Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 54

haunting

* * *

This press release was issued by the Transatlantic Agency this week:

"Edited by beloved Can Lit blogger and editor Kerry Clare (Pickle Me This and The 49th Shelf), Truth, Dare, Doubledare: Stories of Motherhood features some of Canada's best young writers including Heather Birrell, Zoe Whittall, Saleema Nawaz, Susan Olding, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Carrie Snyder, Alison Pick and others. This anthology probes the limits of maternity, from the ordinary to the unconventional. World rights sold to Susanne Alexander, Goose Lane Editions for publication in Spring 2014, by Samantha Haywood."

I'm an "...and others" contributor. I swear! And I had two thoughts in response to the presser:

1) This is the first time any publication of mine has been newsworthy. ("Deal news!")

2) Come spring 2014 I'll be a Goose Lane author. In the most tenuous sense, of course. But still: fun!

* * *

The image for the spring special issue of Room, entitled Mythologies of Loss, is by Ontario artist Amy Friend. I'm a bit haunted by this image. (That perforated cheek...)

Here's how Amy characterizes the series: "Through small deliberate interventions, I altered these vintage images, allowing light to pass through them. (After all, photographs are made possible with light.) In a literal and somewhat playful manner, I aimed to give the photographs back to the light, hence the title of the series, Dare alla Luce, an Italian phrase used to describe the moment of birth."

I imagine the issue itself will be similarly haunting, esp. given the list of contributors:

Kimberly Alcock, Megan Alford, Meghan Bell, Elizabeth Berlin, Jan Bottiglieri, Sarah Brooks, Jennifer Delisle, michele marie desmarais, Nandini Dhar, Candice Fertile, Sally Franson, Amy Friend, Jeanette Geraci, Ariel Gordon, Sue Goyette, Angela Narth, Sigal Samuel, Karen Shklanka, Rachel Thompson, Dania Tomlinson, Bronwen Welch, d lee Williams, Lisa Xing.

* * *

Bread pudding with this summer's pears, made after writing a poem about picking this summer's pears. (The dessert is half-eaten, the poem half-edited...)

* * *

If you'll recall, poet Heidi Greco and I corresponded around the Poems! For the Trees! Project.

She wound up sending me a picture of my poem in a tree. And, also, this image.

I mean, how could she not?

Poems! For the Trees! Part Four!

Photo courtesy Heidi Greco.
McLellan Forest, Langley, BC. January 2013.

* * *

There were hundreds of poets who contributed poems to Susan McCaslin's call for submissions to the Han Shan project. As you'll recall, I gussied up a section from "Infestation Lullaby" in Hump...

The project was designed to draw attention to the value of the Langley, BC's McLellan Forest. Late in the fall, City Council in Langley had recently decided to sell the land the forest sits on in order to fund a community centre.

And McCaslin was part of a group determined to save the forest. The Han Shan project was only one of the efforts of the group.

The poems went up in early December. I was on Facebook around that time and saw that poet Heidi Greco had shared photos of the 'anthology.'

I contacted her to see if she had happened to take a picture of my poem. Given that there were more than 200 poems, I didn't think it was likely...

but thought I'd ask.

Heidi responded, saying my poem had not been among those she'd photographed.

And I said that was fine, that I was fine with my contribution to the project being ephemeral, that its transience was part of what made it such an interesting site-specific project....

Anyways, a few weeks later I got another email from Heidi. The day before the poems were taken down, she'd gone for another walk in the forest.

And found my rained-on, oh-so-ephemeral poem.

gilded

chandelier

oaken

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Wpg, MB. February 10, 2013.* * *

The Forest in winter is subtle. A few of last year's wizened mushrooms, half-buried in snow. The odd wizened leaf, caught in the branches and marked by galls and gnaw-marks...

 The girl took her own pictures today, with M's camera. She dunked it in a snowbank two or three times, and she dawdled and whined through nearly a third of the walk, but she also spent a great deal of time peering at tree trunks and deer tracks and leaves, deciding if they warranted a photograph.

This was my second walk in a week. I was so goddamn relieved to see the patches of blue-green lichen on the trunks of the burr oak, which, besides the oak leaves themselves and the bright orange lichen that covers some trees like a suit of clothes, is the only spot of colour in the winter forest.

But I do so love how the white/grey/green aspen glow in winter, especially when there is a lot of snow, as there is this year. The ground and the trees and the sky a shifting but continuous off-white...

And there was this one path, halfway between a deerpath and the 'official' mulch paths - a path that is only walked in winter, broken by dog walkers and people curious about the middle of the forest - that was full of traces of winter activity.

I don't know what was rabbit, what was squirrel or bird or even mice, but it was splashed on the snow like paint.

And I would have looked through the 'tracks and poop' book that I keep in the car on the way home, but the girl was reading it...

teething

Photo from Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. February 8, 2013.
* * *

So M and I dragged his cold and my tiredness to the forest this morning. And there was lots of snow and a stiff breeze, which meant very few (remaindered) mushrooms and a runny nose, but...it was such a goddamn relief to be there, walking the trails.

And I'm completely rusty, photo-wise, and completely out of shape after a fall/winter full of deadlines and sickness. But. But. But.

This was the only good photo. And it isn't even that good. But. (But. But.)

I have to be reminded, sometimes, that while doing the Wolseley/Wellington loop, which is a good hour/hour-and-a-half, is NOT the same as going for a walk in the forest.

I'm currently working on essays about urban forests with a focus on the forest. I've been meeting with people in environmental sciences, with forest advocates, with conservation officers via lectures and brochures and books.

My favourite piece of research so far? I got an environmental scientist to send me a list of Assiniboine Forest insults. (One example: "Should it even be a forest?  Aerial photos from the 1920s show a patch of wet prairie.  The only reason trees are there is because the cleansing force of fire has been suppressed....")

blurbage

I got a blurb this week from Kevin McPherson, Kalamalka Press' Editor-in-Chief for my John Lent Poetry-Prose Award-winning chapbook.

I have been blurbed exactly twice. Once by poet/publisher Jenna Butler for my 2009 chapbook with her Rubicon Press and once by Robert Kroetsch. (I'm still over the mooooon that Kroetsch had occasion to read my goddamn poems...)

I wrote the blurb for my chapbook The navel gaze, which was re-used for Hump, given that it ATE The navel gaze.

So this is blurb number three. I'm glad that it's from Kevin, who's another good example of a poet/publisher. (Jenna Butler is one, as is Dawn Kresan at Palimpsest...)

Here goes: 

"Ariel Gordon’s How to Make a Collage offers a scrapbook of extraordinary everydayness. Its poems decoupage tender snapshots beside snappy comebacks. Fairy tale moments foment against ailing skin. Sly instructions for loving smash into slovenly destructions of living. A beautiful, gluey mess of memory, decay, and dreams!"

Sometimes my whole life feels like a "beautiful, gluey mess." And so this feels right. Not too superlative but excessive/necessary in a way that is exclusively Kevin's. And maybe mine, too...

In other news, Kevin also let me know that Jason Denewitz and the students in the Diploma in Writing & Publishing at Okanagan College are currently hard at work hand-setting the chapbook in metal type.

They've promised to take/post pictures of this process, which I'm greatly looking forward to...

Poems! For the trees! Part three!

From Susan McCaslin, organizer of the Han Shan Poets project, which was part of an initiative to save McLellan Forest in Langley, BC from development :

"Dear Han Shan Poets:

Last night the Mayor and Council of the Township of Langley sent out a press release regarding their decision on the proposed sale of the forest known locally as McLellan Forest East in Glen Valley, Langley.  In short, the news is both good and bad, but we’re claiming it as a victory.

Photo courtesy McLellan Park Blog.They’re not going to sell 3 of the lots in the parcel but are proceeding with the sale of 2 others in the same ecosystem. The parts they’ve decided to keep are nearer the roadway and full of older trees, but the ones they’re selling are closer to the river and quite ecologically rare and sensitive with many older trees as well.  In fact, the lands being sold may contain species at risk and endangered species.  So we will continue to argue that the baby shouldn’t be divided, but the sale could take place at any time and then parts of the forest will be in private hands.

We’re relieved that all the media attention paid off.  Had the Han Shan Poetry Project, Bateman visit, and other arts events not shown the Mayor and councillors how much the public cares, they would most certainly have sold off the entire area.  So I conclude that poetry matters as well as public outcry. People were deeply moved by your poems fluttering among the trees.

Tonight I’ll be meeting with the group called WOLF to discuss 'what next' for us as a group.  We’ll be in a state of blessed unrest until the forest is legally protected for future generations.  If they succeed in selling off parts of the land, we’re looking into having them place restrictive covenants on its use.  And we’re still trying to get other levels of government to intervene.

Thanks again for your beautiful poems and moral support.  It was great to see those of you who were able to visit McLellan Forest when the exhibit was still up.  We dismantled it on Jan. 22nd, as we felt the initiative had run its course and served its purpose.  It was never meant to permanent.

I’ll keep you posted!

Thanks again,

Susan"

Folio!

* * *

Papirmasse 2012 Folio

Artists: Aman, Car David Ruttan, Fred Caron, Genevieve Simms, Harley Smart, Isabel M. Martinez, Jill Stanton, John Holinaty, Jp King, Kirsten McCrea, Marshall Watson, Melissa Del Pinto, Mike Maxwell, Peru Dyer, Rebecca Adams, Sarah Burwash

Writers: Ariel Gordon, Ellie Anglin, Jp King, Lisa More, Matt Prins, Megan Mackay, Kerri Flannigan, Omar Mouallem, S. Kennedy Sobol, Shelly Thompson

* * *

If you'll recall, I contributed four poems to Papirmasse No. 27, which is/was an accordion wonder with four artworks by Providence, RI-based painter Rebecca Adams.

I got my contributor's copy of the 2012 Folio this week...and spent a lot of time dealing the various pieces out onto my dining room table.

I don't go in for favourites very often, but Ellie Anglin's were-poems (No. 26) are exactly right for what I'm thinking/feeling/writing these days. And I would like to somehow ingest Sarah Burwash's Feathers.

To sum: if you haven't already, contribute/subscribe to Papirmasse.

Yay! Fun!

Keeping the Books Section

On January 19, the Winnipeg Free Press printed an editorial by Paul Samyn entitled It's your paper too, so what do you want to see? 

In his editorial, Samyn wrote that they are contemplating changes to the Saturday edition of the paper:

"We are starting with a blank canvas that will, in short order, become a new showcase section in your weekend edition of the Free Press. My only marching orders to our staff are to create a section that readers are prepared to fight for when they pick up the paper Saturday morning. But what are your marching orders as a reader? What do you want to read? What do you need to read?"

This means that the Books Section, which has always run in the Saturday paper, is in danger of changing format, or, worse, disappearing altogether.

Which, obviously, would be bad. But let's chat for a second about WHY I would specifically be impacted if the Books Section went away...

Under Morley Walker's tenure as editor, the Books Section reviewed titles that would be of interest nationally and internationally but also regional titles that might not get reviewed elsewhere. 

Not only that, but he included poetry in the mix, with a monthly poetry column.

As a female poet living on the prairies (i.e. outside of the major centres), publishing her first book of poetry (!) about pregnancy and mothering (!), I was worried that I might not get reviewed anywhere.

And so it was so so wonderful to have my book reviewed in the pages of the Books Section.

But my connection to the Books Section, as a writer and a reader is much older than that 2010 review. 

I started reviewing for the WFP in 2002. Prior to that, Morley was the arts columnist I loved to hate. But I was introduced to a different Morley via my freelancing for the Books Section. 

For all his impress-me-I-dare-you arts columnist bluster, Morley is one of the best editors I've ever had. 

I've submitted sixty-some-odd reviews to Morley over the past decade, poetry and fiction. He always told me what he liked about my reviews. And when he didn't like my reviews, he told me why and gave me time to fix them, without any jeopardy attached.

But in addition to our freelancer/editor relationship, Morley has invested a lot of time and effort keeping the Books Section going over the years and so I'm grateful to him for that, too.

So, if we're keeping a tally, the Books Section has helped build my career as a poet and a reviewer.

But more than that, Morley and the Books Section have contributed to the literary community in this city. We've got great writers in Winnipeg, of every genre, of every inclination, and that's partly because we're a place where discussions about writing of every genre, of every inclination, happen every weekend in the daily newspaper.

The Books Section doesn't only celebrate local titles. It also critiques them, which is far more useful to writers and readers than a review filled with puffery. 

So, please, let's tell the Winnipeg Free Press that we want to keep our Books Section. That we want to keep having this meaningful, local conversations about books and ideas.

Here's what you can do:

1) Comment on Paul Samyn's editorial.
2) Send the editors an email at feedback@freepress.mb.ca
3) Send Paul Samyn a letter c/o the Free Press newsroom, 1355 Mountain Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R2X 3B6

Thanks!