WASN'T THAT A PARTY! NEW ORPHIC REVIEW TURNS SIXTEEN

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Last night lovers of the written word crowded into Oxygen Art Centre in Nelson to celebrate an auspicious occasion. Ernest Hekkanen has been publishing the New Orphic Review for sixteen years! He does this without any grant assistance from the government (and just as well, as the pool that was once grant assistance for literary ventures dries up a little more every year). 

I was featured poet in the NOR in the spring 2012 issue. I blogged about it here.

There was, of course, a book table.

There was champagne and the clinking of glasses.

Ernest, his partner and editor of the NOR, Margrith Schraner, and Tom Wayman.

There's my Ted chatting with Tom Wayman, in whose creative writing class we met in 1991. And today, as it happens, is our sixteenth wedding anniversary. Best class I ever took!

Margrith talked about the biography she wrote, "The Reluctant Author: the Life and Literature of Ernest Hekkanen".

And then the readings began. What a great audience! I read some poems.

Ross Klatte read from the beginning of his new novel. 

Jane Byers read some of her wonderful poetry.

Sandra Hartline read a short story.

Art Joyce looking on.

Anne Champagne, another NOR contributor. 

What a wonderfully enthusiastic audience!

Intermission meant schmoozing, champagne, and a delicious cake. 

Another clutch of folk talking words.

And another!

Ernest and Margrith sharing a laugh.

A masked Art Joyce in front of one of Ernest's paintings that was also one of the NOR's covers.

The man of the evening, who made it all possible.

If there'd been an award for most innovative presentation last night it would have gone to Susan Andrews Grace, who celebrated the occasion by reading from page sixteen in each of her five books!  

Here, Tom Wayman illustrates a head-scratching passage from a very funny story that's in the current issue of the NOR.

And here we are, readers of the evening, all proud to have been published in the New Orphic Review.

Back Row l-r: Linda Crosfield, Susan Andrews Grace, Sandra Hartline, Jane Byers, Linda Hunter, Ross Klatte

Front Row l-r: Ernest Hekkanen, Margrith Schraner, Art Joyce 

Where it all happens, and hopefully will continue to happen for the next sixteen years!

If you're looking for a home for some of your words, you might want to check it out. Short stories by NOR authors have twice been shortlisted for the Journey Prize Anthology. 

Submissions to the New Orphic Review may be sent here:

The New Orphic Review

706 Mill Street 

Nelson, B.C.   

V1L 4S5 

Canada

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THE POORER SILENCE OF READING

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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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ELEPHANT MOUNTAIN REVIEW LAUNCHES IN NELSON

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I'd have done this update sooner, but I've been looking after my grandson while his lucky parents were soaking up the music at the New Orleans Jazz Festival.

We had a nice wrap to National Poetry Month when around fifty people came out for the launch of Nelson's newest magazine celebrating the arts, The Elephant Mountain Review. I have a couple of poems in it.

Doug Wilton, who spearheaded the event from starting Elephant Mountain Online which features new writing from people with Kootenay ties, then collected some of the strongest work for print. The Elephant Mountain Review takes over where Horsefly, a magazine born out of Kootenay School of the Arts' Writing Program back at the end of the last century (I love getting to say stuff like that!), left off.

Pippa Bowley presided over the book table.

Art Joyce read poems by and about the late Don Law. I got to know Don through the Federation of BC Writers. We miss him at these events.

Olindo Chiocca read one of his wonderful stories about growing up in Toronto.

Margaret Hornby, who launched her new collection, Love in Exotic Places, last month.

Also reading was Sandra Hartline, a stalwart of the writing community.


And my poem, Packing the Car, written when my son went off to university and I was suffering empty nest syndrome, has found its way into another anthology!

I'm spending the weekend in New Denver at Convergence: a Writers' Retreat for Social Justice. 

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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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