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

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

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

What a lovely audience! (photograph by Leanne Boschman)

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

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

Moi (photograph by Leanne Boschman)

(photograph by Linda Crosfield)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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LATE SUMMER ADVENTURES—A WRITING RETREAT IN KASLO AND MODPO IN CYBERSPACE

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Last month I was at a writing retreat in Kaslo, BC. Holley Rubinsky presides over these wonder-weeks which she describes as being "ideal for writers who have material to organize, rewrite or edit who need some getaway time". What writer do you know who can't use something like that?

photo by Holley Rubinsky

Chilling after a hard day in the word mines  L-R Dianne Linden, me, Myrl Coulter 

Myrl Coulter and Dianne Linden were there at the same time. Myrl is working on a novel with an intriguing plot and Dianne is working on a YA novel that is set in a rural place not unlike where we were. To this end, a fact-finding boat trip across the lake to look at the rock bluffs was in order!

Looking north on Kootenay Lake at Kaslo

Pictograph

 Reflections from sunlight hitting the waves danced off the rock face. (aka First Video upload!)

And speaking of rock faces...

Our captain, who has a new book of short stories coming out, by the way.

Holley Rubinsky

I hunkered down with a couple of dozen poems I wanted to revise and by the end of five days about fifteen were approaching acceptable. Of course, I haven't looked at them for over a week now, so who knows if they still are!

photo by Holley Rubinsky

I haven't looked at them because some months ago I signed up for a ten week online course through Coursera and the University of Pennsylvania: Modern and Contemporary American Poetry. We're just going into Week 3 and I'm loving it. It's a lot more work than the 4-8 hours a week they suggest in the course description, even if you only try to stick with the basic requirements. You know how it is on the Internet: one link leads to another. One minute you're reading an assigned Emily Dickinson poem and the next you're pouring over her website. One minute you're listening to a recording of Cid Corman reading a poem about bedwetting and how it relates to war and the next you're marvelling that the very week you were reading about Lorine Niedecker ("i" before "e", and having just had to correct myself, I can see how the gravestone thing happened!) your poet friend, Paul Nelson, blogs about having just visited her home on Black Hawk Island, Wisconsin.

More than 30,000 people all over the world signed up for ModPo, as it is affectionately called. Not everyone is flinging themselves into the forum discussions and likely not everyone will complete the ten weeks, but there is much to be learned, at least for this participant whose working knowledge of poets other than Canadian leaves a lot to be desired (not that my knowledge of Canadian poets is complete, either). There are video discussions by Al Filreis and a group of bright, enthusiastic TA's. Al's head honcho of the course (he's an English prof at the university and Faculty Director of the Kelly Writers House where the discussions happen). Either he's cloned himself or it would appear that Al never sleeps, given the number of times (and times of day/night) he chimes in on the forums.

How much does all this cost, you're wondering? I'm still pinching myself. It's free!

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LOTS GOING ON IN THE KOOTS FOR POETRY MONTH

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It's National Poetry Month for a few more days and we in the Kootenays are still celebrating.

Elephant Mountain Review Launch

Friday, April 27  7:00 PM

Self-Design High, 402 Victoria Street, Nelson B.C.

(upstairs at the Legion which is across from the Library and the Cop Shop)

Here are just a few of the writers who have work in the new magazine.

Kathy Hartley

L-R in front, Robert Banks Foster, Margaret Hornby, Mark Mealing

Margaret Hornby

Linda Crosfield

Music is kinda like poetry, too, so don't miss out on this feast for the ears.

Bessie and the Back Eddies

Saturday, April 28 at the Vallican Whole  7:30 PM

Tickets at the door $12

Map of how to get to the Vallican Whole is here.

Give them a listen here!

Bessie and The Back Eddies is a seven piece old school R 'n B show band that brings style and class mixed in with a bit of mischief to the stage. The elegantly powerful vocal stylings of Bessie Wapp are backed by a dynamic three piece horn section and an all acoustic rhythm section. With a repertoire that dips into the songbooks of Ruth Brown, Etta James, Bessie Smith, Dinah Washington, and Nina Simone, Bessie and The Back Eddies deliver up a performance that goes from the swing of the big band sound and the grooviness of soulful R 'n B to the sass of burlesque classics and the raunch of down home blues. Their eclectic arrangements showcase all aspects of the band and the music making every Bessie and The Back Eddies performance unique and entertaining.

The members of Bessie and the Back Eddies are: Bessie Wapp(lead vocals), Tim Bullen(trumpet), Keith Todd(trombone), Clinton Swanson(saxophones), Marvin Walker(drums), Jesse Lee(acoustic bass), and Colin Spence(piano).

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POETRY: RETREATS AND REWARDS

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Ted and I got home from Mexico and the West Coast a week ago today. We're still missing the warmth, of the sun and of the people. We'll go again.

"... a fine six-course meal of poems..." 
There was a huge stack of mail waiting for us, and mine included my contributor copies of The Wild Weathers, Leaf Press' beautiful anthology of love poems, and the latest issue of The New Orphic Review, in which I have six poems and an essay about my poetics. Art Joyce blogs about The New Orphic and other West Kootenay publications, and my poems here. The quotation above is from it.

 

Found in the mail pile were three issues of Gareth Gaudin's Magic Teeth Dailies, including the much sought-after 50th one! Gareth has been drawing a cartoon a day since 2004. Every single day, including the ones that saw the arrivals of his two daughters. Perogy Cat, who some of you will have met in these pages, is his creation. In the photo he's pointing to the necklace with Perogy Cat both written and illustrated on a grain of rice that we brought him from Mexico. (We got so many of these Adrian, the beach vendor who sells them, bought us a beer!)

And then there was the chapbook from Leaf Press with writing done at one of last year's poetry retreats. Nice timing, because I was just back from this year's Ocean Wilderness adventures in poetry making. The pictures that follow are from that.

I can't stress enough how good it is to get to a poetry retreat. To be able to focus on writing, my own and other peoples', is such an affirmation of what I do. Was good to be in the company of the next, next generation of poets, too.

Today I got an email from someone who has translated one of my poems into Spanish and wants to use it in a magazine. Details on this to follow, but I was pretty pleased as this is the first time I've been translated!

I'm working on a publishing project for the Lifewriters at Castle Wood Village here in Castlegar. It's their seventh and last collection of memoir writing, as spearheaded by Jan de Bruyn. I'll put up some 

pictures when it's done.

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I'M READING IN NANAIMO AND FILMS ABOUT KIDS

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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

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ERNEST HEKKANEN: SOCIAL HISTORIAN and RENAISSANCE MAN

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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

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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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