THE CREATIVE LIFE

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Ted and I were sitting at the table after lunch today, downing what was left of the morning's coffee when this exchange took place:

"Well," he said, getting up from the chair, "I'm going out to the shop to make another useless artifact."

"And I'm going downstairs to write something nobody will read," I replied.

Which got me musing on the creative life—what it is, why I feel I ought to have one—while I was going through pictures from our recent trip, and I came upon a couple that made me smile.

The set up:

I'd been to Granville Island to forage for book cloth at Paper-Ya!, and it's just around the corner from Blackberry Books, so obviously I had to go there, too. I picked up a couple of 2008 calendars and a copy of Wendy Morton's new poetry collection, Gumshoe. Got back to our hosts' place, went outside with a glass of wine to enjoy the early fall sunshine, opened the book and read,

I love to eat garlic
and nap on the lawn
in no particular order.



(from "Saying Yes", p. 26, Black Moss Press)



Just the thing for the beginning of a holiday, I thought.

In the seventies, when I lived in Thornhill, I used to go to the McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg to see art by the Group of Seven and Emily Carr. It happened that there was an exhibition of work by Clarence Gagnon when I was there, and this is what drew me back. His tiny paintings, copies of which were used as illustrations in the1933 edition of Louis Hémon's Maria Chapdelaine always captivated me. Wendy's poems are kind of like that. She paints tiny, precise word pictures that are, by turns, funny, poignant, thoughtful and provocative. Kind of like Wendy.

Wendy "Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast" Morton is the embodiment of a creative life. She believes poetry is for everybody, and sets out to prove it by organizing readings in Victoria at Planet Earth and spearheading and participating in what is becoming an annual rite the first week of October: Random Acts of Poetry, where the unsuspecting may find themselves being "poemed".

And I just finished reading Anne DeGrace's second novel, Wind Tails, published by McArthur and Company. Got it Friday night, finished it before noon Sunday. To put this in perspective, it took me about three months to get through the last Harry Potter, and I liked it. Wind Tails is an immensely readable book with richly drawn characters and vivid descriptions of the setting, a diner and its environs, somewhere on a mountain pass deep in B.C.

Anne's got an essay about the writing process and research in the Writer's Notebook section of her website. Check it out.

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FALLING INTO FALL

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All right, I'm back. Sorry for the delay between posts, but this isn't a job, after all, and besides, I have no idea who reads this, only that someone does. Okay, I know who some of you are, and I appreciate you — and all the anonymous yous — dropping by.

Ted and I just got back from Haida Gwaii, a not-to-be-missed experience if you get the chance. I'm still processing...(read "still sorting out the zillions of digital pictures we took, trying to narrow it down to the best 25 or so). BC is so big. Duh, I know, but it always amazes me when I get out driving in it. Altogether, we put 2200 miles/3500 km on the van, and that's not counting the distance covered whilst spending around 28 hours on ferries.

Here's a picture of us taken on the beach. That would be Alaska in the background, if you could see it.



Everywhere there are huge trees. Everywhere it is green, so many greens.



In our part of the world, they warn you about avalanches. Here, it's trees.



You cannot believe the variety of rocks on the beaches. Rockhounds need to visit Haida Gwaii beaches with their pockets zipped up, carrying no bags. Afterwards, it helps to get into a 12-step program, something called 'Rocks Anonymous', or maybe 'Get Your Rocks Off', as soon as possible.



The blow hole at Tow Hill.



Haida Heritage Centre at Qay'llnagaay (Sea Lion Town) Heritage Centre, Skidegate. Skidegate is my new favourite name to say: Skid-dig-git...try it; it just bursts off your tongue and out of your mouth!



We had a marvellous week. We didn't make it to Gwaii Haanas as we got there a little late in the season. Someone asked, "So, are you here to pick mushrooms or for the fishing?" "Neither," we confessed. "So why did you come this time of year?" "Because we've got the place pretty much to ourselves." We would like to go back, though, to visit some of the old villages.

The weather was kind, (probably because we spent large on really good rain gear before we went). We ate scads of great fish, spent hours wandering up and down mostly deserted beaches, sat and watched the tide come in. We walked in old-growth forests, listened to the whomp-whomp-whomp of ravens overhead and went to bed early every night, reveling in the hypnotic sound of the ocean. It was the sort of vacation that restores your soul.

Then home, to a mailbox full of stuff, including a copy of the latest Ascent Aspirations in which I have a piece of flash fiction.

And (this is a poetry blog, after all) The Minnesota Review has updated its website and my poem, A Good Place to Start, that was a finalist in the Being At Work contest last year, is now online. You can read it here.



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