Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 68
February 29, 2012
The Angel of the Big Muddy
When: Thursday, March 8, 7 pm.
Where: Aqua Books (274 Garry Street)
Cost: FREE
Mondo! Szumigalski
Mark Abley: Anne Szumigalski Memorial Lecture
The Angel of the Big Muddy
Followed by a panel discussion on aspects of Szumigalski's work, moderated by Alison Calder and featuring Mark Abley, Mari-Lou Rowley & Catherine Hunter.
The Anne Szumigalski Memorial Lecture Series, proposed by Regina poet Paul Wilson in 2001 and approved by the League of Canadian Poets' National Council the same year, commemorates the award-winning Saskatchewan poet, who died two years earlier. Szumigalski was a mentor to numerous prairie poets and much loved in the literary community, especially in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. She was a founder of the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild and of the literary magazine Grain. Her achievements inspired (and she personally aided) the founders of the Manitoba Writers' Guild and the publication that became Prairie Fire. The lecture is delivered every year at the LCP's Annual General Meeting and is subsequently published in Prairie Fire.
* * *
Mark Abley is a writer and editor living in Montreal. As a young man in Saskatoon, he was deeply influenced by Anne Szumigalski, whose literary executor he would eventually become. He has written three collections of poetry, two books for children, and several non-fiction books. The best-known of them, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, was published internationally and translated into French, Spanish and Japanese. Abley is now preparing a volume of selected poems as well as a creative non-fiction book about Duncan Campbell Scott.
Poet and science writer Mari-Lou Rowley has published seven collections, including Suicide Psalms (Anvil Press), shortlisted for a Sask Book Award, CosmoSonnets (Jackpine Press) and Viral Suite (Anvil Press), which is on university curricula in North America and Europe. In 2010, she was one of twenty invited participants in the workshop Creative Writing in Mathematics and Science at the Banff International Research Station. Her first poem was published when she was eighteen, in the chapbook Saskatoon Poets, a collection of writing by the members of Anne Szumigalski's poetry group. She moved back to Saskatoon in 2006.
Catherine Hunter teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Winnipeg. For ten years she was the poetry editor of The Muses' Company Press. She is also the author of seven books, including the poetry collection Latent Heat (Signature Editions, 1997), which won the Manitoba Book of the Year Award in 1998. Her most recent work is the crime novel Queen of Diamonds (Turnstone Press, 2006).
Alison Calder's poetry collection, Wolf Tree, won two Manitoba book awards and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert and the Pat Lowther awards. She teaches Canadian literature and creative writing in the Department of English, Film, and Theatre at the University of Manitoba.
* * *
See you there!
Where: Aqua Books (274 Garry Street)
Cost: FREE
Mondo! Szumigalski
Mark Abley: Anne Szumigalski Memorial Lecture
The Angel of the Big Muddy
Followed by a panel discussion on aspects of Szumigalski's work, moderated by Alison Calder and featuring Mark Abley, Mari-Lou Rowley & Catherine Hunter.
The Anne Szumigalski Memorial Lecture Series, proposed by Regina poet Paul Wilson in 2001 and approved by the League of Canadian Poets' National Council the same year, commemorates the award-winning Saskatchewan poet, who died two years earlier. Szumigalski was a mentor to numerous prairie poets and much loved in the literary community, especially in Saskatchewan and Manitoba. She was a founder of the Saskatchewan Writers' Guild and of the literary magazine Grain. Her achievements inspired (and she personally aided) the founders of the Manitoba Writers' Guild and the publication that became Prairie Fire. The lecture is delivered every year at the LCP's Annual General Meeting and is subsequently published in Prairie Fire.* * *
Mark Abley is a writer and editor living in Montreal. As a young man in Saskatoon, he was deeply influenced by Anne Szumigalski, whose literary executor he would eventually become. He has written three collections of poetry, two books for children, and several non-fiction books. The best-known of them, Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages, was published internationally and translated into French, Spanish and Japanese. Abley is now preparing a volume of selected poems as well as a creative non-fiction book about Duncan Campbell Scott.
Poet and science writer Mari-Lou Rowley has published seven collections, including Suicide Psalms (Anvil Press), shortlisted for a Sask Book Award, CosmoSonnets (Jackpine Press) and Viral Suite (Anvil Press), which is on university curricula in North America and Europe. In 2010, she was one of twenty invited participants in the workshop Creative Writing in Mathematics and Science at the Banff International Research Station. Her first poem was published when she was eighteen, in the chapbook Saskatoon Poets, a collection of writing by the members of Anne Szumigalski's poetry group. She moved back to Saskatoon in 2006.
Catherine Hunter teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Winnipeg. For ten years she was the poetry editor of The Muses' Company Press. She is also the author of seven books, including the poetry collection Latent Heat (Signature Editions, 1997), which won the Manitoba Book of the Year Award in 1998. Her most recent work is the crime novel Queen of Diamonds (Turnstone Press, 2006).
Alison Calder's poetry collection, Wolf Tree, won two Manitoba book awards and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert and the Pat Lowther awards. She teaches Canadian literature and creative writing in the Department of English, Film, and Theatre at the University of Manitoba.
* * *
See you there!
February 26, 2012
pare and share
All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. February 26, 2012.
* * *
So it was cold and we were all irritable by the time we arrived at the forest. But we walked the faintest of faint deerpaths and took photos and were going to warm our frozen faces with buckets of green tea at our fav Chinese restaurant. Except the girl started clutching her stomach in a rather urgent way just after we ordered. We got them to pack everything up toute-suite (as my mother would say) and got the girl outside just in time for her to vomit all over her boots.
And that was the kind of day it was. Some old snowy mushrooms, some flash-frozen cheekbones, and some throw up in the snow.
February 24, 2012
sapped
All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. February 24, 2012.
* * *
It was a blustery day, but, as always, it was better once we got under Assiniboine Forest's trees. And once we'd worked up a head of steam.
As is becoming a winter mushrooming staple, we hiked over the frozen bog in the middle of the forest to the island. Which I like to imagine is a kind of mushroom Galapagos but mostly contains the same downed trees and shrubbery as the rest of the forest...
Anyways, I found a few old mushrooms. And took these pictures.
February 23, 2012
Reprint: Papirmasse
The March 2012 installment of art-in-the-mail from Montreal's Papirmasse will feature four of my poems alongside the work of Providence, RI-based artist Rebecca Adams.
A
s part of the lead up to this 'issue,' Papirmasse sent me a barrage of questions, which I responded to with a slew of answers and some pictures: some OF me that M shot, some BY me from the forest, and some of recent work, like spreads from How to Prepare for Flooding.
Here's an excerpt from the interview, conducted by Papirmasse bosslady Kirsten McCrea:
A
s part of the lead up to this 'issue,' Papirmasse sent me a barrage of questions, which I responded to with a slew of answers and some pictures: some OF me that M shot, some BY me from the forest, and some of recent work, like spreads from How to Prepare for Flooding.
Here's an excerpt from the interview, conducted by Papirmasse bosslady Kirsten McCrea:How have you noticed your work changing over the years?
Hopefully my poems are better now than they were several years ago. But that's my capitalist illusion of progress, right?
The final assessment will from readers, from critics and maybe other poets. (Another poet, or instance, told me that the oldest poems in Hump felt like the newest ones to him...)
What are your favourite things about where you live?
That it's frumpy and grumpy and faded-at-the-knees (i.e. that we're NOT a boom town). Which means that Winnipeg's cost of living is reasonable and that there is an active arts communities in every discipline.
There's also this practical, get-it-on-sale-if-you-can mentality to temper the flights of arty fancy. I like that Winnipeg is a medium-sized city that feels, sometimes, like a gossipy village.
Beyond that, I REALLY like that we have supportive arts councils.
February 20, 2012
bloom
The subject of this photo was a patch of moss surrounded by blue-grey lichen. But it looked to me like a flower, with the moss' sporophytes standing in for stamens and the lichen for petals.
