successes and those furtive dreams of eternal escape. In poems that exist between childhood and adulthood, between dream and goal, Bachinsky writes of the delinquent teens who will one day become respectable old men, working the same job their whole lives, but still living in that place where everything is still potential, and nothing is actual; each poem existing in that underlying bubbling of sensuality and sexuality, bursting to get through.
Another young Canadian poet with a second collection is Vancouver resident Elizabeth Bachinsky, with her Home of Sudden Service (Roberts Creek BC: Nightwood Editions, 2006), after her Curio: Grotesques and Satires from the Electronic Age (Toronto ON: BookThug, 2005). More straightforward than her previous collection, the poems in Home of Sudden Service give voice and breath to growing up in the wilds that exist from the suburbs to almost rural, in small town writing of teenage hijinks, failures, successes and those furtive dreams of eternal escape. In poems that exist between childhood and adulthood, between dream and goal, Bachinsky writes of the delinquent teens who will one day become respectable old men, working the same job their whole lives, but still living in that place where everything is still potential, and nothing is actual; each poem existing in that underlying bubbling of sensuality and sexuality, bursting to get through.
HOW TO BAG YOUR SMALL-TOWN GIRLConsidering the shift between the two collections, working from the stretches and flows of her first collection, to poems that look more like poems in this one, it will be interesting to see where her third collection will potentially go; it makes me wonder, almost, if the poems in this collection were actually composed before the poems in the first collection, as there is more of a confidence and maturity that exist within her lines that, although not necessarily lacking in Home of Sudden Service, but certainly don't exist in the same way.
Those small-town girls they like to marry early
you know. Can't wait to settle down, have
a kid or two. What they wouldn't give
for a solid man, one who's ready
to rein it in—that rampant prick—and stick
close to home, a good father, provider
and lover, a tall drink of water
who's cool when the pickup's bust,
stick shift stuck in second gear or the condom's broke
again. But there's no such thing as too much man
to handle. Those girls, they like them
rough around the edges, tough boys who'll never balk
at next month's rent with heart enough to love
a woman right, again and again and again. (p 23)
AT FIFTEENThe most interesting writing here has to be the fifteen-part piece "Drive" that ends the collection. There is something about Bachinsky's long thought, stretched and continued that achieves something more in her writing than in the smaller, more individual poems earlier in the book.
after Irving Layton
Their chests like planks, bellies
like planks,
I want to undress boys
as a carpenter undresses
a block of pine.
Their clothes, shed like shavings,
smell of aftershave, of pine.
I want them naked, contrapposto,
still as posts. They are so polished
beneath their shirts and jeans.
They are so lean, penises
rearing, eager, impatient as ponies.
Young men: all edges, jut of hip, whip of spine.
What temperamental instruments they are,
what clichéd agonies they moan,
my mouth on them now
and then gone. (p 50)
4[Elizabeth Bachinsky reads in Ottawa at the TREE Reading Series on Tuesday, May 23rd: find out other tour information for her here]
This prairie, mostly empty, mostly flat,
affords no respite from the desert heat.
My sister, who can sleep
through anything, will not drift off. She's hot,
goddammitall. She grabs a two-litre
bottle of water, chugs it down as fields
of corn and wheat shimmer past. She unfolds
the map to check out where we are:
seems like nowhere. We sing out Stompin' Tom:
"Roll on, roll on, Saskatchewan" and play at trivia
to stave off boredom. "Did you know," Chris says,
"Saskatchewan has no daylight savings?"
and I'm not surprised. What's there to save?
It doesn't care for us. It merely stays. (p 64)
Saturday, April 22, 2006
festival notes, day five (or, night of a million billion ninjas)
I hosted the second poetry cabaret last night at the ottawa international writers festival with my usual grace, wit and charm to a crowd of roughly seventy people (twenty more than the estimate from Monday night's cabaret) who were treated to lively and vigorously performative readings by Prince Albert, Saskatchewan writer John McDonald, Toronto poet and editor angela rawlings and Hamilton, Ontario writer Gary Barwin. Through pre-reading conversation I discovered that Barwin attended Sir Robert Borden High School in Ottawa's west end, the same high school attended by actress Sandra Oh, and where my own lovely daughter currently attends grade nine; does this mean potential big things for my Kate? (I say: yes!)
I didn't know anything about John McDonald before last night's event, a Cree writer with his first poetry collection published by Kegedonce Press; a sixth generation descendant of Chief Mistawasis of the Plains Cree, you have to admire anyone who, in July 2000, sent out media releases about his "discovering" and then "claiming" England for the first people of the Americas. Three authors who share the performative aspects of their work, as much as they exist on the page, angela rawlings rounded out the evening with a magnificent performance of her Wide Slumber of Lepidopterists (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006) (see my review of the collection here, if you haven't already) with the whole of her body; currently on tour, she left today for Montreal for another Coach House launch there. (see a review of the same show by Amanda Earl; rawlings' own blog account here; other members of the audience included Monty Reid, Allison Pick, Jennifer Mulligan, John MacDonald (with his version of events), etcetera.
Sometimes the best readings of the festival are the ones not seen by the audience (including a reading a few years ago that David W. McFadden did around midnight a few years ago in the hospitality suite to an audience of seven, reading the entirety of his 1971 collection The Ovi Yogas); Ottawa writer/publisher/bibliographer jwcurry performed a few pieces in the hospitality suite just around midnight last night (with vocal help from Max Middle), including the two-voice Opium Marble (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 1999), a fraction of bpNichol's The Martyrology Book(s) 7& (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1990) and Mike Patton's "Ma Meeshka Mow Squoz," some of which were also performed at his Messagio Galore last year.
The night before all of this, as part of the Beckett centenary, was the inaugural performance of Ottawa's own Deasil & Widdershins (John Lavery, Max Middle and Carmel Purkis), presenting a series of readings based on the short fiction of Samuel Beckett. An extremely lively event (including three pieces that Purkis arranged for three voices; easily my favourite parts of the reading), Lavery is one of the finest readers of fiction I've heard in a very long time; Lavery manages to put in exactly the right kinds of emphasis and expression, and one easily gets the impression that, depending on how he wanted to present a text, he could completely alter the meaning of any writing simply by shifting his performance. The mad (fiction) genius of the Ottawa area, the only comparison I could make to his reading style generally would be to Leon Rooke (who once included a record of a reading with one of his books of fiction), with Lavery's energy tighter, and more reigned in. In Lavery's hands, words and phrases written by almost anyone can turn into dangerous projectiles.
Middle and Lavery are used to working more of the surreal and nonsensical in their own work, so it was interesting to hear their take on Beckett, whether through selection or performance; the big surprise of the evening to many of us who had been around for years, was the performance by bookstore staff (and one of the three publishers of the slowly-building Ottawa literary publishing company Chaudiere Books) Carmel Purkis. Fluid and almost dangerous, Purkis could easily do documentary voice-overs, but with a twist (madness, perhaps?) that beautifully infected everything she read. And what to say of Max Middle? He simply gets better and better ever time I hear him perform; hopefully this will not be the only performance by such a stellar group (also, if anyone is interested, Middle reads solo on Sunday as part of Sasquatch; 2pm, Royal Oak II on Laurier; open set + featured reader; free).
And let's not forget the conversation I had with Paul William Roberts in the hospitality suite (after everyone else had left) around 3:3o am; somehow all of his stories involve him being in court, or what countries he's no longer allowed to enter. If you ever have a chance to hear, see or read him, I would highly recommend it; he is dangerously informed and wonderfully entertaining at the same time (the last time he was here, he and I watched the vice-presidential debate together; he had lots to say about that...). No wonder the Americans won't let him near the border). His talk, "The Impossible Logic of War," happened yesterday, but you can still catch him again on Sunday at his "Journey of the Magi: In search of the birth of Jesus."
Yes, 3:30 am; will I ever be able to sleep properly again?
I hosted the second poetry cabaret last night at the ottawa international writers festival with my usual grace, wit and charm to a crowd of roughly seventy people (twenty more than the estimate from Monday night's cabaret) who were treated to lively and vigorously performative readings by Prince Albert, Saskatchewan writer John McDonald, Toronto poet and editor angela rawlings and Hamilton, Ontario writer Gary Barwin. Through pre-reading conversation I discovered that Barwin attended Sir Robert Borden High School in Ottawa's west end, the same high school attended by actress Sandra Oh, and where my own lovely daughter currently attends grade nine; does this mean potential big things for my Kate? (I say: yes!)
I didn't know anything about John McDonald before last night's event, a Cree writer with his first poetry collection published by Kegedonce Press; a sixth generation descendant of Chief Mistawasis of the Plains Cree, you have to admire anyone who, in July 2000, sent out media releases about his "discovering" and then "claiming" England for the first people of the Americas. Three authors who share the performative aspects of their work, as much as they exist on the page, angela rawlings rounded out the evening with a magnificent performance of her Wide Slumber of Lepidopterists (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006) (see my review of the collection here, if you haven't already) with the whole of her body; currently on tour, she left today for Montreal for another Coach House launch there. (see a review of the same show by Amanda Earl; rawlings' own blog account here; other members of the audience included Monty Reid, Allison Pick, Jennifer Mulligan, John MacDonald (with his version of events), etcetera.
Sometimes the best readings of the festival are the ones not seen by the audience (including a reading a few years ago that David W. McFadden did around midnight a few years ago in the hospitality suite to an audience of seven, reading the entirety of his 1971 collection The Ovi Yogas); Ottawa writer/publisher/bibliographer jwcurry performed a few pieces in the hospitality suite just around midnight last night (with vocal help from Max Middle), including the two-voice Opium Marble (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 1999), a fraction of bpNichol's The Martyrology Book(s) 7& (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1990) and Mike Patton's "Ma Meeshka Mow Squoz," some of which were also performed at his Messagio Galore last year.
The night before all of this, as part of the Beckett centenary, was the inaugural performance of Ottawa's own Deasil & Widdershins (John Lavery, Max Middle and Carmel Purkis), presenting a series of readings based on the short fiction of Samuel Beckett. An extremely lively event (including three pieces that Purkis arranged for three voices; easily my favourite parts of the reading), Lavery is one of the finest readers of fiction I've heard in a very long time; Lavery manages to put in exactly the right kinds of emphasis and expression, and one easily gets the impression that, depending on how he wanted to present a text, he could completely alter the meaning of any writing simply by shifting his performance. The mad (fiction) genius of the Ottawa area, the only comparison I could make to his reading style generally would be to Leon Rooke (who once included a record of a reading with one of his books of fiction), with Lavery's energy tighter, and more reigned in. In Lavery's hands, words and phrases written by almost anyone can turn into dangerous projectiles.
Middle and Lavery are used to working more of the surreal and nonsensical in their own work, so it was interesting to hear their take on Beckett, whether through selection or performance; the big surprise of the evening to many of us who had been around for years, was the performance by bookstore staff (and one of the three publishers of the slowly-building Ottawa literary publishing company Chaudiere Books) Carmel Purkis. Fluid and almost dangerous, Purkis could easily do documentary voice-overs, but with a twist (madness, perhaps?) that beautifully infected everything she read. And what to say of Max Middle? He simply gets better and better ever time I hear him perform; hopefully this will not be the only performance by such a stellar group (also, if anyone is interested, Middle reads solo on Sunday as part of Sasquatch; 2pm, Royal Oak II on Laurier; open set + featured reader; free).
And let's not forget the conversation I had with Paul William Roberts in the hospitality suite (after everyone else had left) around 3:3o am; somehow all of his stories involve him being in court, or what countries he's no longer allowed to enter. If you ever have a chance to hear, see or read him, I would highly recommend it; he is dangerously informed and wonderfully entertaining at the same time (the last time he was here, he and I watched the vice-presidential debate together; he had lots to say about that...). No wonder the Americans won't let him near the border). His talk, "The Impossible Logic of War," happened yesterday, but you can still catch him again on Sunday at his "Journey of the Magi: In search of the birth of Jesus."
Yes, 3:30 am; will I ever be able to sleep properly again?
Friday, April 21, 2006
hotel thursday (breakdown)
(from "sequence")
ever if function a style; off riding a canyon
ever if quarantine your minivan coffeeshop
, budget the bone
ever if water rock, my daybreak dreams
of long slave
ever if temples of sex diminish, collapse
under intemperate weight, a thousand
points of time like a fish
ever if on the skin & bleeding, sweat
ever if violence, a year listening, delivered; landscapes
capped suspension
ever if principled, the conifers milk mornings
ever if the medium betrayed strong taste
ever if mobile streamlined, her phone message
gasps, intoxicating
ever if wordspeed & release
ever if the knife my throat you speak; the
stone in my stomach, rises
ever if the light shines
ever if ticket a chocolate love in the first place
ever if mornings would melt
ever if temples, temptations; creature noise
& desultory speech
ever if whether nice weather
(from "sequence")
I was straining to enlarge a compromise
when the context vanished.
— Lisa Robertson, The Apothecary
ever if function a style; off riding a canyon
ever if quarantine your minivan coffeeshop
, budget the bone
ever if water rock, my daybreak dreams
of long slave
ever if temples of sex diminish, collapse
under intemperate weight, a thousand
points of time like a fish
ever if on the skin & bleeding, sweat
ever if violence, a year listening, delivered; landscapes
capped suspension
ever if principled, the conifers milk mornings
ever if the medium betrayed strong taste
ever if mobile streamlined, her phone message
gasps, intoxicating
ever if wordspeed & release
ever if the knife my throat you speak; the
stone in my stomach, rises
ever if the light shines
ever if ticket a chocolate love in the first place
ever if mornings would melt
ever if temples, temptations; creature noise
& desultory speech
ever if whether nice weather
Thursday, April 20, 2006
festival notes, day three (or, eighty-eight lines on fourty-four authors)
Madeline Thien, from her reading last night of a fraction of her first novel, Certainty (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 2006), has written a book filled with beautiful music; what choice did I have but to buy it? She arrived with greetings from fellow Quebec City author Aurian Haller; I sent her home with an envelope for him (and one for herself, of course). Check out an interview with her here.
Author Tim Ward (who grew up in Ottawa, and wore the same tie two days in a row) had a very interesting presentation on the history (and pre-history) of the feminine divine in his Savage Breast (2006). I found it extremely interesting, in part because of the novel I'm writing on Persephone; Ward spoke of the dual goddess, and the continuity of women shown through Demeter and Persephone (my ex-wife and daughter regularly remind me of the continuity between women and the lack of the need of the male). Another book I was forced to purchase. Still, there were some in the crowd that theorized that he wrote about the goddess to get girls...
Fiction writer Ami McKay, who wrote The Birth House (Toronto ON: Random House, 2006), was completely and utterly charming, and I just wanted to adopt her, and keep her in my little apartment (she liked the idea in theory, but wasn't really going for it); we had an interesting conversation about the concern of research taking over the writing in a historical novel (although I argued, aren't all novels historical?). The fourth author from the two events last night was Anar Ali, author of Baby Khakis Wings (Toronto ON: Penguin, 2006), who arrived in the hospitality suite after the event with a number of friends, including a beautiful young Ottawa doctor (we had a conversation about ususual film, and where the best shawarma in Ottawa can be found). This doctor apparently has a practice in my neighbourhood, even. I haven't seen a doctor (in any professional capacity) or any other medical person since the 1980s; perhaps this is something I should re-think?
Winnipeg author Linda Holeman was also quite charming (she reads tonight); apparently she just sold a quarter million copies of her most recent book in Europe; of course, I immediately sold her a copy of my new Stride collection (wouldn't you?).
Paul William Roberts, who has been at the festival before (we watched the American vice-presidential debate together) has been here two days, but we haven't seen him yet; he is like the wind...
And why is Nigel Beale making problems where previously there were none?
Madeline Thien, from her reading last night of a fraction of her first novel, Certainty (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 2006), has written a book filled with beautiful music; what choice did I have but to buy it? She arrived with greetings from fellow Quebec City author Aurian Haller; I sent her home with an envelope for him (and one for herself, of course). Check out an interview with her here.
Author Tim Ward (who grew up in Ottawa, and wore the same tie two days in a row) had a very interesting presentation on the history (and pre-history) of the feminine divine in his Savage Breast (2006). I found it extremely interesting, in part because of the novel I'm writing on Persephone; Ward spoke of the dual goddess, and the continuity of women shown through Demeter and Persephone (my ex-wife and daughter regularly remind me of the continuity between women and the lack of the need of the male). Another book I was forced to purchase. Still, there were some in the crowd that theorized that he wrote about the goddess to get girls...
Fiction writer Ami McKay, who wrote The Birth House (Toronto ON: Random House, 2006), was completely and utterly charming, and I just wanted to adopt her, and keep her in my little apartment (she liked the idea in theory, but wasn't really going for it); we had an interesting conversation about the concern of research taking over the writing in a historical novel (although I argued, aren't all novels historical?). The fourth author from the two events last night was Anar Ali, author of Baby Khakis Wings (Toronto ON: Penguin, 2006), who arrived in the hospitality suite after the event with a number of friends, including a beautiful young Ottawa doctor (we had a conversation about ususual film, and where the best shawarma in Ottawa can be found). This doctor apparently has a practice in my neighbourhood, even. I haven't seen a doctor (in any professional capacity) or any other medical person since the 1980s; perhaps this is something I should re-think?
Winnipeg author Linda Holeman was also quite charming (she reads tonight); apparently she just sold a quarter million copies of her most recent book in Europe; of course, I immediately sold her a copy of my new Stride collection (wouldn't you?).
Paul William Roberts, who has been at the festival before (we watched the American vice-presidential debate together) has been here two days, but we haven't seen him yet; he is like the wind...
And why is Nigel Beale making problems where previously there were none?
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Descant #132: The World of Barbara Gowdy
It's always interesting to see an issue dedicated to the work of a particular writer, whether as feshrift to acknowledge passing, late career or mid, and now Descant magazine has published "Entering the Other: The World of Barbara Gowdy" as their most recent issue, to celebrate the work of the Toronto writer Barbara Gowdy. According to the bio at the end of the issue (it would have been nice to have more information like this on Gowdy, such as a bibliography or something, but there you go), she is the author of five novels (Through the Green Valley, Falling Angels, Mister Sandman, The White Bone and The Romantic) and a collection of short stories (We So Seldom Look on Love) that the movie Kissed came from (which started my ongoing crush on actress Molly Parker. Oh, Molly Parker…)(Falling Angels was also made into a feature-length film). She has twice been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Rogers' Writers Trust Fiction Prize, and three times for the Trillium Award.
I'm not always a fan of the work of Descant magazine, but for the occasional issue here and there, but when I do like, I really like, such as the Sub/Urbia issue (#125) that came out as its summer 2004 issue, and includes some of my favourite work by Calgary writer Christian Bök (as well as other personal favourites, such as Sina Queyras, my most favourite piece ever by Emily Pohl-Weary, Mark Kingwell, Sylvia Legris and Marita Dachsel…). Ending with a wounding, terrific line, here's the short untitled piece by Bök:
Or, as novelist Susan Swan writes in her piece "Redemptive Empathy":
It's always interesting to see an issue dedicated to the work of a particular writer, whether as feshrift to acknowledge passing, late career or mid, and now Descant magazine has published "Entering the Other: The World of Barbara Gowdy" as their most recent issue, to celebrate the work of the Toronto writer Barbara Gowdy. According to the bio at the end of the issue (it would have been nice to have more information like this on Gowdy, such as a bibliography or something, but there you go), she is the author of five novels (Through the Green Valley, Falling Angels, Mister Sandman, The White Bone and The Romantic) and a collection of short stories (We So Seldom Look on Love) that the movie Kissed came from (which started my ongoing crush on actress Molly Parker. Oh, Molly Parker…)(Falling Angels was also made into a feature-length film). She has twice been shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Rogers' Writers Trust Fiction Prize, and three times for the Trillium Award.
I'm not always a fan of the work of Descant magazine, but for the occasional issue here and there, but when I do like, I really like, such as the Sub/Urbia issue (#125) that came out as its summer 2004 issue, and includes some of my favourite work by Calgary writer Christian Bök (as well as other personal favourites, such as Sina Queyras, my most favourite piece ever by Emily Pohl-Weary, Mark Kingwell, Sylvia Legris and Marita Dachsel…). Ending with a wounding, terrific line, here's the short untitled piece by Bök:
ENNUI IS THE EXHAUSTION of the mind caught in the riot cell of its own thoughts. While poets always strive in vain to escape this oubliette, their tedium forces them to find in the workings of the padlocks, evidence of a more beautifulThe "theme issue" isn't always interesting, but issues dedicated to individual writers are often very interesting, and there have been a number of them over the years, including issues of The Capilano Review (George Bowering, Roy K. Kiyooka, bill bissett), dANDelion (Roy K. Kiyooka), West Coast Line (Phyllis Webb, Larissa Lai), The Fiddlehead (John Metcalf), recent issues of The Chicago Review (Edward Dorn and Louis Zukofsky), and Descant (Dennis Lee, R. Murray Schafer, Michael Ondaatje and Timothy Findley) (if anyone ever finds that Cap Review Bowering issue, get it for me, will you?). Given that Gowdy is a product of the suburbs, and has written on the 1950s family, I perhaps get the impression that Descant is even (perhaps) best when dealing with the suburbs (but this is only a theory). Broken into a number of sections, the contributors to the issue include Descant editor Karen Mulhallen and issue editor Mary Newberry ("Prefaces"), Steven Heighton and Margaret Atwood ("Talking Gowdy"), Adrian DiCastri, John Bentley Mays and Robert Teteruck ("Situating Gowdy"), Debra Martens, Cheryl Cowdy Crawford, Neta Gordon, Sally Hayward, Deena Rhyms and T.F. Rigelhof ("Critiquing Gowdy"), Mary Newberry ("Filming Gowdy"), Catherine Bush, Catherine Gildiner, Marni Jackson, Natalie Onuska, Catherine Graham, Shyam Selvadurai and Susan Swan ("Postcards from Gowdyland"), Pamela Stewart, Kathleen Kelly and Jim Johnstone ("The Weight of Gowdy"), and finally, Barbara Gowdy herself ("Gowdy Speaks"), with an excerpt of a novel-in-progress, Helpless. As editor Mulhallen writes in her preface:
reasoning—a kind of eunoia. Never forget that which makes us weary also makes us
dream. (Descant #125, p 13)
In a short time span, for her writing career developed quite late, after musicalPerhaps some of the most interesting work in the issue has to be the piece "Points of Faith: An Interview with Barbara Gowdy" conducted by Kingston writer Steven Heighton:
training, in fact, Gowdy has already made a profound impact. Writers of several generations here attest to the importance of her work, the unique qualities of her imagination, the clarity of her style. Critics debate hotly her epistemology, of The White Bone in particular. Translations into film, and into television of Gowdy's
fictions also signify ways in which the work speaks to a contemporary
sensibility. Grand themes on the family, on love, on diversity capture an
audience emotionally and intellectually. Sacred mysteries. Knowledge and
perception. Innocence. Hers is a fiction which compels us to imagine someone
else's experience, just as she herself has said that the writing of it has done
this for her. In this issue of Descant we are taking a sounding of an artist at
mid-career, in full flight, and we are honoured to present as well an excerpt
from her new novel, her work in progress. (pp 10-11)
BG: Writing fiction involves smoke and mirrors to a degree, doesn't it? Sometimes you feel as if you're pulling a fast one. None of these characters actually exist but you're desperately trying to make the reader believe that they do. You resort to certain tricks, you have to.Also, the issue is worth it alone for the cartoon by Toronto writer Margaret Atwood (which I won't tell you about at all; you now have to go find this issue), which I have always considered completely underrated, and often her best work (they often appear in Brick magazine as well). Will there ever be a trade collection of Atwood's that include her collected cartoons? I certainly hope so.
SH: You do, and that's fine and helpful, but it also bothers me in a way. In a way I wish I didn't know the tricks I know. Or didn't know I knew them.
BG: Why?
SH: No good reason, really ― art has always been about artifice, and I accept that, but there's a younger part of me ― a romantic part ― that wishes I was still innocent of that.
BG: But what's the difference between art and craft, for instance, or art and artifice? Do you know what I think the difference is? I think art is what it does, not how you make it. The difference lies there. Craft can be beautiful and take a whole lot of
talent and a whole lot of knowledge, but as Chris [Dewdney] pointed out to me
once, craft doesn't have the potential to change the way you see the world. Art
does. No matter how you make that happen, if you make it happen, then you've
made art … I'm no chef, and I've had arguments with this one chef who tries to
convince me that cooking is an art. "No," I say, "a spectacular meal is a
pleasure. It can move your soul, it can make you happy, temporarily, you can
feel that it's wondrously presented and that it has ravished your palate, but it
hasn't changed the way you see the world." (pp 32-3)
Or, as novelist Susan Swan writes in her piece "Redemptive Empathy":
BARBARA GOWDY IS ONE of Canada's most important contemporary writers. She is a meticulous stylist and fearless satirist whose sardonic view is informed by aI don't think its possible to get much higher praise than that.
redemptive empathy that portrays misunderstood individuals (or badly treated
animal species) as legitimate people who are sometimes even loveable. She is
also a hyper-realist whose highly sculpted prose is to literary realism what
pop art was to traditional landscape painting. (p 166)
Labels:
Barbara Gowdy,
Christian Bok,
Descant,
Steven Heighton,
Susan Swan
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
festival notes, day one (or, what happens at festival stays at the festival)
Pretty much everyone should know by now that yesterday was the first night of an eventual weeks worth of readings at the spring edition of the ottawa international writers festival. This edition has the added bonus of a second festival appearance by Aidan Wilson (accompanied by adorable mother Kira Harris, who has also been running the festival for almost as long as it has existed), third generation of the Wilson crew (father Sean and grandfather Neil founded the festival how many years ago), born but days before the fall 2005 edition. He had his own staff pass, which will soon be altered to a "complaints department" pass (you have a problem? talk to the baby…). I expect him to be hosting events within the next couple of years…
As part of opening night, I was able to host the first of the three poetry cabarets, an amazing reading by poets Kevin Connolly (Toronto ON), Nicole Brossard (Montreal QC) and Ken Babstock (Toronto ON), with a short question and answer period following. A last minute replacement for a cancelled author, Kevin Connolly launched his third poetry collection drift (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2005) at the festival for a second time (we liked the book so much, he got to launch it twice; I can't wait for him to launch it at the festival a third time…). Babstock, born in Newfoundland but raised in the Ottawa Valley, specifically Pembroke, Ontario (where poet David O'Meara is also from), was launching his third collection, Airstream Land Yacht (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2006).
I've been hearing Babstock read for years now (I remember a reading at the Manx Pub in 1994 with him and O'Meara; we all got drunk afterward and played pool), and the more I've heard him read, or more specifically talk between the poems, the more I want him to start writing essays. I remember a reading I heard him do at Concordia University in the fall of 2001 that had a question and answer period resulting in short essays on poetic form coming out of him; I wanted someone somewhere to have recorded it, or written it all down. Why aren't people interviewing Ken Babstock about what he's doing?
Even though she was part of the poetry cabaret, Montreal author Nicole Brossard (see my review of her collection of essays here, if you haven't already) wasn't actually launching a poetry collection, but instead a number of other things, including two Coach House novels, one of which she read from briefly, the new paperback edition of Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon (trans. Susanne De Lotbinière-Harwood), before reading a few of her poems translated into English (I don't recall the translator of those, but she did mention them). Part of the reading featured Brossard including me in a performance of a collaborative poem, as she read her poem "Si sismal" (from á tout regard), as I read alternating stanzas (and some together) from Fred Wah's transcreation of the same piece, what he called "If Yes Seismal." It was extremely fun (and without practice, even), and made everyone in the audience jealous (I bet); the poem itself (at least the parts I could understand) especially resonated with me, considering that I feel my poetic far closer to Wah than to Babstock or Connolly (which makes me want to go through more of Brossard's own poems). Here are the first two stanzas of each (with twelve stanzas in total):
si aboyer ou noyer la voix
parmi les images et les mots
éveille un peu de crainte
abrite alors la figure choisie
ie bord renversé de vivre
labelle spacieux
if above the clysmic bark heaves
noise the voice detonates images and
words for life a little crazy we
think but all right before the actual
figures choose choice the border
labels space in you
An impressive question and answer period followed, with many of the audience asking very engaging questions to each of the three writers; there was something pretty entertaining as well about the fact that I could (with two exceptions) respond to each audience member by name as they were handed the microphone. There was something comfortable and intimate about being able to do that; what Kevin Connolly referred to later as "community."
I am also hosting the second poetry cabarets, on April 21, with poets angela rawlings (Toronto ON) (see my review of her first poetry collection here, if you haven't already), John McDonald and Gary Barwin (Hamilton ON). You should go to that. I mean, really.
And, in case you've forgotten, I am fortunate enough to be writer in residence again at this ottawa festival of ours (our tenth year, this festival), which means I not only get to clean up the hospitality suite after everyone leaves, but I get to stay there as well (and only a fifteen minute walk from my apartment). But remember, what happens at festival, stays at the festival. I can say no more.
on another note, check out Amanda Earl's version of last night's reading
also, check out info on my next session of poetry workshops at Collected Works Bookstore
Pretty much everyone should know by now that yesterday was the first night of an eventual weeks worth of readings at the spring edition of the ottawa international writers festival. This edition has the added bonus of a second festival appearance by Aidan Wilson (accompanied by adorable mother Kira Harris, who has also been running the festival for almost as long as it has existed), third generation of the Wilson crew (father Sean and grandfather Neil founded the festival how many years ago), born but days before the fall 2005 edition. He had his own staff pass, which will soon be altered to a "complaints department" pass (you have a problem? talk to the baby…). I expect him to be hosting events within the next couple of years…
As part of opening night, I was able to host the first of the three poetry cabarets, an amazing reading by poets Kevin Connolly (Toronto ON), Nicole Brossard (Montreal QC) and Ken Babstock (Toronto ON), with a short question and answer period following. A last minute replacement for a cancelled author, Kevin Connolly launched his third poetry collection drift (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2005) at the festival for a second time (we liked the book so much, he got to launch it twice; I can't wait for him to launch it at the festival a third time…). Babstock, born in Newfoundland but raised in the Ottawa Valley, specifically Pembroke, Ontario (where poet David O'Meara is also from), was launching his third collection, Airstream Land Yacht (Toronto ON: Anansi, 2006).
I've been hearing Babstock read for years now (I remember a reading at the Manx Pub in 1994 with him and O'Meara; we all got drunk afterward and played pool), and the more I've heard him read, or more specifically talk between the poems, the more I want him to start writing essays. I remember a reading I heard him do at Concordia University in the fall of 2001 that had a question and answer period resulting in short essays on poetic form coming out of him; I wanted someone somewhere to have recorded it, or written it all down. Why aren't people interviewing Ken Babstock about what he's doing?
Even though she was part of the poetry cabaret, Montreal author Nicole Brossard (see my review of her collection of essays here, if you haven't already) wasn't actually launching a poetry collection, but instead a number of other things, including two Coach House novels, one of which she read from briefly, the new paperback edition of Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon (trans. Susanne De Lotbinière-Harwood), before reading a few of her poems translated into English (I don't recall the translator of those, but she did mention them). Part of the reading featured Brossard including me in a performance of a collaborative poem, as she read her poem "Si sismal" (from á tout regard), as I read alternating stanzas (and some together) from Fred Wah's transcreation of the same piece, what he called "If Yes Seismal." It was extremely fun (and without practice, even), and made everyone in the audience jealous (I bet); the poem itself (at least the parts I could understand) especially resonated with me, considering that I feel my poetic far closer to Wah than to Babstock or Connolly (which makes me want to go through more of Brossard's own poems). Here are the first two stanzas of each (with twelve stanzas in total):
si aboyer ou noyer la voix
parmi les images et les mots
éveille un peu de crainte
abrite alors la figure choisie
ie bord renversé de vivre
labelle spacieux
if above the clysmic bark heaves
noise the voice detonates images and
words for life a little crazy we
think but all right before the actual
figures choose choice the border
labels space in you
An impressive question and answer period followed, with many of the audience asking very engaging questions to each of the three writers; there was something pretty entertaining as well about the fact that I could (with two exceptions) respond to each audience member by name as they were handed the microphone. There was something comfortable and intimate about being able to do that; what Kevin Connolly referred to later as "community."
I am also hosting the second poetry cabarets, on April 21, with poets angela rawlings (Toronto ON) (see my review of her first poetry collection here, if you haven't already), John McDonald and Gary Barwin (Hamilton ON). You should go to that. I mean, really.
And, in case you've forgotten, I am fortunate enough to be writer in residence again at this ottawa festival of ours (our tenth year, this festival), which means I not only get to clean up the hospitality suite after everyone leaves, but I get to stay there as well (and only a fifteen minute walk from my apartment). But remember, what happens at festival, stays at the festival. I can say no more.
on another note, check out Amanda Earl's version of last night's reading
also, check out info on my next session of poetry workshops at Collected Works Bookstore
Monday, April 17, 2006
a. rawlings' Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists
In her first trade poetry collection, Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006), Toronto writer, editor and Lexiconjury co-organizer angela rawlings works from two threads into a collection built around and out of language itself, from the various states of sleep (more precisely, sleep disorders, including narcolepsy, hypnic twitch, insomnia, somnambulism) to the development of lepidoptera (the birth of egg, larval hatching, a caterpillar's life). Involved with writing and Toronto for the past few years, self-proclaimed multidisciplinary artist angela rawlings has worked with The Mercury Press, the Scream Literary Festival, Sumach Press, Word: Toronto's literary calendar, as well as one of three co-editors (with Calgary poet/editors derek beaulieu and Jason Christie) of the anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Toronto ON: The Mercury Press, 2005).
Dedicated to "Northern Ontario," where rawlings is from (the Algoma District), the book works in sections such as "figure 1 : EGG - INSOMNIA," "figure 2 : EGG, LARVA - DYSSOMNIA," "figure 3 : LARVA - NREM," "figure 4 : LARVA, PUPA - REM," "figure 5 : PUPA - PARASOMNIA," "figure 6 : IMAGO - AROUSAL," as well as appendix, glossary and "EPIGRAPHS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS" at the very end. I like that the small dirty brown cover, bound on its short side at 7 x 5 inches and 112 pages, can fit thick in the travelling pocket almost like a field guide for sleep, for watching the development of sleep and moth movement, complete with language example and illustration.
Here's a fragment of the " figure 1 : EGG - INSOMNIA" section, where she writes:
Slow light touch of hand on wing, scales brush off like butterfly kisses, hand on brow, eyelash dew and fog, breath and fur our entrance and we caress the dulled wet passage, the flicker of soft quiet like sound or sand, when larva eats its eggshell and becomes pupa a hoosh
we tongue our shell, our conch, we smell the honeysuckle sweat heavily in the night air. a hoosh The fragrance a push of belly against abdomen, tongue buried deep in the suckle the honey and the brush-foots wake and crowd, thrust or pulse, spastic praxis, massive pulse out of sync. This is not what this is no, we intended, we thought sleep and none came we come. ha a a ha Horned caterpillars epilepse, wood nymphs spin and hang crude cocoons
we hold our slow high flight (p 15)
There have been other writings on sleep lately, including a talk that Canadian poet Anne Carson gave at the League of Canadian Poets AGM in Montreal two years ago, returning to the waking world as the essay “Every Exit Is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)” in an issue of Prairie Fire (Vol. 25, No. 3, Autumn 2004), and later as part of Carson's Decreation (New York NY: Knopf, 2005), where she begins by writing “I want to make a praise of sleep. Not as a practitioner–I admit I have never been what is called ‘a good sleeper’ and perhaps we can return later to that curious concept–but as a reader.” (p 19). Carson later goes on to write:
It is in these terms that I wish to praise sleep, as a glimpse of something incognito. Both words are important. Incognito means “unrecognized, hidden, unknown.” Something means not nothing. What is incognito hides from us because it has something worth hiding, or so we judge. (p 20)
Another piece, closer to home (somewhat) is Prince George, British Columbia writer Rob Budde in the piece "A Sleep of Faith," originally published as a chapbook by Budde's own wink books (2005), and reprinted in his trade collection Flicker (Winnipeg MB: Signature Editions, 2005). As much as rawlings, the notion of play has always been an important element of Budde’s poetry, and this piece is no different, working a dart and a hopscotch skill through such reflections from the opening line “sleep as if sleep exists anyway” (p 75), or further on, as he writes (altered slightly from the earlier chapbook version):
preemptive sleep, just in case
sleep like at a poetry reading, polite, filled with linguistic virtuosity,
easing your way to the cheese platter
staring at white paint and not knowing the difference
repose via repository
sleep is overcoded; sleep is underfunded
sleep as if shopping for something you already have
sleep as if your regular breathing is an integral part of an elaborate
ecological which operates the entire earth and its
convenience stores
sleep in moss, mushrooms burgeoning from your eyes, a sphagnum
cornea (p 76)
Budde moves through his sleep as something hidden and unknown, while at the same time, understanding that “faith” is something that can not necessarily be known but can be developed; can be explored but never explained. The whole notion of faith, certainly, is to believe in something that can never be proven, as he ends with:
a court order for order when none will be had, sleep as a public
protest, a concerted civil disobedience, a police line broken–sleeping
off the chaos, sleeping off the anarchy
a paddle in water, a float over there (p 84)
Still, it might be Carson's sleep that exists far closer to the fitful and fitless sleep/s demonstrated in the poetry of angela rawlings, as in this fragment taken from near the end of the book, the "figure 6 : IMAGO - AROUSAL" section, writing:
It's a story it's not a story it has elements of story. 'Y' is a letter. 'Rots' are four letters. The caged body deteriorates, rails.
Why.
Pre-end. Exhale three dead white moths - cream moths. Moths with thick, furry antennae. Tickle the epiglottis and struggle to exit. The story is stuck in details. Images bedrail themselves, quilt and sheet themselves, thick no entrance. Exit.
There is no argument, then, let the body do the body does. (p 90)
It seems interesting that rawlings would choose to merge what could be considering yin/yang elements of a disorder (sleep) with order (the natural occurrence of lepidoptera), as one idea reacts up against another one, much as in her piece LOGYoLOGY (a version of which appeared in Calgary's dANDelion magazine, volume 29, number 2, and expanded at commutiny.net/logy); as she wrote beside her name in the dANDelion issue, " LOGYoLOGY is a community of body-related -logies exploring personal experience with sex and sensuality in poems." (p 106). In Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists, rawlings' words manage to replicate the fluttering of butterfly/moth wings, and the movement of sleep.
Among the essential elements of rawlings' collection is the notion of notation and play across the page—words and letters work as essential shapes—making most of the pieces in this elegant book nearly impossible to replicate in such a format as this (given my lack of technical skills), as well as the images of butterfly, egg, jar and cocoon by artist Matt Ceolin. In the press releases for the collection, that includes a page long interview with the author, rawlings had this to say about the connections between moths and sleep disorders:
"The phrase 'wide slumber for lepidopterists' occurred during a free-writing session and rattled around in my head for a week. The subjects intersected. What happens when a person obsessed with a subject dreams at night; does the subject matter affect how they think, how they dream, how their bodies process information? I'd been toying with this question for a while, in terms of my own tendency to write poems while dreaming. If a poet writes poems during sleep, how might a lepidopterist work while she sleeps? What effect does intimate examination of insects have on long-term information processing and subconscious behaviour?
A 'pataphysical question cropped up, too … What happens when you breed the vocabularies and ideas of two disparate subjects together (in my case, lepidoptery and sleep/dream studies)? What does the spawn of incompatible bedfellows resemble? From that perverse breeding, Wide slumber for lepidopterists was born."
[a. rawlings reads at poetry cabaret #2 on April 21 with John McDonald and Gary Barwin as part of the ottawa international writers festival]
In her first trade poetry collection, Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists (Toronto ON: Coach House Books, 2006), Toronto writer, editor and Lexiconjury co-organizer angela rawlings works from two threads into a collection built around and out of language itself, from the various states of sleep (more precisely, sleep disorders, including narcolepsy, hypnic twitch, insomnia, somnambulism) to the development of lepidoptera (the birth of egg, larval hatching, a caterpillar's life). Involved with writing and Toronto for the past few years, self-proclaimed multidisciplinary artist angela rawlings has worked with The Mercury Press, the Scream Literary Festival, Sumach Press, Word: Toronto's literary calendar, as well as one of three co-editors (with Calgary poet/editors derek beaulieu and Jason Christie) of the anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Toronto ON: The Mercury Press, 2005).
Dedicated to "Northern Ontario," where rawlings is from (the Algoma District), the book works in sections such as "figure 1 : EGG - INSOMNIA," "figure 2 : EGG, LARVA - DYSSOMNIA," "figure 3 : LARVA - NREM," "figure 4 : LARVA, PUPA - REM," "figure 5 : PUPA - PARASOMNIA," "figure 6 : IMAGO - AROUSAL," as well as appendix, glossary and "EPIGRAPHS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS" at the very end. I like that the small dirty brown cover, bound on its short side at 7 x 5 inches and 112 pages, can fit thick in the travelling pocket almost like a field guide for sleep, for watching the development of sleep and moth movement, complete with language example and illustration.
Here's a fragment of the " figure 1 : EGG - INSOMNIA" section, where she writes:
Slow light touch of hand on wing, scales brush off like butterfly kisses, hand on brow, eyelash dew and fog, breath and fur our entrance and we caress the dulled wet passage, the flicker of soft quiet like sound or sand, when larva eats its eggshell and becomes pupa a hoosh
we tongue our shell, our conch, we smell the honeysuckle sweat heavily in the night air. a hoosh The fragrance a push of belly against abdomen, tongue buried deep in the suckle the honey and the brush-foots wake and crowd, thrust or pulse, spastic praxis, massive pulse out of sync. This is not what this is no, we intended, we thought sleep and none came we come. ha a a ha Horned caterpillars epilepse, wood nymphs spin and hang crude cocoons
we hold our slow high flight (p 15)
There have been other writings on sleep lately, including a talk that Canadian poet Anne Carson gave at the League of Canadian Poets AGM in Montreal two years ago, returning to the waking world as the essay “Every Exit Is an Entrance (A Praise of Sleep)” in an issue of Prairie Fire (Vol. 25, No. 3, Autumn 2004), and later as part of Carson's Decreation (New York NY: Knopf, 2005), where she begins by writing “I want to make a praise of sleep. Not as a practitioner–I admit I have never been what is called ‘a good sleeper’ and perhaps we can return later to that curious concept–but as a reader.” (p 19). Carson later goes on to write:
It is in these terms that I wish to praise sleep, as a glimpse of something incognito. Both words are important. Incognito means “unrecognized, hidden, unknown.” Something means not nothing. What is incognito hides from us because it has something worth hiding, or so we judge. (p 20)
Another piece, closer to home (somewhat) is Prince George, British Columbia writer Rob Budde in the piece "A Sleep of Faith," originally published as a chapbook by Budde's own wink books (2005), and reprinted in his trade collection Flicker (Winnipeg MB: Signature Editions, 2005). As much as rawlings, the notion of play has always been an important element of Budde’s poetry, and this piece is no different, working a dart and a hopscotch skill through such reflections from the opening line “sleep as if sleep exists anyway” (p 75), or further on, as he writes (altered slightly from the earlier chapbook version):
preemptive sleep, just in case
sleep like at a poetry reading, polite, filled with linguistic virtuosity,
easing your way to the cheese platter
staring at white paint and not knowing the difference
repose via repository
sleep is overcoded; sleep is underfunded
sleep as if shopping for something you already have
sleep as if your regular breathing is an integral part of an elaborate
ecological which operates the entire earth and its
convenience stores
sleep in moss, mushrooms burgeoning from your eyes, a sphagnum
cornea (p 76)
Budde moves through his sleep as something hidden and unknown, while at the same time, understanding that “faith” is something that can not necessarily be known but can be developed; can be explored but never explained. The whole notion of faith, certainly, is to believe in something that can never be proven, as he ends with:
a court order for order when none will be had, sleep as a public
protest, a concerted civil disobedience, a police line broken–sleeping
off the chaos, sleeping off the anarchy
a paddle in water, a float over there (p 84)
Still, it might be Carson's sleep that exists far closer to the fitful and fitless sleep/s demonstrated in the poetry of angela rawlings, as in this fragment taken from near the end of the book, the "figure 6 : IMAGO - AROUSAL" section, writing:
It's a story it's not a story it has elements of story. 'Y' is a letter. 'Rots' are four letters. The caged body deteriorates, rails.
Why.
Pre-end. Exhale three dead white moths - cream moths. Moths with thick, furry antennae. Tickle the epiglottis and struggle to exit. The story is stuck in details. Images bedrail themselves, quilt and sheet themselves, thick no entrance. Exit.
There is no argument, then, let the body do the body does. (p 90)
It seems interesting that rawlings would choose to merge what could be considering yin/yang elements of a disorder (sleep) with order (the natural occurrence of lepidoptera), as one idea reacts up against another one, much as in her piece LOGYoLOGY (a version of which appeared in Calgary's dANDelion magazine, volume 29, number 2, and expanded at commutiny.net/logy); as she wrote beside her name in the dANDelion issue, " LOGYoLOGY is a community of body-related -logies exploring personal experience with sex and sensuality in poems." (p 106). In Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists, rawlings' words manage to replicate the fluttering of butterfly/moth wings, and the movement of sleep.
Among the essential elements of rawlings' collection is the notion of notation and play across the page—words and letters work as essential shapes—making most of the pieces in this elegant book nearly impossible to replicate in such a format as this (given my lack of technical skills), as well as the images of butterfly, egg, jar and cocoon by artist Matt Ceolin. In the press releases for the collection, that includes a page long interview with the author, rawlings had this to say about the connections between moths and sleep disorders:
"The phrase 'wide slumber for lepidopterists' occurred during a free-writing session and rattled around in my head for a week. The subjects intersected. What happens when a person obsessed with a subject dreams at night; does the subject matter affect how they think, how they dream, how their bodies process information? I'd been toying with this question for a while, in terms of my own tendency to write poems while dreaming. If a poet writes poems during sleep, how might a lepidopterist work while she sleeps? What effect does intimate examination of insects have on long-term information processing and subconscious behaviour?
A 'pataphysical question cropped up, too … What happens when you breed the vocabularies and ideas of two disparate subjects together (in my case, lepidoptery and sleep/dream studies)? What does the spawn of incompatible bedfellows resemble? From that perverse breeding, Wide slumber for lepidopterists was born."
[a. rawlings reads at poetry cabaret #2 on April 21 with John McDonald and Gary Barwin as part of the ottawa international writers festival]
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