Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 65
April 18, 2012
PBN: George Amabile
* * *
From the spring 2012 issue of Prairie books NOW.
April 16, 2012
lashed
All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. April 15, 2012.
* * *
Chilly walk. Old mushrooms, new grass. But even better, new mushrooms...
April 14, 2012
Frog Princess
I am the failed frog princess, my young
squirming thoughts
in my mouth. My ideas are weather, full of atmosphere
& incident: mud puddles slid
through. Inky blots. The prince invites
anything royal to court – maiden,
matron, or crone – and puckers up,
but my babies help me hold
my tongue. If I could talk,
I’d tell him tadpoles are apostrophes:
they indicate possession
but I am in no way confined.
I can attend every costume ball, cotillion & concert
so long as the rooms are lined
with pails - dainty teeming spittoons.
I knew frogs were slippery, braying endlessly
for company & never settling
anywhere long – but my feelings for him
are black globbules dredged up
from greying lungs
& spat at his feet. The prince ignores me
but I am the frog princess
& I am taken,
my gowns all embroidered with heads,
tails & the suggestion of legs.
squirming thoughts
in my mouth. My ideas are weather, full of atmosphere
& incident: mud puddles slid
through. Inky blots. The prince invites
anything royal to court – maiden,
matron, or crone – and puckers up,
but my babies help me hold
my tongue. If I could talk,
I’d tell him tadpoles are apostrophes:
they indicate possession
but I am in no way confined.
I can attend every costume ball, cotillion & concert
so long as the rooms are lined
with pails - dainty teeming spittoons.
I knew frogs were slippery, braying endlessly
for company & never settling
anywhere long – but my feelings for him
are black globbules dredged up
from greying lungs
& spat at his feet. The prince ignores me
but I am the frog princess
& I am taken,
my gowns all embroidered with heads,
tails & the suggestion of legs.
April 12, 2012
Poet/publishers UNITE!
Peter Midgley Reading & Signing
with Cynara Geissler, Sharon Caseburg & Ariel Gordon
When: Wednesday May 16 2012 7:30 pm
Where: McNally Robinson at Grant Park (1120 Grant Avenue)
Cost: FREE
Please join Winnipeg poets Sharon Caseburg and Ariel Gordon in welcoming Edmonton's Peter Midgley & Vancouver's Cynara Geissler to Winnipeg. Fittingly, the event will take place in McNally Robinson's travel alcove.
BONUS: This event is the Winnipeg launch of Cynara Geissler's chapbook small, stunted ways!
Cynara Geissler has a new chapbook of poetry called small, stunted ways (Hur Publishing 2012). Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in a number of print and online publications including subTerrain, Event, Geez, Fatshionista.com, and Shameless. When she's not busy typing her own name into google, she works the marketing beat at Arsenal Pulp Press in Vancouver. When she was ten she tried (and failed) to stalk Wayne Gretzky on a family trip to Los Angeles (while wearing a hat-to-hightop sneaker ensemble emblazoned with the number 99).
Sharon Caseburg is a Canadian writer, editor and book designer who splits her time between producing other people’s books and writing her own. Her poetry and critical writing have appeared in numerous publications. She is co-founder of the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her first book, Hump, won the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry in 2011. Most recently, she collaborated with designer Julia Michaud on the disaster DIY chapbook How to Prepare for Flooding, which was launched at Words Aloud Spoken Word and Storytelling Festival in Durham, Ontario. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
Peter Midgley is a writer and storyteller based in Edmonton. His bilingual volume of poems, perhaps i should / miskien moet ek appeared in 2010. He has written three children's book, which together have been translated into 28 languages. Thuli's New Mattress won the IBBY/Asahi Award for Literacy Promotion. He is also the author of two plays, Archetypes and Namlish. Peter is currently working on book-length creative non-fiction project, A Truce Stranger than Fiction and a second collection of poetry, Diary of a Red Chicken.
* * *
Let's get our affiliations straight, shall we?
Cynara Geissler works at Vancouver's Arsenal Pulp Press. Sharon Caseburg works at Winnipeg's Turnstone Press. I work at University of Manitoba Press. Peter Midgley works at Edmonton's University of Alberta Press.
with Cynara Geissler, Sharon Caseburg & Ariel Gordon
When: Wednesday May 16 2012 7:30 pm
Where: McNally Robinson at Grant Park (1120 Grant Avenue)
Cost: FREE
Please join Winnipeg poets Sharon Caseburg and Ariel Gordon in welcoming Edmonton's Peter Midgley & Vancouver's Cynara Geissler to Winnipeg. Fittingly, the event will take place in McNally Robinson's travel alcove.
BONUS: This event is the Winnipeg launch of Cynara Geissler's chapbook small, stunted ways!Cynara Geissler has a new chapbook of poetry called small, stunted ways (Hur Publishing 2012). Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in a number of print and online publications including subTerrain, Event, Geez, Fatshionista.com, and Shameless. When she's not busy typing her own name into google, she works the marketing beat at Arsenal Pulp Press in Vancouver. When she was ten she tried (and failed) to stalk Wayne Gretzky on a family trip to Los Angeles (while wearing a hat-to-hightop sneaker ensemble emblazoned with the number 99).
Sharon Caseburg is a Canadian writer, editor and book designer who splits her time between producing other people’s books and writing her own. Her poetry and critical writing have appeared in numerous publications. She is co-founder of the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her first book, Hump, won the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry in 2011. Most recently, she collaborated with designer Julia Michaud on the disaster DIY chapbook How to Prepare for Flooding, which was launched at Words Aloud Spoken Word and Storytelling Festival in Durham, Ontario. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
Peter Midgley is a writer and storyteller based in Edmonton. His bilingual volume of poems, perhaps i should / miskien moet ek appeared in 2010. He has written three children's book, which together have been translated into 28 languages. Thuli's New Mattress won the IBBY/Asahi Award for Literacy Promotion. He is also the author of two plays, Archetypes and Namlish. Peter is currently working on book-length creative non-fiction project, A Truce Stranger than Fiction and a second collection of poetry, Diary of a Red Chicken.
* * *
Let's get our affiliations straight, shall we?
Cynara Geissler works at Vancouver's Arsenal Pulp Press. Sharon Caseburg works at Winnipeg's Turnstone Press. I work at University of Manitoba Press. Peter Midgley works at Edmonton's University of Alberta Press.
April 11, 2012
Books + bed: my side
For those of you with inquiring minds, my side of the bed includes Barbara Romanik, George Amabile, Maggie Helwig, Darryl Joel Berger, Colin McAdam, Daphne Marlatt, Harold Rhenisch, and Bert Almon.I'd especially recommend the exception to the Can-lit organizing mechanism at work here, Jill Jonnes' Eiffel's Tower.
Her examination of the intersection of Buffalo Bill Cody, Thomas Edison and Gustave Eiffel at the 1899 World's Fair in Paris, i.e. historical pop culture studies, is very interesting...
Mind you, as this is largely a collection of to-reads, that isn't a particularly distinguished recommendation.
Also noteworthy is the fact that I finally found a place for my poisonous mushroom tealight collection from Prairie Sky Bookstore here in Wolseley.
April 10, 2012
Books + bed
I bought a set of Umbra's Conceal book shelves from the U of M Bookstore in November, thinking it might be fun to stack the traditional dusty-piles-next-to-my-bed on the wall instead.
We finally put the shelves up on good Friday while also opening up the balcony off our bedroom. Which really just means making M go get the patio furniture from the garage, hauling it upstairs, and peering at the browned skeletons of herbs in the various containers stacked in the corners.
Now, this isn't a long-term solution to the lack of storage space in this house, but...it's kind of fun: Books! On the Wall!
Except that I might literally get brained by some of Canada's best writers, should the shelf on my side of the book fail.
"She died in her sleep...after a stack of books fell on her."
But barring braining, I'm enjoying having friends and colleagues look over my shoulder when I do my before-bed reading.
(For the record, my books are on the left and M's on the right. His books tend to have LARGE TITLES so it's easier to see what, precisely, he's reading. Or will be reading...)
We finally put the shelves up on good Friday while also opening up the balcony off our bedroom. Which really just means making M go get the patio furniture from the garage, hauling it upstairs, and peering at the browned skeletons of herbs in the various containers stacked in the corners.Now, this isn't a long-term solution to the lack of storage space in this house, but...it's kind of fun: Books! On the Wall!
Except that I might literally get brained by some of Canada's best writers, should the shelf on my side of the book fail.
"She died in her sleep...after a stack of books fell on her."
But barring braining, I'm enjoying having friends and colleagues look over my shoulder when I do my before-bed reading.
(For the record, my books are on the left and M's on the right. His books tend to have LARGE TITLES so it's easier to see what, precisely, he's reading. Or will be reading...)
