Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 57

the BIG clip

So I've got a November deadline for getting my next manuscript to my publisher.

I've been mentally rifling through the poems for months now, since that ever-so-productive farmhouse retreat but it seemed like it might be time to make the manuscript manifest.

So I found not one but two BIG clips, manuscript-sized clips, and spent a morning printing out poems and collecting the notes-on-poems from a year's worth of writing group meetings and then another evening making piles, making groupings.

I've still got heaps of edits to do and individual poems will probably drop out or be added to the whole, but it already feels like a whole.

I don't have a title yet. I don't have a cover image. But I've got a stack of fresh poems. Of dirty dark earnest things...and they seem to know each other already.

Thanks to the aforementioned Plastered Hams for the notes and the company. Thanks to the lit mags and chapbook presses who have - or will be, like Kalamalka Press' upcoming How to Make a Collage - publishing chunks from the manuscript.

One surprise was that a long poem that I published as a chapbook in 2009 with Edmonton's Rubicon Press called Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999, won't be included in this ms.

It doesn't fit and, also, it has picked up baggage since I began thinking about THE NEXT BOOK.

Basically, I've been scheming up a ms. of long poems, one devoted to each of my grandparents. What they did and who they left behind. Which means two WWII poems, one for my grandfather-the-spy and one for the grandfather who guarded a POW camp in Ontario. Which means a poem set in Ireland and the Antarctic, amidst whaling ships.

So Guidelines, which is about my orphaned Dutch grandmother and her father and grandfather, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies, as well as my own travels in Malaysia and Indonesia a hundred years later, has become the seed poem for that ms.

But that's the pie-in-the sky and I'm more than happy to stay in the here-and-now with this manuscript...

And one more...

Nora Gould with Charlene Diehl & Ariel Gordon
Reading and In Conversation

When: Thursday, November 1, 7:00 pm
Where: Atrium, McNally Robinson Grant Park (1120 Grant Avenue)
Cost: FREE

Reading I see my love more clearly from a distance (Brick Books) with guest poet Charlene Diehl followed by a conversation moderated by Ariel Gordon.

In Nora Gould’s one-of-a-kind debut, the Prairie itself is a central character: muse, mythic persona, the place of deepest solace and of deepest questioning. The poems focus with great firmness and technical command on the facts of daily life on the farm: impregnating cows, the neighbour kid picking off a coyote, cutting hay, getting water to the herd in a drought, dehorning. But Prairie anecdotalism this ain’t. What is breathtaking about this book is the relation between its exactness of observation and the grief, horror, and beauty that it documents. What the voice achieves, in its very gestures, is a kind of transcendence: not with the purpose of avoiding pain, but in order to make all of it—all of it—seeable and feelable by a human being.

Nora Gould writes from east central Alberta where she ranches with her family and volunteers in wildlife rehabilitation with the Medicine River Wildlife Centre. She graduated from the University of Guelph in 1984 with a degree in veterinary medicine.

Guest poet Charlene Diehl is a writer, educator, critic, teacher and the director of THIN AIR, Winnipeg’s annual literary splash. She has published essays, poetry, non-fiction, reviews, and interviews in journals across Canada, and has to her credit a scholarly book on Fred Wah as well as a collection of poetry, lamentations, and two chapbooks, mm and The Lover’s Handbook. Excerpts from her memoir Out of Grief, Singing, which appeared in Prairie Fire, won a western Canadian Magazine Gold Award. She was the featured poet in the fall 2007 issue of CV2. When she’s not chasing literary language (or her two speedy pre-teens), she edits dig! Magazine, Winnipeg’s little-jazz-engine-that-could.

A conversation between Gould & Diehl will be moderated by fellow poet Ariel Gordon.

Listed

Katherine Bitney, Shawna Dempsey, Dora Dueck, Shayla Elizabeth, Joanne Epp, Ariel Gordon, Carolyn Gray, Patti Grayson, Sally Ito, Esme Claire Keith, Sarah Klassen, Sheila McClarty, Christina Penner, Adele Perry, Carol Rose, Daria Salamon, Angeline Schellenberg, Deborah Schnitzer, Brenda Sciberras, Melissa Steele, Jennifer Still, Melanie Dennis Unrau, Katherena Vermette, Jessica Woolford.

...Being the up-to-date list of readers at the Celebrating TWB...In Winnipeg event October 30.

Yay! Fun!

Celebrating TWB…in Winnipeg

When: Tuessday, October 30, 7:00 pm
Where: McNally Robinson Grant Park (1120 Grant Avenue)
Cost: FREE

For 39 years, Toronto Women’s Bookstore has served the community, readers and writers, both in Toronto and further afield.

November 4, 2011 reading at TWB.In mid-October TWB owner Victoria Moreno, announced that the store will close its doors at the end of November.

Former Winnipegger Tanis MacDonald is planning a celebratory event in Toronto on October 30. And so we’re planning a satellite/sympathy event in Winnipeg for the same day at McNally Robinson, to mark TWB’s passing, to talk about the need for spaces dedicated to women, the need for independent booksellers.

What better space than McNally Robinson? And what better community of readers and writers than in Winnipeg?

So far, confirmed readers include Katherine Bitney, Shawna Dempsey, Dora Dueck, Joanne Epp, Ariel Gordon, Carolyn Gray, Patti Grayson, Sally Ito, Sarah Klassen, Sheila McClarty, Christina Penner, Adele Perry, Jennifer Still, Melanie Dennis Unrau, Katherena Vermette.

With more to come! Please join us!

* * *

An Important Message to the Many Valued Customers, Supporters, and Friends of The Toronto Women’s Bookstore:

It is with a mix of sadness and resignation that I inform you all that The Toronto Women’s Bookstore (TWB) will be closing on Friday, November 30th., 2012. Over the course of its illustrious 39 year history, the TWB has meant many things to many people. It was already steeped in those memories for me, when, two and a half years ago, I decided to try my hand at reviving and re-branding the TWB as the vibrant and viable centre for social justice and women’s issues that has defined its core values for almost four decades. For me and for many like me, it was always a safe, open and welcoming space where ideas were paramount, and where a community was given a voice. I’d like to think that in my relatively brief tenure as owner, I stayed true to the principles that defined this internationally renowned institution over the course of its history.

The fact is book markets have changed radically in the past few years. Ebooks, fierce online competition and a stagnant economy have all contributed to our business model becoming no longer sustainable. I’m closing the bookstore with the bittersweet knowledge that I did my best. I gave everything I had; physically, emotionally, and financially. I’ve learned a great deal about every aspect of the business and I have no regrets.

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite all friends, past and present, to a two day celebration of the Toronto Women's Bookstore, wherein we will honour the legacy of this Toronto landmark. Details of this celebration will be made available as plans coalesce.

Thanks in advance to you all for your support and please spread the word to your friends and colleagues. It’s been a true pleasure working with the community these past few years and I hope to continue to enjoy the fruits of our acquaintance in all of my future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Victoria Moreno

All the rubies I'll ever need...

Amber/Anger

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. October 13, 2012.* * *

We walked in the forest today, in the fall sun, in the cold breeze. And I spent much of the time struggling to get comfortable. I was too warm, in my shell, a fleece, and a long-sleeve shirt, so I irritably added and subtracted layers until I found something I could live with. And then my hair kept on getting in my hair and my eyes and I didn't have an elastic with me, despite finding them tucked in pockets for days. I tried tying my hair in a big knot but when that didn't work, M loaned me a strap from a piece of gear.

But, after last week's rain, there were a few new mushrooms. And I had a perfect cup of tea. And I was happy to be taking pictures...

So it was a stuttering start/stop walk: irritable/happy/irritable. Everyone's dog was off-leash, which readers of this blog will know is not a favourite situation of mine. Luckily, only one dog looked as if it was considering attacking...sigh.

And then we found what looked like the starting point to last week's brushfire: a bonfire, surrounded by smashed bottles and empty four-litre pop bottles. And, of course, burned-out woods.

The fire had been built at the end of a footpath from nearby houses into the forest. Which leads me to believe that it was Charleswood teenagers who built a fire, smashed their drinks, and then either improperly put out their fire or were unable to stop its spread through the very dry forest...

Hours later, I'm still angry about that. Even though the fire didn't likely do much damage beyond clearing away the accumulated underbrush, I'm angry at the carelessness. I'm angry that people go to natural spaces, shared spaces, and all they can come up with is...smashing and burning. 

"People get carried away, Mom," the girl said as I walked away from the fire, scowling.

"I don't care," I said. And I really REALLY don't.

Now, I'm no saint. I pick mushrooms, mostly to make spore prints from but a few to eat. I go off-path and probably disturb the resident herds of deer. When I was rearing monarchs that summer, I picked milkweed in the forest because I didn't know where else to get it.

But the forest is one of the few places in the city where I feel fully at home. I'm part of a community that uses the forest, that works to keep it as a public space. So I try to minimize my impact on the forest, to think of everyone else using it besides me.

So burning it, on purpose, is probably the worst offence I can think of. ...

Ironically, the worst-burned area was where an airplane went down in the forest in 2000. The ground there had been criss-crossed with logs just burned enough to prohibit either growth or decomposition. So they'd stayed where they'd fallen in the dozen years since the crash razed the area.

By this time of year, the clearing would usually be filled with blonde chest-high grasses. If you wanted to cross it, you had to sound for logs with your feet or risk tripping every few feet. It was like wading through a pond with downed trees just below the surface.

And deer liked the clearing and the trees that surrounded it. It was were we saw the moose that time. And there were a few logs there with well-established clumps of slow-growing club lichens that I liked visiting.

So. Good walk. A few good pictures. And, also, faint despair...

Giantess

* * *

I wonder what pumpkin sap would taste like?

Giant

* * *

All photos from the Roland Pumpkin Fair, Roland, MB. October 6, 2012.

* * *

So after an absence of two years, we went to the Roland Pumpkin Fair in Roland.

My friend Tessa is from Roland, so she introduced me to it's many varied pleasures a decade ago. For me, it's not fall unless I spend some time contemplating both the giant pumpkins that are the fair's main attraction but also the flower arrangements and quilts that are in 4H competition down the street.

This year's winner was approximately 1, 235 pounds but all the pumpkins in competition are behind the stage. And everyone goes back to see the also-rans, which vary in colour, texture and shape.

And while M lifted the girl up and onto one giant, I spent a few minutes contemplating the stems of two others. They're perhaps too obviously umbilical, but still. Much depends on the stem connecting these giants to their vines and ultimately to the ground.

SPORED: The Book of Wonders

* * *

From page 174, "When Man Began to Live," from The Book of Wonders (Toronto: Bureau of Industrial Education, 1916).

* * *

I bought this encyclopedia of sorts at the Symposium on Manitoba Writing this past spring. 

The cover is purple and features an owl with gold foil eyes staring down at the earth.

Its subtitle is: Wonders of Nature and the Wonders Produced by Man. Its sub-subtitle is: Gives Plain and Simple Answers to the Thousands of Everyday Questions That Are Asked And Which All Should Be Able To, But Cannot Answer.

And in addition to answering an array of questions - p. 174 includes Where Do Living Things Come From?, What is Inorganic Matter? Where Did Life Begin on Earth? When Did Man Begin to Live? Why Must Life Be Reproduced? - it also includes mini-essays on topics such as The Story in a Railroad Engine and The Story in a Drink of Water.

Having put the Edison manuscript away for the moment, I haven't been working from this text very much of late. But it's a fascinating text...and so I decided to spore it.

PBN: Mitch Spray, Brenda Schmidt & Victor Enns

* * *

 From the summer 2012 issue of Prairie books NOW.