Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 35
May 29, 2014
Image/text #3
* * *
So...many of the poems in Stowaways came out of an back-and-forth email collaboration with Darryl Joel Berger, a writer/visual artist based in Kingston.
This illustration was the basis for my poem "How to be a Prince Among Men."
What I liked about this image was that the man seemed both pristine and bloodied, boyish and blase.
We'd primarily been working with female subjects at that point in our collaboration, and their 'mates' (I use this term because the majority of the subjects were pregnant or new mothers) were not faring well in my poems. So I think Darryl was turning the camera, which is to say, forcing me to think/write from the other point of view.
In terms of sequence, this image came right after the image that produced "Pond Scum," about a beauty queen that marries a frog prince.
So I began thinking about fairy tales and politics and Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, and so I came up with a list of helpful hints for any prince, real or imaginary (or both).
May 28, 2014
May 27, 2014
An XL bag of ketchup chips
So last night was the wrap-up reading for the WPL/MWG's Writers Circles.
I facilitated the Poetry Critique Circle the past five months, meeting at the River Heights Public Library on Monday nights.
The poets in the group were a devoted bunch. They sent poems in, they discussed them avidly but respectfully at our meetings, and then they did it all over again, for months.
The wrap-up reading included members of Donna Besel's Fiction/Non-fiction group.
We rehearsed in advance of the reading, but that was hardly necessary. Though a few of the poets claimed they were nervous, you couldn't tell. The readings were great...and I look forward to reading/hearing more of their work out in the world.
Kendra Gaede, the programming coordinator at the MWG, also attended the event on behalf of the guild and told participants about other programs on offer, including the always-excellent Sheldon Oberman Emerging Writer Mentor Program.
And there were sweets! My favourites were the dense chocolate brownies and the two home-made coffee cakes, one of which included pistachios...
I came home with two hunks of cake tucked into my bag: I'd say it was a successful event. (My contribution was an XL bag of ketchup chips...)
I facilitated the Poetry Critique Circle the past five months, meeting at the River Heights Public Library on Monday nights.The poets in the group were a devoted bunch. They sent poems in, they discussed them avidly but respectfully at our meetings, and then they did it all over again, for months.
The wrap-up reading included members of Donna Besel's Fiction/Non-fiction group.
We rehearsed in advance of the reading, but that was hardly necessary. Though a few of the poets claimed they were nervous, you couldn't tell. The readings were great...and I look forward to reading/hearing more of their work out in the world.
Kendra Gaede, the programming coordinator at the MWG, also attended the event on behalf of the guild and told participants about other programs on offer, including the always-excellent Sheldon Oberman Emerging Writer Mentor Program.
And there were sweets! My favourites were the dense chocolate brownies and the two home-made coffee cakes, one of which included pistachios...
I came home with two hunks of cake tucked into my bag: I'd say it was a successful event. (My contribution was an XL bag of ketchup chips...)
May 25, 2014
Reprint: Vivid verse from trio of Manitoba poets
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
By Jonathan Ball
Ariel Gordon is another Winnipeg author and Manitoba Book Award winner avoiding the sophomore slump with Stowaways (Palimpsest, 96 pages, $19).
Gordon, like Calder, oscillates rapidly between light-heartedness and melancholy, although Gordon has almost baked irony into these poems by structuring many as dubious instructions for potentially useful skills: "When the zombie apocalypse comes, your tippity-tap skills will be on par with those who can kill remorselessly," notes Gordon in "How to Learn Morse Code."
"In How to Soften Facial Scars," by comparison, Gordon abandons any jokiness to describe a woman whose "face [is] an abused envelope, / herself a scented page / you will never put down."
"You will never see her again, but you will be Facebook friends forever," writes Gordon in "How to Tell if Someone is Dead," a poem that basks in both registers. Adept and assured, Stowaways swaggers.
* * *
My thanks to Jonathan Ball for this review of poetry titles by myself, Alison Calder, Luann E. Hiebert, and Marc Di Saverio.
(Whee! The first review...)
By Jonathan Ball
Ariel Gordon is another Winnipeg author and Manitoba Book Award winner avoiding the sophomore slump with Stowaways (Palimpsest, 96 pages, $19).
Gordon, like Calder, oscillates rapidly between light-heartedness and melancholy, although Gordon has almost baked irony into these poems by structuring many as dubious instructions for potentially useful skills: "When the zombie apocalypse comes, your tippity-tap skills will be on par with those who can kill remorselessly," notes Gordon in "How to Learn Morse Code."
"In How to Soften Facial Scars," by comparison, Gordon abandons any jokiness to describe a woman whose "face [is] an abused envelope, / herself a scented page / you will never put down."
"You will never see her again, but you will be Facebook friends forever," writes Gordon in "How to Tell if Someone is Dead," a poem that basks in both registers. Adept and assured, Stowaways swaggers.
* * *
My thanks to Jonathan Ball for this review of poetry titles by myself, Alison Calder, Luann E. Hiebert, and Marc Di Saverio.
(Whee! The first review...)
May 24, 2014
Out-of-Town-Authors: Trevor Herriot
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
Regina writer and naturalist Trevor Herriot has twice had books nominated for the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction. He's written radio documentaries for CBC's Ideas and is an in-demand public speaker on conservation issues.
But after a battle to keep pigeons and their associated mites from infesting his house that wound up with Herriot taking a serious fall from a ladder, he felt irritable and disengaged from both the natural world and his work.
So he did a three-day fast on a hill. And then a 64-kilometre walk on the prairie, all by himself.
The result of this journey is The Road is How, which launched this week. He recently talked with Winnipeg writer Ariel Gordon.
AG: What do you want people to know about The Road Is How?
TH: This book draws outside the lines of traditional nature writing and takes a few risks. Rather than stick with the lyrical lament for lost ecologies or searching at the social and economic level for the causes of environmental degradation, in The Road is How I try to deepen the narrative inquiry a bit. Using experiences and stories from life, I ask some questions about the forces in the individual human heart that determine how we relate to one another and to the land.
We can try to argue for the protection of a river, a forest or a piece of prairie by measuring its long-term ecological and economic benefits, but these are almost always outweighed by immediate benefits that go directly to human beings. Behind that small-minded pragmatism there is a madness driving us farther away from the wisdom and love that would help us make better choices for our community and nature. What is the nature of that madness, and how do we begin to wake up from its spell? Science and reason are essential for helping us argue and present the data, but to go deeper and inquire into the forces at play in the human heart is to enter the murkier terrain of the imagination, eros, narrative, and psyche. To get there, I borrow two traditional practices that plains people still use now and then: a long sit on a hilltop and a long walk on a road.
AG: You've done a lot of work around the federal government's decommissioning of the PFRA, the protected pasture/grasslands that spread from Alberta to Manitoba. What would you most like to see happen with that land? (And is it the subject of your next book?)
TH: We would like to see the land retained as Crown land and then managed as it was under the PFRA, for a sustainable balance of conservation and grazing. There are many ways we could do that and do it well, in ways that would serve the farmers and ranchers who depend on these lands for grazing, while at the same time protecting and managing the habitat for 30 species at risk.
AG: When/how does a nature writer become a naturalist? Was it as hard to claim that title as it was 'writer'? And how does a naturalist differ from a biologist or a forester?
TH: I would say it works the other way around: Not all nature writers are skilled naturalists, but naturalists sometimes become writers. A naturalist is someone who pursues the art and tradition of natural history by spending time in nature, observing, making notes and sometimes participating in activities that contribute to our understanding of nature, the behaviour, population and distribution of wild plants and animals.
AG: Tell me about your favourite place to go walking.
TH: I like to walk the hills and coulees of the Qu'Appelle River watershed, which is my home landscape sprawling across a good stretch of Treaty 4 territory. The natural history and human history of this corner of the northern Great Plains is still there, to be encountered along the meandering creeks and uplands that drain into the valley.
AG: Have you ever been to Winnipeg? What have you heard?
TH: Of course—I love to come to the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and so much of our history and ecology is shared and convergent with life as it has emerged at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.
by: Ariel Gordon
Regina writer and naturalist Trevor Herriot has twice had books nominated for the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction. He's written radio documentaries for CBC's Ideas and is an in-demand public speaker on conservation issues.
But after a battle to keep pigeons and their associated mites from infesting his house that wound up with Herriot taking a serious fall from a ladder, he felt irritable and disengaged from both the natural world and his work.So he did a three-day fast on a hill. And then a 64-kilometre walk on the prairie, all by himself.
The result of this journey is The Road is How, which launched this week. He recently talked with Winnipeg writer Ariel Gordon.
AG: What do you want people to know about The Road Is How?
TH: This book draws outside the lines of traditional nature writing and takes a few risks. Rather than stick with the lyrical lament for lost ecologies or searching at the social and economic level for the causes of environmental degradation, in The Road is How I try to deepen the narrative inquiry a bit. Using experiences and stories from life, I ask some questions about the forces in the individual human heart that determine how we relate to one another and to the land.We can try to argue for the protection of a river, a forest or a piece of prairie by measuring its long-term ecological and economic benefits, but these are almost always outweighed by immediate benefits that go directly to human beings. Behind that small-minded pragmatism there is a madness driving us farther away from the wisdom and love that would help us make better choices for our community and nature. What is the nature of that madness, and how do we begin to wake up from its spell? Science and reason are essential for helping us argue and present the data, but to go deeper and inquire into the forces at play in the human heart is to enter the murkier terrain of the imagination, eros, narrative, and psyche. To get there, I borrow two traditional practices that plains people still use now and then: a long sit on a hilltop and a long walk on a road.
AG: You've done a lot of work around the federal government's decommissioning of the PFRA, the protected pasture/grasslands that spread from Alberta to Manitoba. What would you most like to see happen with that land? (And is it the subject of your next book?)
TH: We would like to see the land retained as Crown land and then managed as it was under the PFRA, for a sustainable balance of conservation and grazing. There are many ways we could do that and do it well, in ways that would serve the farmers and ranchers who depend on these lands for grazing, while at the same time protecting and managing the habitat for 30 species at risk.
AG: When/how does a nature writer become a naturalist? Was it as hard to claim that title as it was 'writer'? And how does a naturalist differ from a biologist or a forester?
TH: I would say it works the other way around: Not all nature writers are skilled naturalists, but naturalists sometimes become writers. A naturalist is someone who pursues the art and tradition of natural history by spending time in nature, observing, making notes and sometimes participating in activities that contribute to our understanding of nature, the behaviour, population and distribution of wild plants and animals.
AG: Tell me about your favourite place to go walking.
TH: I like to walk the hills and coulees of the Qu'Appelle River watershed, which is my home landscape sprawling across a good stretch of Treaty 4 territory. The natural history and human history of this corner of the northern Great Plains is still there, to be encountered along the meandering creeks and uplands that drain into the valley.
AG: Have you ever been to Winnipeg? What have you heard?
TH: Of course—I love to come to the Winnipeg Folk Festival, and so much of our history and ecology is shared and convergent with life as it has emerged at the forks of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.
May 23, 2014
That good list...
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* * *
McNally's is the place to launch your book in Winnipeg. And their bestseller list, which is published in the Winnipeg Free Press on Saturdays, is just one of those reasons.
The bookstore has been really good to me over the years, so it was nice to repay at least some of their kindness with a great big launch. John Toews, McNally's Event Coordinator, was kind enough to read the book and think about it and say terribly nice things in his plummy voice.
His intro can be found below, but first, my thanks to everyone who came out...I hope I repaid your generosity with the incoherent prose poems I wrote in your books.
* * *
Hello everyone, I’m John Toews, the Event Coordinator here at McNally Robinson Booksellers. I’m here to introduce a certain local author simply because you only get so many opportunities in life to say the word “Palimpsest” out loud.
With that in mind, I would like to thank Palimpsest Press and officially welcome you all here tonight to the launch of Ariel Gordon’s Stowaways, the latest in her “Urban Cowboy” series of erotic novels. Or her second volume of poetry.
It’s really quite unfair to say any further nice things about Ariel, despite the fact she’s already offered to slip me $10 to do exactly that. Her first book of poetry, Hump, won the 2011 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry and, most recently, her chapbook How to Make a Collage won Kalamalka Press’ inaugural John Lent Poetry-Prose Award.
Several of the poems featured in this new collection first appeared in that chapbook, and when I first read the description of Stowaways I wondered how they might fit contextually among the other work in the collection. Hump had such a natural thematic connection and rhythm to its pages and this book, composed as it is of those poems that poked their heads up following the semi-abandonment of a more conceptual project, seemed like an unruly bunch to throw together.
As any of you who have already read this will know, I was sorely mistaken. This is a coherent, entirely natural and deeply playful second work from one of our most gifted poets.
Stowaways is printed on Rolland Zephyr Laid paper – a kind of paper that the manufacturer describes as “creamy” and “sensual.” While I can’t, or at least shouldn’t, comment on the creaminess of this collection, I can certainly testify to its inherent sensuality. Reading the book is an oddly tactile experience as we tromp through slush to run our fingers along the edges of a wild mushroom, and as bark-encrusted plant transport tissues transform to sterile rubber tubing; the poems are always physically present, yielding roughly to the touch.
Ariel refuses to respect boundaries – the urban and the wild collide in this book, with the plastic sheen of our surroundings constantly subjected to the mulched beauty of the natural world.
She buries us beneath snow and guides our hands into the slippery bulk of a whale, instructing us on those tasks both day to day and those somewhat unusual, plunging us both into the past and into a harrowing zombie apocalypse future (with some helpful tips along the way) – all in the voice of one who has an inherent and visceral connection to the world around us, and one who has the skill to harness its beauty into equally evocative poetry; one who can easily convey a rich story in a single stanza, with a simple line break, or hide the most basic and aching emotion within a cheeky comment.
I would like to call up someone who is now notoriously fond of tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms. Someone who knows that you can get a dead battery goin' by mixin' bird feces and spit, cause there's like acids in it, eh?
May 22, 2014
Launched!
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Photo by Kirsten Wurmann. * * *
So here's a first photo from the May 21 launch of Stowaways, taken by Kirsten Wurmann, a librarian I met when we were doing events for UMP's book of L.B. Foote photographs, Imagining Winnipeg.
I like the image because of the steeped-tea quality of the light. Because it has Greg Chomichuk finishing up his werecoyote and M taking pictures and my mum following along.
The launch was great fun, I think. (It sort of went by in a blur...)
More pictures to come!
May 15, 2014
Giveaways
So there are three Stowaways giveaways, which is kind of fun...
McNally Robinson Booksellers, where I'll be launching the book next week, is doing both a Twitter and Facebook giveaway.
Here are the details, rife with hastags:
@mcnallyrobinson: Tell us your fav poem by a Cdn writer, tag it #StowawaysMRB, and u can win Ariel Gordon's new #poetry colln STOWAWAYS!
There's also a Goodreads giveaways, details of which can be found in the widget below:
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
Stowaways
by Ariel Gordon
Giveaway ends June 13, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Enter to win
McNally Robinson Booksellers, where I'll be launching the book next week, is doing both a Twitter and Facebook giveaway.
Here are the details, rife with hastags:
@mcnallyrobinson: Tell us your fav poem by a Cdn writer, tag it #StowawaysMRB, and u can win Ariel Gordon's new #poetry colln STOWAWAYS!
There's also a Goodreads giveaways, details of which can be found in the widget below:
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font-style: normal; background: white; }
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.goodreadsGiveawayWidgetEnterLink:hover { background-image:url(https://www.goodreads.com/images/layo...
color: black; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;
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Goodreads Book Giveaway
Stowaways
by Ariel Gordon
Giveaway ends June 13, 2014.
See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.
Enter to win
May 11, 2014
Arrival
* * *
I'd almost forgotten to post this, taken on Thursday afternoon when I was home and the sun was right and I finally had a box of books with my name on them loitering on the porch.
(I know the photo is strangely out of focus, but I liked all the light. And my wrinkly thumb. And the dried-up peony in the background.)
And of course I'm pleased and grateful, but I also feel a little anxious, to be completely honest. This book is an entirely new pocketful of stones...and I want to do it justice at the launch and at the other events that I'll be doing here and there over the next year.
On the shelves
For more information on the event, see the McNally's website.
* * *
The launch of Stowaways is in just under two weeks. The book is on the shelves at McNally's. And my box of books showed up at my house this week.
As many of the poems in this collection were written in collaboration with a visual artist, I’d be pleased as punch if audience members brought sketch pads and drew (or their knitting/embroidery/cameras and knitted/embroidered/took pictures) during the launch.
See you there?
