POETRY FESTIVALS EVERYWHERE YOU LOOK

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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.

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

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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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OF WRITERS AND READINGS AND FOOD AND THE FUTURE

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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.

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