ELEPHANT MOUNTAIN LITERARY FESTIVAL 2016 -- THE LITTLE FESTIVAL THAT JUST KEEPS GETTING BETTER

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Just back from a great weekend where I got to immerse myself in words and wine. Words, because it was Nelson's Fifth Annual Elephant Mountain Literary Festival. Wine, because the opening gala has a wine-pairing thing where four different writers are "paired" with four different wines, and you get to try them all out as long as you're not driving; thanks, Ted! The only thing I missed was Caroline Adderson's talk on craft on Wednesday night, and already I'm kicking myself. (I'd just got my studio painted and was attempting to put it back together). Missed seeing Lynn Krauss, who's been part of the festival organization committee pretty much since EMLF began. Next year we're going to see her dancing!

Thursday night's 100-Mile Gala saw the Richard Carver Award for Emerging Writers go to two deserving people. Here's Alanda Greene of Kootenay Bay whose historical novel Napi's Dance was published by Second Story Press. 

Co-winner of the Carver Award, Donna Macdonald, whose book Surviving City Hall was published by Nightwood Editions earlier this year.

Jazz singer Jill Barber entertained the enthusiastic audience with a few songs.

Jill's husband, Grant Lawrence's reading included some old diary notes about the first time he visited Nelson as a young guy, when he was touring with The Smugglers. He was also frequently spotted wearing the cutest baby!

 Leesa Dean and P'nina Shames working the book table.

Will Johnson (who has much better pictures from the evening on his blog as he was using a real camera) read from his story that won the Kootenay Mountain Culture fiction contest. 

Fletcher Fitzgibbon also read from his prize-winning KMC story.

"Reading the Earth" on Friday night at the Capitol Theatre. The audience was treated to talks, readings, and slides by Richard Cannings (being from the riding Castlegar's in as opposed to Nelson's, he's my MP!), Briony Penn, and J.B. McKinnon. The inimitable Bill Richardson was MC for the evening.

 The recently rebuilt/refurbished/repurposed old CPR Station building housed the Saturday panels where various aspects of the writing life were discussed. The first one was "Writing the Land",  moderated by Calvin Wharton and featuring (left to right) J.B. McKinnon, Eileen Pearkes, Briony Penn, and Grant Lawrence. 

Next up was a panel that looked at the state of children's literature in Canada, appropriately titled "Once Upon a Time". Verna Relkoff moderated this one which included Murray Kimber who illustrates children's books (among other things), Caroline Adderson, and Jill Barber. The consensus? Canada's children's literature is doing just fine!

What Nelson literary event would be complete without Tom Wayman? (Answer: None.) Here he is, moderating the afternoon panel that looked at the state of publishing in Canada these days. 

Nancy Wise of Sandhill Book Marketing, Julian Ross of Polestar Press fame and calendars, and New Star's Rolf Maurer took on the "Publishing: Perish or Prosper" panel. Consensus on this one? Somewhat grim; although that might be just me.

At the festival's Saturday night wind-up Bill Richardson read from new fiction he's working on as well as sharing a few of the wonderful poems in his latest book, The First Little Bastard to Call Me Gramps: Poems of the Late Middle Ages. 

A pensive Bill. Probably hatching a new poem.

Bill shared the stage with Caroline Adderson who read from her latest book, Ellen in Pieces. Both Bill and Caroline have given readings in Nelson before, when the Kootenay School of Writing (the ad hoc local committee that sought funding from Canada Council to bring in readers, not the Vancouver off-shoot) was organizing such events. If memory serves (and it should be noted that mostly, it doesn't), Bill was here in around 1991when Queen of All the Dustballs came out, and Caroline was here a few years later when she was touring with her short story collection, Bad Imaginings.

Something new at EMLF this year was the Holley Rubinsky Memorial Blue Pencil Sessions, funded in part by a generous bequest from Holley who died last August. Caroline Adderson was the writer-in-residence for this and from what I hear those who took advantage of the 40-minute one-on-one sessions got marvellous feedback from her.

Just some of the folk who came out for the Saturday panels.

And finally, if I was looking for the one photo to sum up the energy and attention to detail that EMLF organizer Anne DeGrace puts into it, this is the one. She does everything!

HOW TO PUT A CHAPBOOK TOGETHER

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This post is slightly different, but I needed to put it somewhere accessible and my blog seems as good a place as any. It's certainly poetry-related!

A friend of mine is working on making her first chapbook. She had some questions about the procedure and was curious as to what kind of a device, if any, I use to facilitate putting the holes in the spine. I went down to my studio to take a picture of said device (which Ted made for me; it's very handy having a handy person around), then ended up employing the "picture is worth a thousand words" technique and photographing the whole sequence. 

So, here we go. I'm sewing a copy of George Bowering's chapbook, Los Pájaros de Tenacatita.

The wood device Ted made me that is responsible for the next 19 pictures!

Make sure your pages are as square as can be

Keep as much of it as you can perfectly lined up

Gently coax it so that the edges line up as perfectly as possible (which won't be completely perfect as a rule) 

You're now ready to lie it down and crease the spine 

Meet the bone creaser, so named because they were originally made from bone but now are made of some sort of hard plastic. While you're at it, meet the awl I use, which is only here to show the relative size of the business end.

Obviously your going to hold the book down as in the picture directly above while you drag the bone creaser down the spine. There was only so much I could do whilst taking this photo! 

Now you're ready for book to meet that wooden thing Ted made 

I just eyeball the hole positions. Do the middle one first, then the other two. 

Cut a length of thread (linen is great if you can find it; otherwise a coat-weight thread from any notions store will do) about 15" long (38cm, but I'm betting my friend speaks inches!). Draw the thread through some beeswax a few times. (Those little votive candles work well).

Starting from the cover side, insert needle through the centre hole.

Now go back through one of the other holes

Note that you've left a tail about 2.5" (just over 6cm) long in the middle. Now take a giant step and go back through the remaining empty hole. 

Your last sewing moment is to go back through that same middle hole and come out on the cover side.

Make sure the two loose ends are on either side of the long stitch

Tie a square knot around that long stitch. Tie it tight. Trim the ends to whatever length makes you happy. Mine are around an inch (which we all know is 2.54cm).

Here's a fuzzy look at that fan-creep you end up with. It's the nature of the beast.

Meet my guillotine. I realize most people don't have these in their basements. You can bundle up your sewn books at this point and take them to your trusty printer who probably has one that's a lot fancier (and more accurate) than this one.

I'm going to trim about 3/16" (1/2 cm) off the edge. I'm not going to show you a picture of this because the guillotine is very sensibly made to only work when you employ both hands pushing buttons that are far away from that blade!

Voilà! All done. And remember, as in all things practice makes perfect.

And here, by popular request (okay, one person asked), are pix of all four of my own chapbooks.

My first collection, ways to get to here, was stapled, not sewn. Published in 2004. On the page with the publishing info it says: 

"ISBN planning this for a long time"

I still had lots to learn. Still do, come to that.

Generation Dance came along in 2008. That's vellum over the cover, which is a collage of all the family folk who get mentioned in the poems. The title poem originated as an August postcard poem in 2007.

Starting at top left, Aunt Nancy, grandson Kyran, son Jesse, my mom's cousin Billy in Ireland, Mom, Nana (my mom's mom), Braco (my mom's dad), the old Major (my dad's dad), Dad and his mother, a gaggle of cousins on the beach in the early 60s, Aunt Nancy heading down the hall to her room at Jubilee Manor with Kyran leading the way, my cousin Fred and me. Now I'm wondering, how did my sisters get left out of this one?! Probably because the last poems I wrote specifically for/about them were penned in about 1962. I'll have to get on that. Oh, that's me in the middle, age 11, photo by Helmuth Mayerhofer whose sons still have Vogue Studio in Nelson.

Etiquette, 2011. (This is why I now get my covers professionally printed. The ink eventually flakes on the ones I do at home.)

This one is my latest, created this year for Nelson's 2013 Elephant Mountain Literary Festival. Earlier this year, the title poem, What's Best for Us, was immortalized in the form of a very special artist's book by Meredith Purvis. It's a one-off and she calls it "Lung Book". My poem is on the scroll that's tucked into the windpipe.

You can read about the exciting collaboration that allowed this beautiful piece to be born over on The Light Ekphrastic.

Actually, I have one more chapbook with about four or five poems in it, titled Tea in a China Cup, but somehow I didn't hang onto a copy of that one nor get a picture of it. It was cute, too. Sort of square, if memory serves. I'll have to try to track one down.

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WORDS, WORDS, AND MORE WORDS AT THE ELEPHANT MOUNTAIN LITERARY FESTIVAL

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Somewhere between 70 and 80 people (according to my less-than-accurate count) came out for the opening night gala for the 2nd Annual Elephant Mountain Literary Festival in Nelson last weekend. It was my first time in the Shanti Centre which proved to be a gorgeous space complete with high ceilings, huge windows, and a stage. A table groaned under the weight of all the food and there was much beer and wine and schmoozing. 

Calvin Wharton, Tom Wayman and Verna Relkoff 

Jenny Craig and Anne Champagne

Sean Arthur Joyce

Bessie Wapp, MC for the event, arrived on stage wearing a rather unusual outfit. 

Fortunately, she just happened to have a tasteful tux handy

I know, I know, I should have used the flash. But here's a look at the very supportive audience.

Peter McPhee and Lynn Krauss, enjoying one of the readings. HUGE kudos to Lynn who, with a great team of helpers, organized the festival. 

Another look at the book table, with Barbara Mulcahy and Agnes Toews

Jane Byers, with whom I'm lucky enough to be in a poetry group

Elena Banfield performed a gorgeous and moving poem 

The very entertaining Magpie Ulysses 

Performance poet and singer Brendan McLeod led a singalong and had the audience in stitches

Agnes Toews, Ann Alma, Andrea Wright, Anne DeGrace, Barbara Mulcahy, Art Joyce, Marcia Braundy and me. We all had books on the book table.

Friday night I went to hear MG Vassanji, Howard White and Terry Fallis, whose first book, The Best Laid Plans, I just finished reading. If you haven't yet (although surely I must be the last Canadian to get into it), and if you are a little, um, displeased with the way things are going on Parliament Hill these years, do yourself a favour and get it immediately. I haven't had such a good reading giggle in a long time.

I was sorry to have to miss the Saturday events (panels and readings), but got to attend a very fun wedding. Oh, to be able to clone oneself at such times!

I've been busy sewing books again. This time it's a journal for the silent auction at a fundraiser for Pat Henman and her daughter, Maia, who were in a nasty car accident. Kootenay people, it's on July 31st at the Capitol Theatre. Be there!

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