Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 55
January 19, 2013
coyote poem
<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:Verdana; panose-1:2 11 6 4 3 5 4 4 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:647 0 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-update:auto; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Verdana; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-size:10.0pt; mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-fareast-language:JA;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">The first clue was how he <i>yipped</i> instead of laughing. How the sound bounced off the living room wall. And came back at us.</span><br /><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">He was wonky in the way that teenage boys are, rough-boned, stinky. </span></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ARSJ_FjN2qY..." imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ARSJ_FjN2qY..." width="291" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image by Darryl Joel Berger</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">He slunk around the house, almost never looking us in the eye. He almost never said thank you, though we kept the fridge full and his iTunes account topped up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">We thought it was pot. Or jerking off.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">We lingered at his bedroom door for tell-tale odours. For mid-day cries.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">We could have offered him the good stuff. Or made wink-wink comments about hairy palms. But we tried to leave him be.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Until he started wandering around the neighbourhood at night, shirtless. Until I watched him watching the neighbour through her living room window, his exposed skin glowing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">His nipples were a shock. It had been years since I’d seen that much of him. And he was so very naked…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">So, standing in the dark kitchen, I tracked him. Silverware gleaming in its drawer. A chicken defrosting on the counter, its legs securely trussed.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">I took prenatal vitamins. I opted for a natural birth. But even so, I knew there were risks. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">He could have arrived with a clubfoot or a heart murmur...but I was unprepared when I saw how his coyote’s head was torqued backwards on his shoulders, that night in our yard.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">I heard him struggle to howl, his windpipe obstructed. I heard him trying to breech-birth <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">himself</i> out in the dark.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">And that’s how I found myself, howling sympathetically by the fridge’s harsh light.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Come in</span></i><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">, I tried to tell him. <i>I’ll feed you</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">* * *</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">This is what I call a were-mummy poem. Which means transformation inside transformation. Which, because I'm writing them, means Manitoba-specific settings. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">The poem is also part of the continuing collaboration between Kingston-based visual artist/writer Darryl Joel Berger and myself. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;">As you might expect, they're great gory fun to write/write to...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-fareast-language: JA;"><br /></span></div>
January 17, 2013
Mentor/mentee/manatee
So last night was the kick off reception for this year's edition of the MWG's Sheldon Oberman Emerging Writer Mentorship Program.
I was mentored by Melissa Steele via this program ten years ago, so it feels particularly apt that this year, for the first time, I will be mentoring another writer.
Here are the details, mostly because I can't recommend this program enough:
"The Sheldon Oberman Mentorship Program pairs emerging writers with established, professional writers to work together one-on-one for a five month period. During the program, the emerging writer is encouraged to utilize the expertise of the professional writer in the areas of manuscript evaluation, markets and publishing, and grants and employment opportunities.
The Program is designed for emerging writers who have made a commitment to their writing and is not to take the place of a creative writing course. Emerging writers are expected to have been writing for some time and have a body of work. For many emerging writers who have participated in the program, the experience of working with a professional writer often marks the transition from beginning writer to published author."
And so, from January through May, I will be meeting with my apprentice/mentee/manatee (all three terms have been bandied about over the years, the third, not surprisingly, mostly by me...) twice a month.
Melissa liked to meet at Salisbery House on Stafford. And I regularly dropped sheafs of poems in her mailbox.
I'm looking forward to establishing a similar routine with my apprentice.
Yay! Fun!
I was mentored by Melissa Steele via this program ten years ago, so it feels particularly apt that this year, for the first time, I will be mentoring another writer.
Here are the details, mostly because I can't recommend this program enough:
"The Sheldon Oberman Mentorship Program pairs emerging writers with established, professional writers to work together one-on-one for a five month period. During the program, the emerging writer is encouraged to utilize the expertise of the professional writer in the areas of manuscript evaluation, markets and publishing, and grants and employment opportunities.
The Program is designed for emerging writers who have made a commitment to their writing and is not to take the place of a creative writing course. Emerging writers are expected to have been writing for some time and have a body of work. For many emerging writers who have participated in the program, the experience of working with a professional writer often marks the transition from beginning writer to published author."
And so, from January through May, I will be meeting with my apprentice/mentee/manatee (all three terms have been bandied about over the years, the third, not surprisingly, mostly by me...) twice a month.
Melissa liked to meet at Salisbery House on Stafford. And I regularly dropped sheafs of poems in her mailbox.
I'm looking forward to establishing a similar routine with my apprentice.
Yay! Fun!
January 11, 2013
Reprint: Toronto Women's Bookstore Readings
From the U of M's Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture website, CCWOC Lab:
The two poems recorded here will be in the upcoming Kalamalka Press chapbook, How to Make a Collage.
Thanks again to Marcos and CCWOC's Jessica Woolford for taking this event on-line!
On October 30th, 2012, and at the behest of Ariel Gordon and Sharon Caseburg, twenty-six of Winnipeg's female writers gathered at McNally Robinson to take part in Celebrating TWB...in Winnipeg.* * *
For two and a half hours they shared their writing and in this way marked the closing of the Toronto Women's Bookstore, a landmark Tanis MacDonald refers to as "that store in which you bought the first book that made you think 'How did that woman get inside my head? Is there more of this out there?'"
In November and December, many of the women came into the Centre for Creative Writing & Oral Culture to record their work and carve a small space for women on the internet.
Thanks to all Winnipeg writers reading at the sister/satellite TWB event, to Ariel Gordon and Sharon Caseburg for leaping in and organizing the Winnipeg event, and to Marcos Cordeiro for his technical expertise and keen interest in the project.
The two poems recorded here will be in the upcoming Kalamalka Press chapbook, How to Make a Collage.
Thanks again to Marcos and CCWOC's Jessica Woolford for taking this event on-line!
January 9, 2013
Back cover
So here's the back cover the spring 2013 issue of Vancouver-based lit mag Room Magazine, which includes a poem of mine.
This special issue, entitled Mythologies of Loss, was edited by former/forever Winnipeg poet Rachel Thompson.
Here's how she described the texts she was looking for in the call for submissions:
"If loss is anything, it is lonely. But perhaps the intimacy of the page shared by writer and reader can make it less so.
When establishing the theme for this issue, I figured there must be other writers out there who are re-tasting through retrospection personal tragedies, re-framing things, exploring the insides of the experience.
I thought these writers could come together and share the logic of their thinking (their 'mythologies'), lighting the way for others who have, or who inevitably will, lose someone or something dear to them (that's life)."
My poem is a mixed-up memorial to writers Robert Kroetsch and Michael Van Roy, both of whom died suddenly in 2011.
Yay! (Sad) Fun!
This special issue, entitled Mythologies of Loss, was edited by former/forever Winnipeg poet Rachel Thompson.
Here's how she described the texts she was looking for in the call for submissions:
"If loss is anything, it is lonely. But perhaps the intimacy of the page shared by writer and reader can make it less so.
When establishing the theme for this issue, I figured there must be other writers out there who are re-tasting through retrospection personal tragedies, re-framing things, exploring the insides of the experience.
I thought these writers could come together and share the logic of their thinking (their 'mythologies'), lighting the way for others who have, or who inevitably will, lose someone or something dear to them (that's life)."
My poem is a mixed-up memorial to writers Robert Kroetsch and Michael Van Roy, both of whom died suddenly in 2011.
Yay! (Sad) Fun!
January 6, 2013
PBN: Jonathan Ball
* * *
From the Winter 2012 issue of Prairie books NOW.
PBN: Leah Horlick
* * *
From the Winter 2012 issue of Prairie books NOW.
December 21, 2012
Holiday reading
So I have nearly three weeks off this holiday season.
And believe-you-me, I need every goddamn minute to recover from this hellbent-for-leather fall-and-winter. Soooo many new-to-me projects, soo many grant apps, so many deadlines.
While it was all stuff I wanted and needed to do, I've been feeling rather...blowsy...of late.As such, this holiday is all about resting but also getting-the-fuck back to work.
I've earmarked a pile of titles for this holiday season and thought I'd share them with you...
You WIN Reads:A Page From the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster (from Brick Books via Goodreads)
Honore Jaxon: Prairie Visionary by Donald B. Smith (from Coteau Books via Facebook)
Pressmate(s) Forever:A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: Paratexts by Aislinn HunterHummingbird by John Wall Barger
I bought these titles as a part of Palimpsest's 3-for-2 sale, which means that I'll also be getting Hard Ass by Sharon McCartney in spring 2013.
It's About GODDAMN Time Reads:Archive of the Undressed by Jeanette LynesA Book of Great Worth by Dave MargoshesMonkey Ranch by Julie Bruck Winnipeg 1912 by Jim Blanchard
Serendipitous Bookstore Finds:Steveston by Daphne Marlatt and Robert Minden
And, having purchased seven copies of Imagining Winnipeg: History Through the Photographs of L.B. Foote for friends/family for Xmas, I plan to spend several hours with MY copy over the next coupla weeks. I feel like I haven't looked at the photos in ages...
And believe-you-me, I need every goddamn minute to recover from this hellbent-for-leather fall-and-winter. Soooo many new-to-me projects, soo many grant apps, so many deadlines.
While it was all stuff I wanted and needed to do, I've been feeling rather...blowsy...of late.As such, this holiday is all about resting but also getting-the-fuck back to work.I've earmarked a pile of titles for this holiday season and thought I'd share them with you...
You WIN Reads:A Page From the Wonders of Life on Earth by Stephanie Bolster (from Brick Books via Goodreads)
Honore Jaxon: Prairie Visionary by Donald B. Smith (from Coteau Books via Facebook)
Pressmate(s) Forever:A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: Paratexts by Aislinn HunterHummingbird by John Wall Barger
I bought these titles as a part of Palimpsest's 3-for-2 sale, which means that I'll also be getting Hard Ass by Sharon McCartney in spring 2013.
It's About GODDAMN Time Reads:Archive of the Undressed by Jeanette LynesA Book of Great Worth by Dave MargoshesMonkey Ranch by Julie Bruck Winnipeg 1912 by Jim Blanchard
Serendipitous Bookstore Finds:Steveston by Daphne Marlatt and Robert Minden
And, having purchased seven copies of Imagining Winnipeg: History Through the Photographs of L.B. Foote for friends/family for Xmas, I plan to spend several hours with MY copy over the next coupla weeks. I feel like I haven't looked at the photos in ages...
December 14, 2012
next big thing-y
What is the working title of your book?
How to Pack Without Overpacking, though that really does feel like a working title. I'm looking forward to elaborating the final title...
Where did the idea for the book come from?
This manuscript is more-or-less conceited. More by virtue of being mostly how-to poems, less by not being the manuscript I published next. I wrote these poems as palate cleansers when not working on my 'main' manuscript, which eventually stopped cooperating. Eventually, I realized that I had a manuscript's worth of palate cleansers and that, reading them together, they were all very closely linked, thematically speaking.
I started writing how-to poems - that is, poems that give step by step instructions on how to do something - while I was finishing my debut, Hump. That book was primarily pregnancy and mothering poems and I think the how-to poem appealed because it's incredibly open-ended and yet suggests a particular structure. A beginning-middle-end.
Also, I think I was mocking the "Mommy voice" that I found myself using with my daughter...
As I kept working on the manuscript, of course, I allowed myself to use whatever form the individual poem seemed to require.
Which is to say that sometimes the title is just a hanger for the poem and that sometimes it's the rickety spine...
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Hugh Jackman and Tilda Swinton. For obvious reasons.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Hmm. I don't have one yet, but I DO have this description of the chapbook of poems I published in 2011 with Saskatoon's JackPine Press:
"How to Prepare for Flooding is a collection of poems modeled on the how-to manuals and survival guides that rattle around your toolbox and clog up your glove compartment. Chock-a-block with illustrations and useful tips, these poems will prepare readers for a raft of natural and personal disasters such as "How to Survive a Plane Crash" and "How to Sew a Button." But more than that, How to Prepare for Flooding asks, over and over, what's the difference between wild and tame? Natural and unnatural? Also, is this REALLY where we find ourselves?"
(The poems from this chapbook will likely find themselves in How to Pack Without Overpacking, as will the poems in my upcoming Kalamalka Press chapbook, How to Make a Collage.)
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I've just signed a contract to publish How to Pack Without Overpacking with Palimpsest Press in spring 2014. They published my first book, Hump, back in 2010.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Some of these poems date back to 2007 but the great majority were written over the past year...
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Poems that work with humour. Poems that incorporate myth and fable in contemporary settings. Poems with faintly apocalyptic inklings: there are poems here about plane crashes, being lost in the woods, and surviving floods as well as how you'd go about ailments like boils and leprosy.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The idea of being a working writer. The idea that I'd always be working on a piece of writing, that I'd always be pushing at the edges of what I was capable of.
Beyond that, I was interested in what was a worthy subject for a poem. Can you write a poem about anything? What would that poem look like?
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
That I'm hoping to convince my publisher to use artworks by Darryl Joel Berger for the cover and maybe also the interiors. Mostly because he's hatefully talented but also because some of the poems came out of an image/text collaboration with him.
* * *
Rules of the Next Big Thing
Use this format for your postAnswer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.
Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:
What is the working title of your book?Where did the idea for the book come from?What genre does your book fall under?Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?Who or what inspired you to write this book?What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?* * *
I'm not usually super interested in blog memes, which are just tricked-up chain letters, but when I was tagged by Pearl Pirie / pesbo, I decided I'd stop being such a poop.
And use the opportunity to tag in my turn people whose work I was interested in hearing about.
Which is to say, people I don't know exceptionally well but whose work I find interesting...which includes Saleema Nawaz / Metaphysical Conceit, David Jon Fuller / As You Were, Darryl Joel Berger / red-handed.
How to Pack Without Overpacking, though that really does feel like a working title. I'm looking forward to elaborating the final title...
Where did the idea for the book come from?
This manuscript is more-or-less conceited. More by virtue of being mostly how-to poems, less by not being the manuscript I published next. I wrote these poems as palate cleansers when not working on my 'main' manuscript, which eventually stopped cooperating. Eventually, I realized that I had a manuscript's worth of palate cleansers and that, reading them together, they were all very closely linked, thematically speaking.
I started writing how-to poems - that is, poems that give step by step instructions on how to do something - while I was finishing my debut, Hump. That book was primarily pregnancy and mothering poems and I think the how-to poem appealed because it's incredibly open-ended and yet suggests a particular structure. A beginning-middle-end. Also, I think I was mocking the "Mommy voice" that I found myself using with my daughter...
As I kept working on the manuscript, of course, I allowed myself to use whatever form the individual poem seemed to require.Which is to say that sometimes the title is just a hanger for the poem and that sometimes it's the rickety spine...
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Hugh Jackman and Tilda Swinton. For obvious reasons.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Hmm. I don't have one yet, but I DO have this description of the chapbook of poems I published in 2011 with Saskatoon's JackPine Press:
"How to Prepare for Flooding is a collection of poems modeled on the how-to manuals and survival guides that rattle around your toolbox and clog up your glove compartment. Chock-a-block with illustrations and useful tips, these poems will prepare readers for a raft of natural and personal disasters such as "How to Survive a Plane Crash" and "How to Sew a Button." But more than that, How to Prepare for Flooding asks, over and over, what's the difference between wild and tame? Natural and unnatural? Also, is this REALLY where we find ourselves?"
(The poems from this chapbook will likely find themselves in How to Pack Without Overpacking, as will the poems in my upcoming Kalamalka Press chapbook, How to Make a Collage.)
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I've just signed a contract to publish How to Pack Without Overpacking with Palimpsest Press in spring 2014. They published my first book, Hump, back in 2010.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Some of these poems date back to 2007 but the great majority were written over the past year...
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Poems that work with humour. Poems that incorporate myth and fable in contemporary settings. Poems with faintly apocalyptic inklings: there are poems here about plane crashes, being lost in the woods, and surviving floods as well as how you'd go about ailments like boils and leprosy.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The idea of being a working writer. The idea that I'd always be working on a piece of writing, that I'd always be pushing at the edges of what I was capable of.
Beyond that, I was interested in what was a worthy subject for a poem. Can you write a poem about anything? What would that poem look like?
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
That I'm hoping to convince my publisher to use artworks by Darryl Joel Berger for the cover and maybe also the interiors. Mostly because he's hatefully talented but also because some of the poems came out of an image/text collaboration with him.
* * *
Rules of the Next Big Thing
Use this format for your postAnswer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.
Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:
What is the working title of your book?Where did the idea for the book come from?What genre does your book fall under?Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?Who or what inspired you to write this book?What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?* * *
I'm not usually super interested in blog memes, which are just tricked-up chain letters, but when I was tagged by Pearl Pirie / pesbo, I decided I'd stop being such a poop.
And use the opportunity to tag in my turn people whose work I was interested in hearing about.
Which is to say, people I don't know exceptionally well but whose work I find interesting...which includes Saleema Nawaz / Metaphysical Conceit, David Jon Fuller / As You Were, Darryl Joel Berger / red-handed.
December 13, 2012
No Place Like Home
So my poem "Wingless Females" appears in the latest issue of Contemporary Verse 2.
This is a themed issue, dubbed No Place Like Home: A Winnipeg Issue, and includes poems and personal essays on aspects of Winnipeg writing as well as a section of visual art curated by J.J. Kegan McFadden.
I'd also submitted an essay about urban/nature poetry. I wanted to turn outward from my own ideas and practices and so I spent a month or so reading and re-reading collections by Winnipeg poets.
I wanted to note the various ways Winnipeg poets had approached the urban/natural. And a few categories emerged: parking lots and parkland poems, front yard / elm canopy poems, back yard / garden poems, and survey poetry or what I like to call poetry of return.
I pulled half of my poetry books down from my shelves, rifled impatiently through the stacks at libraries and bookstores for titles that weren't in my collection. I even solicited local publishers for books that weren't yet out but that I'd heard had urban/natural bents.
At the same time, I was attempting to edit three or four manuscripts that friends had entrusted to me, which was new! and exciting! but also frightening!
And the usual working/householding/childminding. And so the time allotted to write my essay elapsed far too quickly...
Which is to say that the day the essay was due that I went to work, came home and made dinner, and then sat in front of my computer, trying to write the essay. I scribbled until 6 am, then went to bed for two hours, then got up and went back to work.
I submitted something. But it wasn't very good. And I was mostly relieved when it was rejected, even if all my rushing around, all my scrawled notes and teetering piles of books were for naught...
Of course, the work isn't wasted. I have a much fuller sense of what my peers are writing and thinking on this place. I am now able to better articulate what I am doing in my own work and why. And I can always put some meat on the bones of my starved little essay...
In the meantime, I'm going to spend some time with Alison Calder and Catherine Hunter's ideas on writing the city, with poems by Jason Stefaniuk and Kerry Ryan and John K. Samson and Sharon Caseburg.
This is a themed issue, dubbed No Place Like Home: A Winnipeg Issue, and includes poems and personal essays on aspects of Winnipeg writing as well as a section of visual art curated by J.J. Kegan McFadden.
I'd also submitted an essay about urban/nature poetry. I wanted to turn outward from my own ideas and practices and so I spent a month or so reading and re-reading collections by Winnipeg poets.I wanted to note the various ways Winnipeg poets had approached the urban/natural. And a few categories emerged: parking lots and parkland poems, front yard / elm canopy poems, back yard / garden poems, and survey poetry or what I like to call poetry of return.
I pulled half of my poetry books down from my shelves, rifled impatiently through the stacks at libraries and bookstores for titles that weren't in my collection. I even solicited local publishers for books that weren't yet out but that I'd heard had urban/natural bents.
At the same time, I was attempting to edit three or four manuscripts that friends had entrusted to me, which was new! and exciting! but also frightening!
And the usual working/householding/childminding. And so the time allotted to write my essay elapsed far too quickly...
Which is to say that the day the essay was due that I went to work, came home and made dinner, and then sat in front of my computer, trying to write the essay. I scribbled until 6 am, then went to bed for two hours, then got up and went back to work.
I submitted something. But it wasn't very good. And I was mostly relieved when it was rejected, even if all my rushing around, all my scrawled notes and teetering piles of books were for naught...
Of course, the work isn't wasted. I have a much fuller sense of what my peers are writing and thinking on this place. I am now able to better articulate what I am doing in my own work and why. And I can always put some meat on the bones of my starved little essay...
In the meantime, I'm going to spend some time with Alison Calder and Catherine Hunter's ideas on writing the city, with poems by Jason Stefaniuk and Kerry Ryan and John K. Samson and Sharon Caseburg.
December 11, 2012
Experimental novel a book and book-making project
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon
Love and the Mess We’re In
By Stephen Marche
Gaspereau Press, 272 pages, $29
THIS Canadian experimental novel tells the curious love story of Tim and Viv and Clive and Viv and the enduring friendship of Tim and Clive.
Toronto author Stephen Marche tells it in fragments and asides and lyrical bursts. It reveals, for instance, both sides of a dinner conversation, the spoken and the unspoken, between (journalist) Clive and (novelist) Viv just before they embark on an affair: "Lying on the bed full of Tim / Clive steak guilt flight adultery / money rain."
It describes (ornithologist) Tim’s life in a mental institution after a sudden breakdown and Viv and Clive’s separate grieving of his loss.
But that’s only the story. The design of the book, its typography, is an entirely different kettle of fish.
The text is sometimes laid out sideways on the page. It occasionally undulates. It periodically runs in a circle. In one instance, it is interspersed with drawings of constellations.
All of which suggests a book of poetry, right down to the publisher’s choice of creamy, subtly textured paper of the kind often used by poetry presses.
But Marche writes novels. This is his third. So it must be approached as a novel as well as a book that is lovely to look at and hold.
Now its publisher, Nova Scotiabased Gaspereau Press, is already known for producing beautiful books, but Love and the Mess We’re In was a particular labour of love for Marche and his collaborator Andrew Steeves, Gaspereau’s publisher and an award-winning typographer.
Marche reputedly wrote the book in a year and then turned it over to Steeves, who spent two years laying it out in consultation with Marche.
This is not a typical production schedule. But neither Steeves nor Marche are known for being strictly conventional.
Take Marche’s first book, 2005’s Raymond and Hannah (Random House), an erotically charged story of a troubled relationship divided by faith and geography where the point of view shifts from paragraph to paragraph. Its marginal notes are often the only clue to who is speaking.
Steeves earned notoriety when Gaspereau was unable — or unwilling — to print enough books to meet the demand for Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists after it won the 2010 Giller Prize.
But no matter how many conventions Love and Mess We’re In subverts, the real test is whether or not it works as art. Is the whole is greater than the sum of its parts? Do the design and typography add to the power of the story or are they just elaborate window-dressing?
Well, mostly, yes.
Though the novel runs 272 pages, it lacks the nuance and the exhaustive examination of two people and their relationship that Marche specializes in. (Likely the word count would put it more in the novella range, which is a smaller canvas than March usually employs.) And while Tim, Viv and Clive are all compelling characters with an original tragedy to share between them, the fact that Clive and Viv are writers means that both our leads are excruciating articulate.
Also, Tim’s mental illness often seems like more of a plot device than real, lived experience.
But make no mistake. Love and the Mess We’re In is not a failure (or, if it is, it’s as grand failure as you’ll ever read).
It is a book and a book-making project that should appeal to visual artists, anyone interested in the book-as-fetish-object, readers of experimental fiction and poetry, and fans of both Steeves (and the rest of the crew at Gaspereau) and Marche.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer and poet.
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon
Love and the Mess We’re In
By Stephen Marche
Gaspereau Press, 272 pages, $29
THIS Canadian experimental novel tells the curious love story of Tim and Viv and Clive and Viv and the enduring friendship of Tim and Clive.
Toronto author Stephen Marche tells it in fragments and asides and lyrical bursts. It reveals, for instance, both sides of a dinner conversation, the spoken and the unspoken, between (journalist) Clive and (novelist) Viv just before they embark on an affair: "Lying on the bed full of Tim / Clive steak guilt flight adultery / money rain."It describes (ornithologist) Tim’s life in a mental institution after a sudden breakdown and Viv and Clive’s separate grieving of his loss.
But that’s only the story. The design of the book, its typography, is an entirely different kettle of fish.
The text is sometimes laid out sideways on the page. It occasionally undulates. It periodically runs in a circle. In one instance, it is interspersed with drawings of constellations.
All of which suggests a book of poetry, right down to the publisher’s choice of creamy, subtly textured paper of the kind often used by poetry presses.
But Marche writes novels. This is his third. So it must be approached as a novel as well as a book that is lovely to look at and hold.
Now its publisher, Nova Scotiabased Gaspereau Press, is already known for producing beautiful books, but Love and the Mess We’re In was a particular labour of love for Marche and his collaborator Andrew Steeves, Gaspereau’s publisher and an award-winning typographer.
Marche reputedly wrote the book in a year and then turned it over to Steeves, who spent two years laying it out in consultation with Marche.
This is not a typical production schedule. But neither Steeves nor Marche are known for being strictly conventional.
Take Marche’s first book, 2005’s Raymond and Hannah (Random House), an erotically charged story of a troubled relationship divided by faith and geography where the point of view shifts from paragraph to paragraph. Its marginal notes are often the only clue to who is speaking.
Steeves earned notoriety when Gaspereau was unable — or unwilling — to print enough books to meet the demand for Johanna Skibsrud’s The Sentimentalists after it won the 2010 Giller Prize.
But no matter how many conventions Love and Mess We’re In subverts, the real test is whether or not it works as art. Is the whole is greater than the sum of its parts? Do the design and typography add to the power of the story or are they just elaborate window-dressing?
Well, mostly, yes.
Though the novel runs 272 pages, it lacks the nuance and the exhaustive examination of two people and their relationship that Marche specializes in. (Likely the word count would put it more in the novella range, which is a smaller canvas than March usually employs.) And while Tim, Viv and Clive are all compelling characters with an original tragedy to share between them, the fact that Clive and Viv are writers means that both our leads are excruciating articulate.
Also, Tim’s mental illness often seems like more of a plot device than real, lived experience.
But make no mistake. Love and the Mess We’re In is not a failure (or, if it is, it’s as grand failure as you’ll ever read).
It is a book and a book-making project that should appeal to visual artists, anyone interested in the book-as-fetish-object, readers of experimental fiction and poetry, and fans of both Steeves (and the rest of the crew at Gaspereau) and Marche.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer and poet.
