WASN'T THAT A PARTY! NEW ORPHIC REVIEW TURNS SIXTEEN

§

Last night lovers of the written word crowded into Oxygen Art Centre in Nelson to celebrate an auspicious occasion. Ernest Hekkanen has been publishing the New Orphic Review for sixteen years! He does this without any grant assistance from the government (and just as well, as the pool that was once grant assistance for literary ventures dries up a little more every year). 

I was featured poet in the NOR in the spring 2012 issue. I blogged about it here.

There was, of course, a book table.

There was champagne and the clinking of glasses.

Ernest, his partner and editor of the NOR, Margrith Schraner, and Tom Wayman.

There's my Ted chatting with Tom Wayman, in whose creative writing class we met in 1991. And today, as it happens, is our sixteenth wedding anniversary. Best class I ever took!

Margrith talked about the biography she wrote, "The Reluctant Author: the Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen".

And then the readings began. What a great audience! I read some poems.

Ross Klatte read from the beginning of his new novel. 

Jane Byers read some of her wonderful poetry.

Sandra Hartline read a short story.

Art Joyce looking on.

Anne Champagne, another NOR contributor. 

What a wonderfully enthusiastic audience!

Intermission meant schmoozing, champagne, and a delicious cake. 

Another clutch of folk talking words.

And another!

Linda Hunter, Ernest and Margrith sharing a laugh.

A masked Art Joyce in front of one of Ernest's paintings that was also one of the NOR's covers.

The man of the evening, who made it all possible.

Linda Hunter read a very entertaining piece written by her late husband, Michael Woligroski. 

Linda was also responsible for catapulting Ernest into the digital publishing age when she showed him how to work with Pagemaker and send files to a printer. Before that, he used to bind every copy by hand. Every single one. (I meant to thank him last night for showing me how to do that, at a workshop in Kaslo about ten years ago. Thanks, Ernest! It still comes in handy from time to time.)

If there'd been an award for most innovative presentation last night it would have gone to Susan Andrews Grace, who celebrated the occasion by reading from page sixteen in each of her five books!  

Here, Tom Wayman illustrates a head-scratching passage from a very funny story that's in the current issue of the NOR.

And here we are, readers of the evening, all proud to have been published in the New Orphic Review.

Back Row l-r: Linda Crosfield, Susan Andrews Grace, Sandra Hartline, Jane Byers, Linda Hunter, Ross Klatte

Front Row l-r: Art Joyce, Margrith Schraner, Ernest Hekkanen

Where it all happens, and hopefully will continue to happen for the next sixteen years!

If you're looking for a home for some of your words, you might want to check it out. Short stories by NOR authors have twice been shortlisted for the Journey Prize Anthology. 

Submissions to the New Orphic Review may be sent here:

The New Orphic Review

706 Mill Street 

Nelson, B.C.   

V1L 4S5 

Canada

§

POETRY FOR THE BIRDS, OR, POETRY GOING TO THE DOGS, OR...

§

Last Monday Stuart Ross and I read to an enthusiastic group of folk who assembled on the east deck at the Ootischenia abode. Beckham, Stuart's dog friend came with his New Denver family and provided the perfect doggie atmosphere when I read my poems from Mexico. They talk about dogs a lot, and Beckham didn't seem to mind.

It was an unseasonably hot day (which is why we read outside) and hummingbirds buzzed the feeders while we read.

What a lovely audience! (photograph by Leanne Boschman)

Ted held up the donations basket and the twenty-plus crowd was more than generous. 

Stuart's Proper Tales Press published "2 Poems", one by each of us, to mark the occasion.

Moi (photograph by Leanne Boschman)

(photograph by Linda Crosfield)

Stuart Ross is a poet, short-story writer and novelist who lives in Cobourg, Ontario. But a little piece of his heart is in the Kootenays, especially up the Slocan Valley.

Stuart entertained us with his wonderful words (photograph by Leanne Boschman)

My grandson, Kyran, who's almost ten, gave the evening a two-thumbs up. Said if he'd had four hands, it would be a four-thumbs up. We were pretty pleased with that kind of feed-back!

§

STUART ROSS AND LINDA CROSFIELD READING MAY 6TH, OOTISCHENIA (BC)!

§

Attention Kootenay folk! Tomorrow (Monday, May 6th), Stuart Ross and I are doing  reading at my house and you're invited! Everything you need to know is on the poster:

Do come. We'd love to see you and celebrate this wonderful weather with you. We'll try not to read poems about snow. Maybe. 

§

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH ROUND-UP FOR 2013 (AND I DON'T MEAN THE HERBICIDE)

§

I can't believe it! It's the last day of April and National Poetry Month has come to an end for this year. Somehow, I managed to put up a post everyday. I am now even more in awe of people who blog practically every day all the time and still manage to produce books of their own. 

I started out the month thinking I might try to write a poem a day, but as I really didn't want to put them all up on my blog (god forbid I should write a good one and then not be able to get it published elsewhere).  So I started pulling poetry books off my shelves and writing about them. That turned out to be great fun. I got to revisit books I'd shelved, in some cases, decades ago. 

When I wasn't blogging about poetry I was reading it. Literary Press Group's poem-a-day blog (for an idea of what we poets are up against, just read the beginning of the link), the League of Canadian Poets'  also posted a poem a day, as did too many other blogs and zines to count. From the other side of the 49th, Your Daily Poem (shameless linking to one of my own there) drops one into my email box every day, and they ramp up for April, too. Not that I read every single post that came my way, but every time I dipped in I was off on another romp in the poetry fields. 

Here are the books I blogged about this month. I was planning to get a picture of all of them (perhaps with me collapsed in the middle, or crushed by their very weight or something) but I'm not home yet so that will have to wait.

Stickboy ~ Shane Koyczan

Small Hallows ~ Gabriel Wainio-Théberge

Impact: theTitanic poems ~ Billeh Nickerson

Something Small to Carry Home ~ Isa Milman

The Flicker Tree: Okanagan Poems ~ Nancy Holmes

Monkey Ranch ~ Julie Bruck

Why Are You So Sad? ~ David W. McFadden

Framed ~ Dawn Marie Kresan

Dis ease and De sire—the M anu S cript ~ Kim Clark

Philosopher at the Skin Edge of Being ~ Susan Andrews Grace

What Big Teeth–Red Riding Hood’s Real Life ~ Lana Hechtman Ayers

prisoner ~ Linda Pyke

Small Corners ~ Pat Smekal

Genève ~ George Bowering

This Poem ~ Adeena Karasick

So yes, Mr. Custom's Officer, people are still "making" poetry. They're writing it and putting it into books and online and hanging it from trees. I hope this continues for a long time to come. And you know, I'm pretty sure it will.

Thanks for stopping by. You can be sure I'll be back soon with more poetry stuff, just not every flippin' day! 

§

THE KEY TO POETRY MONTH—GOOD FOOD, AND KIDS WHO LOVE BOOKS

§

Letters

     Those sometimes awkward, sometimes curvaceous figures that get together and make up

Words

     Those sometimes gentle, sometimes caustic accumulations of letters that get together and make up 

Sentences

     Those sometimes rambling, sometimes concise accumulations of words that get together and make up

Stories and Poems

     Those sometimes heart wrenching, sometimes comic accumulations of sentences or fragments of sentences that get together and make up life

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And life without stories, poems, sentences, words, and letters would be so much less enticing. That's my poem-y thing for today.

Those letters in the photo at the top? They're from outside Dark Table, the restaurant on West 4th in Vancouver that lets you experience what it's like to live in darkness. I went with a friend tonight and if you find yourself in Vancouver and are looking for something a little—no, a lot—different I recommend you try it. The servers are blind or sight-impaired. The room you enter is so dark you can't see your hand in front of your face, even after you've been there for awhile. That was perhaps the most disconcerting part of the evening; waiting in vain for my eyes to grow accustomed to the dark. Our waiter was from Togo and immediately put us at ease, or as at ease as we were able, given our newly imposed lack of sight. On the website they say that when one sense is compromised the others tend step up to the plate (I'm paraphrasing and I'm sorry!), and we certainly found that to be the case. Taste and smell became paramount. The music in the background was easy to listen to. Oh, and the food? Absolutely, unreservedly fabulous. Go!

Keys on the typewriter, keys on the piano, and Enid has the keys to my heart!

Yesterday, after the reunion poets broke up and went their separate ways, I got to visit with two very special young ladies who belong to the Victoria end of the family. You have to love a kid who wants a typewriter! 

Read to me!

And you have to love a kid who brings you a book and snuggles up beside you so you'll read to her. And yes, it was a rhyming story about a witch who broke her broomstick. Very well done, too. 

And that is my penultimate post for Poetry Month! 

§