Purple Mountain Poetry

A POST FOR ALL THE DANIELS

2011-12-01T11:42:00.001-08:00

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My old laptop fell ill last week and is currently on life support. Just waiting to see if it's brain dead or if modern medicine in the form of the very able guys over at Digerati Computing in Nelson can revive it enough to at least scoop what's on the hard drive. I'm backed up to about 3 months ago, but as I knew I was getting a new computer around now I decided not to confuse myself by connecting the old one to the new back-up disk. Figured I'd just move everything from the old to the new and then hook up the new one. I really ought to know better by now! Anyway, all I stand to lose is the most recent photos, many of which are already loaded to sites here and there, and about 10K words from when I started NaNoWriMo at the beginning of November, but then fizzled as I was away for ten days and writing just wasn't in the cards. I really liked about 500 of those 10K words, and happily I have them on paper!

Today is World AIDS Day. Time to reflect on all that has happened in the world of medicine since this mean disease raised its ugly head in the late 70s/early 80s.

I was in Toronto last month. Stayed with my friend Alan in what's known as the Gay Village. What a fabulous part of town! The night I arrived we went out for dinner at a lovely little Thai restaurant and then walked around. It was unseasonably warm. I saw the plaques with all the names of those who have died at the AIDS Memorial in Cawthra Park. Found my late friend Daniel's name there.

This post is for all the Daniels.

Here's a poem I wrote that was published in 1999 in Room of One's Own (now known as Room Magazine).

THE QUILT

Daniel arrives at the airport

wearing a floor length gown

it’s Halloween

first time we’ve met

I’ve heard so much about him

a Christmas card arrives from Don

scared, might have AIDS

waiting for results

I remember his orange Mustang

how we rode, top down

through the Gatineau Hills

radio blasting

wind in our hair

another letter comes

he’s all right

Christmas is safe

each year, from now on

when cards begin

to drift in with the snow

I look for his

and Daniel, sweet Daniel

delights in my infant son

laughs with him

loves him

hugs him and holds him

until he falls asleep

in Daniel’s arms

I come across a red and white ceramic ashtray

a gift from Mark the night

he and his lover threw a party

we danced and sang

I saw forever in their eyes

but that was years and years ago

my ashtray has a chip on one side

Mark went home to Newfoundland

weighed ninety pounds when he died

Daniel looks at me

over my baby’s head

says he’s an old soul

he will teach you

Blayne lies, tubes everywhere

in a Shaughnessy Hospital bed

wearing her latex armor

a nurse comes in to change the bag

that collects his urine

she does not pull the curtain

as if his privacy no longer matters

it does to me so I look away

busy myself with his plants

the only signs of life left in the room

after she leaves I talk about mutual friends

take his hand, say goodbye

know I really mean it

Daniel sits beside my son

they’re deep in concentration

Daniel is drawing on command

Make a horse! Make it run!

says my son

and Daniel draws

these latter day lepers

fill bed after bed after bed

in this place where I wait

to see Daniel

when I’m told he’s asleep

I write him a note

say I’m sorry to miss you

a strange thing to say

when the person I’ve missed

is dying by inches

and I’m going home

on the plane the next day

Daniel arrives at the end of his life

wearing a hospice gown

I think of him now as part of a quilt

that stretches as far as I want to see

shimmering with starlight

glistening with tears

it is pieced together with love

ANNE DEGRACE BOOK LAUNCH & LATEST YMIR WRITERS' RETREAT

2011-11-08T23:16:00.000-08:00

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There wasn't a seat in the house last month when Nelson author Anne DeGrace launched her fourth book, a novel comprised of linked stories, Flying With Amelia. You can hear her read an excerpt from it over at Vimeo.

Anne used to be the rep for the Federation of BC Writers, South East Region. She got the Ymir retreats started and even though she couldn't join us for the most recent one, that's where I was last weekend. Once again fifteen of us took over the Ymir Palace Hotel in Ymir, BC. (Near Castlegar. Near Nelson.) We feasted, we wrote, we drank a little wine, we laughed. Good weekend.

I'm about to head off again, Toronto this time. As a result, this post is going to be heavy on photos and light on words.

The food was wonderful.

This time the Friday night dinner was catered by hotel owners, Ross and Belinda. Delicious carrot-ginger soup to start, then ratatouille and roast potatoes.

Saturday night everyone read something after dinner. Here's Mary and Randi in listening mode.

Natasha

Cynthia

Patricia, our regional representative for the Federation of BC Writers. She did an amazing job organizing this weekend.

Wei Yin

Arlene

Mary

Madeleine

Dorothy

Patricia and me

Doreen

Randi

Madeleine

Sue

Shirley

Monica

Heather offered two short exercises to shake us loose each morning

The smiles tell the story. Great weekend!

FALLING INTO FALL AND OTHER POETIC PURSUITS

2011-10-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

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I've not posted anything lately. Too busy with yard work and similar endeavors. But I see people are still surfing in here so it's more than time for an update.

Ah, fall. Season of taking stock. I was away, on Vancouver Island mostly, for a couple of weeks and since I got back there has been no end of things to do. It all began last week on an October-warm day when I decided I should prepare the basement room for wintering over my geraniums. Went down to clear of the table where some of them will sit and noticed there was a new thick layer of dust over everything. The room in question used to be Ted's turning shop. He built a proper one seven years ago and at some point this summer he finally removed some lumber that was still in a rack suspended from the basement ceiling. This unleashed a fury of the aforementioned dust, so instead of dealing with the geraniums I found myself vacuuming. The next day I attacked four boxes labeled "Sort Me" — full discloser here, I have a nasty habit of cleaning my workroom and at the very end, when it's all done except for a variety of paper vomit all over my desk, I sweep said paper into a box and, well, you get the picture. Such treasures I found! Like the last page of a four page poem I revised for a reading in February 2010, then promptly lost the revision. I knew it wasn't gone. It was "somewhere". It may be time to hunker down with an episode or two of Hoarders again. It's all a matter of degree, and that show keeps me honest.

So here's a recap of my time away. First up was Nanaimo and WordStorm. Cindy and Peter hosted us lovingly, as you can see by this beautiful beverage complete with chocolate that we had after dinner the night we arrived.

WordStorm's new venue is the Rendezvous Restaurant. It has good food and a great performance space. Here's Cindy Shantz, one of the organizers.

Winona Baker at the open mic part of the evening. I've been reading her book, Flesh in the Inkwell: poems from a writer's life. Knew some of her work in haiku, but these are longer poems, and such stories she tells. I'm still haunted by one about her mother who threw herself on the ground over and over when she discovered she was pregnant again.

Ursula Vaira read from her new book, And See What Happens, which contains three long poems that explore the ramifications of putting oneself in challenging situations; in Ursula's case, a thousand-mile paddle from Hazelton to Victoria and a kayak trip around the treacherous northern tip of Vancouver Island.

Lisa Shatzky read from her new book, Do Not Call Me By My Name, an often harrowing telling of some of the stories gleaned from her work around as a trauma therapist with people who have suffered directly or indirectly because of residential schools.

The end of her poem, The Elders, says it all.

When you take away

a people's children,

the elders lose their stories.

With this collection of poems some of the stories are coming back.

I read some poems, too.

So did David Fraser.

Next up was Victoria where I got to meet Lyra, a lovely new member of the family.

Then it was off to Val's for our annual Georgette's reunion of some poets who met and bonded at the Victoria School of Writing in 2005. This year we started with some genuine excitement — Kim Clark got to open a box containing her first book, a collection of stories called Attemptations. It's a brave and funny read that's not probably not like anything you've read before.

Lenora came up from California so as not to miss out on the fun. And what a great weekend it was. We read and critiqued each other's work in the mornings and wrote new stuff in the afternoons (thanks to George's gentle prompting). Evenings were devoted to eating (everyone swooned over Jean's spinach and pear soup) and drinking wine. Some things never change.

Here's most of us (next time we'll coordinate the group picture before anyone leaves).

And that's it for this time. I'll be posting about Anne DeGrace's book launch next, soon as I upload the pictures from my camera.
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I'M READING IN NANAIMO AND FILMS ABOUT KIDS

2011-09-22T01:53:00.000-07:00

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A heads-up for next Monday, September 26, if you're in or around Nanaimo, BC. I'm reading at WordStorm with David Fraser, Ursula Vaira and Lisa Shatzky. Starts at 6:30 PM and it's a good idea to get there early. It happens at Diners Rendezvous, 489 Wallace Street. Love to see you there.

What a couple of weeks it's been. I had a interesting cyber-chat with an old friend who professed not to be into poetry all that much. Sent him a couple of mine as examples of what we were talking about and just found out today that one of them, Cake, is to be included in Leaf Press' forthcoming anthology of love poems. Nice way to start the day.

And another of my poems, Stones for a Fire Pit, was featured on Your Daily Poem at the beginning of the month.

Last weekend I attended a screening of two documentaries by local film makers, Katherine Pettit and Amy Bohigian.

Katherine's is a delightful animated short film presented from the point of view of her toddler. Dancing with the Moon deals with Katherine's difficulties getting pregnant after being diagnosed with PCOS (Poly Cyctic Ovary Syndrome). In the course of seeking answers to why she was having difficulty conceiving after having had a miscarriage, she was offered a fertility drug. Instead she opted for a more natural approach which included paying strict attention to her diet and Lunaception, based on the theory that women's bodies respond to light and dark and if we weren't constantly surrounded by artificial light we'd menstruate at the time of the new moon and ovulate when the moon is full. I'd say Lunaception is working well for Ms. Pettit as in addition to the presence of her delightful small daughter she is very obviously pregnant again! I particularly liked the way she dealt with miscarriage in the film, suggesting that sometimes the children we conceive and lose are just not ready to join our family yet. Miscarriage is something that is so common to so many women. I had one once, and it was devastating. I remember my conflicted emotions as if it was yesterday (and as you can tell from my profile picture, this happened a very long time ago). Global music man, Adham Shaikh, did the music for the film.

These days it seems the news includes at least one dysfunctional family story every time I turn it on. It was so refreshing to watch Conceiving Family which tells the story of Amy, her partner Jane Byers, and four other same-sex couples and their experiences on the road to adopting a child. Jane, who co-wrote the film, is in my poetry group in Nelson and you should see her light up when she talks about her kids. Yes, kids, plural. Jane and Amy ended up adopting twins!

The audience at the Capitol Theatre was very kid-friendly — and that in itself was refreshing as earlier in the day I'd heard a story on CBC about a couple who think there should be a four-block child-free zone around their condo in the area where they live. They went on about the stressful jobs they have and how upsetting it is to come home after a hard day's slogging in the graphic design mines, or wherever it is they work, and seeing yards with plastic toys and overturned bicycles in them. I'm not kidding. Makes you wonder how they ever got through childhood without thoroughly offending themselves... but I digress. (Note: Apparently I didn't digress enough; one of my faithful readers —thanks, Jim — tells me there's a new show, This is That, that does stories like this with a straight face. That'll teach me to turn on the radio mid-program!) Anyway, back to the Capitol and Amy's film, the room was filled with many parents (some same-sex couples, some not) who had adopted kids from various countries. It looked like the United Nations in there! The story unfolded with all the couples' experiences en route to becoming parents woven into a whole cloth of story. If only, I thought, leaving the theatre when it was over, if only all kids were as wanted as the ones we saw in the film, to say nothing of the ones who were running around in the theatre. Music for this one was by Ben Euerby. He's in a couple of bands with my son, Jesse, who played some guitar for Conceiving Family. If you get the chance, see this film. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll scratch your head at the incomprehensible obstacles same-sex couples can face simply because they want to raise a child. I think it will be interesting to assess, in a couple of decades or so, how well the children raised by same-sex couples are faring in this adventure we call life. I'm betting they'll be doing just fine.

Jane and Amy at the Castlegar Festival, Summer 2011

ERNEST HEKKANEN: SOCIAL HISTORIAN and RENAISSANCE MAN

2011-09-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

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Ernest Hekkanen is one focussed writer. I was just at an event at the Nelson Municipal Library where he launched not one, but two books: a collection of gritty short stories and story autopsies, All Night Gas Bar; and Wintering Over: Poems Strewn on Snow.

Being of the poetic persuasion myself, I was first drawn to the poems, which I have been dipping into. I am inevitably rewarded with some wonderful lines and images, as from The Surreal Frozen Landscape —

The warming trend continues one degree
at a time, and now arpeggios of snow
cascade with musical precision
from boughs bent severely earthward.

or this, from a poem called Winter Morning, Warm Thoughts —

III

O, to feel the sun's warmth

kiss my skin

one more time.

To feel it infuse

every cell

of my body.

I would give anything

to be caressed

like caramel

against the roof

of God's mouth.

Savored,

just savored

for being me.

Ernest told us that he wrote the poems during the winter when he was dealing with depression, something many of us can relate to when it comes to day after day after soul-sucking day of low-hanging clouds and darkness. I just know that, come about February, unless I've managed to shake off winter in some far-off sunny clime, I will be returning to this book for comfort. Safety in numbers.

The short stories are something else again. In the early seventies, shortly after he arrived in Canada as a war resister like so many other young Americans did, Ernest had a variety of jobs, all of which he credits with providing him with something to write about. For three years he worked graveyards as a gas station attendant in Vancouver's infamous downtown Eastside at Hastings and Semlin. He jotted down notes about his experiences — being held-up was a fairly regular occurrence — and turned them into short stories which he tried to get published with very little success (although in 1976 one of them made it into Prism International). He finally stuffed them into a box, which in the way of writers he kept all these years until he rediscovered them during one of those rigourous clean-outs many of us have from time to time (especially, speaking personally here, since the proliferation of TV shows like Hoarders). Reading them over, he found they took him back to the time they were written, so he typed them into a machine, did a soupçon of editing, and then came up with the "story autopsies" idea, in which he wrote about the writing of the stories and interspersed the results with the stories themselves. It makes for a fascinating look at a time, not that long ago, when life was just a little bit different. Having read his depiction of the hazards of working at a gas station at night, I no longer wonder about the validity of the recent BC law that requires people to pay for their gas before filling their vehicle. All Night Gas Bar is a fascinating look at the Vancouver of yesteryear.

Ernest's partner and muse, Margrith Schraner, looked after the book table. Margrith is a writer herself, notably of the short story, Dream Dig, which was published in The New Orphic Review and subsequently included in 2001's Journey Prize Anthology, and of a biography of Ernest, The Reluctant Author: the life and literature of Ernest Hekkanen, New Orphic Publishers, 2006.

Sales were brisk, and Ernest signed a lot of books.

Both All Night Gas Bar; and Wintering Over: Poems Strewn on Snow are published by New Orphic Publishers, Ernest's publishing imprint. He and Margrith edit The New Orphic Review, a literary magazine that comes out in the spring and the fall (and one in which my own work has appeared).

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THE THIRD CROP — A VERY HUMAN HISTORY OF THE SLOCAN VALLEY AND THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE THERE

2011-08-22T02:02:00.000-07:00

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Spent this afternoon at the launch of Rita Moir's new book, The Third Crop, at the Vallican Whole in Winlaw. It was a beautiful day. We picked up neighbours, Robin and Rebecca, and drove up the Slocan Valley, resplendent in garden greens and summer browns and managed to park reasonably close to the Whole. There must have been 200 people who came out to celebrate with Rita.

There was a huge cake and lots of other goodies to enjoy.

Rita got to sign lots of books, both before and after she spoke about its conception, gestation and birth, thanking the many midwives who assisted as well as the three young writers whose work also appears in the book, Natasha Jmieff, Jordan Mounteer and Martina Avis, who Rita calls "the fourth crop".

Poet Natasha Jmieff.

Cameras everywhere, in this case, Judie's!

Publisher Diane Morriss of Sono Nis Press, who published The Third Crop.

Rita, listening to Diane's introduction.

It was a rapt audience. Pretty much always is, when Rita is the focus of attention. She spoke about the importance of community, a theme she explores in the book.

Got to see lots of friends. That's Shelley and Heather, with Bonnie in the background.

Heather and me. There must have been a book table nearby! (Photo by Judie Gray)

The place was crawling with writers, of course. Anne DeGrace (whose next book, Flying with Amelia, launches next month!) and Tom Wayman in conversation.

The launch was barely over and already there were people outside on the porch enjoying the book!

And what a book it is! It chronicles the people who lived and worked in the Slocan Valley until the 1940s in a winning combination of Rita Moir's exquisite language and the wonderful photographs she talks about. It begins: "Four distinct groups of people arrived in the Slocan Valley, through choice or by force, by the middle of the Second World War...Aboriginal people lived in this valley first; then came the European and Doukhobour settlers, then the Japanese-Canadians."

One of the wonderful photographs in the book. This one's of a wedding party in 1950.

I'm looking forward to reading The Third Crop, and to examining more closely all the pictures. My parents came to Bonnington and South Slocan in 1911 and 1921. I know how many albums and shoeboxes of old photographs there are in my family. I cannot imagine the work that went into amassing all these and annotating them so clearly. Kudos to Rita and the team at Sono Nis.

That was my day. How was yours?

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CELEBRATE RITA MOIR'S "THE THIRD CROP" AUGUST 21st!!

2011-08-07T18:47:00.000-07:00

Rita in Ymir last fall, hard at work on The Third Crop

Rita Moir has a new book and she's launching it at the Vallican Whole on Sunday, August 21st, at 3:30 PM.

The Third Crop is the story of the Slocan Valley from the 1800s to the early 1940s. It has over 160 photographs culled from government archives and personal collections, with Rita weaving the stories she discovered into an wonderfully cohesive whole. The Third Crop is Rita's fourth book. It's published by Sono Nis Press.

The Slocan Valley is an absolutely stunning part of south eastern British Columbia, conveniently located right near where I live in the West Kootenays. I've been going there since I was a kid and to this day it remains, for me, a step back in time. Oh, it's got all the modcons—cell phones, somewhat regrettably, actually work here and there in the valley now and you can get high-speed Internet, but drive the highway or one of the less traveled roads that follow the meandering Slocan River and you'll be bewitched by the beauty of the place in any season.

I will admit to having a bit of a soft spot for the area because Ted and I got married at the Vallican Whole, where Rita's launch will take place. (One of our guests who was from Toronto went for a walk in the woods at one point and came back rhapsodizing because she'd encountered a deer. There's always some form of wildlife to admire; not always human.) The Whole is celebrating its 40th anniversary this month with a weekend party August 26-28.

AUGUST IS ALMOST UPON US...LET THE POETRY GAMES BEGIN

2011-07-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

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Some of you may recall my going on about the postcard poem exchange I participate in in August. You sign up, make a copy of the list you're on, get yourself a bunch of postcards and stamps (mostly US; Paul E. Nelson and Lana Hechtman Ayers started it about 5 years ago and they're from the Seattle area so the majority of participating poets are from the States) and write/send a card a day for the entire month. More details and/or sign up here .

Some of mine from 2007 are right here on this blog. I picked up some neat postcards earlier this year in anticipation of the August poetry fest.

For the truly masochistic among us there's the 3:15 Experiment. Every night for the month of August you set your alarm for 3:15 AM, wake up, grab your pen and notebook which will be waiting expectantly by your bed, and write whatever comes into your sleepy head. You can post the resulting poems on the website, but NO EDITING first!

And today I'm off to Kaslo, BC, for Holley Rubinsky's Summer Camp for Writers. I'm looking forward to the writing time.

I'll leave you with an old postcard image and the poem that went with it:

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

You escape into a corner

pull out some cards

and begin to write.

Then someone wants to know

what on earth you’re doing

that for, a twitter of disbelief

flitters round the room

where people come and go

talking of vanishing glaciers

and pink snow.

If the door opened right this moment

and an elephant walked in

it would probably cause

less of a fuss.

POETRY FESTIVALS EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK

2011-07-16T03:31:00.000-07:00

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   There's so much going on in the world of poetry these days I just have to share a few links with you.
I was just reading the blurb on the Hazelwood Writers' Festival on August 7 and damn, I'd love to go. In fact, I think I'm going. So what if I just got back from an 8,500 km road trip. What's another 1,500 or so?
   I will be reading at WordStorm at Diners Rendezvous (I'm resisting giving the place an apostrophe) in Nanaimo on September 26, 2011, a Monday. Ursula Vaira, David Fraser and Lisa Shatzky are also reading so it should be fun. If you're in the vicinity, please come. You need to email David Fraser to get seats or get there before 6:30 PM as WordStorm is a highly attended event.
   Vancouver is the place to be in October if you're a poet, specifically October 19-22, 2011. Vancouver turns 125 this year and lots of celebrations are taking place, including the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference. Just have a look at the poets who are participating. Looks like it's time to start figuring out fall.

CASCADIA - Map by David McCloskey

   And next March, in Seattle, Washington, there's the Cascadia Poetry Festival. This festival will feature a gathering of poets from Cascadia, a bio-region that comprises California, Oregon, Idaho, Washington, British Columbia, the Alaska panhandle and Western Montana. The panel discussions, readings and workshops announced so far sound great. Registration will be available later this fall.
   This last, of course, is the perfect segue for me to mention that I just received my copy of Cascade 2011, Journal of the Washington Poets Association March 23-25, 2012 as well. My poem, My Boy's a Minstrel is in it. Interestingly, the poem was accepted in August 2008. I posted a note about it, along with the poem, in my January 2009 blog post. Then, as so often happens in volunteer-based organizations, everything ground to a halt for a while, or at least to a very, very slow. The poem has been revised several times since then, as is my wont, so it was interesting to see the version I'd sent out over three years ago. It's actually very close to the most recent one.
   And in another bit of publishing news, my poem Packing the Car is going to be anthologized again—this time in a book called Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers, due out in 2012 in the USA.

Our North of 60 route

   So as I mentioned, I'm just back from a rather long road trip. For a long time now Ted and I have wanted to be up north (think Northwest Territories, the Yukon, Alaska) for the longest day, so when the opportunity to have house sitters in June arose we decided to go for it.
   Around the time we were in the process of figuring out our route, Yukon poet, Clea Roberts, posted a note to the League of Canadian Poets' list-serve about a poetry festival that was happening in Whitehorse at the end of June. Ted and I had figured out a tentative route that took us up through BC with stops in Terrace and Telegraph Creek, to Fort Simpson to visit friends on the longest day, then back home via Alberta.
   "I guess it's too far to double back from Fort Simpson to Whitehorse," I said, squinting at the map.
   "Why?"
   "There's a poetry festival in Whitehorse June 24–26."
   "We could go counter-clockwise." said my husband, leaving me to wonder why I hadn't thought of that.
   So away we went, starting from Castlegar, down near the BC/Washington border and up through central BC, over to Jasper and then north through Alberta on the MacKenzie Highway with stops in High Level and Enterprise, where we watched the 7th Stanley Cup game in horror (and was anyone really surprised at what happened after the game? Like it would have made any difference if the Canucks had won). We spent three nights in Yellowknife (expensive) before heading to Fort Simpson where we visited friends, Aaron and Jackie, and flew into Nahanni National Park to see Virginia Falls.

A very enthusiastic young drummer at the Aboriginal Days celebrations in Fort Simpson.

And then there was the wildlife along the way. A scruffy raven patrols the banks of the MacKenzie.

"Don't mind us!"

Young bull hits the road. Actually, in this shot none of his hooves are hitting the road. (Photo by Ted) We saw lots of bison.

Black bear taking it easy in a field of buttercups

Two long driving days brought us to Whitehorse for a weekend of poetry — what a great line-up!

Every good writers' festival has a supportive bookstore in its life. Mac's Fireweed Books carried pretty much all the poets' books, the Canada Post strike notwithstanding. They've got a good selection of poetry in general and they have an apostrophe!

bill bissett communing with Jack London

Eleanor Wachtel and Karen Solie

David Seymour

Eleanor and John Pass

Miranda Pearson

Rhea Tregebov

Elizabeth Bachinsky

Clea Roberts, who was instrumental in the formation of the Whitehorse Poetry Festival

It was a great weekend. Readings, panel discussions, books, hanging with the tribe. I look forward to seeing who they'll bring in for the next Whitehorse Poetry Festival in 2013.

Started home via the Cassiar Highway. Detoured 112km from Dease Lake to Telegraph Creek. The drive in was worth the trip—the road was gravel, but well maintained. Some of the grades were 20% and there were no barriers between the car and the Stikine River or one of its tributaries far below.

On the way to Terrace we drove past the lava fields near New Aiyansh. In 1775 a volcano erupted and left a mess of lava 3km by 10km. It took out two Nisga'a villages, killing some 2,000 people. (Don't remember learning anything about this in Social Studies). Only in the last 100 years have the moss and lichen begun to cover everything.

Can any of my birder friends tell me if this is a juvenile flicker? If so, I got to see it's first flight.

In Terrace it rained. Here's a water lily on Lakelse Lake

Near Barriere, BC. This is what it looks like a few years after a forest fire.

Finally, after almost 8,500 km in 3 1/2 weeks, Backyard Mountain! Home sweet home.

Thanks for dropping in! As a little reward for reading this far, here's something I heard at the poetry festival in Whitehorse.

Q. What did Luke Skywalker say to the poet?

A. Metaphors be with you!

Over and out.

POETS AND PONDERING AND A HINT OF SPRING

2011-05-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

You may wonder at my lack of posting anything after The Harper Government pulled off a majority win on election night. No, I wasn't sulking, just busy. I worked the advance polls as a poll clerk. First time I've done anything like that. It was fun to see the process from another side. So here's what happened on election night. Thanks to the way our political system works, Stephen Harper's Conservatives Party won with 39.6% of the vote, which got him 53.4% of the seats in parliament.Some good things happened. In my riding, NDP incumbent, Alex Atamanenko, resoundingly trounced his opposition. Elizabeth May won her seat in the Gulf Islands and became the first Green Party member to be elected to parliament and the NDP shook up Quebec something fierce. Stay tuned. The next four years should prove to be, um, interesting.

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In March I was in Sooke at a poetry writing retreat. Got to see old friends again, search for inspiration on the beach, eat fine food, laugh a lot and best of all, WRITE! Here's the view from Ocean Wilderness. Kind of makes you want to pick up a pen, doesn't it?

These words to live by are at the bottom of the path that leads to the beach.

Judith Heron, on the way down

Pat Smekal coming back up, demonstrating what I've come to suspect: that humans were invented to move rocks around

This little guy made a cameo appearance in one of the poems I wrote

Wendy Morton and Lisa Shatzky, probably looking at a picture of...

...these! (Probably the most photographed glass balls in a bird bath on Vancouver Island).

My wonderful roommate, Pat, hard at work

Wendy and Patrick, sizzling something in the kitchen

Trailer-towing going badly, right outside our door. Seems it was a little too heavy and one of the axels broke. The incident spawned at least one poem.

Leslie Mc Bain, looking for feedback from Rhonda Ganz, whose reflection you can see in the mirror, and Pat

Yvonne Blomer and Cynthia Woodman Kerkham talking poems

In the evenings we read poems to each other. One night Patrick Lane, our fearless leader, read some of his work, one night we read a poem of our own, and one night we split into groups and introduced the group to a poet whose words we wanted to share. L-R: Wendy Morton, Pat Smekal, Judith Heron, Lisa Shatzky, Heidi Garnett, David Fraser and Rhonda Ganz

Karen Chester

David Fraser

Isa Milman

Leanne McIntosh

Daniel G. Scott

Lisa and Heidi

Patrick and Cynthia, listening

Lovely Wendy, who's responsible for just about everything

These boots are made for beach walks (and for gardening in the rain, which is what I'll be doing after I finish this post!)

Finally, a link to a poem of mine, A Good Place to Start, that was featured on YourDailyPoem at the beginning of the month. Over and out for this time. Thanks for stopping by.

APRIL'S ALMOST OVER...WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

2011-04-29T04:17:00.000-07:00

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I've learned to really appreciate Twitter over this election. There is no faster way to catch up on news, and not infrequently the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-re-tweeted-friend says something funny, and that sure helps. Just came across this: "Dear Governor General: Is it possible to prorogue an election? Just curious. Asking for a friend."

When last I posted about the looming election in Canada I said the NDP was third in the numbers game. Well, as of a recent surge of appreciation for the fireside chat feel of Jack Layton's campaign, the Orange machine is threatening to crush a number of comme ci, comme ça ridings. There's separatist talk again, the abortion debate was almost reopened except The Harper Government will never do that, the attack ads get nastier every day and my respect for all parties who indulge in such petty tactics is waning. If only these spokespeople would stop picking at the peccadilloes of their competition as if they were scabs and focus on telling us what they can do. Whatever happened to keeping it positive?

To that end, I thought I'd practice what I'm preaching and find five positive pieces about Harper, Layton, Ignatieff, Duceppe and May. Here goes:

Stephen Harper has the endorsement of the Globe and Mail.

Over at www.canada.com Jack Layton warrants a dandy headline from Chris Cobb: Cane and Able — Layton's humanity hits right note: observers. By now, anyone who's been following the latest political skirmish knows that Jack had hip replacement surgery in early March; hence the cane.

Michael Ignatieff secured the endorsement of the Labourers' International Union of North America for the Liberals.

Gilles Duceppe got a thumbs-up from the Canadian Auto Workers' Quebec Division.

Elizabeth May is doing well in the polls in the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding where she is challenging the Conservative incumbent. I'd love to see the Greens get a seat. She has the support of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

And for something with just enough levity to get us through, Rick Mercer has a column in MacLean's Magazine for the duration of the election. His most recent: Is Stephen Harper a Hologram?

If that doesn't cheer you up enough, watch these Salt Spring Island women who want to break up with Stephen Harper.

From the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a look a the Prime Minister's economic record to date. The CCPA, self-defined, is "an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social, economic and environmental justice. Founded in 1980, the CCPA is one of Canada’s leading progressive voices in public policy debates."

And as this is my poetry blog, let me repost this poem of mine that appeared in Mansfield Press' 2010 collection, Rogue Stimulus—the Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament.

GOOD NEIGHBOURS

It was a small thing,

forgetting to check the venting index

before lighting the Solstice fire.

Who knew the sweet blue sky

was nothing but a large foot pushing down the smoke

laden with year-end remains

— her thrice-rejected manuscript,

the packaging that once encased a meat thermometer,

a copy of Stephen Harper’s biography, mint condition,

someone gave her for Christmas last year—

back to the earth from which it rose,

spreading across the subdivision like syrup on a plate

while a phalanx of neighbours from an archipelago of houses

arrived to complain of wheezing elders, burning eyes,

Happy Solstice dying on her lips

replaced by stammered apologies

and promises never to re-offend.

After they’d gone she cracked a Corona

and imagined she could fly above the clouds,

get the air moving, soar.

Here's hoping something gets the air moving in Ottawa again. The next few days should prove interesting.

A WEEKEND AWAY—WRITERS DESCEND ON YMIR AGAIN

2011-04-18T22:24:00.000-07:00

First, there's the Ymir Hotel. I've blogged about this place before, Friday night jam sessions with eight or ten folk playing just about everything that can be played and taking turns singing great old songs: Lightfoot and Dylan and Tom Paxton's Last Thing On My Mind—this time the place was packed. Jugs of beer appeared on tables and food requests were communicated to the server, although by the time it arrived we'd mostly forgotten what we'd ordered. We got to catch up with each other before settling into the weekend routine. There may even have been the occasional bit of dancing. An experience not to be missed when you're in the West Kootenays.

Saturday morning, right after breakfast, we got down to work.

We took turns doing meal prep (ingredients which Anne DeGrace had organized ahead of time)

Lots of mealtime chat around the huge table

Dueling cameras

"Ask me about my book", said Jenny's T-shirt. And we did, and it was good!

Same time next year? Sure hope so!

AN EMPTY CHAIR: NATIONAL POETRY MONTH IN CASTLEGAR

2011-04-11T14:13:00.000-07:00

As I'm writing this, my next door neighbour has a large grader of some sort (bad on technical names of trucks) going up and down the driveway. Neighbour has every right to do so. I suspect a paving job of some sort may be in the works. Good for Neighbour. But every time the machine comes down to this end of the road the house shakes to its very foundations. The horse nearby doesn't like it. He's been whinnying loudly and thundering around his yard. I don't like it. I don't like things that can shake the earth, and lately there's been so much of that. War in Libya. Uprisings all over the Middle East and Africa. Earthquakes in Haiti and Chile and Japan. Tsunamis. I could go on, but back to my point, the noise is making me feel quite nervous, and as I already suggested, there's no need, and I don't like the feeling. What must it be like when such a machine continues on through your old cedar fence and through your yard, eventually smashing your house down? How long is Canada going to be fortunate enough to not have to worry about such things happening here? Meanwhile, three or four carriers of sirens have just gone up the highway on the mountain behind our house. Someone's lives have just had some changes thrown at them. But these are not sirens of war or aggression. What must that be like?

I've been mulling over such things after attending No Words Barred last Friday, a celebration by second year creative writing students in Almeda Glenn Miller's Studies in Writing Program at Selkirk College. Iranian-Canadian blogger, Hossein Derakhshan, was present in the form of a photograph. I first heard of Hossein when George Stroumboulopoulos interviewed him on The Hour in 2006. You can watch the interview here. Hossein was wearing a T-shirt that said "I Heart Tehran" which is more than ironic given that he was arrested in that city November 1, 2008 and sentenced within the month to 19.5 years in prison for reasons that are not completely clear.

Proceeds from the evening went to PEN Canada. There was an empty chair at each table with a picture of Hossein attached to it, and a minute of silence was observed on his behalf. During that minute I thought about my own blog, how in my last post I went off on Conservative Party policy but was still able to go to bed that night and not worry about someone pounding on my door because of what I wrote. I can't begin to imagine what that would be like, yet I know it is a reality for many people with whom I share this planet.

Each table had its own student serving up menu choices of both words and food, one for the main course and one for dessert. The students had constructed their own little books or chapbooks and donated copies for the PEN Canada fundraiser.

Here's a look at some of the lovely books (with lots of variations of Coptic and Japanese stab binding), with some of the students in the background.

Almeda, looking like a proud mom. She has every reason to be.

Our table: main course.

And dessert.

Several local writers were there. That's Anne DeGrace, raising a glass of white, and Jenny Craig with the red. Rita Moir is on Anne's right and Antonia Banyard is beside her.

Readings were presented throughout the evening. Not too long, and not too many. I left wanting more, bought three of the chapbooks and had finished them all by Sunday. Riveting stuff!

Bill Metcalfe was there with the microphone that has become an extension of his hand, getting sound bites for a forthcoming CBC Radio show.

Here's another look at the book table

Terry listening to Almeda read some love poems. It was their 23rd anniversary.

Not only were we treated to students reading, three of them managed to get us all singing!

Hossein Derakhshan, whose presence was felt, if not seen. Hopefully somehow, someday, he'll be free again and able to sit at one of these tables himself.

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Finally, the League of Canadian Poets has a blog running for National Poetry Month featuring poems by several of its members on the theme of "nurturing". Mine, called Ritual, is here, or you can just go to the blog's homepage and wander about at will. On behalf of poets everywhere, I hope you will!

AND THERE GOES APRIL...FEDERAL ELECTION COMING, MAY 2, 2011

2011-03-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

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Just spent the weekend surrounded by poets and poetry again, a nice change from all the news of late, not that the odd mention of tsunamis and war (does it really matter which one(s)? didn't make it into some of the poems we wrote. So much strife in the world. So much cold and terror and sadness. I can't pretend to make sense of it all. And now, after months and months of unbelievable posturing by ALL parties, The Harper Government has fallen to a non-confidence vote by the other three parties (and this time it's not about the budget, but because THG has been found in contempt of parliament) and we're headed for a spring election. So not much poetry chat this time. I'm mad as hell, and I'm gonna talk about that.

I'm in Canada and I know some of you are not, so here's how our political system works to the casual observer, which I guess I am. We have a provincial government in each of our ten provinces and three territories and a federal one that oversees the provincial ones to some extent and is supposed to be more involved with foreign affairs. The one we'll be voting on presently is the federal one. We don't vote for the actual Prime Minister (unless we live in his riding), but for our own regional representatives called Members of Parliament. Where I live we have Alex Atamanenko who is a member of the New Democratic Party (NDP). I vote for Alex because he works hard for his constituents and tends to be on the same side of political issues as I am. He even (thanks, of course, to his able assistants, people like Ann Harvey) acknowledges emails you send him. A nice touch, that. Sort of like a two-way dialogue.

Over the years, I have voted both NDP and Liberal in federal elections. I moved to Ottawa in 1967 and I licked envelopes for John Turner in the Liberal Party leadership convention of 1968 that was won by Pierre Elliott Trudeau. In the early, early 80s I lived in the Annex in Toronto and did some door-to-door calls on behalf of Dan Heap who was running for NDP MP for Spadina, a position he won and held from 1981-1988, whence it changed its name to Trinity-Spadina and he carried on as MP there until 1993. Wow, just looked him up, and he's 85! So I've dabbled with both parties. I don't think I ever voted for the Progressive Conservative Party, although I wouldn't swear to it. All the parties do things that piss me off sometimes, and how I vote depends on how much and who and how close to an election.

Things that piss me off sometimes...just like in any family. For that's what we are, in relation to our various governments in this world of ours. Part of a family. Sometimes it's like we're all equals. Sometimes there's a distinct parent-child relationship, and when this is the case, hopefully the one in charge isn't abusive, or vengeful, or greedy.

As far as numbers go in the big political scheme of things, the NDP, with its leader, Jack Layton, comes third. In second place in this rather lopsided polling popularity contest is the Liberal Party with Michael Ignatieff at the helm. Once the darlings of progressive thought in better economic times, the Liberals fell from grace after the sponsorship scandal was uncovered in the early 2000s. Blue Tory (The Conservative Party of Canada, which is really the Reform Party that became the Canadian Alliance after one of those wiped out the Progressive Conservatives) madness swept the country, but not quite, and we've had a minority Conservative government since 2006, headed by Stephen Harper who campaigned on "open, accountable government", among other things, and then proceeded to muzzle his minions and start nipping at post-secondary education, health care, and the still nervously two-stepping arts and culture budget while promising to spend what THG says is $18 billion and other reports insist will likely be more, on F-35 stealth fighter jets. Oh, and Harper's tough on crime, wants to build more prisons. That's a tad over-simplified and I know I've left out lots of issues, but stay with me here.

The other night on the news (CBC) there was a piece about a town in northern Manitoba where the majority of the houses have no running water and no sewage. There were pictures of men out on the ice chipping a hole in it to get through to the lake water below. $33,000 per home would provide running water, a sink, a tub, a toilet and a little room that would offer privacy for the latter. And this election is costing what? And those F-35s cost what? It just seems to me we could be spreading this kind of money around a little more magnanimously.

So. Conservatives, Liberals, NDP are all in the running, but there are two other parties we can vote for, at least in some parts of Canada. There's Elizabeth May's Green Party and Gilles Duceppe's Bloc Quebecois. Elizabeth May is smart, articulate, and I really wish she was involved with either the NDP or the Libs, because either party could use her and having a Green Party (which, dammit, they ALL should be, shouldn't they?) splits the vote. The Bloc's mandate, interestingly, is to push for a separate Quebec, yet because of the way the voting system works, the BQ gets to eat a lot of votes that could feed a government interested in trying to keep Canada together, not splitting it apart.

"A coalition if necessary, but not necessarily a coalition," said Michael Ignatieff back in December, 2008, paraphrasing Mackenzie King's "conscription if necessary..." speech in 1942. Well, ladies and gentlemen who are serving the public, it might be time to think about it. All of you. There's a bigger picture here than your own petty "I want this bridge" or "You have to fix this part of the highway with this money or you get nothing" or "no, you can't have (pick one) a hospital/school" sort of mentality that seems to be emanating from far too many of you far too often.

Harper, of course, is trying to make it sound like a coalition of the lefties would be the worst thing since WWII. Here's an interesting old video of him talking about the subject before he was PM. He must be thinking about it, though. In a speech the other day he used the dreaded C-word 21 times.

Oh please, oh please let it be another minority government. I fear it's the most we can expect.

Finally, here's a link to "Vote Compass" where you can (supposedly anonymously) answer a bunch of questions in order to figure out with which political party you are most aligned. Apparently, I should be voting Liberal. I'm not. I'm voting for Alex.
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MARCH—WHAT TO READ, WHAT TO DO

2011-03-06T16:27:00.000-08:00

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Sometimes keeping a blog is just plain onerous. This is one of those times. I watch the visitor numbers go up and think, who? Why? Bloggers like me who don't solicit comments or other nods that someone's reading are often riddled with guilt when they don't post new stuff, and why? It's not like anyone's complaining. Ah, the cyber-age. It's getting to me.

Okay, so in poetry-land, what's happening? On Valentine's Day I got word that The Antigonish Review will be publishing one of my poems in a future issue. I'm pretty happy about that, and a shout-out to the editors there; turnaround time from November 23, 2010 to Feb 14, 2011 is just shy of three months. Not bad! I wasn't even starting to look for a response, and nor am I for the other three submissions I sent out that day. Four to six months is kind of the norm. Of course, just to keep me humble, I got rejections from two other places the next week. Now to toss those babies in the shower, clean them up and send them off to somebody else.

February never got a post from me as I was away for two weeks in Mexico where we walked on the five-kilometer beach and ate wonderful food and read books. And drank the odd beer!

The sunsets were incredible...

Bright colours everywhere at the Friday market...

After we got back several people asked if we felt safe, given all the news of drug-related shootings coming out of there. Well, yes, we did feel perfectly safe. Which is why it was a bit of a shock one day to observe these kids on the beach. Look closely and you'll see that each of the boys is carrying a gun. 'Guns are not toys,' I thought somewhat indignantly, then remembered my son making one out of Lego when he was little. What is the attraction?

This little guy (he was about 2 inches long) was shedding his skin. When first I spied him on the floor I thought he'd been stepped on, but he was just resting.

Surfacing...

Egret hanging out at the mangrove swamp...

Me and my guy...

I took some poetry with me: John Steffler's Lookout, plus an anthology of new Canadian poems. After our trip to Newfoundland in 2009 I somehow heard about Steffler's The Grey Islands, a long narrative poem originally published in 1985 that chronicles life on a remote island off the northern peninsula there. Wilderness writing at its finest. I picked up a 2-CD dramatic reading of same last year. I listen to it whenever I have long, solitary drives, and love the way it plants me back in that wild, unruly, beautiful province.

Also on the reading list was The Song Reader, by Lisa Tucker, which I enjoyed, and The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein, which is narrated very effectively (and affectively, come to think of it) by a dog, and The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, which is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early sixties, so you know what kind of "help" we're talking about here. I love vacation reading. These were three "can't put it down" books, especially The Help which is 450-odd pages and I read it in two days (I'm not a speed reader by any means).

All too soon, it was time to come home. Since being back, I've been reading lots of Dorianne Laux's poetry, and An Autoerotic History of Swings by Patricia Young. In the prose department, I finally finished Stephen King's Under the Dome. I used to read him like crazy, gave up around the time he wrote Gerald's Game, I think it was. This book, which was over 1,000 pages long, reminded me a little of The Stand, the first of his books I ever read and one I loved. Apparently, he's been writing Under the Dome since the 70's, so that may explain my patience with it.

The other day I picked up the mail and there in a plain brown envelope was a chapbook, An Ode to my Nephew, by Kelsey Wiebe. She sent it along because, she wrote, she remembered how intrigued I was by all the obscure chapbooks in her basement in Prince George when Ted and I were up in that part of the province visiting his cousin in Terrace, who also happens to be Kelsey's grandmother. Well yes, I am always intrigued by chapbooks and am always delighted to find them in someone's house. Such a time-honoured way of getting poems out into the world. This collection of poems dedicated to Kelsey's young nephew made me laugh, cry, and I found myself nodding in appreciation at several of her lines. In the way of all good poems, she writes of universal truths but manages to find fresh, new ways to do so. In family photos: take two, for example, she says:

we set you up as a focal point on the yellowed lawn,
pointed your brown shoes perpendicular and waited
for happiness.

How lucky are children who have poems written for/about them!

Over and out for this time. Thanks for stopping by!

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JANUARY IS POETRY MONTH FOR ME

2011-01-21T20:02:00.000-08:00

January has turned into poetry month! First, four of us in Nelson/Castlegar have a new, poetry-writing group! We met for the first time on Saturday, and it was so good to come home with some very valuable feedback on a couple of new poems.

Today (Jan. 21), I'm the poem in your email box if you subscribe to Your Daily Poem, a website out of South Carolina that's tended by Joyce who sends subscribers a poem a day. Near as I can tell, she does this for love of poetry. On her home page, right before the poem, she says, "This site exists for one purpose only: to help dispel the ugly myth that poetry is boring." She features a lot of ODPs, of course, 'cause they're in the public domain, and they're fun to read alongside poets who writing now. (If you are reading this after today—and if I don't get this posted soon, you will be—the link will take you to the current daily poem and you can then find mine in Archives by date or name. If it be your will.) And I have to say, one of the most amazing things about this has been the feedback. A huge thank you to all who left comments. I appreciated them very much.

At the beginning of the month I drove down to the coast, eventually to a retreat centre near Cowichan Lake on Vancouver Island. There, I spent four days immersed in the alchemy that comes with being surrounded by poets who talk poetry pretty much all the time! It was heaven.

Here's a glimpse of us:

For one evening's entertainment we got into groups and presented poems by poets like Dorianne Laux and Alden Nowlan

and Norman Dubie, who was fêted with affection, big time!

Richard Osler did the heavy lifting when it came to arrangements

Patrick—purveyor of poetry

The occasional glass of wine was consumed

In addition to writing poetry we indulged in some pretty weird neck games.

All too soon, it was time to head for home.

The Similkameen River, about 15 km. west of Keremeos, B.C.

The Hope-Princeton part of Highway 3A in southeast BC. Always a pleasure. These bright, fancy arrows are new since the last time I drove this (which was last month).

Home Sweet

HE GRINS LIKE A SMALL BOY

2011-01-15T01:55:00.000-08:00

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Okay, okay, okay, lots to write about, but I keep having to do things like sleep. I was down at the coast for a week, visiting friends and relations and going to a poetry writing retreat. Want to put up some pictures from that, but I'm not done editing them yet and in the interest of trying to post something on a reasonably regular basis, here's a winter poem for Ted, who blows the snow and cuts the wood and warms my body and heart!

HE GRINS LIKE A SMALL BOY

All fall he waits

for the snow to come

he’s done with rain

and the leaves have gone

when white drifts start

to form at last

he heads to the shed

to the old John Deere

and starts him up

with a putt putt putt

and blows

IN WHICH THE POET TAKES A MOMENT TO STAND AND STARE AND IS GREATLY REWARDED

2010-12-28T00:43:00.000-08:00

On Christmas Day I found myself running around the kitchen from about nine o'clock, preparing for the Big Meal. By mid-day I needed to go out to the compost and before I came back in the house I stood on the deck taking pictures of the yard which was glowing in the often uncharacteristic (for this time of year) sunshine. The odd car went past on the road and I got into artist date mode, trying to catch the cars as they appeared, briefly, at the end of the driveway. After a bit a Steller's Jay appeared on the feeder, but it was only after I took the pictures off my camera and put them on the computer that I discovered this one. No cars, but as it says on a post-it note on my friend's bathroom mirror, you never know when you're having good luck.

Here he is, moments later, with a black oil sunflower seed in his beak. The Jays like this feeder because they can get at the contents, unlike the tube feeders in the back yard where the chickadees and finch hang out.

Artist dates are one of the things Julia Cameron would have you do for yourself when you're attempting to follow the tenets of her 1992 The Artist's Way — A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self, a book I mention because it was one of the first things Ted gave me. We both got into it at Christmas, 16 years ago. We wrote morning pages every day for about two years and credit the process with helping us decide to get married. I don't know why I stopped—wandered off down another path, I suppose, but I still miss doing them sometimes and I do try to remember to have artist dates, and when I do my camera is usually involved.

Julia describes the Artist Date as "a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you" and when I was introduced to the concept I actually found it quite difficult. Now, not so much. Morning Pages are "three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning." You'd be amazed at what you can sort out with this approach.

My computer got testy and had to go off to hospital for almost a week, which meant I didn't get a new blog post done before Christmas, and now it's over for another year and New Year's Eve isn't far off.

While it's unlikely to happen any time soon, I wish for a gentler, more compassionate world in 2011. As a species we humans seem to have gotten off the rails in many ways.

May our elected officials practice the time-honoured art of listening to their constituents and to each other before they mouth off.

May we treat others in this world the way we'd like to be treated ourselves.

May we all remember to stand and stare once in awhile.

I don't usually bother making New Year's resolutions, but this year I resolve to be more proactive when it comes to getting my poetry out into the world, and to that end I'm happy to report that I currently have a total of 32 poems out there, sitting on someone's desk waiting to be looked at. (If even one of them gets a favourable nod I'll be pleased, for that is what it means to be a poet these days, at least for this one).

I resolve to have a yard sale when the weather permits and get rid of a lot of extraneous stuff that's taking up too much space in my life. Simplicity attracts me, but at the same time I'm a junior hoarder. (Have you seen that show on TV? I'm not as bad as the people they feature, but I definitely can appreciate how they got started).

I resolve to be nicer to telemarketers when they call, even though it's dinner time and even though I'm pretty sure our number is on the so-called "Do Not Call" list, for they have to put food on their tables, too. I shall continue to uphold my policy of not agreeing to do anything over the phone. There's no point encouraging them.

To all of you who drop in here from time to time I wish a contemplative, creative New Year, with as much health and wealth as you can muster.

See you next year!

And as this is, after all, primarily a poetry blog, let's have a look at that poem I alluded to, by William Henry Davies, who self-published his first book of poetry in 1905.

LEISURE

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Words to live by in the coming year, I'm sure.

OF CABBAGE PATCH KIDS AND TRIVIAL PURSUIT AND SMALL, ELEGANT PRESSES

2010-11-14T22:31:00.000-08:00

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Nov. 25/10 update: Here's a video of how Gaspereau makes books. Now, back to your regular programming!

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In 1982, the board game Trivial Pursuit appeared on the radar of seasonal must-haves. Everybody wanted it, especially if you'd had a chance to play it. I ordered one at Toys-R-Us in Toronto, there was a wait of I forget how long, and the day they arrived I still had to line up outside while guards let a few customers into the store at a time. The next year everyone wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid. When the odd, yet strangely anthropomorphic dolls suddenly became the latest fad, people hoping to get their hands on one lined up at department stores where fights broke out. I remember watching this very clip with a mixture of disbelief and horror.

But you know what? I suspect everyone who really, really wanted to play Trivial Pursuit and everyone who wanted a Cabbage Patch Kid eventually got one. It's not such a bad thing, anticipation.

I just spent twenty minutes looking for a book of poems. I have a lot of poetry books, as it happens. I'm a bit of a junkie that way. I house them in white IKEA shelving units on the wall behind my desk downstairs. They are in alphabetical order, by author. Which is why I was completely flummoxed just now when I went to get George Elliot Clarke's Execution Poems and it wasn't under the Cs. Well, as it turned out, it was, but as it was snuggled between the attention-getting green of John A. (Jack to his legion of friends) Charters' 1981 chapbook, The Dragon Tree and the black spine of Leonard Cohen's Stranger Music, I missed it the first two times I looked. You can see how this happened.

Over coffee this morning I was talking to my husband, Ted, about how annoyed I was by some of the snarky remarks I've seen online lately (reader comments on stories posted at the Globe and Mail and National Post and CBC, for example) pitched at Gaspereau Press ever since Johanna Skibsrud won the Giller for her 2009 novel, The Sentimentalists.

Skibsrud had the temerity to get her novel published by Gaspereau Press, a Kentville, Nova Scotia company who announces itself on its very shingle as being "Printers and Publishers". Note the order.

The original print run for The Sentimentalists was ± 800 copies. Gaspereau says it can only make about 1000 copies a week (which, to me, is pretty impressive in and of itself), but thanks to the big win there is suddenly demand, and the Indigos and Chapters of this world are indignant as hell because they can't get copies of the book as fast as they'd like. Which is yesterday. After all, it's all about sell, sell, sell, making hay when the sun shines, books are business, baby, and if you don't believe that, get over it.

People are incensed. They want to read Skibsrud's out-of-the-park home run NOW, but there are no copies to be had, anywhere. As of this writing, Amazon.ca has links to two used copies, one for $685 and one for $1600. ABE has none, although they do have a copy of a Glimmer Train anthology that includes a short story by Skibsrud. "Highly coveted and very hard to find," says the ad for one of the available second-hand copies of The Sentimentalists. No kidding.

I was looking for George Elliott Clarke's book because I wanted to show Ted what by a Gaspereau Press book is about. Come to think of it, I probably shouldn't have "looked" for Execution Poems. I could find Gaspereau Press books, at least the three I own, by touch, in the dark, thanks to their enormously tactile and touch-friendly letterpress jackets. (For an interesting look at how such covers are produced, have a look at Gaspereau Press's own blog on the subject.)

Gaspereau Press books feel different. They have texture, not shine. Open them up and the attention to detail is obvious.

Thomas Wharton's The Logogryph), comes in three parts. There's the book itself, perfect bound with a card stock weight cover, a dust jacket, and a sleeve that fits over both. This book was responsible for my reading Wharton's blog of the same name until he closed it down last year as he found it was taking a lot of time, as blogs do, if they're done with much thought. I was one of those lurking readers (like a number of you, I expect). Never commented on, but appreciated his posts.

Throughout the book are images of Wesley Bates' exquisite wood engravings.

In June, 2009, my friend Heather and I were handling a book table at a writers' weekend in Creston. Poet—well, not just a poet; essayist, teacher, mentor, novelist, short story writer—Tom Wayman brought in some of his books, including one little 4.5x7 inch number that caught my eye immediately. Songs Without Price, subtitled The Music of Poetry in a Discordant World, was originally presented by Tom when he was giving the Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet Lecture at Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, BC, October 2007. Production of the accompanying book was done through the publishing workshop at the College. The series is presented by The Institute for Coastal Research.

You have to get past the cover to the back page to find where it was printed and bound: Gaspereau Press.

Gaspereau's archive of press releases and list of authors is a who's who of many of our literary greats: Don McKay, Tim Bowling, George Elliot Clarke, Thomas Wharton, Jan Zwicky, Anne Simpson, Ven Begamudré, Patrick Friesen, Wanda Campbell, who recently published Looking for Lucy with BC's own Leaf Press (another of my personal favourites as far as presses are concerned), the list goes on and on.

What a conundrum it is, this getting published. There are not a whole lot of publishers in Canada. There are a lot of writers looking for publishers. Arts' funding has been cut, cut, cut, everywhere. Out of the hundreds, sometimes thousands of submissions they get, publishers only accept a handful of books every year. Skibsrub herself has two poetry collections with Gaspereau Press: Late Nights With Wild Cowboys (2008) and I Do Not Think That I Could Love a Human Being (2010), in addition to her 2009 award winner that inadvertently prompted this post. Try and find a copy of any of her books right now.

And while you're wandering around over there at Gaspereau Press's website (and as of this writing I will allow that the link to their books is not working, and I'm not surprised), read their submissions guidelines, something any author who is serious about getting published will have done before they take the time and trouble to send off their work. Gaspereau Press, say the guidelines, publishes "short-run editions of both literary and regional interest." Short run. As in, they're not equipped for large runs, and nor do they want to be. Any of their authors know this.

And in spite of the unwritten caveat that in the event of the lottery gods smiling and a mega-prize being won, the press may not be able to keep up with demand which may result in the loss of a few sales, I can't think of any of my writer friends who wouldn't love to be published by Gaspereau Press.

Hats off.

UPDATE

Nov. 15, 2010 This just in via Quill and Quire: Gaspereau Press has sold the rights to print the book to Douglas and McIntyre. 30,000 copies will ship November 19. Here's the link to D&M's press release. Sounds like a big win all around.

Oh, and Gaspereau Press is still doing what they do, and I'm ordering a copy through them. I don't mind waiting.

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CRESTON WRITER TANNA PATTERSON-Z LAUNCHES 'BUTTERFLIES IN BUCARAMANGA'

2010-11-09T03:35:00.000-08:00

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Last year I was at a writers' fest in Creston and one of the readings I remember was by Tanna Patterson-Z. It was from her soon-to-be-published novel, Butterflies in Bucaramanga. It's fiction based on fact, or fiction the author admits right up front is based on fact, as opposed to most other fiction where the author denies everything and hmmmm... The other day I ran into her at the Castlegar Craft Fair. She had a table and was selling copies of her just-released book, published by NeWest Press.

In 1998, diamond driller Ed Leonard, also of Creston, was kidnapped by guerrillas and held for 105 days, almost as long as the life-span of the stunning, iridescent blue Morpho butterfly. His survival was due in no small part to his obsession with them. A Google search tells me they can have a wing-span up to 8 inches (20 cm) and they like to drink from such delicacies as fungi, tree sap, rotting fruit, wet mud and decomposing animals.

At the time of the kidnapping Tanna was working with Ed's wife. After he was released and Tanna heard more about what had happened to him, she realized the story's potential and wrote a letter about it to Jon Krakauer of Into Thin Air and Into the Wild fame. Jon's curiosity was sufficiently piqued that he called her to say yes, it was a great story, but he was too busy to write it. Tanna decided to take it on.

She'll be reading from Butterflies in Bucaramanga in Nelson on Tuesday, November 30, 7:30PM at the Nelson Municipal Library.

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DRUNK ON WORDS IN YMIR

2010-10-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

Ah...fall. Every season is my favourite as it arrives (except winter, although I'll give it pretty), but is anything prettier than an autumn drive past huge stands of orange-golden larch?

This weekend the destination was Ymir ("Why Myrrh"), where some 15 of us gathered for a writers' retreat. We took over most of the Ymir Palace (the building behind the hotel), and for 48 hours we ate, drank a lot of coffee and a little wine (or was it the other way around?), slept, and played with words.

Ymir is a town with a population of two or three hundred. At the end of the 19th century it was a booming mining town. Now it's a bedroom community for Nelson, popular in the winter with skiers who come for the powder at Whitewater. These days it's one of the locations for The Tall Man, a suspense thriller starring Jessica Biel. (Note the head of the inflatable deer in the window.)

We had dinner at the Ymir Hotel where, we were told, anywhere from two to eight musicians get together and play. They were great!

After a good breakfast Saturday morning that included lots of Oso Negro coffee, we got to work.

Remember those Penny Loves Wade, Wade Loves Penny cookies from my last post? Rita brought some more, this time with all the letters of the alphabet. By mid-afternoon Rita, Cyndi and I figured out we could play make-a-word with them. Unfortunately, by the time we figured this out we'd eaten all the vowels except the E and the U so we had to be creative. But then, that's what the weekend was about.

We explored the best way to take photos that minimize those pesky little chin and neck problems that sometimes occur as we get older. (From now on I'm having any pictures of me taken from a helicopter.)

Many hands make light work, and we had many hands all weekend.

There was ample time to catch up with each other around the big table at mealtimes.

It was such a great weekend. Being surrounded by writers is sort of like wrapping yourself in a warm blanket on a cold day.

Thanks to everyone for making it fun. Special thanks to Anne DeGrace who organized the accommodations, shopped for food and made two kinds of spaghetti sauce while in the middle of doing an exhausting line up of readings for her novel, Treading Water, which was the book chosen for One Book, One Kootenay this fall.

And thanks to Jennifer Craig, our rep for the Federation of BC Writers, who gave us all hope with her fairy tale story of how Yes Sister, No Sister, her memoir of when she trained as a nurse in Leeds in the 1950s that was first published by Breeden Books in 2002, has just been re-published by Ebury Press to glowing reviews. We in the Koots are very proud of you!

OF WRITERS AND READINGS AND FOOD AND THE FUTURE

2010-10-19T02:26:00.000-07:00

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It's been a busy week for writerly events. Last Thursday night we came with food to the Vallican Whole to welcome former Kootenay resident, Caroline Woodward, who is on a whirlwind tour of BC launching TWO new books. Penny Loves Wade, Wade Loves Penny, is an updated version of The Odyssey, with Ulysses reincarnated as Wade, a long-distance trucker, and his wife, Penny, who's keeping the home fires burning on their Peace River ranch. Here's a review from the Vancouver Sun. Singing Away the Dark is a simply beautiful children's story about a little girl who has to walk a fair distance to catch the bus to school and sings to keep from being afraid. My seven-year-old grandson, Kyran, read it and after he was done he looked up and said, "This is a really good book." No faint praise from that one; if he hadn't liked it he'd have said.

Dan and Rita came up with cookies that fit the occasion

Caroline and Ted catching up before she read. Look at all those books!

Caroline's old friend, Rita Moir, introduced her

The illustrations in the kids' book are by Julie Morstad. Go check out some of her work, it's just lovely. I'll wait til you get back!

Caroline signed lots of books

The next night she read to another appreciative home crowd, this time in Nelson at Oxygen Art Centre.

Here she is in front of a bunch of posters of writers who have come to Nelson to give readings and workshops under the auspices of the Nelson Kootenay School of Writing group (the ad hoc one that brings in writers who are funded through Canada Council as opposed to the Vancouver one, although they are related in that they both rose from the ashes of David Thompson University Centre that was shut down by the Socred government in 1984). Caroline and her husband, Jeff George, were both very involved with KSW when they lived here. The posters went up after her reading in preparation for yet another writerly event the following night.

Saturday night about two dozen local writers met to discuss the future of Nelson's KSW. A scrumptuous dinner was catered by Jesse Phillips.

Happy hungry writers

The upshot of the discussions was that KSW is indeed a welcome and integral part of the writing scene in Nelson. With a few new people on board to divvy up the tasks, we can expect to bring in more writers to enchant and inspire us. I won't be as directly involved any more. After 18 years (!) of sitting book tables, transporting writers, billeting, and doing a few posters, I'm taking a break. Maybe.

AN APPRECIATION OF WATER

2010-10-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

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I just found out today is Blog Action Day 2010 for Water.

Here in the Kootenays we are fortunate to be surrounded by water. Creeks, rivers, and mountain lakes so deep there are locomotives at the bottom and who's ever seen them? I live in Castlegar, a small town of 8,000 or so situated at the confluence of the Kootenay River, which is an extension of Kootenay Lake, and the mighty Columbia River whose headwaters are in the Canadian Rockies. A couple of years ago I was in Portland, Oregon, and was thrilled to get to see where the Columbia flows into the Pacific Ocean. We humans are funny creatures. So often we tend to think that whatever land or water mass is at hand belongs exclusively to us. Not so. It has been said the next great wars will be fought over water. I hope not. Because if that's true we're in big trouble around here.

Here, then, is a small sampling of pictures taken around Kootenay Lake and Slocan Lake.

Water

We play in it

And near it

Sometime we just admire it

We must never forget

we weren't the first people moved

to leave our marks beside it

The First People were

Finally, two poems of mine that have to do with water:

TRICKSTER MAGIC

At night I hear coyote voices.
One starts and the rest join in
a harsh cacophony,

triumphant, dreadful baying.

The cat’s ears twitch and he curls

tighter, imagines he’s a snake,

transformed by trickster magic.

I want to go outside and stand

beneath the vigilant moon

say it’s time to bring the river back,

to welcome the anadromous salmon

but the coyotes are silent again

and the river doesn't answer.

LANGUAGE OF RAIN

“water is the first world”

Susan Andrews Grace

How do I know it’s rain

and not some colony

of suicidal river moths

slamming against the glass

in a kamikaze raid

interrupted by skylight

ra ta tat tat

not plink

not splat

no dreary drums

for here it comes

I know the voice of rain

I speak its language

Less intimate with the ocean

and her many tongues

I wander the beach

watch waves worry the shore

like a rat-mouthed dog, still

hungry for so much more,

for this is how we began,

dragging ourselves from water,

primordial birth,

our first, triumphant breath.

I want to remember this:

white caps streaming

behind the waves they almost were,

each spray more intricate,

more convoluted than the last,

like a suite of veils brought out

for the inspection of a bride whose marriage

no one thinks will last.

Don’t speak—

the wind does the talking here

waits for the waves’ crash,

begins again.

If water is

the first world,

is wind the last?

Is rain?

MISS ME?

2010-10-10T03:31:00.000-07:00

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So, for whatever reason I haven't been blogging but that hasn't stopped visitors coming over to see what I'm up to. What have I been up to? Why haven't I been blogging? If I had easy answers to these questions you'd be the first to know, after me. No good reason. No family crisis, no broken fingers, nothing like that. As Wordsworth reminds me, The world is too much with us. The Internet is so vast, there are so many words floating about in cyberspace, never mind all the ones that live in books on my shelves, transported all over the place by fibre optics and who-knows-what and I question, and not for the first time, the value of me adding words to this already impossibly overpopulated world of them.

I last posted in April, half a year ago. Summer came and went, and with it a steady stream of visitors—in the flesh as opposed to virtual. It was, in fact, a lovely summer.

That being said, I'm back, playing with a slightly different look to my blog. (This is akin to my apparent need to change rooms around every year or so!) My intentions, as they say, are good.

But for all I haven't been writing much, at least here, I have been reading, and oh, what a lot of good words!

Today, for example, I read The Crazy Man by Pamela Porter. The story, written in free verse—and what a spare, precise, beautiful way to tell one—is aimed at young readers (grades 4-6, according to the publisher), but as is the case with any enduring story, readers of any age can enjoy it. I certainly did. It's about Em, a 12-year-old girl who lives on a Saskatchewan farm. She suffers a life-altering accident to which her father reacts by leaving her and her mother to fend for themselves. Her mother hires Angus, a man who's been a patient at the local mental hospital, to help with the farm work. Because of the all-to-prevalent attitude of the times towards mental illness, conflicts arise, but Angus proves to be a good man who helps Em deal with her disability, both practically, as when he designs a lift for the shoe for the foot on her damaged leg and even more importantly, psychologically.

Last week I devoured Ayelet Waldman's Red Hook Road. It begins with a horrific accident—a bride and groom are killed in a car accident while on their way to the reception—and investigates the way the two families deal with their loss over the next four years. I particularly enjoyed the story of the deceased bride's grandfather, a world-class violinist now stricken with Parkinson's Disease, who recognizes a kindred talent in a young girl from the late groom's family.

And sometime between Ayelet's book and Pam's, I snorted, yes, LOL'd through The Lateral Truth: An Apostate's Bible Stories by Rebecca Bradley. I have to admit that had I come across this book in a store with its bleak and busy Doré illustration on the cover, to say nothing of the reference to Bible stories in the title, I probably wouldn't have picked it up. But last Sunday there was a knock on the door and our new neighbour, Rebecca, was standing there with a dozen eggs. She came in and I managed to disappear long enough to at least get dressed before we got into some coffee and a chat. When she left I got to googling, and after I read her take on the writing of The Lateral Truth I ordered it. What a find! It's probing and irreverent and funny all at once, and beautifully written.

And then, of course, there were poetry books. Sandra Ridley's Fallout is a searing collection of poems that explore, among other things, a disappointing segment of our history as humans—the nuclear testing that went on in the 50's, even after the devastation wrought by the bombs that exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sandra's a poet to watch. Try these ones, in This Magazine last fall, for example.

Former Kootenay writer, Caroline Woodward has escaped the clutches of her island home (she and her husband look after the lighthouse on Lennard Island) and is touring with her new book, Penny Loves Wade, Wade Loves Penny. Starting October 12, she's doing two dozen readings before the end of the month (bet she'll be glad to get back to the island after that!) She's reading in Nakusp, New Denver, Vallican Thursday night and Nelson on Friday, but if you're not in one of those check her touring schedule here as she'll likely be reading near you, too!

There. It's a start. Over and out for this time.

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POETRY MONTH~WHAT READING, WHAT DOING

2010-04-22T23:00:00.000-07:00

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Okay, April has been a busy month to date. Unseasonably warm days have led to a flurry of yard work around Ootischenia with Ted's daughter, Sarah, providing inspiration, information, and a lot of the grunt work. Yay, Sarah!

I've been putting together another little book for the Castle Wood Village Lifewriters, a group of seniors who live at the Village and get together to write about their lives. This one is called Thanks for the Memory. It's their sixth collection. Got some sewing to do over the next few days.

Daughter-in-law Cheralynne is graduating from Selkirk College's Nursing Program tomorrow.

None of us can believe she's done! She's worked really hard and already has a job. Two, actually. Seems nobody gets hired full-time any more. So tomorrow we celebrate. Cap and gown begins at one, then tea, then pre-dinner drinks, then dinner. After that we get to take the child home and Cher and Jesse get to party. Yay, Cheralynne!

And, of course, it's National Poetry Month. I'm reading with Bobbie Ogletree, Judy Wapp and Marilyn McCombe, all from my Nelson writing group, at a fundraiser for Nelson Co-op Radio on Saturday night. We're reading pieces loosely wound around something to do with radio. I love specifics, don't you? To that end, I should get off here and take another run at the poem I'm going to read. It's not all written yet!

My day begins with a look at the League of Canadian Poets' Poetry Blog.

Just finished Susan Musgrave's selected poems 1985-2000, When the World is Not Our Home. Click that link and check out the cover. The image perfectly reflects the title, I think. And how pleased was I when I started reading the poems and the first two are a couple of my Musgrave favourites—Tomatoes on the Windowsill After Rain and Something Has to Give in a Life. Another reason to get this book is Susan's essay that introduces the poems, Water Trembling at the Rim — The Process of Revision. For those of us who can pick away at a poem like a crow at roadkill, this is a must-read.

I'm relishing North of Summer — Poems from Baffin Island, by one Alfred Purdy (M&S, 1967) with the oil sketch illustrations of A.Y. Jackson. Love how the poems appear in this book. Acres of white space. When I Sat Down To Play the Piano is a delightful piece. Who knew the anus, to wit, one being snapped at by huskies with "an inexplicable (to me) appetite/for human excrement" could be written about in such an eloquent fashion? People who say they don't "get" poetry so they don't read it, any of it, it's all the same, etc. should try reading Al.

"Dear Ann Landers

what would you do?

Dear Perry Mason

what would you do

in a case like this?"

(Sorry, lost the spacing).

Narrative poems. I've always had a soft spot for them.

And today Refugees of Yesteryear, a collection of poems by Gregory Wm. Gunn, arrived, and I'm looking forward to getting into that.

As long as you've hung in this long, if it's still April, you could go over here and vote for Stuart Ross' book, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, in the Alberta Readers' Choice Award contest. For decades Stu has been a mainstay of Canadian poetry. So he writes a book of short short stories and IT gets all this attention. Poetry. Sigh. Anyway, if Cigarettes should win this mad, Internet voting frenzy, Stuart would get $10K, and I can't think of anyone who deserves it more.

Over and out!

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HAPPY POETRY MONTH!

2010-04-04T11:19:00.000-07:00

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It's National Poetry Month and to that end I've been checking out the League of Canadian Poets' Poetry Blog where a poem a day by one of the members will be features throughout the month of April. Imagine my surprise when I called it up this morning and there was MY poem! Check it out (day 4):

Can't stay and chat. Have a houseful coming for dinner and a delightful 6-year-old is needing a bath.

Happy Easter, one and all.

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WASN'T THAT A PARTY—BC ARTS, THE OLYMPICS—WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

2010-03-02T14:02:00.000-08:00

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The Olympics are done. Budgets are about to be put down (I'm seeing a beloved old pet here, purring or wagging its tail, about to get the needle) and neither of them—BC or Federal—are likely to be overly generous to Arts and Culture.

Here's an open letter I sent to the Premier of British Columbia last month. I borrowed a couple of key points from a form letter that came around from one of the Petition sites, and then I personalized it. Have to say I appreciate the ease with which one can send such letters these days. So far, the only response I've had is from Katrine Conroy's office. She's our MLA (NDP). She included a number of sites with good information on arts-related issues. "Important Links", she calls them. I think so, too.

Dear Mr. Campbell:

Here we are, in the midst of funding cuts that have arts communities reeling. Given the support being withdrawn both federally and provincially of late, I had concluded that arts and culture is not something Canada and British Columbia consider important. And then I watched the opening ceremonies of the current Olympics, and given the number of artists who were chosen to perform their dancing, music, songs, and poetry to show us off to the world, it appears my conclusion was wrong.

This sector of the economy is one that visitors and immigrants are aware of from the moment they set foot here. I'm thinking of the visual feast of art that greets people arriving at the airport in Vancouver. I'm thinking of the murals in Chemainus. I'm thinking of Word on the Street. And I'm thinking about how difficult it is to produce these kinds of things when the government of the day tells us they're not important enough to be supported.

As part of the public consultations for the 2010 Budget, the Legislative Assembly's Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services issued a unanimous recommendation: that government funding for arts and culture be restored to 2008-2009 levels. I am asking today that at the very least you accept this bipartisan recommendation, and that it be reflected in the upcoming Budget. I'd really like it if you'd restore funding even more—I'm thinking about how budget cuts have affected the Federation of BC Writers, for example. I'm remembering the BC Festival of the Arts, once an annual multi-disciplinary event that was held in different communities throughout the province.

A jaw-dropping amount of money has been spent on the Olympics while costs relating to education and health care soar. Improvements to the Sea-to-Sky highway gobbled a lot of that money. In my own neck of the woods, a 6.5 million dollar passing lane is about to be constructed west of Nelson because, we're told, the money has to be spent or it will be lost. How? Will it evaporate like morning fog over the Castlegar airport? Will it be stuffed in a furnace and burned? We're told it's not fuel-efficient to travel at high speeds and at the same time we're encouraged to go faster. But there's no money for the arts. No wonder.

I ask you to give BC's arts and culture sector the support it needs and deserves, or perhaps next time there is an important function or occasion to promote there won't be any artists left to do it for you.

(The following info is quite BC-centric).

Important Links (from Katrine

The Alliance for Arts and Culture

Facebook Group against Campbell's cuts to the arts

Blogs that have been providing excellent coverage of the BC Liberal Arts & Culture Cuts

Straight.com

Plank Magazine

Stop BC Arts Cuts is an excellent site with great videos and links to help you send a letter to your MLA and to a petition you can sign over at The Alliance for Arts and Culture

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Rogue Stimulus Launches!

2010-02-25T14:38:00.000-08:00

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This is a heads-up for any of my readers who happen to be in Montreal, Ottawa, Kingston, or Toronto over the next few days.

ROGUE STIMULUS: THE STEPHEN HARPER HOLIDAY ANTHOLOGY FOR A PROROGUED PARLIAMENT

—featuring 72 government-toppling poems (including one by me!) and including three Governor-General Award winners and a former Parliamentary Poet Laureate

—edited by Stephen Brockwell & Stuart Ross

—joining the tour are Jim Smith and Robert Earl Stewart, reading from their new poetry collections from Mansfield

February 25, Montreal
5 pm - Divan Orange, 4234 boulevard Saint-Laurent

February 27, Ottawa
2 pm - Join us on Parliament Hill
6 pm - Gallery 101, 301 1/2 Bank St.

February 28, Kingston
4 pm
The Kingston Brewing Company (upstairs), 34 Clarence St.
with a special performance by Trevor Strong of the Arrogant Worms

March 2, Toronto
7:30 pm
The Monarch Tavern, 12 Clinton St.

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POEMS HERE, POEMS THERE

2010-01-28T02:12:00.000-08:00

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Just had a poem published in the Winter '09 issue of Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas out of Duke University in Durham, NC. They publish one poem per issue, under the heading "The Common Verse". I have come to realize that's what I do best. I'm looking forward to getting my contributor's copy. The subject matter is a little different from other magazines I've been in.

And if work-related poetry isn't your thing, I've got a poem in the anthology Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament edited by Stephen Brockwell, Stuart Ross and Denis De Klerck and published by Mansfield Press. It's slated to be out just as parliament reconvenes at the beginning of March. "Contrary to what the Harper government would have Canadians believe about the “chattering classes”, said the call for submissions, "people are expressing their outrage over Harper’s unilateralism at family dinners, in the workplace, in social media and in print."

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POEMS ARE MADE BY FOOLS LIKE ME

2010-01-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

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Winter is upon us. As someone who is occasionally felled by S.A.D., what to do, what to do...

Drive to Vancouver.

Take ferry over to Bowen Island.

Set up room (Perogy Cat loves to watch me agonize over an elusive poem).

Meet with dear poetfriends and get to prepping some of the amazing food we ate, under the artful tutelage of the lovely and talented, (both as poet and cook) Somae.

A room awaits the arrival of the poets.

Allow time for laughter.

And coffee.

What an incredible privilege to get to hang out and talk and listen and write with all of you (two missing from photo; you know who you are and we love you, too! Damn ferry schedules).

Thank you.

Here's that elusive one.

JUST PRETEND YOU’RE DEAD AND MAKE A DECISION

find a home for the Belleek vase with the roses
box the books you’ll never read again
put water on to boil and forget it

sort the sheet music into piles
violin/piano/vocals
sort those into difficult and easy
and disperse accordingly
forget to flush the toilet

keep your wedding picture
and the lock of someone’s hair
thow away the bag meant for Goodwill

read old letters
imagine how you’d answer them now
prepare a pyre for the ceremony
while the toast is burning

clean the silver one last time
give away the piano
spend an hour searching for the remote
it’s in your pocket

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN FARRELL, WHEREVER YOU MAY BE

2010-01-10T01:04:00.001-08:00

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Hi there, all you faithful readers. I've been AWOL, but you probably noticed that. My apologies. I'll do a more comprehesive post soon, but all of a sudden it's January 10, and that means it's a bunch of peoples' birthdays, including that of Jesse's dad. Jesse would love to find his dad, which would be (and has always been) absolutely fine with me, hence the picture (from 1988, King City, Ontario) and blog title.

Happy Birthday, as well, to Pegi and Marilyn.

All of you know who you are.

Jesse put together a very nice EP for Christmas. You can download it here, for free. Definitely worth a listen, especially tracks 3 and 5.

Here's a more recent picture of the lad.

Special thanks to Paul and the mysterious Annett who left comments on my last post.

Happy New Year, and thanks for checking in.

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