Dany Laferrière, I Am a Japanese Writer

I first started reading Haiti-born Montreal writer Dany Laferrière through the publication of not one but two of his novels translated into English from French in a single day, the day Coach House Press released his Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? (1994) and Dining with the Dictator (1994), following on the heels of Coach House Press’ volumes of An Aroma of Coffee (1993), Eroshina (1991) and, of course, his infamous first novel, How To Make Love To a Negro (Without Getting Tired)(1987). Through his novels, there was the sustained, confident voice of a narrator, usually unnamed, but one that had very many similarities to the writer Dany Laferrière, with other features included: originally a journalist from Port-au-Prince, escaping from Duvalier’s Haiti to Montreal in 1978, who writes novels in French, loves women, and prefers to spend his days in bed, reading. Now author of over a dozen novels translated into English, his most recent is I Am a Japanese Writer (translated by David Homel; Toronto ON: Douglas & McIntyre, 2010) follows along the same rough path, following the narrative voice of many of his first-person semi-(seemingly)-autobiographical works of the writer Dany Laferrière, writing about a writer who may or may not be a fictional variant on the writer Dany Laferrière (this is something he shares with New York novelist Paul Auster as well, twisting around the idea of the fictional self).

Another early consideration I noticed while reading his works in the mid-1990s, was his interest in Asian women (in Eroshina, naturally), his oddly-surreal bent, and his clear first-person voice writing out novels through shorter self-contained and titled sections, much like another one of my early favourites, the late American novelist and poet Richard Brautigan. With I Am a Japanese Writer, his focus is on a group of Japanese women, those he is drawn to, and drawn to him, as he spends his days as a writer preferring to spend his days in bed, reading. In this book more than many, I could even feel Brautigan’s influence through the chapters, finally rewarded by the author himself in the chapter “Richard Brautigan’s Cowboy Boots,” and reference to one of Brautigan’s own Japanese works, his short story/novel, The Tokyo-Montana Express (1980).

While exploring the poetry of Basho, the narrator tells his publisher that his next novel will be titled “I Am a Japanese Writer,” and immediately receives an advance, but doesn’t get around to starting to work on the book. Somehow, the media catches wind, including the Japanese consulate, Tokyo news media and, seemingly, everyone around him, each approaching with their own opinions, concerns, excitements of his novel (which he hasn’t started) or his claim (which he didn’t claim). Much like the novel Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? claimed to be a novel about writing a novel that most knew the title of, and had plenty of opinions of, but hadn’t actually read (a reference to his How To Make Love To a Negro (Without Getting Tired)), I Am a Japanese Writer is about the book he hasn’t written yet and might not, and how much claim an author really has about any work, any text, or even any idea, moving through the nature of fame, identity and meaning, all wrapped up in his usual considerations and concerns with cultural/sexual politics. And yet, perhaps this is even the work itself, the story of how he didn’t write this novel we are reading. His previous novel, Heading South (translated by Wayne Grady; Toronto ON: Douglas & McIntyre, 2009), was a vibrant, long-awaited return to Laferrière’s English-language career as a fiction writer, but I Am a Japanese Writer somehow brings out that extra potency of his lyric cadence, his narrator’s deep, considered movement through the world as a sizzling thinking and sexual being, exploring what he does best, women, culture, ideas and ideas of women. I would rank this among one of his finest.

The Nippon at The Eiffel Tower

I’ve never owned a still camera. That’s because I’ve never quite figured out their purpose. If it’s just to take pictures I’ll never look at, then it has to be the stupidest invention ever. Anyway, I have one that works very well: this skull where I’ve stored fifty years of images, most of them repeated until they’ve become the fabric of my ordinary life. This day-to-day life made of a series of tiny explosions. An electric life. I’ve been told that these images belong to me only, and that other people can’t access them. That’s not exactly true—I can describe them with such precision that, in the end, they become visible to other eyes. Even better: I can transform these pictures into feelings. I can relate a moment without describing the people who were there, simply by bringing forth the energy that gave life to the event. In a photo, we rarely see the emotion that creates the story unfolding before our eyes. Except, maybe, in birthday photos, where we see the child’s enchanted eyes behind the lit candles. Of course, sometimes a whiff of nostalgia rises up from a picture yellowed with time, especially when almost all those who looked into the lens are dead. I keep all those photos in my head, and they have taken root there, the images falling one over the other, all wanting to surge to the front. As for the Japanese man, who never stops photographing the world: what does he see? He doesn’t even see the two elements he is trying to capture, his traveling companion and the monument that the companion is blocking out. The Eiffel Tower is there to show that this guy spent a day in Paris. But by cracking the same wide, impersonal smile in front of every monument on the face of the Earth, he is destroying the intimate nature of the moment. The Japanese man becomes as timeless as the tower itself. You’d think that the Eiffel Tower was being photographed as a backdrop for a smiling Japanese guy.

fwd; new issue of The Puritan (with an interview I did with Ken Sparling);

Friends,

The Puritan is back after a self-imposed exile, and has returned bearing gifts and rumours from distant shores...

Firstly, we have just launched Issue 11 Summer/Fall 2010. In this issue you'll find fantastic new fiction, poetry, and interviews with Ken Sparling (by rob mclennan) and Dionne Brand. It is available for perusal on our website.

Which brings us to our second announcement. Our website has been refurbished. It is no longer the lumbering mastodon of ages past, but rather a new kind of monster, sleeker, meaner, and hungrier. Go forth and uncover its secrets, including our new forum, The Town Crier, where you can (finally!) vent and rant about our endless bombast with other readers.

Finally, you'll notice a call out for Winter 2011, which promises to be a milestone issue. Thanks to a recent chest of treasures plundered from the Canada Council for the Arts, The Puritan will now be paying its beleaguered contributors for their endless toil.

All of this and more awaits you at www.puritan-magazine.com.

Thank you for your continued support,

Love always,

Spencer
Tyler
Andrew
and the rest of The Puritan crew

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MINE MINE MINE NOW NOW NOW: Johanna Skibsrud, The Sentimentalists, Gaspereau Press + the Scotiabank Giller Prize

Everyone sure seems to have a lot of opinions about Gaspereau Press these days, for deciding to hand-print a thousand copies a week of Johanna Skibsrud’s debut novel, The Sentimentalists, winner of this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize. Daily I’ve seen newspaper reports and opinions about Gaspereau’s decision to say no to certain outside offers to quick-print, and the oft-repeated number of “75,000” when referring to sales of previous winner’s titles. How could they pass up commerce for beauty? What about the opportunities for their author? How could they not understand? Don’t fool yourself: this is not about whether or not her work is getting out there.

Perhaps we need to change the way we think about books, and about how books are sold. Somehow, booksellers, readers and everyone else related to the literary book industry seem to have been self-programmed to expect that books are forgettable, and therefore, have only a shelf-life of six months. Books are aimed now for the quick, the immediate push and then nothing else; like butterflies, a quick season before absolute, utter death. Apparently copies of the book are available still on the Chapters site (Amazon’s unavailability is oft-quoted, but Chapters availability is ignored), and even selling plenty of copies as ebooks for those who want it quickly and can’t wait.

Exactly what is the concern here? Gaspereau won’t play along; I’m sure they, among many other small publishers over the past half-decade or more, have suffered greatly with the big chains over-demanding, over-ordering and thusly over-returning. Imagine a big-box chain bookstore demand to produce two, three or five times more than you would have otherwise, and then returning almost every one six months later, meaning a dead, unsellable stock that you still haven’t paid the printing for, let alone the years ahead of warehousing fees. It’s death to small press, pure and simple. So Gaspereau doesn’t play that way? Good for them. Will it hurt the immediate sales of Skibsrud’s novel? In the short term, sure, but so what? Awards and lists should be the opening for conversation and debate, and not a series of annual absolutes.

Awards make readers lazy, unadventurous and possibly stupid; instead of allowing to celebrate the accomplishment of a jury-decided award, it’s made an entire segment of the population and media focus on only the winning author and winning title, and ignoring most else of what gets written and published. A jury shouldn’t tell you what to read; if books are part of an actual culture, juries should tell you what else to read.

For god’s sake, write down the name of her novel on your calendar, and wait. Better that Gaspereau hold to their guns, despite the snide remarks that media has thrown, from the Globe and Mail to the Ottawa Citizen. Apparently they originally produced only eight hundred copies in their little shop, and ran through their initial run almost immediately. The best part? For some reason, they mailed me two copies of the first run (I immediately gave my extra away to Michael Blouin, who has been boasting on facebook about such). The entire point of their operation is hand-made books, so suck it up, gentle reader. Hold, for the obvious beauty. Savour in small, slow bites.

Wolfville, Nova Scotia’s Gaspereau Press, which came initially out of the poetry and fiction journal, The Gaspereau Review, has quite an extensive backlist, and I’m sure any of their other authors would very much appreciate the attention. If you are to like what Skibsrud has accomplished, and already it’s shown that many have, why not take a chance on another of the many books of poetry, fiction or non-fiction that the press has produced over the last decade? Why not pick up either of her other books, possibly? Her first poetry collection, Late Night with Wild Cowboys (Gaspereau, 2008) was lovely, although her second, I Do Not Think that I Could Love a Human Being (Gaspereau, 2010), didn’t really do it for me. Why not explore the short-list while waiting? Alexander MacLeod’s Light Lifting (Biblioasis) is one I would very much like to get my hands on, after a sharp, stellar reading at this past writers festival in Ottawa.

When we were in our later teens, my not-yet-ex-wife introduced me to the idea of walking into a video store and renting flicks neither of us had ever heard of, and what magnificent discoveries we made along the way. The disappointments were surprisingly few.

Reading should be something considered, thoughtful and long, and not caught up the immediate nonsense of instant gratification. As for myself? A copy of the novel has been sitting on my shelf for months, unopened. I’ll get to it when I get to it. I have no problem with any of that at all.

Suburban Dream No. 2

You will be counted on in heaven to bring,

to each and every book-club meeting,

two or three pearls

in order to illuminate the text for us so that it becomes

clear in those few moments, to

all of us, sitting upright in our dragged-in chairs,

how everything has to do with everything,

and our lives go down, and down.

Afterwards, someone will make a little joke,

or else a child will come

barrelling in from a driveway game,

and we will close our books

and laugh on our way to the door,

our voices trailing off into a sigh,

but not because we are either

discontented, or sad. (Late Night with Wild Cowboys)

Ottawa X-Press; Best of Ottawa 2010; apparently I won something,

Best work of fiction/non-fiction/poetry by local writer

Winner: Wild Horses by rob mclennan

Honourable mentions: Soft Where by Marcus McCann, Egg on Mao by Denise Chong, The Lizard and Other Stories by Michael Bryson

What I like is the fact that Bryson lives in Toronto, and McCann does at least half time; are there any Ottawa writers, according to the X-Press?

D.G. Jones, The Stream Exposed with All its Stones, Collected Poems

The Stream Exposed with All its Stones

The stream exposed with all its stones

Flung on a raw field

Is covered, once again,

With snow.

It is not hidden. It

Still flows.

The houses in the valley, standing

Motionless below,

Seem wrapped in sunlight like a snow

And are deceptive. Even stones

Deceive us.

The creator goes

Rampaging through our lives: winter

Is a masquerade.

I tell you

Nakedness is a disguise: the white

Is dark below.

This silence is the water’s cry.

I tell you in those silent houses girls

Are dancing like the stones. (from Phrases From Orpheus)

I must admit, I wonder at the subtitle “Collected Poems” of this long-anticipated collection of poet D.G. Jones, his finally-released The Stream Exposed with All its Stones (Montreal QC: Vehicule Press/Signal Editions, 2010). With selections from Frost on the Sun (Contact Press, 1957), The Sun is Axeman (University of Toronto Press, 1961), Phrases From Orpheus (Oxford University Press, 1967), the Governor General’s Award-winning Under the Thunder the Flowers Light up the Earth (Coach House Press, 1977), A Throw of Particles (General Publishing, 1983), Balthazar and Other Poems (Coach House, 1988), The Floating Garden (Coach House, 1995), Wild Asterisks in Cloud (Empyreal Press, 1997) and Grounding Sight (Empyreal Press, 1999), is this actually a collected, or just a really big selected? With newer work appearing in a number of places over the past decade, including poems online at Jacket magazine and the small chapbook, standard pose (above/ground press, 2002), I was actually surprised not to see any new or uncollected included in this collection; is that reason enough to anticipate a forthcoming full collection of new writing?

Ambiguous States

rain on the snow creates

an intimate space

up close, each twig, each dark

string of waterdrops, absorbs

the attentive breath

the rest fog

of half-fog or slippery

the lake becomes myriad lakes

all shallow

and shadowy, like the parts of

an untravelled body

or a lived but deeply receding

lacustrine place (from Grounding Sight)

As I’ve written before, D.G. Jones, a resident of Quebec’s eastern townships, seems one of the few English-language poets of his generation visibly influenced by some of the Quebec poets that came before him, notably the late Anne Hebert, and more recently, poems that reference and are influenced by more contemporary poets such as Steve McCaffery, Erin Moure and Stephanie Bolster, making him one of the rare Canadian poets that straddles with ease the line between modernism and post-modernism. Can you imagine any other Canadian poets over the years that have had books edited by such as Carmine Starnino and Christopher Dewdney? Seems unlikely to even bother to try. He exists in both “camps” without contradiction, and is also one of the rare few Canadian poets who completely understands the purpose and point of a perfect line break. Much, too, has been made of his collection of Canadian criticism (there have been books apart from Atwood’s Survival), Butterfly on Rock (University of Toronto Press, 1970). Oddly overlooked much of the time, known but not necessarily read, Jones’ poems have an elegance and ease of cadence that require so many of his pieces to be read aloud. If you care about understanding the poetic line, between breath and break, this is an essential book. Really, before everything else that came through the original collections as individual wholes, this is but a good beginning.

Poetry Depends on the Season

tax installments: the lake

a glass darkly

noncommittal

mild in the snow

the black dog breathing

like a fast train

where are the shepherds, where

are the sheep

the government

veut la laine sur le dos

semper fidelis

a bit like the solsice, the

black letter/white page, taxes

gifts, still water

no mam, you can’t

see the bottom of the lake (from Wild Asterisks in Cloud)

As much as there are pieces here that I wish were included but aren’t, the collection wisely takes fuller selections from earlier works, and less on the more recent, and possibly more easily available other collections (and I would recommend highly, if you desire only one, picking up his Wild Asterisks in Cloud). Still, with an introduction by W.J. Keith, it informs, yet somehow misses the pure aspect of cadence and play that Jones’ work revels in, nearly making me wish they had also included a counter-essay by someone like Dewdney, Moure or even George Bowering, all followers of Jones’ work over the years. It is almost difficult reading such knowing that it is only a partial account of what the poems should simply be telling you all on their own.

The end of history;

First scraps of memory wander, so as to never get lost. They are always around, inside, somewhere, appearing when I might least expect. Barely big enough to walk, I crawl through front verandah slats, edge slowly along the outside edge to steps, avoiding baby-gate. The verandah far too high to jump. Once the steps and down, I made my break. How small I would have been. The story of one time I escaped, found later in a field, tearing fresh grass to feed a cow that was down, unable to get up. I recall the tear, the crunch as grass tore from the ground in my hands, and the wet chewing sounds she made. How worried my parents would have been, that something might have happened. I was so small. Two thousand pounds of meat and muscle, flesh and bone. I remember thinking, she unable to rise and feed herself, my only choice was to help.

Playing perhaps only with surfaces. Stories I ask for from her two remaining siblings, seeking clarification, most of which left unanswered. Unacknowledged. Perhaps asking too much, asking too much at once. Once or twice a year, routine of asking to be removed from an uncle’s email forwarding list of chain letters, “joke” emails. I have no interest or time. Why can’t, I asked him once, you ever send me messages telling me about how you are, your wife, your daughter, grandchildren? Why do you never seem interested in conversation, in what the rest of us are doing? Six months of compliance before the jokes return, the usual silences begun again, accumulating.

October 2010: woke up spoiled, late. Checked email, waited for morning mail, walked down to coffeeshop for newspapers. Allowing as little work as I could get away with, to process the full spectrum of grief. The previous evening, listening to PJ Harvey on YouTube sing, “Is that all there is?” A simple torch song, reminded some weeks ago by Homer Simpson, a repeat of The Simpsons. I put the link to her lovely little cover on my Facebook page, electronically etched upon my wall, adding three-line Leonard Cohen-influenced caveat: “pj harvey / please find me / I am finally 40.” Cohen wrote his on a wall in a combination of performance and earnest desperation, and I suppose I did as well. Is that all there possibly is?

Four months before I was born, “Is that all there is?” The song Peggy Lee recorded in November, 1969; not the first version, but one of a nearly half-dozen during a two-year stretch, and the one my mother would have certainly known, number eleven on the American pop singles chart. It was her first Top 40 hit since eleven years past, singing “Fever.”

Homer Simpson, come find me. The state at which rest is just restless. My mother, a study in motion, now that she gone. At rest; not dead, but only sleeping.

The Capilano Review 3.12

I’m intrigued by the new issue of The Capilano Review (3.12 / fall 2010) and their section “Susan Bee & Charles Bernstein in Ruskin, BC 1973,” come out of nine months they spent on Vancouver after he’d received funding to study in Canada. I’ve been long aware of New York City poet and critic Charles Bernstein’s awareness of Canadian poets and poetry, attending conferences over the years, among other connections, and it’s interesting to see where this attention and awareness might have began. 

The section starts with an interview with the two conducted by Andrea Actis, and some of their works from during that period, from Bee’s visuals (including on the cover) and some of his own poetry. As Bee says in the interview:

Charles went to class with Robin Blaser, a seminar in the poetry of Emily Dickinson, while I stayed in the house and painted and drew and cooked and read books. For me, it was a welcome break from endless years of schooling. We had roommates in the house and cats to look after and we learned to bake bread and to chop wood to heat the house with. Neither of us had ever lived in the woods except in the summer and we learned to wield an axe and make a fire and Charles used the chainsaw. We went for long walks in the woods with the cats and Charles wrote poems. We also read Emily Dickinson’s poetry out loud. It was quite an idyllic interlude, though not an easy transition for me. I wasn’t used to the unstructured time, but I immersed myself in the immediacy of this new existence, though I was somewhat homesick for the urban fray of New York.

Are you able to recall the name of the SFU professor who rented out the property in Ruskin?

Charles Bernstein: Names are elusive. I do remember it was Dean Walter Gage of the University of British Columbia who said I’d have to formally enroll in classes to be affiliated with UBC. Simon Fraser was much more accommodating. I’d majored in philosophy at college so my initial contacts at SFU were with the Philosophy Department. I think it was David Finn from that department who said we could rent the ground floor of a house he had just built in Ruskin. He was renting the upper two floors to a few other students. Finn had originally planned to move into the house himself, with his family, but his plans went awry. The house itself was a modern wood house with almost no insulation, so we had to keep a wood fire going all the time to stay warm. I’d never chopped wood before, but now I was swinging an axe if not like a native then not like a killer on the loose either, though my forte was the chainsaw. I love the smell of chainsaw gasoline in the morning, the intoxicating buzz, the moment when blade makes contact with tree. (I’ve never used an axe or a chainsaw since.)

There are also some entirely compelling prose pieces by Vancouver writer and publisher Meredith Quartermain (perhaps from her new BookThug collection, Recipes From the Red Planet, possibly out any minute, if not already) as well as some fantastic original pieces and translations of Nicole Brossard by Erin Moure. When one sees particular journals remain interesting and lively, doesn’t it make you wonder how the rest remain so remarkably dull?

A Marijuana Stalk

Unbeknownst to the woodsman, a marijuana stalk has grown 20 feet over the summer. The first snow has wilted its leaves. The woodsman cuts it down and hangs it to dry in his cabin, pocketing his pipe and some hashish. A smoke for later, he thinks, on a path through a meadow, down a road to a frosty dock—floating out to a raft of sail boats in a lake. He walks down the icy planks, then turns to the grey water sliding murkily around clumps of snowy reeds. In a swift, decisive movement, he jumps in, becomes completely submerged, then rises to the surface, pulls himself up on the dock and sits there, drenched clothes streaming around him. Come, get out of the cold, do come inside, the narrator calls to him, the narrator afraid to set foot on the frosty planks of the floating dock. Why, he shouts back. I suppose, the narrator says, You’ve heard of pneumonia. The woodsman jumps off the dock and dives under the grey brown water toward a steep bank of tangled snowy bushes, leaving the narrator wondering how she will speak to her character. Is a narrator to her woodman like a king to his army, or a mother to a son. Devil to disciple, or god to bewitched. Like language to word, or planet to plant? (Meredith Quartermain)

Pearl Pirie launches her first poetry collection, been shed bore;

now available through Chaudiere Books;

Clea Roberts, Here Is Where We Disembark

Commute in Summer

Suddenly, the ice

is gone from the rivers

and the summer workers

are riding their bicycles.

The gravel crackles

under their tires

as they swoop

through the streets

clean and bright

as gulls.

They are commuting

to their summer jobs

in shops and hotels

where things are uncomplicated.

They punch tills or make beds

and take their lunch hour

in the park

by the clay cliffs.

Somewhere 10,000 hectares

of forest are burning

but the smoke

hasn’t reached us,

just the CBC news.

Canoes float by

on roof racks.

I’d rather be on the river,

but the shape

of a keel is a consolation of sorts

and the prettiest thing

I’ve seen—that,

or the pink haze

of fireweed growing

out of a burned forest,

or how a cyclist

must raise her hip a little

and renew her grip

on the handlebars

before she pedals away.

Writing from her “northerly edge,” is Whitehorse, Yukon poet Clea Robertsin her debut collection, Here Is Where We Disembark (Calgary AB: Freehand Books, 2010). Built with a storytelling ease, hers is a collection that writes of her geographic immediate, the surroundings and domestic and moments of simply living. Beyond the arc of straightforward narrative, where her writing compels is in the small moments, writing out not arcs but specific points, the pinpricks of smallnesses, such as in the piece “Seasonal Adjustments” or “Sunset, Little Atlin.” These pieces etch out almost like little koans, writing:

The light

has chosen

a path across

the water.

There were sections of the collection that read as too straightforward, requiring more nuance, some tightening up in spots, to let the compelling phrases and sections really come out. Still, hers are contemplative poems on a roughneck and potentially aggressive wilderness, letting the breath show where the breathing lies, suggesting so much more nearly as matter-of-fact, such as the poem “What to Carry With You,” that opens:

In august of the year that

ruined and saved us

we ride toward autumn

on the Fish Lake road,

my review of David Donnell's Watermelon Kindness (ECW Press, 2010)

now up at the Prairie Fire Review of Books;

a little interview with me on the grey borders blog;

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

Pearl Pirie launches her first poetry collection on Sunday at Dusty Owl;

Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie launches her first trade poetry collection, been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010) on Sunday, November 7, 2010 at the Dusty Owl Reading Series, Swizzles on Queen Street, 5pm.

Information from the press' catalogue page:

Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie’s been shed bore, her first trade poetry collection, follows years of a small voice gaining in strength, and in volume, through so much subtle activity and quiet disconnect that by the time she was noticed, she was already everywhere, and already a confident voice. In a poetry built on the strength of play, Pirie’s writing moves at the speed of sound, slipping up against silence. The poems in the collection are eccentric and perceptive. It is an examination of nation telescoping from the immediate macro view and the distance after historical calm. The combination of landscape poems and plunder makes for an original take on our world.

The poems in the collection are eccentric and perceptive. It is an examination of nation telescoping from the immediate macro view and the distance after historical calm. The combination of landscape poems and plunder makes for an original take on our world.

"that right blend of feverish and yet clear at once, not descending into either facile or noise."
— Roland Prevost

"Intricate gamesmanship + hardy ideas. A knockout combination."
— Marcus McCann 

 Check out www.chaudierebooks.blogspot.com for further updates, reviews, readings and other information, including a reading with myself and Gregory Betts on November 10 in St. Catherine's Ontario; email rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com for information on obtaining a review copy or to interview the author.

12 or 20 questions: with David Dowker

David Dowker was born in Kingston, Ontario but has lived most of his life in Toronto. He was editor of the on-line journal The Alterran Poetry Assemblage (which is archived at http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/003/008/099/003008-disclaimer.html?orig=/100/202/300/alterran/index.html).

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


The publication of Machine Language hasn’t changed anything in my life, as far as I can tell. My most recent work is probably not that much different from my previous work – perhaps more of a distillation than presentation.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

The impulse to poetry, I think, arose from the childhood habit of scribbling in little notebooks, mostly emblematic or coded bits of a scientific nature, not to mention the writing of songs from an early age. Then the two Dylans (Thomas and Bob) kind of cemented things.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?


The writing varies, depending on nothing in particular it seems. There may be pages of tiny notes, mostly in the “margins,” with the poem gradually emerging in the middle of the page (or eventually being filled with more micro-scrawls), or sometimes a draft may even appear relatively complete. Now, though, more often than not, the writing is done entirely on the computer (with notes and variants at the bottom and/or the right side of the page).

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?


A poem usually begins with a phrase or sentence. As the work progresses it soon becomes apparent whether it stands on its own or is part of a larger work (which, for more years than I care to admit, meant whether or not it was part of Machine Language).

There are always exceptions, of course, and complications. Ma nt i s, being a work of erasure, was conceived of as a book from the beginning. The poem Machine Language at one time included sections which now appear as “individual poems” in the book Machine Language, although I think it is probably more useful to consider the book as one long poem. Virtualis, the collaboration with Christine Stewart, has been open-ended and exceptional from the start, but essentially a “long work.” The blog, Time-Sensitive Material (http://time-sensitivematerial.blogspot.com/), which I began this past summer, is also meant to be considered as an on-going poem composed of many individual sections (with interruptions).

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I’ve actually only done two brief readings, both this past spring – one as part of a launch with Karen Mac Cormack and Steve McCaffery (http://www.bookthug.ca/audio_readings.php), and the other as part of the BookThug spring launch (http://www.bookthug.ca/spring_launch2010_vids.php). I quite enjoyed them, all in all and notwithstanding the anxieties involved.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?


Any theoretical concerns in my writing are purely coincidental. I can’t say that I’m actually trying to answer any questions with my work. I might say that I’m seeing where the language takes me (or, perhaps, where the “old words” get me).

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?


The writer must be a writer, that is: write. The writer as individual in “larger culture” likely assumes many roles, and how much of an influence the “writer function” plays in each varies.

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


I’ve only really actively worked with one editor, Jay MillAr at BookThug, and that was an entirely enjoyable experience, quintessentially non-difficult.

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


“One perception must immediately and directly lead to a further perception.” (Edward Dahlberg by way of Charles Olson)

10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?


I have no set writing routine. A typical day (Monday to Friday) begins with getting ready for “the job.”

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


Truth be told, my writing is in an almost permanent state of being stalled, but I suppose that I mostly turn to music for inspiration.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?


Jasmine still reminds me of home, although the plant has unfortunately been gone for some time.

13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?


Music and science have most definitely influenced my work.

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


The writings of William S. Burroughs, Samuel R. Delany, Charles Olson, Susan Howe and Christopher Dewdney (to name but a handful) have all been important for my work.

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


I would like to write a novel eventually.

16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?


I think that computer programmer or songwriter might have been other possible occupations.

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


I’m not really sure that there is any opposition. It is more a matter of emphasis and timing.

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


The last truly great book I read was Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. The last film I saw was Inception by Christopher Nolan – it was certainly quite good, but I’d have to see it again to assess its greatness.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I am currently working on the blog-poem Time-Sensitive Material and, intermittent as it is, the collaboration (Virtualis) with Christine Stewart.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

fwd: call for submissions, jobbers

JOBBERS: CALL FOR SUBMISSION

Ladies and Gentlemen this call for submission is scheduled for one fall and it is for inclusion in the most electrifying anthology in the history of CanLit...

In professional wrestling slang, the term "job" describes a losing performance in a wrestling match. It is derived from the euphemism "doing one's job", which was employed to protect kayfabe (in other words, the portrayal of events in the wrestling industry as real). As professional wrestling is scripted, inevitably a wrestler will be required to lose to an opponent ...

Inspired by Michael Holmes' 2004 collection of poetry Parts Unknown: Wrestling, Gimmicks and Other Works and Nicholas Sammond's 2005 collection of essays Steel Chair to the Head: The Pleasure and Pain of Professional Wrestling, comes Jobbers: A Can-Lit Wrestling Reader.

Jobbers wants your best non-fiction, fiction, and poetry that reviles, reflects, or revels in the art of professional wrestling. Capture the steroidal zaniness of the cartoon rock and wrestling mid 1980s or the over-gimmicked dark ages of the early 1990s. Recall with nostalgia the glory days of pre-McMahon black and white regional integrity.

Explore the exhausted locker rooms of your local small-time wrestling league. Write erotic love poems to your favourite bespandexed hero or villain. Give us a "hell yeah" as you investigate the middle-finger-in-the-air screwjobs of the Attitude Era. Give us humour or heartbreak, caustic wit or hyperbolic fandom.

So whether you're a local hero, heel or not quite sure, send us your best wrasslin'-inspired literature.

No limits, no restrictions, and no rules, but remember to do your "job". Edited by Toronto Literary Tag Team jobbers Spencer Gordon and Nathaniel G. Moore.

Deadline May 15, 2011.

For more info email NGM at bowlbrawl [at] gmail dot com

(another) very short story;

Every city constructed out of a series of markers, of landmarks, but what happens to a city when it is constantly in danger of losing? What happens to memory when a city is constantly new? There is nothing to hold on to, there are no regulars to keep the rent in your restaurant. There is no heart, no soul, no loyalty. When a city is constantly new, it runs the risk of losing all meaning.

Rob Winger, The Chimney Stone, ghazals

Ghazal for the Birthday Hotel

Why insist on records? Better build

an eavestrough, discover brick, sleep.

Let’s get this straight: does setting the chimney stone

promise fire?

Ordered calendars and icing:

why shuck the grave’s nightdress?

The ice buckles under a hot stream

in the urinal.

Takhallus; suit yourself;

get to the bloody point.

Listen, idiot wind, the body won’t serve

until you forget it.

Long an admirer of the North American ghazal, Rob Winger, with his second poetry collection, The Chimney Stone (Gibsons BC: Nightwood Editions, 2010), adds his own voice to the storm. It’s not always easy to construct a collection out of such a form, admittedly not as overused or loaded as the sonnet; still, the Canadian ghazal, brought into prominence by John Thompson through his posthumous Stilt jack (1976), inevitably brought just about everyone along for the ride, with notable works by Phyllis Webb, D.G. Jones, Douglas Barbour, Catherine Owen, Andy Weaver and even my own attempt, a compact of words (2009). 

There were many others who attempted, but did little or nothing to propel the form. Moving from the documentary long poem of his first collection, Muybridge's Horse (Gibsons BC: Nightwood Editions, 2007), what can Winger bring to the ghazal?

I’m tired of lyrics;

what else is there? (“Ghazal for Empty Nests”)

It has been known for a while that Winger was heading into the ghazal, including through his participation in “White Salt Mountain: A Gathering of Poets for John Thompson,” a conference that happened in Sackville, New Brunswick in November 2008, later appearing as a section in Arc Poetry Magazine #62 [see my review of such here], a section that included an extended essay by Winger on the Canadian/North American ghazal form. Structurally, Winger’s ghazals are more conservative than Thompson, something closer to Webb’s, Owen’s or Adrienne Rich’s, say, than Barbour’s pieces, and riff off a network of references, enough to fill three pages at the end of the collection in small type. His is a thoughtful form, speaking to an entire list of previous practitioners, from Rimbaud, Dionne Brand, Al Purdy, Michael Ondaatje, Christopher Dewdney, Dennis Lee and innumerable musical references. Why notes at all, I’d wonder? Still, what Winger brings is a collage effect to his pieces, tight lines that allow a breath of flexibility, scattered but held together, but not tight enough to confine, or choke.

Ghazal for Pas

Eadweard’s dead. He’s dead.

Chuck another lump on the fire, Scrooge.

The moon rose for you, too. I know that.

We’ve lost your bread crumbs in the undergrowth.

That’s not it. River; spring weed;

not the fossils.

It’s not Yasgur’s farm we’re after;

we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.

On the screen: bombs in Algiers, that torso torque;

each suitcase holds a thousand pixels.

(The difference between a sign and a song is

an I.)

Who’s anxious? John’s dead as a doornail, isn’t he?

Why am I paging apophrades?

Turn the band-saw teeth into your thumb.

I’ll keep piling blood.

Pearl, what are you waiting for, blinking that eye?

A burning thing, your cursor.

Translating Pessoa: Winnett, Taddle, Garrison,

another fragment of my creative non-fiction work-in-progress, 'sleeping in toronto,' on Erin Moure, Taddle Creek, Garrison Creek, etcetera, now up at Open Book Toronto;

Ongoing notes, some journals: Grain magazine + Open Letter

“Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.” This is the epigraph to the Riverside edition of Emerson’s essay “Quotation and Originality.” (Susan Howe, The Midnight)

Saskatoon SK: I’ve been admiring poet Sylvia Legris' run over the past number of issues as editor of Saskatoon’s Grain magazine, crafting issues as full units, as opposed to the usual structure that literary journals seem to have. Recently, the summer 2010 issue, Vol. 37.4, “All over the place,” arrived, with highlights by Moez Surani, Chuqiao Yang, Jeramy Dodds, Audrea Lim and photography by featured artist Dianne Bos. There’s a unity to Legris’ issues that come out of careful attention to the writing, careful attention to what work is selected and how it is arranged, blending something between the usual option of “theme” or “non-themed” issues that so many others have simply continued out of, what, habit? Far too often, I’m either finding the idea of the “theme” issue rather tiresome (and somewhat arbitrary), or frustrated that every issue of any particular trade poetry and fiction journal feels almost exactly the same. Kudos to Legris for adding some freshness, thought and sheer attention to the process of literary journals, seamlessly blending poetry, fiction and non-fiction in a way that puts the writing itself first and foremost while creating each issue. How does such a thing become a rarity, I ask?

I am back from the Expo. I saw a woman club another woman in the lineup for the German pavilion. Her bra was sliding off. Two old men started to hit each other. The sweat on my body did not belong to me. I went home and drank four or five giant bottles of beer and sang a really bad rendition of a Chinese song. I think my relatives hate me. (Chuqiao Yang, “Beijing Notes”)

Strathroy ON: Had situations been different, I would have certainly submitted to the most recent issue of the critical journal Open Letter (Fourteenth Series, Number 4, Fall 2010), “George Bowering: Bridges to Elsewhere.” I think you already know why. Between my natural interest in Bowering’s writing, editing of a section on his work for Jacket, furthering the same into a soon-to-be-completed George Bowering: Essays on His Works for Guernica Editions. Constructed as a thesis, I’m wildly impressed at how guest-editor Ian Rae constructed his issue on the work of the Vancouver writer, editor and general troublemaker, George Bowering, very much created to explore his work other than the usual pieces on his Tish and post-Tish poetry-specific exploits, all without diminishing or dismissing that essential part of Bowering history. As he writes in his introduction:

The positive aspects of this post-Tish activity are that 1) as poets they continued to inspire each other to produce daring new works; 2) as colleagues they became each other’s most trusted editors and interpreters; 3) as critics they became experts in their fields and obtained prestigious positions as university professors or writers-in-residence; and 4) the importance of the Tish movement has been effectively enshrined in Canadian literary history. The negative aspects of this activity are that 1) the focus on Tish as a particular West Coast group, publication, and moment has diverted critical attention away from the projects of the individual poets once they had left Vancouver to pursue careers across the continent; 2) they journals to which the poets dedicated longer periods of their life – such as Bowering’s Imago (1964-1974), the subject of Shearer’s essay – are little studied; 3) the Tish poet-critics have now entered retirement and it is uncertain how the group fits into the research projects of younger scholars; and 4) while Jonathan Ball’s parody of Bowering’s A Short Sad Book (1977) in this issue highlights continuities between younger and older generations of experimental writers, new waves of Canadian poets, such as the Kootenay School of Writing, have seized upon the poet-critic model as a means of advancing their own distinct status in the book market. For such avant-garde writers, the first imperative is always to make a break with the literary past, even if this break exaggerates differences and conceals debts. For example, a recent issue of Open Letter demonstrates how hard KSW struggles to distance itself from its Tish predecessors.

The eleven pieces in the journal include works on Bowering’s long poem journal Imago by Karis Shearer, and pieces connecting Bowering to Al Purdy, Nicole Brossard, hockey, Bowering as historian, Earle Birney and the Okanagan itself, as well as a long-lost poem by Bowering on Birney. This might be the shortest and most expansive work on his considerably broad ouvre, and highlights, too, what other work there is that could be done. There could be a piece on Bowering’s reviewing and otherwise critical writing alone, for example. For anyone interested in the work of George Bowering, this is an essential text.