Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 18

Arrived!

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I arrived at MAC's Deep Bay Cabin in Riding Mountain National Park late this afternoon. I'll be here for the next two weeks, writing about Winnipeg's urban forest. And maybe visiting the bison. And going for a trail ride.

Bin of books

This is the bin of books & magazines I'll be bringing with me to the Deep Bay Cabin.

Thanks to the Manitoba Arts Council and Riding Mountain National Park, I get to unpack all of this...

(It's far fewer books than I usually bring on retreat. I'm shocked by how 'light' I packed this go-round.)

Some of the forest-y books I know I'll be consulting regularly include:

Forest Policy and Management: Course Notes by Richard Westwood

Urban Forestry: Course Notes by Richard Westwood

Plants of the Western Boreal Forest & Aspen Parkland by Johnson, Kershaw, MacKinnon & Pojar

Dr. Tree's Guide to the Common Diseases of Urban Prairie Trees by Michael Allen

Understanding Local Values Related to the Urban Forest: Connecting Winnipeg Residents to their Trees by Jaclyn Diduck

Winnipeg Forest Watch Handbook: A Guide on Tree Health and Basic Tree Care for Homeowners by Trees Winnipeg

Field Guide to Native Trees of Manitoba by the Province of Manitoba

Reprint: Manitoba Arts Council

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So I'm leaving on Monday for my stint at the Deep Bay cabin.

I still have to assemble a teetering stack of books I have no hope of making my way through in two weeks, which is tradition. I still have to make sure I move all the files I'll need to my laptop. I have to make sure I have my camera and my camera's battery charger.

I have to pack sheets & clothes, sunscreen & bug spray, flip flops & hiking boots.

I'm looking forward to being alone, to bringing home a respectable chunk of new writing, but also to the shift in perspective that being at the edge of Riding Mountain National Park's wild will bring.

Working forest vs. urban forest. Tourists vs. neighbours. Resident squirrels & crows vs. resident bison & wolves.

My thanks to MAC for the opportunity and to Kristen Pauch-Nolin for all her help!

Tired/walking

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So I haven't posted a goddamn thing in weeks.

Part of that is that the blog barely kept up with my doings this spring. Which were marvelous, far-flung and varied. But also: tiring.

So, as soon as I didn't have to post event notices and clippings, I didn't.

I went for walks, both to look at the trees, to take deep breaths of lilac (which sounds purple and florid but is one of my favourite spring-in-Winnipeg things, besides carigana & frogsong & pulling on shorts after a loooooong winter), AND to get on some kind of regular exercize schedule again, which this diptych proves.

But I also cleaned house and watched movies with M and the girl. I did outstanding paperwork and napped.

I'm also been setting my shoulder to the proverbial wheel of the urban forest essays. It's still big and scary, because it's a slightly different genre, because it's new and at the edge of what I'm capable of, in writing, but I'm determined to do it.

Six books + a plate

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Some of the MB authored/published books I'll be chatting with Dahlia Kurtz about at 2:30 pm on CJOB 680:

Ghost Most Foul by Patti Grayson (Coteau Books)
Wonder Horse by Anita Daher (Rebelight Publishing Inc.)
Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman (University of Manitoba Press)
A Daytripper's Guide to Manitoba by Bartley Kives (Great Plains Publications)
Monologue Dogs by Meira Cook (Brick Books)
The Significance of Moths by Shirley Camia (Turnstone Press)

Or, put another way, two YA books, two non-fiction books, and two collections of poetry.

The books for a new monthly books column, which should be great fun. The plate is just decorative but is one of my grandmother's. 

Envoi-ing

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So, after a busy weekend that included the TWUC/LCP AGM in addition to the usual to-ing-and fro-ing, Regina poet Tracy Hamon, The Pas-based writer Lauren Carter, and I read at McNally's Monday night as part of the Envoi Poetry Festival.

There were a lot of poems, a lot of bad jokes (mine) and laughter, and a decent Q&A that included questions about putting together a ms., writing the body, and what it means to write poems in character when the person in question is a relative.

I'd like to thank Kristian Enright for hosting/enduring gentle ribbing, to McNally's for having us, and for the audience, some of which I knew and some of which I didn't...which is how I like it.

(I also managed to pick up the second volume of Rat Queens, which made me happy. The girl had a gift card she was itching to spend and, after extensive browsing, settled on the third Zita the Spacegirl.)

And that's it for the official Stowaways touring. I don't have a single reading on my event horizon, and hoo-boy, am I ever ready for a good long quiet summer of reading & writing & walks in woodsy places.

So is this an envoi ("the usually explanatory or commendatory concluding remarks to a poem, essay, or book; especially: a short final stanza of a ballad serving as a summary or dedication") for my second book? Yah. Mostly.

Book-launch venue hop

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Over the last two weeks of April, I wrote four articles for Quill & Quire. Three were web-only interviews with poets launching books for National Poetry Month: Bren Simmers, Elena Johnson & K.I. Press.

The final article, which was slated to run in the June print edition of the magazine, was to be part of their series called Book-launch Venue Hop, i.e. profiles of popular venues in which to launch books.

So far, they've written about an artsy performance space in Halifax & a poetry-hosting tavern in Ottawa. But in Winnipeg, aside from the Millennium Library, our non-traditional venues have only lasted a few  years each. So: McNally's, which is big and bright and hosts most every launch in town.

It was an easy decision, and, in the service of writing the article, I got to interview Rob Budde, Guy Gavriel Kay & Perry Grosshans. And a bunch of other people too, but when you've only got 600 words, well...people and their quotes get cut.

I also got to include a picture of Chantal Fiola launching her Rekindling the Sacred Fire, which is an UMP title. This wasn't only self-serving. It turns out I only bother taking hi-res photos at events I'm reading at or are working, so the selection was limited...
 
Fun!

Saskatchewan shelfie

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Being the stack of books I brought back from my readings in Saskatoon and Regina.

Bruce Rice's The Trouble with Beauty
Anne Lazurko's Dollybird
John Donlan's Baysville
Slow Food Saskatoon's Food Words: plums in the icebox, food poems by Saskatchewan poets

Out-of-Town-Authors: Guy Gavriel Kay II

Winnipeg Free Press—PRINT EDITION
By Ariel Gordon 

A little over 30 years ago, Guy Gavriel Kay published his first fantasy novel, The Summer Tree. Since that time, the former Winnipegger has published 11 more novels.

On Friday, Kay will return to the city to give the Writers' Trust of Canada-sponsored Margaret Laurence Lecture at the University of Winnipeg's Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall.

The Toronto-based Kay recently took the time to d
iscuss the changes to the city—and to his writing—over those three decades.

Q: Has your process changed enormously the 30 years you've been writing? I'm thinking specifically about the amount of research required to write "history with a quarter-turn to the fantastic," as your recent work has been labelled, versus the high fantasy of the Finovar Tapestry...

A: Yes, the migration towards historically based or driven work does require a great deal of research, slows me down, though I am aware that my readers worldwide allow me that luxury of being able to go slower, write at the speed that feels like I am closer to doing justice to the story I want to tell. I'll add that the research phase is by far my favourite: I'm just learning things, interacting with very smart scholars—and I don't have "responsibilities" till that evil moment when I know it is time to start writing!

Q: You've gone from fan letters sent to your publisher to readers tweeting at you. What's changed in terms of how you engage with readers, over the three decades that you've been writing?

A: That one needs an essay! There is enormous complexity to a cultural age where we are so readily and easily in contact with artists whose work we admire (or hate, sometimes!). The idea of the author as his or her own "marketing director" is a new one, puts a lot of stress on young writers, and has absolutely changed the process, as you suggest. James Joyce spoke of "silence" as part of what a writer needed. That can get harder and harder to find.

Q: How do you think you wound up as a fiction writer, despite training as a lawyer, despite your early forays into TV and journalism? Did growing up in impatient/activist/practical/arty/small-town/fantastical Winnipeg have anything to do with it?

A: Winnipeg, for me and my peers, was a source of tremendous energy. In Toronto, at the CBC where I was involved for some years at the beginning of my career, the idea of "the Winnipeg mafia" was a given. This city made a lot of us driven and ambitious. Something in the water and the air, the city "punching above its weight" in terms of the national culture. My honest answer when I started would have been that I expected to practise law and try hard to find time around that to write a little. Every author who is able to make a living, work full-time at fiction (it can't even be imagined for poetry or short stories), needs to be profoundly aware of good fortune that this is so. I am.

Q: Speaking of poetry, tell me about the last poem you wrote.

A: I started with poetry (at Grant Park High and U of M) and I still write it. The shift over the years and decades is that for the most part the poems are for myself—everything else, just about, is for readers. The poetry isn't always.

Q: Tell me a bit about your Winnipeg. What burns brightest from your childhood? What is your latest discovery?

A: Another essay! I have only good memories of Winnipeg, and a great deal still burns brightly, from various hockey rinks (frozen toes burn!) to Assiniboine Park to campus lounges to Junior's hamburger stand by the train station. Every time I come back it is, as the sage Yogi Berra said, "déj vu all over again." The new thing? What comes to mind is food—this is now a seriously good dining city! That's so despite the heartbreaking loss of Kelekis. Not sure I'll forgive anyone for letting that happen.

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So this is the second interview I've done with GGK for my Out of Town Authors column. Which is great fun, especially considering how I cried over The Finovar Tapestry in my twenties.

The first interview is here, should you want to see...

Envoi Poetry Festival

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For more information on the event, you can check out McNally's website or the Envoi Poetry Festival.