Tour notes, day eight; November 8, Vancouver to Salt Spring Island BC

All the things I never wrote about before; apparently when I get home or soon thereafter, the first meeting of a little fiction group for workshopping that Tina-Frances Trineer is setting up; me and Nicholas Lea and Steve Zydveld and Kate Heartfield and I forget who else. It reminds me that I keep wanting to write fiction on this trip and things keep getting up in the way. It reminds me that we haven’t had a Peter F. Yacht Club meeting in months and months (since last fall, I think); I know I’m late with the next issue, one edited by Laurie Fuhr… hard to have a writer’s group when we never get around to grouping… Jeff Derksen suggests that if my lovely daughter Kate is into films and filmmaking, I should tell her about the work of poet/filmmakers Abigail Child and Henry Hills; I keep seeing poems on the bus, the BC Transit, pieces by Jane Munro (from her Point No Point) and Rita Wong. And why haven’t I emailed Karl Siegler yet, while in Vancouver? I wonder what it is he’s doing; I liked it better when he lived here, and I could visit him more easily…

Got a nice email from Heidi Greco yesterday, apologizing for not being able to get into Vancouver for my Robson UBC reading; I haven’t met her yet, but remember her from an Anvil Press collection of three writers that came out some ten years ago or so; I remember reviewing it somewhere as one of my very early reviews. When will we get any more of her poems? And got a stack of new books from that nice Brian Lam at Arsenal Pulp; why don’t they have any new poetry titles? At least the gay Canadian male poet anthology in April or May of next year… got an “old lady” bag from him too, for all the books he handed over; now I can be mean to children, now I can treat animals as though they live like people…

After reading the Globe and Mail yesterday about a group of new Canadian visual artists, I went through the website of Toronto photographer Jennifer Long; some of her photographs are wonderfully sublime. The Globe and Mail called this particular series, “hairwork,” “a series of cropped, almost clinical nudes […].” I would call them much more than that; even through their cropped bodies they seem very personal, personable; subtle and even alluring; I would hardly call them clinical. Is it wrong to even find some of these images quite attractive? Going through her website, I think I like her visual art very much.

My horoscope from yesterday’s paper:

Someone you work or do business with is about to pull a fast one in the hope that they can cheat you out of what you deserve. But they can only succeed if you are so sleepy-headed that you don’t see it coming. How likely is that? Wake up to reality: not everyone is as easy-going and honest as you.

How likely is that? Pretty bloody likely, I’d say. I’ve been jet-lagged a week; can barely keep my eyes open after 10:30pm. Living the past few days on coffee and pizza slices, coffee and pizza slices.

The reading last night was pretty entertaining, able to hear donato mancini read for the first time, with American poet Lytle Shaw; audience included nikki reimer, Colin Smith, Jonathon Wilcke (whom I know from his Calgary days, and don’t see nearly often enough), Jeff Derksen, Pauline Butling, Meredith and Peter Quartermain (I really need to learn more about this guy), Maxine Gadd [see my review of her latest book here], and a bunch of folk I either hadn’t met yet or lost their names in that sieve of memory (I’m famously bad for remembering names). Apparently Kim Minkus lives here now, a poet who works at Simon Fraser University; I used to work with her over a decade ago at Octopus Books in Ottawa, and she says that I even published her work somewhere, although for the life of me, I can’t remember where that would have been. Hoping to get a submission for the third ottawater from her. At least I remember her name…

mancini apparently a second trade collection in the spring from New Star Books, the same publisher that did his first [see my review of it here]; he read a series of “candle in the wind” poems, after realizing that Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana were both thirty-six years old when they died, writing a series of poems for others who died the same age, including Bob Marley and others; very interesting, and the crowd loved them. Strange little pieces from a very nervous mancini… Shaw, a poet I’d not previously heard of, was introduced by Derksen as being part of all these traditions including Fritterman and Hejinian, but I had a hard time finding an entry point to the work; I obviously need to know more background before I can know how to get inside it. Maybe I should have picked up a book? He’s author of, among other things, a new book on the late New York poet Frank O’Hara, subtitled “the poetics of coterie.”

After the reading at Spartacus Books, moving boxes and glasses and drinks back to the Kootenay School of Writing offices, hanging out there for a while instead of those drinks we meant to move further on; various folk wandered off instead of moving further; Cochrane was supposed to come out after he finished teaching, but managed to bail on us (oh Mark). Did you know that the Kootenay School of Writing got evicted from their previous address last year, where they held readings the last time I was through (the last reading I went to was Barry McKinnon launching The Centre: Poems 1970-2000 in 2004)? They had to move their office and Charles Watts Memorial Library to smaller offices that don’t really allow for events or availability, unfortunately. Can you believe its been ten years since I first read at the KSW, with Kathryn Payne and Clare Latremouille?

Apparently Karl Seigler is around on Friday; maybe I’ll see him then? Apparently potential drinks on Friday night with Wilcke, reimer and who else? Warren will be the last day of a shoot, so Nancy says he’ll probably be later than usual…

Looking forward to two days offline, on Salt Spring; looking forward to looking forward to.

Tour notes, day nine; November 9, Salt Spring Island BC

Picked up by Robert McTavish, filmmaker, before we headed off to the island on two ferries, an hour and a half to Victoria and another half hour straight to Salt Spring, where he left his car. Schemes on the Newlove selected he’s been working two years on, for fall 2007 Chaudiere Books. He made a big production about having to buy six wine glasses at a thrift store (for only a quarter each) because his girlfriend, musician Sharon Bailey (who has put out a cd since I was here last), is apparently constantly breaking wine glasses; then, Robert managed to break four of them before we got on the ferry (stepping out of his father’s van, which he couldn’t do easily, because he overdid hockey the night before and pulled a bunch of leg muscles…), and one more later on in his kitchen (he swore). After my extremely clever idea to start a pool to put money on how/when Sharon would break them, and he breaks them. I didn’t think those last two would even make it over to the island. He drank out of the final one in triumph…

Copies of the film, What to make of it all? The life and poetry of John Newlove, arrived in McTavish’s mailbox as soon as we were back on the island; a beautiful thing. We don’t know when it appears on Bravo yet, but copies are available through his distributor, Moving Images Distribution. God knows for how much. Should really get into seeing it today; spent last night mostly on guitar with Sharon, after a quick dip into the Royal Canadian Legion #92, Salt Spring Island where Robert works (and Newlove’s son-in-law as well). There are lots of folk on this island I tend to forget about, including CBC guy Arthur Black (apparently at the Legion every Thursday), or poets Brian Brett and Phyllis Webb (will she ever have another book out? I think a book on her work appearing soon with Talonbooks…). Last night many hours of guitar, including original pieces by Sharon and plenty of covers back and forth (I played the spoons, too). Going quietly through John Newlove at breakfast, this poem from Moving In Alone (Toronto ON: Contact Press, 1965).

NOTHING IS TO BE SAID

Everything ends once
and cannot be recovered,
even our poor selves.

Your tongue thrusts into my mouth
violently and I am lost,
nothing is to be said. I am plunged
into the black gap again.

It is not to be endured
easily, unthought of, never
to be dismissed with ease.

What can I do. My hand
shakes on the page. Knowing
I am criminality, there is
nothing I dare do.

Ah, I can’t go home
and make love to her either,
pretending it’s you. (John Newlove)

Apparently Susan Newlove here over Christmas, to visit her daughter and family; McTavish lives in a little cove with (as he calls it) the best beach on the island (and it’s private, owned by the person Robert rents his house from). A quiet setting with birds and water and trees and rocks and mountains and sky and sky and sky and water and sky. Few poems over the last few days, but too busy to try; fighting with the wireless on this thing (might go to the Legion and attempt again/more).

Got an old old old issue of Open Letter from Robert, from 1966; few poems, few poems. Jennifer called last night to tell me how wonderful I am; no, wait, that wasn’t it.

the way to hump a cow is not
to get yourself a stool
but draw a line around the stop
and call it beautifool

to multiply because and why
dividing thens by nows
and adding and (i understand)
is hows to hump a cows

the way to hump a cow is not
to elevate your tool
but drop a penny in the slot
and bellow like a bool

to lay a wreath from ancient greath
on insulting brows
(while tossing boms at uncle toms)
is hows to hump a cows

the way to hump a cow is not
to push and then to pull
but practicing the art of swot
to preach the golden rull

to vote for me (all decent mem
and wonens will allows
which if they don’t to hell with them)
is hows to hump a cows (ee cummings)

Back from our wanderings, just before we finally watched the John Newlove documentary; between the book exchange (free stuff) and the Salt Spring library (cheap), I must have picked up about twenty books, maybe more, for less than $5.00; what the hell? Copies of e.e. cumming’s 50 poems, Isabel Huggan’s The Elizabeth Stories (I’d heard good things about it) (Ottawa ON: Oberon Press, 1984), old copies of Quarry magazine and Coach House Press’ The Story So Far (there was talk a while ago of current Coach House Books restarting the series…), a stack of recent BRICK: A Literary Journal issues, Greco’s Last Book: Selected Poems of Stanley Cooperman (Vancouver BC: Intermedia, 1980), other books by Daphne Marlatt, John Nold, Maxine Gadd’s selected poems [see my review of her book since here], Thomas King, Rafael Barreto-Rivera, Diana Hartog, Catherine Owen, and a two volume Conversations with Canadian Novelists by Donald Cameron (Toronto ON: Macmillian, 1973), including interviews with George Bowering, Rudy Wiebe, Robert Kroetsch, Timothy Findley and piles of others. What a score! There are a couple of books with “Phyllis” written in, including Allan Safarik’s OKIRA (Burnaby BC: Blackfish, 1976), signed to “Phyllis” from the author. Is island poet Phyllis Webb unloading excess? Almost makes me want to call her to see what else she has… Picked up a lovely picture book too, Saskatchewan In Sight by John Perret; its actually a book I was going through from the Ottawa Public Library to help with my prairie novel, so it’s good to have a copy I can go through more regularly…

On the Mathematical Probability
of a Head-on Collision

Here I am heading east thinking of
you heading west and you’re probably thinking
mild sexual thoughts as you cruise along, while I’m
passing a lot, vibrating at the perfect frequency
and remembering how love is often best
when you just pull over
and I’ll bet you’ve just speeded up. (Diana Hartog, Matinee Light)

Listening to Iron + Wine and pining, wondering…

Some of the most expensive real estate in the country, McTavish says. The last time I was here, summer before last (when I read for the West Coast Poetry Festival), one of his friends asked if I was planning to move out here; oh, they said, everyone who ever comes to visit ends up giving up their lives wherever they’re from, so they can live on the island, it’s just that beautiful. If they last the winter (most of them don’t), folk end up staying for good. No, I said, I think I’m fine in Ottawa; besides, I grew up with a similar experience of open lush green and solitude (with fewer oceans and mountains, granted), so I understand, but is it wrong to be happy where I live? (The city I mean and neighbourhood too, not necessarily my little itty bitty apartment…)

An unencumbered view; look up Walker Hook, Salt Spring Island on google maps. A little inlet outside his solarium (windows windows windows on the water), not a body or boat in sight (but sometimes boats); where am I writing from? As far west as I think I have ever been…

After years of waiting and wondering, I finally got to see McTavish’s documentary on John Newlove, narrated by CBC Radio’s Shelagh Rogers; more than worth the wait, and including interviews with John himself as well as his wife Susan, stepchildren Tamsin and Jeremy Gilbert, and George Bowering, Allan Safarik, Joe Rosenblatt, Barry McKinnon, Douglas Barbour, (the now late) Fred Douglas, and others, and film clips of Newlove’s last two readings in Vancouver in 1999 (I was lucky enough to be there for the second one), at the Vancouver Public Library and Anza Club, organized by The Capilano Review and Jamie Reid; his first reading in Vancouver, he said at the time, in some fourteen years. It’s strange to think of, in all the time he lived in Ottawa (seventeen years, more time than he lived anywhere else) he managed to only do four readings; somehow I was present for every one, and had even organized one of them. What the?

Originally, I actually met McTavish originally because of the Newlove documentary. Since I lived no more than a block away from 1996 on, Bowering apparently told McTavish in Vancouver (how many years ago; ten?) that he hadn’t seen John in a decade or more, why not talk to this kid in Ottawa? He actually sees the guy… suddenly McTavish making regular visits from home bases in Regina, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and now Salt Spring Island with camera in hand to crash on my couch before wandering over to interview John or Susan yet again…

Robert worried his television too small; I suggested we play it on the big screen at the Legion, but Robert thought it not the best of ideas…

Tour notes, day ten; November 10, Salt Spring Island to Vancouver BC

A morning of ferry delays, a squall with winds over 100 km/hr that knocked out power all across the island (not where we are) and pushed ferry departures by hours and hours; instead of getting into Vancouver by about 2:30pm and working online downtown (posting this nonsense, for example) and showering and banking and doing laundry, getting in around 6pm or so and heading straight back to Warren’s apartment (a bookstore downtown I really wanted to get back to, but there you go). Leaving now at the 4:30pm ferry, but at least this way able to mail another box of books back to myself (via that lovely lovely Jennifer; oh lovely Jennifer…). Hoping drinks tonight along Commercial Drive with Wayde Compton, Jonathon Wilcke and nikki reimer…

Water rippling all up and down the coast along the inlet; the hook. Rain hard on the roof for hours before the end of sleeping. Nearly 10am before it slowed down. The water and the ducks and the trees returned to normal, quickly and slow.

Where the hell did I put my scarf? Have I already lost my scarf? Almost impossible to find one on Salt Spring.

Apparently a nice review in the Ottawa X-Press today of the Monty Reid book we published, which is pretty cool; hopefully it’ll get more of a crowd for the reading he’s doing with Clare Latremouille at Collected Works in December, or the one at the Ottawa Art Gallery a week later for the Decalogue: ten Ottawa Poets anthology. Already got a few emails on the subject. Apparently I’m going back and forth between Kristy McKay and Douglas Barbour in Edmonton (which I have no problem with); Kristy worried about me being a “latch-key kid,” which I actually prefer when I’m visiting folk; that way I feel as though I’m less in the way.

Lost while looking out across the water.

Reading the old Charlie Brown stuff in Robert’s bathroom; the great stuff, from 1962. A quick shower, Robert (or Sharon or both) wash their hair with Head & Shoulders; remembering back to my maternal grandmother’s house on Ridgemont Avenue in Ottawa in the 1980s, that she (or Uncle Bob or cousins Patti and Kim or all) did the same, the only other household I knew that did. I remember it as memorable simply because different than what my mother bought; why would I be thinking about that now? Salt Sprint Island, perhaps as far away from Ottawa as I could get and still be in country, and back to my pre-teen self in my grandmother’s bathroom, taking a shower and the rarity of another shampoo, the rarity of being away from home. Over the past few years, I think I’ve become quite good at it, this placing within placelessness, a place where to be and to go. And on the League of Canadian Poets list-serve, a conversation about writing place vs. nature poetry, and what the hell all of it means. I kept adding my own twenty cents in.

Last night another evening of drinks and pool and other nonsense at the Royal Canadian Legion (the only one in Canada, I told them, that I frequent…), including meeting Tamsin Gilbert (John Newlove’s step-daughter)’s husband, who works there with Robert; a really nice fella. Also, as they do every Thursday, Arthur Black and Derek Lundy came in to the Legion to play snooker; I got to meet both, which was pretty cool. Black did a thing on Diane Woodward a few years ago (not long after she and I broke up) for Weird Homes after she moved to Madoc. This morning, introduced Sharon to the work of Salt Spring Island poet Phyllis Webb, from one of the books on Robert’s shelf; here’s a piece from her most recent collection, Hanging Fire (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1990):

Cue Cards

Fabulous fold of the gray cloud
over the banked white one –

Stolen thunder. Stolen gold.

Heart of the jungle darkness.
Hot death. Rousseau and Conrad

meet at the river bank
stare at their outstretched hands

that hold no clues.
Clueless. Monsieur Rousseau

falls down in a faint
seeing stars and shepherdesses.

And Mr. Conrad stumbles on
lured by drumbeats.

Half dead at the end of
his story, he leaves his trail –

and another Rousseau, Henri,
paints stripes on a large cat

as it royally passes through customs. (Phyllis Webb)

Aiming for the 4:30pm direct ferry back to Vancouver; aiming for the post office before we head through.

Tour notes, day eleven; November 11, Vancouver BC to Edmonton AB

Sharon and I back on the ferry, so so long. Somehow the bus a half hour later than the half hour later than we were originally told, a Pacific Coast Lines bus that took us to the airport first and then downtown when we were aiming for the train station but we never made it, jumping out after over an hour at the Hotel Vancouver and tearing off to Commercial Drive to meet up with Wayde Compton for drinks; apparently the first Line Books are out (an imprint of West Coast Line), but he forgot to bring them by; hopefully getting them in the mail later. Ryan Knighton came by too, and later then Warren Fulton. Almost went to the Jacqueline Turner launch at Spartacus Books [see my review of the book she was launching here] to hang out with Jonathon Wilcke etcetera but decided a quiet drink with Wayde instead of a reading.

Always a little stressful heading into Alberta, a woman there that left me so far behind and broke me (I haven’t been the same since); far worse when I get to Calgary (I haven’t been able to spend more than a night in Calgary in years). It’s been, what, five or six years and I haven’t quite been the same. See also: paper hotel (2001) and what’s left (2004), two parts of a trilogy (a third waits on publishers’ desks, the unpublished ruins (a book of absences…). Moan, moan, moan. How some of these things linger years if I let them…

a photograph George Bowering emailed a few days ago (why?)

of himself and David W. McFadden, titled "yr muses"

Alayna Munce, When I Was Young & In My Prime

After more than a year of waiting for the proper time, I was finally able to read Alayna Munce’s first novel When I Was Young & In My Prime (Madeira Park BC: Nightwood Editions, 2005), reading it on the flight from Ottawa to Vancouver to Prince George. A Toronto-based poet and fiction writer, she has three times won prizes in Grain magazine’s annual Short Grain Contest, won the second place in 2003 in the travel-writing category of the CBC Literary Awards, and was included in the anthology Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets (2004). After she read at the ottawa international writers festival as part of a three fiction writer event, and was easily the strongest writer. When I Was Young & In My Prime is a wonderful collage of overlapping narratives, diary entries, lost thoughts, poetry that weave together the story of a narrator in her twenties against the lives of her grandparents and their slow demise through Altzheimer’s. As the narrator negotiates her way through her own life, married and individually, Munce blends the essential with the mundane in ways that echo the way people think, and the way people live.

You don’t have to do much to speak volumes in your last days. He’d make a batch of muffins and a pot of coffee and invite a nursing home volunteer up to his apartment to share them, and it was a grand gesture, containing a lifetime. Each day, on his way to visit her in Extended Care, he walked around the atrium of the old age apartments bearing the cockatiel on his shoulder, and it was an act stunning in its generosity.

Terrible to say, in a way, but there’s a glamour in decay. All the sugars rising to the surface. Even the making of wine is a kind of controlled decomposition.

The last days have an atmosphere in which everything stands out, backlit, finite. Photographers call it magic hour. As if death, closer now, closer every day, radiates a kind of pre-storm light.

And then that pre-storm light lasts for a spell after death—for the living. Basic things take on new definition, demand attention but resist naming. The world flares and rears under me these days in areas I always thought of as solid ground (or, more precisely, didn’t think of at all). I slide off the slippery fact of things existing. I say to myself, you could your whole life saying to yourself, this could be the last time I ride a ferry, see a black and white movie, taste brandy, stand on tiptoe, roll out pie dough, write a letter, stamp it and drop it in the mailbox, see a fox up close. (p 230)

Munce’s novel is a beautiful and heartbreaking collage work writing the remnants of lives broken up and sold off in parts as well as what else gets rescued and passed on, and writing the foundations on what other lives, such as the narrator’s own, as well as her grandparents, are built upon.

Ongoing notes, November 2006

Is it possible to blog while travelling? I seem to think so. Max Middle recently showed me where a poem of his appears on Geof Huth's blog. Did you see the nice things Amanda Earl wrote about Tina-Frances Trineer's fiction? Where am I writing from? I can just never tell (still in the middle of this fabulous tour). Where am I writing from? Apparently five more poems from my "gifts" are up in the third issue of Olotoths; & this guy called me a dynamo. Who am I to argue the point? Do you know of this new literary journal out of the University of Ottawa, to publish poetry & fiction? Where am I writing from? Did I tell you that the Diana Brebner Prize (for best unpublished poem by a new poet in the Ottawa area without a book out) that I judged has been announced? This year's winner is Rhonda Douglas [see my previous note on her here], with honourable mention going to Sandra Ridley. Did you see this notice for the Calgary reading? Did you hear that the book of essays I've been working on by prairie poet Andrew Suknaski [see my essay on him here, or the review I did of his recent Wood Mountain Poems reissue...] was just accepted officially for the NeWest Press Writer as Critic series? Where am I writing from? Did you see this note where Tina-Frances Trineer said lovely things about myself and Mulligan, for our Chaudiere schemes? Where am I writing from? Where am I going? Did you see that Ariel Gordon mention of the reading we're doing soon in Winnipeg? Will you be there? Will I be there? Anyways. Here are a few of the things that I've picked up on this jaunt to the far west:

Prince George BC: Barry McKinnon (one of my favourite Canadian poets) gave me copies of two new Gorse Press chapbooks of his, in the millennium, part 3; joy ( an epithalamium )" and Head Out: a letter. essay. poem. McKinnon has been producing these chapbooks for years, with previous pieces by George Bowering, Robert Creeley, David Phillips and tons of others to coincide with readings and other events; over the past decade or so, he's pulled back, producing almost exclusively his own work. Written as a response to the Phillytalks McKinnon did with American poet Cecil Giscombe, McKinnon writes in his preface:

I’ve decided to let Head Out: a letter, essay, poem to Cecil Giscombe stand alone as part 5 of a series of poems I’m working on called In the Millennium. I do, however, prompt any interested reader of this chapbook to see the full context of Philly Talks18 – which as a whole consists of the poems, essays, statements, e-mails, queries, and written post responses that arose out of the live web cast discussion. (The Philly Talks # 18 and Philly Talks Post Response #18 are at phillytalks.org).

I’m not sure that during the talk/discussion part of the event Cecil & I made any teleological advances – even without the pressure to do so; however, we both agreed the next day of feeling – the word we simultaneously blurted out in laughter – was: stupid. When in the range of intelligent, huge, hairy, and difficult questions that we were asked – concerns of place, race, meaning, form, content and the intents of
poetry – our answers, or at least mine as I remember them, went out by the seat of my pants. If only had we more time to think! To say what we really mean! To revise the spontaneous inaccuracies with felicity! etc…

Nevertheless:

never apologize, I once heard it said:

risk to let the voice and writing stand.

Beautifully produced in an edition of 126 copies, the book includes photographs of Giscome, British Columbia by Barry’s wife Joy, as well as a number of appendices, writing the death of a town and furthering the linkages between McKinnon and Giscombe and Giscome. I like the working of an idea that, for whatever reason, hadn’t let McKinnon go yet, working and reworking his consideration of the north end of the province through these new threads, still going long after the Philly Talks event was done.

dumbly / head out

as early miners packing each thing for a journey into vast unknowns, up the physical canyons,
thru miles of bush I can barely walk a block thru ( Cecil, that day on the Giscome Trail in the
sheer and wonderful context of the “historical” moment, being with you, I was also being bled
by many species of carnivorous bugs – and in fear noted trees shredded by recent hungry bears.
How far did we go until we got the idea: this, now, here, the literal Giscombe Trail/ his portage
on

to Summit Lake/the water
shed divide at 54/40 – longitudes and latitudes of history. I watched
you swim out quite a way.

our subject? What tools, what corporeal/ mind/ necessity let us start with an agreement, spit out
without a thought, yet a thought we continuously return to by virtue of its curiosity – to a
“theme” of sorts: “this is a place we decided, but there’s nothing here.”

right and wrong

the name’s the last thing to disappear

To get copies of these or any other Gorse Press item, email Barry McKinnon at bmck13@shaw.ca

Vancouver BC: Apparently Vancouver writer and troublemaker George Bowering, author of the new trade poetry collection Vermeer's Light: Poems 1996-2006 (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2006) [see my review in an upcoming issue of The Antigonish Review] is working a sequence of sequences, one per month for a full year, and working to publish them all individually as chapbooks. One has already appeared, his A Knot of Light (Calgary AB: No Press, 2006), as well as one from Toronto's BookThug I have yet to see. Published in a handout edition of fifty-two copies as No #33 by the anonymous No Press, his A Knot of Light is the February poem. Where will he be putting the others?

7.

There is nothing
so much to desire
as the Montreal
smile in your
photograph.



And if there is
a problem in composition
there is still the
picture, and you
are so much in it.

Vancouver BC: Warren Dean Fulton has been working Pooka Press for year, making chapbooks and postcards for quite some time, but I hardly ever get to see them, since he left Ottawa for Kamloops moons and moons ago, and even further into Vancouver. While I was staying with him, I got copies of various chapbooks and postcards by George Bowering, Kate Braid, Fulton, bill bissett, Jesse Ferguson, Mike Weltz, Michael Elton Crye, John Rupert and others (he even produced a small postcard by Robert Creeley, mere days before he died), as well as producing regular items by various members of the Kamloops Poets Factory when he was still in the interior (although his most published authors remain himself and his wife Nancy). I don’t know how or where he distributes Pooka Press items these days, but you can certainly email him to find out more at pooka_press@yahoo.com

Dover Beach (Again)

The waves keep at it,
Arnold’s Aegean Sophocles heard,
the swell and ebb,
the cresting and the falling under,

each one particular and the same—
Each day a reminder, each sun in its world, each face,
each word something one hears
or someone once heard. (Robert Creeley)

For more information, check out his website here.

Tour notes, day five; November 5, Vancouver BC

The seasons shock us
w/ unbidden power, & we drink
when it thunders;
-- George Stanley, "The Hangover," Four Realities

White wine hangover, the worst. For some reason, more than a glass gives me a splitting headache.

Of course, I just found out that the day I arrived, there was a reading by Montreal poet Susan Elmslie, Vancouver poets Rachel Rose [see my review of her most recent book here] and Miranda Pearson and Barbara Nickel (I’m not sure where she is these days) at the Vancouver Public Library (but why didn’t The Georgia Straight list my reading, or Christian's or donato mancini’s [see my review of his first book here], on Tuesday night at KSW?); I would have loved to have gone, if for nothing else than to see Elmslie [see my review of her first book here]. I’ve been wanting to meet Rose for some time too (I think she lives in the US now, or is she here? I can’t keep track of everyone). Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me about these things? In a hotel room in Ottawa how many years ago, I got Barbara Nickel to play “Hooked on a Feeling” on her fiddle (you’d be surprised at how many musicians don’t take requests…). Today the official plan includes the Vancouver Art Gallery; I’ve only managed to get in there once, and have wanted back the whole time. I could live in the Canadian section, with the Kiyookas and the Curnoes and the what else.

Richard Simmons, the late Ottawa bookseller and photographer, was formerly one of the curators there, and was removed under unpleasant circumstances moons and moons ago; I remember when he and jwcurry met, and curry was able to quote from Simmons’ first and only novel, Sweet Marie, as well as a poem from the old 3 cent pulp days that Simmons was involved in (a precursor to the current Arsenal Pulp Press. Simmons had long distanced himself from the book; he’d even told the Ottawa painter (now in Madoc, Ontario) Diane Woodward that if she ever found that book and read it, he would never talk to her again. I always think of Simmons when I think of the Vancouver Art Gallery; apparently he was the first public curator in Canada to purchase Greg Curnoe paintings. Apparently his removal from the gallery was a political move, and less a matter of what he had actually done wrong. Apparently he used to run a used bookstore in the space now housed by Invisible Cinema at 319 Lisgar Street (at Bank, above Wallacks), what was previously Gallery 101, and just before he moved his store to Dalhousie Street (it closed in the early/mid-1990s).

An interesting quote (considering Brockwell was traveling with a book, again, of Collected Wallace Stevens poems (he did same when we went to Montreal last year, on the same trip I wrote the poetry manuscript strike out (a suite) ) ) from Robert Creeley (April 28, 1950) from Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, Volume 1:

Thinking of Stevens, who slipped into PR, with this: ‘Poetic form in its proper sense is a question of what appears within the poem itself… By appearance within the poem itself one means the things created and existing there… Basic. Yet they won’t see it, that it cannot be a box or a bag or what you will. Like Eliot: the imposition of tradition etc., etc. Both senses to apply. You cannot put 1 tradition on top of another, without losing what APPLIES in each… Like these idiots who will not take what is of use but insist on ‘returns’ &tc.

Anyhow—sick at the heart. (p 22)

I found an issue of the magazine FRONT: Contemporary Art and Ideas, tweaking my eye because of the fact it had ROSS PRIDDLE in big letters on the front cover; apparently he has a poem on the inside, which is pretty cool. He once turned up to visit jwcurry with his entire family from VAnderhoof BC (near Prince George), driving four days non-stop to get there, and same home, just for two days with john. Where will priddle (whom I’ve known for years as a lowercase writer) turn up next?

Commercial Drive: I have always felt comfortable hanging around Commercial Drive: poet Sharon Thesen used to live around here (Warren and I were trying to figure out where the cover image from her News & Smoke might be located...), just a few years back, before moving into the interior. Patrick Friesen used to, closer to the Skytrain; apparently Lionel Kearns around here somewhere. Meira Cook and husband Mark Libin, during their Vancouver year(s). Did/does Ryan Knighton as well? (And that little diner just south of the Skytrain, Seto Cafe, that makes the greatest breakfast…. When did Bukowski’s close (I read there with Anne Stone and kath macLean back in April, 1999…)? And that bookstore that used to be across from it, where I found that second hand copy of Stephen Scobie’s GOSPEL how many years back, or the one still around where I found that SALT book…) Anne and Wayde; Jason Le Heup used to live a few blocks away from where Stone and Compton currently do, and Fulton does, just a few blocks away from where Tom Snyders used to live, and run SPAN (the original small press action network). The same warehouse space I convinced Tom he should host a party for Anne Stone and myself during our spring 1999 tour, the night before our afternoon reading in the same location (we were lucky to make it, despite not having really left the building…), and where/when I first met Le Heup. The same warehouse space where Clare Latremouille and I spent the whole night talking with Tom and Gerry Gilbert after a reading in 1997 (telepoetics, perhaps?) and ended up on the roof to watch the sunrise, where Gilbert read us a poem and danced a jig, to a background of sunrise and mountains (there are photos of the event somewhere; with Gerry, I think?).

I met Snyders (who I haven’t seen now in some time) in 1996 in Sechelt, British Columbia at the weekend conference for small and micro presses organized by Michael Barnholden and Victor Coleman (with other participants including Rob Manery and Joe Blades; where I also met a pile of others, including Barry McKinnon, John Pass, Cybele Creery, Tim Lander, Doug Steadman, Wendy Agnew, Blaine Kyllo, etcetera… where we were unable to eat most meals because we were so full from the meal previous…); the idea was that the rest of us would go home and become a real network (an idea that never actually went anywhere), where the idea of span-o came from (cleaning out your literary clogs). Joe Blades would do spann-er (eastern region), and there was talk of either national or Calgary or Kingston as span-c/span-k (heh heh). Bad schoolboy humour, but what’s a boy to do, otherwise? Joe Blades even has a photograph of me standing outside of Molly’s Reach in Gibson’s Landing on our way from the ferry (Barnholden was nice enough to offer to drive us through) to the event, back when “Relic” was still alive; did you know the Reach actually exists as a half café/half tourist spot? I think it was the only part of my trip west that year that my parents had any entry point to…

Back at Warren’s apartment, there was talk of bowling, but we never got to it; an idea started by Bowering and Baird and Stone and Compton (etc), the Kootenay School of Bowling. An idea that apparently annoys a number of the actual Kootenay School of Writing folk, which somehow makes the whole thing much funnier. But, Warren says, there’s no point if none of the four of them are around…

The documentary film launch apparently tonight, not last night; Warren got his dates wrong. Last night quieter, working on machines with me writing and Warren producing a small broadsheet of a poem he’d requested (I wrote it yesterday afternoon), in a series of single-page broadsides that include photo booth photos (we took mine in the moring at the train station, while picking up my luggage…).

Rob Budde currently making a list of Canadian eco-poets (see his post on our Prince George adventures here); did you know Barry McKinnon working on a book on Al Purdy?

At the Vancouver Art Gallery (finally) around 11am, realizing a reading by John Barton, Kate Braid and others in the Emily Carr exhibit around 2pm, the same time Christian apparently reads at Spartacus Books; if he was closer, I’d pick his event, but I’m seeing him tomorrow at the college, and already paid my $15 to get into the show, so I might as well come back, partly for the reading, partly to just say hello to John. While I do like the work of Emily Carr, I feel somehow un-Canadian to admit that I never really got as excited as everyone else by the work of Emily Carr or the Group of Seven; I always preferred David Milne to the Group of Seven, always preferred the work of Greg Curnoe. The Carr exhibit works to put her work in a context larger than herself, which I always find interesting in any exhibit, working to show exactly what the work meant and means on the terms in which it was created. One of the pieces that really jumps out at me is one by Langdon Kihn (1898-1957), the piece “Gitwinlkool Totem Poles” from 1924, for its magnificent use of white and white space. Why is it most art doesn’t understand the use of white and space?

The other exhibit on the second floor is simply called PAINT; for some reason, I guess I had presumed a collection of permanent, to see some of the same works I'd seen before, but no. Still, this was far more exciting than the Carr exhibit (for me), showcasing Vancouver paintings from the 1960s on, including Brian Fisher, Claude Breeze, Roy Kiyooka, Takao Tanabe (I saw a 75th birthday retrospective of his a few years ago here, finding the little gallery while lost trying to find somewhere else), Attila Richard Lukacs, Robert Young, Jack Shadbolt, and showcasing the work of a number of younger painters, the most striking being Matthew Brown (his "Laughing Green" was magnificent), Jessica Stockholder, and Arabella Campbell, who's work reminded me somewhat of Ontario artist Barbara Caruso.

The reading by the three poets was interesting enough, in a little side gallery as part of the Emily Carr exhibit; Barton was far and away the most interesting of the three (I am looking forward to his next book, whenever; I never did get the name of the third reader). I’d never actually heard Kate Braid read before; part of that work poetry Vancouver stuff in the 1980s (with Erin Mouré, Phil Hall, Tom Wayman and others), it wasn’t really my thing, but I could hear echoes of Stephanie Bolster’s first poetry collection White Stone: The Alice Poems (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press, 1998) in Braid’s poetry collection on the life of Emily Carr; a similar kind of tone through her lyric “I” – was there an influence there, perhaps? Barton has been co-editing an anthology of gay male Canadian poets for some time, from the beginnings to poets born in the 1980s that is supposed to be out next year that I’m looking forward to, partly so someone somewhere gives acknowledgment to the late Ed Lacey (we’re publishing an essay/introduction on him in our next issue of Poetics.ca, whenever we get to it…).

Leaving the reading I found Warren Fulton walking along Granville with Christian Bök, apparently looking for a photo booth after Christian’s reading at Spartacus Books; we got lost in a mall after the pictures were taken (Christian tried to look exactly the same in all four pictures, but his smirk began to develop by the third); drinks after meeting up with the reading crowd (apparently) including donato mancini, Jeff Derksen, Michael Barnholden, Colin Smith and others, with Pauline Butling appearing a bit later, pre-KSW meeting, before Warren and I had to run off. The documentary Warren took me to, later that evening, and shown as part of the Vancouver Asian Film Festival, was the Vancouver premiere of Brockett 99 – Rockin’ The Country by Director/Writer/Producer Nilesh Patel. A very smart and very funny documentary, the official blurb writes:

In the mid-1980s, an audiotape made in Lethbridge, Alberta began circulating throughout Canada and parts of the U.S. It was ostensibly a morning radio show by members of the First Nations community of Brockett, Alberta. In 2004, Nilesh Patel and his crew embarked on a road trip across Western Canada to talk to fans of the tape, foes of the tape, and everyone in between. They were able to capture the unguarded opinions of Canadians of their perceptions of Aboriginal life, while revealing insight into the spread of racist humour. At times angry, at times moving, but surprisingly candid throughout.

Selected as best documentary at the Montreal First People’s Festival in 2006, what made the documentary really interesting was a film on racism against First Nations people in southern Alberta by a filmmaker from Prince George, British Columbia with an East Indian background (at an Asian Film Festival); what helped give the film weight was the fact that he was an outsider, talking directly about racism; against a particular community, sure, but racism itself knows very little boundaries. Interplaying the original tape as narration in parts (a tape I had never actually heard of), the documentary shows quite a range of engagement with the questions asked, and even a few unspoken.

And later last night, an email from Dana Bath letting me know that Montreal poet Robert Allen had succumbed to cancer on Friday…

Tour notes, day six; November 6, Vancouver BC

Part of the morning working on my obit for Robert Allen [here]. Nearly an hour on the phone with Mark Cochrane, a Vancouver poet I’m lucky to see every few years, who had actually been searching out a confirmation on Rob’s death when I called; Allen was his supervisor when he went through Concordia University over ten years ago, working the manuscript that became his first collection, Boy Am I (Toronto ON: Wolsak & Wynn, 1995). He didn’t even know Rob had been sick. A few minutes on the phone with Simon Dardick, before running off to get work done, to catch Christian’s reading at Capilano College for 3:30pm, before my own reading with Brockwell tonight. So many things to do…

At Capilano College, Christian was magnificent, of course. After the reading to a couple of classes of students (and Michael Barnholden and Ryan Knighton, as well as reading hosts Andrew Klobucar and Jenny Penberthy), he answered questions, talking about how poetry is completely irrelevant to living, partly because of poets themselves refusing to think outside the bounds of what they’ve learned, unlike their contemporaries in visual art (I know I’m paraphrasing quite badly, but it was extremely interesting). Poets need to be able to compete with video games; it reminds me of the Gertrude Stein line that we all have to write of the times we live in. Christian, it seems, has got it figured out in a very interesting way, and in a way that makes so much sense it seems baffling that he’s the only one vocalizing it; how can we be expected to compete with video games (etcetera) if writers refuse to even think that way?

Spent time with Jenny Penberthy in The Capilano Review offices; she's been doing some interesting work on Lorine Niedecker for years, including that magnificent collected for University of California Press. Wishing I had more time to hear about her current projects...

Transiting up and down to Capilano College (I didn’t know that Dwight Gardiner was there; geez, when’s the last time he had a book out? What’s he doing now?), it’s always entertaining to watch the street and place names in this western Canada, taken from various First Nations languages that just don’t exist in my part of the world. I read so many of these names and wonder what they might mean; I read so many of them and think how wonderful it must be to live in a place with such an interesting and lyric name. Nootka. Skeena.

Otherwise, the Sea Bus (and the Sky Train; why not a Sea Train?) was lovely; although it took forever to get up to the campus, and over an hour to get back downtown from there for my seven o’clock reading. Thanks much to Elizabeth Bachinsky (currently up for GG-poetry; although we speculate it'll probbly go to Dionne Brand....) for setting up the reading for Brockwell and myself; had a small audience, but a good audience: Tom Konyves, Diane Tucker, Mark Cochrane, some random guy I didn’t know (who left half-way through), Colin Smith and Chris Gatchalian, most of whom appear regularly when I read in town (which is so lovely I can't even comprehend...). Brief drinks afterward with Konyves, Tucker and Cochrane on a patio where everyone asked for money we didn’t have (I must have been asked thirty times; by the end I was getting less polite about it all, and we were all out of change…).

I asked Colin Smith (whom I've known for a few years and a few provinces) if he would ever have another book out; he had a book out millions of years ago with Tsunami Editions; he said that donato mancini is currently working to put the Tsunami Editions titles not already up on the ubuweb site on the Kootenay School of Writing site. Amazing! Something to look forward to, and hopefully it might even spur Smith on to do something further?

Tour notes, day seven; November 7, Vancouver BC

Scheming my way to Salt Spring Island to visit Robert McTavish tomorrow, for two nights, before flying to Edmonton on Saturday; will I ever be able to figure it out? So much of writing (it seems) is waiting for money, and it never comes in fast enough. What is a poor boy to do?

McTavish is the one who did the documentary on late Saskatchewan poet John Newlove that was premiered at the Saskatchewan Festival of Words in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in July; apparently they’re still waiting for a broadcast date from Bravo. McTavish is also putting the finishing touches on a larger John Newlove new and selected poems for Chaudiere Books to publish in fall 2007; we want it larger than Apology for Absence (Erin ON: The Porcupine’s Quill, Inc., 1993); we want to correct the cover of such that featured a photograph of an Alberta grain elevator…

This afternoon a meeting with Brian at Arsenal Pulp Press over that Ottawa: The Unknown City book I've been working on. Tonight a reading at Spartacus Books (8pm) hosted by KSW by donato mancini and someone else I admit I’ve heard of but don’t (yet) know; supposed to call Mark Cochrane after that, because he teaches until 10pm…

Robert Allen: 1946-2006

I got an email from Dana Bath last night, telling me that Montreal poet Robert Allen died on Friday, after a long battle with cancer, surrounded by friends and family at his home in Ayer's Cliff, Quebec. A poet [see my review of his Ricky Ricardo Suites here], fiction writer, teacher, mentor, editor and publisher, Allen taught in the creative writing program at Concordia University, was responsible for many years for Matrix magazine, and, with Jon Paul Fiorentino, had been an editor for DC Books, and more recently, had started up Snare Books, as an imprint of the magazine. Starting to publish books in the 1970s, Allen was the author of numerous books of fiction and poetry, as both author and editor, and his long poem, The Encantadas, published in sections throughout various of his poetry collections, finally appeared as a whole through Andy Brown's Conundrum Press earlier this year.

Every time I saw him he was smiling. He was a good guy, and will be missed by a whole bunch of people, writers, students and otherwise. Here's the email I got from Simon Dardick this morning, publisher of Vehicule Press:

Poet and novelist Robert Allen 1946-2006

Vehicule Press mourns the loss of poet, novelist, colleague, and friend Robert Allen who died in Sherbrooke, Quebec on Friday, November 3.

As a professor in the Creative Writing department of Concordia University he had a lasting influence on hundreds students over the years--many of whom became writers. As the editor of Matrix magazine he opened its pages to the innovative work of a new generation of writers and illustrators. His 15 published works included poetry, short stories, and three novels.

Vehicule Press is proud to have published Magellan's Clouds: Poems 1971-1986 (1987) and Standing Wave (2005), both part of its Signal Editions poetry series. Standing Wave reflected themes familiar to Robert Allen's poetry and novels: the slow rusts and wild incandescences of memory; the myths and delusions sustaining our lives; and the uneasy duo of body and mind. His latest book, The Encantadas, published this year by Conundrum Press, collects together in one volume, his important long poem of the same name.

Robert Allen was born in England in 1946 and came to Canada as a ten-year-old. He attended the University of Toronto and Cornell University and taught at Kenyon College (Ohio), Champlain College (Lennoxville, Qc), and Concordia University since 1982.

Simon Dardick & Nancy Marrelli, publishers
Vehicule Press

Todd Swift's obit and previous note on Robert Allen; Fiorentino's obit; a poem for Robert Allen by David Solway; BookNinja link to Dardick's release; Golda Fried has already written a piece, and Simon Dardick says there are others in the works, including one by Steve Luxton; there will be a group of tributes to appear in the Montreal Gazette in a few days.

Tour notes, day three; November 3, Prince George to Vancouver BC

Barry McKinnon gave me a hug after the reading at UNBC, just before he had to leave; I think he liked the reading? Worried about the coming storm, he drove immediately off to Tumbler Ridge. Canadian poet Ken Norris, down there teaching lit at the University of Maine in Orono since about 1985, started teaching McKinnon a few days ago, once he was finished Sharon Thesen. In an email the day before yesterday, he wrote:

Tell Barry that the students from the mill towns of Maine are very appreciative
of poems like "The the." We've been having some very intense discussions about
his work.

Words that make me suddenly aware of my own accent (Ottawa Valley?): “room” (as “rhoom”) and “buried” (as “burr-eed”).

After last night’s dinner, with some younger folk I didn’t catch the names of (awful, I know) as well as Belford and Budde, we wandered off to the upstairs of Books and Company, where an open performance of music and poetry was already underway; Budde had got us on the bill, but Brockwell was in a listening mood, and decided not to read. I read three poems from “gifts,” just before poet and musician Jeremy Stewart (Budde published a chapbook of his a while ago) performed the most amazing original material, accompanied by his lovely partner on accordion. Apparently he’s been in a bunch of bands over the years, and is salvaging much of his older material into something that he’s working to group together on a potential CD. I think the kid is going places; Brockwell and I were fading, so we (unfortunately) had to leave before richard kruegar got on stage. Budde says he’s great too, and working toward producing a CD of his own material. I was disappointed to not get the opportunity to meet hardy f., but apparently he was caught in that snow squall and couldn’t make it into Prince George. Jeremy Stewart gave me a new chapbook of his, and wrote inside it (for me), “Culture is happening all around your hair.”

In the breakfast billion-dollar morning nook, writing:

from “the other side of the world”

a snow that anywhere else

might become a delicacy; a man

of letters & a man

of numbers / comparisons

announce themselves; who are you

for counting? dry mouth

outta get out

when the gettings good, outta

drink a lot more water; I am

--when the water hits the air

it bends--

a desert standing in the pouring rain

Flying soon back to Vancouver, where everything else will probably happen; staying with Warren Fulton for a few days while I figure out the rest of my life (I usually stay with Anne Stone (who finally has her third novel out in the spring) and Wayde Compton, but they're both away). Already dropped a few postcards into the mailbox outside of the hotel. Brockwell and I want to know who to thank officially for all of this; Budde has done a spectacular job hosting us. Who could ask for anything more?

At the airport lounge later in Vancouver (after watching two RCMP officers transport a prisoner from the north on our little flight...), even though I have to figure out baggage before meeting up with Fulton hours from now, sitting with Brockwell an hour before he heads home (to re-appear on Monday night for the reading, on his way to California for meetings). Ah, me in the Vancouver airport Air Canada lounge; what the hell am I doing here? Filling up on soups, drinks and whatever I can carry. Oh, Air Canada lounge, let me love you a long time; I know I could live here forever...

Tour notes, day four; November 4, Vancouver BC

Hard to imagine, over the past two months: Westminster to New Westminster. You don’t even want to know about getting myself finally from the airport to downtown, sitting hours waiting for transit that never happened, to pay nearly $40 for a taxicab to get my larger luggage stored overnight at the Central Station via/greyhound building. Hours of broken umbrella and raining before finding Warren’s children (aged 4, 13 and 15) and lovely wife Nancy home in their snug apartment off Commercial Drive. Moons and moons ago, Fulton was part of The Carleton Arts Review with me from 1993-4, co-editing two issues of the now-defunct journal (the people that happened after we left weren’t nearly as responsible). Fulton also ran poetry slams at Zaphod Beeblebrox under the title “The Vogon Reading Series,” as well as readings at the Lois & Frima’s ice cream store on Elgin Street he used to work in, later starting up Pooka Press and eventually, the Kamloops Poets Factory after he headed west. Now he lives in Vancouver and works in film (after Vancouver Film School), working on such things as The Fantastic Four movie, X-Men 3, Stargate, Blade 3, and various movies of the week (extremely cool). Maybe I should ask him if he knows someone who would want to option Clare Latremouille’s novel into a film? (He used to hang out with Clare before she left Kamloops…)

Sitting in a coffeeshop at Hastings and Richards (for some reason the police have it blocked off), right by the Simon Fraser University building; I read there last summer as part of that West Coast Poetry Festival (I hope they still do that over here); did a talk there a few years ago to a class full of students in the publishing program about making little chapbooks. One kid tried to get me to justify the publication of poetry at all, if they don’t sell 100,000 copies; I told him that wasn’t what I was there for. Sitting here with the first two volumes of Charles Olson & Robert Creeley: The Complete Correspondence, edited by George F. Butterick. I’ve been wanting these for years, ever since I saw them in Windsor, Ontario, on a shelf in Marty Gervais’ (founder/publisher of Black Moss Press) house. Apparently Toronto poet (now teaching at the University of Calgary) Christian Bök reads at 3:30 on Monday at Capilano College, the Library Building, room #321; I haven’t heard him read since that West Coast Poetry Festival. (I hear he’s reading somewhere on Sunday too, but don’t know where…) Why is I only see him in Vancouver now?

Finally reading Suzette Mayr's second novel, The Widows (Edmonton AB: NeWest Press, 1998). I heard her read from part of it last year when she was in Ottawa for Alberta Scene (100 years of the province; but I still ask outgoing Mayor Bob Chiarelli: where was the Ottawa scene for our 150?). I completely loved her Venous Hum (Vancouver BC: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2006). She lives and teaches in that Calgary; will I see her when I get there? When will she ever have that long-promised poetry collection?

Apparently, according to Warren, our old acquaintance Jennifer Amey now lives in Toronto, and has a novel out (I haven't seen her for years; this is me looking it up), called sundowning. Apparently tonight we're going to the premiere of a documentary by a friend of Warren’s; should be entertaining. He’s been telling me stories of interacting with Halle Berry and Robin Williams and Tom Green. It is pretty cool, when you think about it. But enough of this blogging, I've got work needs to be done...

Tour report: Prince George UNBC reading photos (provided by Rob Budde):

myself & then Stephen Brockwell

Jacqueline Turner's Seven into Even

Easily the most effective of her three poetry collections is Vancouver writer and editor Jacqueline Turner's Seven Into Even (Toronto ON: ECW Press, 2006), after her previous ECW Press collections Into the Fold (2000) and Careful (2003) [see my review of such here]. Wonderfully lush and lyric while at the same time working against that lyric, the poems in Seven Into Even rework Edmund Spencer's The Faerie Queene into contemporary settings. It's interesting how, no matter how far we might move, the earlier works can't help but be referenced, and completely reworked, as (for example) New York poet Lisa Jarnot recently reworked The Illiad [see my note on such here], Vancouver writer George Bowering reworked Duino Elegies in his Kerrisdale Elegies (Toronto ON: Coach House Press, 1986), and Vancouver poet Daphne Marlatt reworked The Snow Queen in her collection Frames (Toronto ON: McClelland & Stewart, 1969). In Turner's Seven Into Even, her connections and sections are accumulative, working the lyric prose line in layers, working and reworking her peripheries of language and geography, writing her domestic blisters and bliss through Vancouver, Calgary and Australian marks.

gluttony


your creamy thighs
your chocolate éclair
smeared sweet
back of my throat




just can't get enough of just can't get enough of just can't get enough
ginger stings the back of my throat chocolate presses between my
tongue and the roof of my mouth a crisp glass of thick red wine drips
and gushes or a cold pot of beer my lips on a hot day sizzles crackles
but goes down smooth eventually and another and another and anoth-
er raspberry vodka and muddled lime mmmm or cheese dripping
thickly off the edges of crackers whipped cream straight out of the
aerosol can suffocating slightly the tip of my nose or the dark hit of
coffee with a milky tinge zing to stay awake with all night long (Book 4)

Turner's Seven Into Even, writing seven numbered sections plus three (making it an even number), works ten sections, writing from "Book 1" to "Book 4" (writing the seven deadly sins, as above), "Book 5" writing the days of the week, to "Book 7 (Or Mutability)," to the final three sections, writing her coastal regions as "Bay" (including "Horseshoe," "Lions" and "English"), "Queen(e)sland" and her "History of Sexuality." Turner's "Queen(e)sland" references her time in Brisbane, Australia as Queensland's inaugural poet-in-residence at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts.

A Brisbane Poem

down is a hazy light
I don't always get to see
suffuse with the blush on the palms
of the sun slowly rising
here on the other side of the earth
earlier the southern cross
emerged as clouds pushed past
hello scorpio's vivid immensity
across a dark sky rushing
along the river
to get to where we always end up
not home, but welcome
not altogether free, but wanting
to capture what's in front of us
that will someday be far away
leaning up into a different night sky
a glimpse back
arms out spinning

Balancing the domestic and linguistic collisions has been a theme throughout Turner's published work, writing her immediate world of children and Vancouver streets (her editing work with Meredith Quartermain on The News also reflects this consideration of the local), a thread that also works through the poems in this collection. What I like about the progression of her writing is the mix of lyrical sensuality, her writing sexuality and the domestic (including children) as not competing or conflicting ideas, and her mix of narrative and language collusions, working a territory that very few have managed to work or work so well, including Toronto poet Margaret Christakos [see my piece on her here] or New York poet Rachel Zucker [see my note on her here].

Things Present

you can finally attend to it outside the neighbourhood feeds the crows what
looks like catfood and the biggest joke is that one can call the kids for
lunch through the overgrown green or from atop the flat mossy roof
where once there were cottages one no ferry no impending box
destroying overpass: a jewel a gem that now features the largest num-
ber of divorced people in the whole area so much so that people won-
dered if you were moving on your own there your husband is he mov-
ing too (Book 2)

Writing The Faerie Queene as a guideline, Turner manages the strongest of her three collections in her Seven Into Even, writing her lyrical thrust through a history and geography of ideas that balance nicely between reduction and expansion in her suite of ten lyric sequences. Also, every so often I find myself writing on how the prose poem is a rarity in contemporary Canadian writing, something I've been saying more and more often when referring to new writing, whether Turner or Sina Queyras [see my note on her here], Nicole Markotić, Bruce Whiteman [see my note on him here] and just so many others; is this something I should finally admit not only happens, but has become prevalent?

citi/zen


another cosmopolitan
creates equilibrium
in its natural state
remember your membership
badge affix it here and here
band together remember
bar stools tip easily
subjectivity gets blurry
wow your makeup
shimmers with obligation
you've accumulated
quite a collection your
freshly waxed legs shine
you'd be at home everywhere
pink inhabits an urban experience
again when implications
coincide or subside
up your tree lined street (Book 6)

Tour notes, day one; November 1, Ottawa ON to Vancouver to Prince George BC

(Rob Budde + Barry McKinnon images from November 1st, Coast Hotel & Resorts lounge; photos by Stephen Brockwell)

In the Vancouver Airport checking email and trying all the soups in the lounge; the benefits of traveling with Stephen, to be bumped up to first class every so often (as we were for England in August/September, and Ireland in 2003). I ate as much as I could in the two hours between arriving and our next flight north to Prince George; three kinds of soup (two of one kind), and four salads (they were all on these tinytiny plates). Had two cans (ahhhh) of Guinness and Stephen told me to be careful. I am always careful. Checked way too much of my email and posted some blog items. Why always with the blog items?

Reading tours are always where I allow myself the luxury of reading fiction; time I never think I have as much at home. On this trip, reading prose and working to write it as well, with four books of fiction in my bag, starting and finishing Toronto writer Alayna Munce’s When I Was Young & In My Prime (Madeira Park BC: Nightwood Editions, 2005) in a single day while in the air. A magnificent novel. I could never say enough good about it (although I am working on it, currently). A month is a long time do be doing any kind of travel, so I plan to eventually move from fiction to non-fiction in both reading and work. I’ve been wanting to work a longer short story on Buffalo Bill for some time now, as some sort of counterpart to the long poem the true eventual story of buffalo bill that I wrote a few years back, pilfering much of the same information (it’s currently sitting on my desk in a pile of other manuscripts, lingering unpublished… but who am I to complain…). I have a few pages of notes so far, but another line has fallen into my notebook as well; I wonder if this could be another story, moving along the lines of “Bones.” Since I wrote my “escape notes: london” in August/September, I’ve been aware of working an eventual manuscript of perhaps five or six longer short stories (or shorter novels, since my “long” novels are only about 100 pages anyway). Could this be the time?

Brockwell, as usual, has his stacks of reading material, reading Emerson on the plane from Vancouver to Prince George (I made the expected Lake and Palmer jokes, of course; he was too far behind me on the previous flight to know anything of what he was doing). In the hotel later on, while waiting for McKinnon to call, he read me this quote from "The Poet" (from The Portable Emerson, new edition, edited by Carl Bode in collaboration with Malcolm Cowley):

The condition of true naming, on the poet's part, is his resigning himself to
the divine aura which breathes through forms, and accompanying that.

Tour notes, day two; November 2, Prince George BC

Last night drinks with Rob Budde and Barry McKinnon (see photos above); was supposed to with Ken Belford as well, but he didn’t make it. Budde and Barry have to be two of the nicest folk I’ve met, talking about whatever it is that us writers do, them writers, Budde and his four hundred children that made him later to the hotel lounge. We meant to meet in the lounge and go further, but didn’t quite end up that way. Some photos Brockwell took, and the notes that made it into my head. Got some little publications from Barry; will his in the millennium book ever appear? Reading in an hour or so at the university, and then an afternoon of whatever else with Belford and Barry, dinner later somewhere else. This university knows how to take care of writers, paying for hotel and reading fee and the occasional food; what the? I gave Budde books and he still insisted on buying others, including the new one from Monty Reid. Oh, these people with jobs. Had an expensive breakfast thismorning around 8am downstairs and tinkered a bit, reading and taking notes.

from “the other side of the world”


a world of where two rivers; thompson, fraser

mix into mackenzie waters

circumnavigate the stain

where dark smoke mates w/ northern light

where heart is part & parcel

where north is north is passage singing rogers & not

to be fucked with

where is not international waters

he says, you can’t run a business

like that

grist a mischief; mistaken laughter


The reading at the University of Northern British Columbia, hosted by poet and professor Rob Budde went quite well (although what’s the deal with the bear in the front painted up like Spider-Man? Where was the Green Goblin bear, or the Doctor Octopus bear? Oh, why didn’t we get a photograph…. ); to a packed house, Stephen Brockwell and I read about twenty minutes each, and answered a flurry of questions from both audience and host (Brockwell did record the reading digitally, if anyone is interested). We did our usual dog-and-pony show, what Brockwell calls our “Abbott & Costello routine” (I prefer Wayne & Shuster, keep to Canadiana; to hell with anyone who doesn’t get the reference). What I find interesting is that we’ve been performing together long enough and in enough places that we do actually have a little routine going, knowing what I can get away with (heh heh), and learning how to compliment each other’s considerations, since our work doesn’t really have that much overlap, especially when we’re answering questions. I think it’s good for a group of students, as well, to see how our stylistic contradictions don’t have to become competitions; that just because we do different kinds of things and have different purposes and interests doesn’t mean we have to have idiot pissing matches. It was one of the founding principles of Poetics.ca, that our considerations do have these divergent directions, which hopefully makes the site as a whole less about our individual interests and more about those places where we might even contradict (but sometimes meet). During his reading, Stephen repeated our constant joke that I make fun of him for refusing to read the living, and his that I refuse to read the dead; I tossed a comment from the back of the room that I looked forward to reading his work...

Audience members included Barry McKinnon, Ken Belford, Si Transken, Gillian Wigmore and Laisha Rosnau; the last time I saw Laisha, a few years ago, she was back and forth from Vancouver to Victoria (I had originally met her in Vernon, British Columbia in 2001 when Andy Weaver and I drove from Edmonton to read for Jason Dewinetz’s Greenboathouse Books reading series). I had no idea she was here; apparently she and her husband moved to Prince George last year (husband; is it appropriate to admit that I used to have a massive crush on her?). And after how much I enjoyed and admired her first novel, when will the next one appear?

Wigmore introduced herself and gave me a small package to pass on to Ariel Gordon in Winnipeg (and I won’t tell Gordon what it is, either, just to bug her). Apparently Wigmore is envious, and would love to be at this reading we’re doing there (but wouldn’t give me sufficient reason as to why she can’t just come along…). Budde was even nice enough to take us to lunch afterwards, and gave me copies of a couple of things, including richard krueger’s chapbook [t]h[e [f]oldin[g s]easo[n] (Prince George BC: noScene(press), 2002), Michael Armstrong’s play In Their Nightgowns, Dancing (Prince George BC: UNBC Press, 2005), and Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C. (Prince George BC: The Caitlin Press, 1992), edited by Don Precosky (who also did It’s Still Winter, something I think he should do more of) and featuring the work of Ken Belford, Barry McKinnon, Barbara Munk and George Stanley (who has long since moved to Vancouver). I’ve actually been wanting a copy of this for some time, so very much appreciate that he had one (with a 99cent sticker on the back cover). McKinnon is one of my favourite Canadian poets (I’m disappointed that he had to leave after the reading to head back to his other house in Tumbler Ridge), and he was saying that his magnificent collected/selected The Centre: Poems 1970-2000 (Vancouver BC: Talonbooks, 2004) had only one review (the one I did in The Antigonish Review; I at least did a longer essay, but it hasn’t appeared anywhere yet, and might not, until it appears next fall in my ECW Press collection of essays). Here is one of his poems from the anthology (originally in his Governor General’s Award nominated Coach House Press title, The the.) that was later included in his Talonbook.

Gestures

Claire has 4 teeth
& can stand

high enough to turn
the radio off

& throw my baby picture
off the shelf

what questions can I
ask

about these things
I watch my girl

grow. I am grown up
& must bend down

to turn the radio on
& put my picture back (Barry McKinnon)

Ken Belford is interesting; after a break of years, he had books out in the late 1960s, and then a couple more over the past couple of years. Budde calls him an “eco-poet,” suggesting that no-one really knows where to put Belford’s writing. During lunch, he referred to himself as a “Mountain poet,” comparing himself to Peter Christenson and Sid Marty; where does one put someone who writes poetry about places that don’t usually have or get the poetry? It reminds me of a Frank O’Hara quote about schools, how they’re predominantly useful for being remembered at all; individuals are too often lost, after the years go by. Do you remember the poets that existed in New York that weren’t in the New York School but at the same time? Do you remember the Vancouver poets the same time as Tish that were included but not included? (See also: Newlove, Kiyooka, Copithorne, Gilbert, etcetera…)

Waiting soon on Budde to call for dinner plans that will hopefully include some of the writers that weren’t around for the 11:30am reading (what the hell?), and some other event tonight that Brockwell brought his 90 year old classical acoustic guitar for...

Monica Youn's Barter

One of the most interesting poets to read in Ottawa with the infamous "poetry bus" had to be Manhattan, New York poet and entertainment lawyer Monica Youn. The manuscript of her second collection was only sent to her publisher a couple of weeks before she was here, but I've been going through her first collection, Barter (Saint Paul Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2003). In a collection of smart, smart poems, I like the point to point to point straightforwardness, the hesitating line breaks, and the complications made through the simplest of language.

A Parking Lot in West Houston

Angels are unthinkable
in hot weather

except in some tropical locales, where
from time to time, the women catch one in their nets,

hang it to dry, and fashion it into a lantern
that will burn forever on its own inexhaustible oils.

But here—shins smocked with heat rash,
the supersaturated air. We no longer believe

in energies pure enough not to carry heat,
nor in connections—the thought of someone

somewhere warming the air we breathe
that one degree more ….

In a packed pub during the World Cup final,
a bony redhead woman gripped my arm

too hard. I could see how a bloke might fancy you.
Like a child's perfect outline in fast-melting snow,

her wet handprint on my skin, disappearing.
The crowd boiling over, a steam jet: Brrra-zil!

And Paris—a heroin addict
who put her hypodermic

to my throat: Je suis malade.
J'ai besoin de medicaments.

Grabbing her wrist, I saw
her forearm's tight net sleeve of drying blood.

I don’t like to be touched.
I stand in this mammoth parking lot,

car doors open, letting the air conditioner
run for a while before getting in.

The heat presses down equally
everywhere. It wants to focus itself,

to vaporize something instantaneously,
efficiently—that shopping cart, maybe,

or that half-crushed brown-glass bottle—
but can't quite. Asphalt softens in the sun.

Nothing's detachable.
The silvery zigzag line

stitching the tarmac to the sky around the edges
is no breeze, just a trick of heat.

My splayed-out compact car half-sunk
in the tar pit of its own shadow—

strong-shouldered, straining
to lift its vestigial wings.

At the reading the group of them did, her poems immediately struck; given the strength of the poems she read while she was here, a series of poems on Ignatz from the Krazy & Ignatz cartoons of the early twentieth century, it easily makes her new work far and away ahead of what she did in her first collection; I am very much looking forward to what else she has to offer. Will a second collection happen next year? Can I wait that long?