A SOCIAL JUSTICE WRITERS' RETREAT IN NEW DENVER AND MONDAY'S POEM

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On Friday I packed a few things and drove through the warming greening Slocan Valley to New Denver where I spent the weekend at a beautiful retreat and conference centre, Heart's Rest. This particular event was Convergence Writers' Retreat: Writing for Social Justice. Tom Wayman, who recently launched his latest poetry collection, Dirty Snow, my old friend Judy Wapp, who I got to know in Tom's 1991 writing course in Nelson (where I also met my husband of 15 years this week!) and Verna Relkoff, wonderful writing instructor and agent at Morty Mint's Literary Agency in Nelson, led workshops that explored some of the ways of getting your point across, including the rant, writing with humour and how best to reach your audience. We were fed and informed and some of us got to share our writing on Sunday afternoon at the coffeehouse. Here are a few pictures.

Oh, before I forget, I'm the Monday's Poem person over at Leaf Press this week. Here's the link. Big thanks to Leaf editor, Ursula Vaira, for all you do for poetry.

Now those pictures from the weekend.

Sean Arthur Joyce who talked about poetry and politics and was instrumental in planning the conference. 

Keith Wiley and Cynthia McCallum Miller, listening. Everyone was listening

Keith brought a great photo-op prop. If you have a chance, go see the documentary, On the Line, about the proposed Enbridge pipeline. It's excellent. 

Anne Champagne, another tireless volunteer who helped put the retreat together

Some of the delicious, colourful food that fed our bodies

Robert Banks Foster

Kathy Hartley

Judy Wapp (orange top), Verna Relkoff and Tom Wayman, the three workshop facilitators

Ivan Nicholson

Therese DesCamp and George Meier of Heart's Rest.

Jennifer Rebbetoy working on her rant

Dominique Fraissard played several of his songs that pertain to social justice at the coffeehouse on Sunday. I'm listening to him right now and he's really good!

Laurel Walton

Judy Wapp

Moimeme

Jenny Crakes reading from a short story

Bonus! A Stuart Ross sighting (okay, and beering) in New Denver, where he's been instilling the joy of poetry in school kids. He's an honorary Kootenay citizen, for sure.

When I signed up for this weekend and was asked to send along 10 pages of my writing that had to do with social justice issues, I was amazed at how quickly I found poems that fit. I realized that The Quilt, the first poem I ever had published by someone who didn't know me, in Room of One's Own back in 1999, qualifies. It's about friends who died of AIDS.

Here's one of mine about asbestos. You know, that deadly stuff we can't use in Canada any more because it'll kill you but we still mine it to export to other countries. Here's a link to some news stories that relate. Chrysotile is the white, fibrous form of asbestos.

This poem is published in The New Orphic Review, spring 2012 issue in which I'm the featured poet.  An earlier version appeared in the September–December 2011 issue Verse Afire, the tri-annual little magazine of The Ontario Poetry Society, an organization I, from my distant vantage point in BC, belong to as I still, for my sins, have an incredible soft spot for Ontario. The focus for this particular issue was the environment and I wrote the poem with that in mind, sent it off, then kind of forgot about it (do other poets out there do this?) so when it arrived in the mail and I read the poem it was kind of like running into an old friend you haven't seen for a while. 

What's Best For Us

Chrysotile sounds like

a semi-precious stone

an island off the coast of South America

the name of an exotic dancer 

and in a way it is

the way it skips

on the edge of breath

to unsuspecting lungs

where it clings like a pole dancer

in tights adorned with feathers

performs predictably 

while suits in the audience

quaff drinks, count money

convinced they know

what’s best for us

.    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .   .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .     .      Linda Crosfield

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

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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.

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AN EMPTY CHAIR: NATIONAL POETRY MONTH IN CASTLEGAR

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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!

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

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

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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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POEMS HERE, POEMS THERE

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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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Corky's Nelson Roast and Toast

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After many years as MLA for this part of the world, Corky Evans has decided to retire. Accordingly, there was a party...

Many of his friends and cohorts flocked to Mary Hall in Nelson to eat, drink, buy things via auctions (both silent and not, including a very fun toonie auction for gift baskets groaning with goodies that had us flipping coins into bowls faster than tiddly-winks) and to toast and roast the man of the hour.





Sandy Korman has been Corky's assistant forever. What a team!


Here, he's toasted in true Newfie fashion—with screech!



Corky was first elected in 1991.





Here's wishing him a long, productive retirement.

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