Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 73
November 13, 2011
MORE extra marital mushrooming
All photos Riverstone Retreat, Durham, ON. November 6, 2011.
* * *
It was such a lovely day, moving through patches of late fall sun, moving through thickets of tiredness and elation.
And there were bird's wings on the ground, tangled in the leaf litter. And there were handfood logs furred with incandescent moss.
And there was small stump, trimmed down nearly to the ground by an axe, and growing on the stump was a deep brown and a deep green mushroom. And crouching there, I felt pierced by affection for that stump and those mushrooms.
So I sat on the cedar-strewn ground and tried to get a picture that looked like something. But, as is the way with representation, didn't succeed.
But I was pleased with the day and these unexpected mushrooms.
November 12, 2011
SPORED: Robert Kroetsch
From Robert Kroetsch's poem "Making an Impression" in his Too Bad: Sketches Toward a Self-Portrait (University of Alberta Press, 2010).
* * *
So this is an ugly spore print, from last-chance mushrooms I found on the boulevard instead of in my precious forest. And I think it's right that it's ugly, sort of jagged and shapeless, because that's how this poem in particular makes me feel.
Because Kroetsch died by the side of the road, after an accident. And I'm still (selfishly) sad that he's dead, despite not having really known him.
So RIP Robert Kroetsch. And RIP Michael Van Rooy, whose face peered down from the wall at McNally Robinson when I was there for an event last week.
And RIP to M's grandmother and Aa's great-grandmother, Julia Onody, who died Thursday night, her daughters holding her arthritis-gnarled hands.
November 9, 2011
Out Loud
So I spent three days in Durham Ontario this past weekend at the Words Aloud Spoken Word Festival.
I think Words Aloud - the authors, the audiences, the organizers - has ruined me for subsequent festivals. I spit on superlatives normally, but it was probably the best experience I've ever had as a writer.
To start, instead of making me take the bus from Toronto and Durham (which can be as long as six hours) I was picked up at the airport and enjoyed two hours of chatter with festival authors.
Then I was driven to the Riverstone Retreat just outside of Durham, a beautiful place enclosed by cedar woods. And then we were fed homemade soup and pizza, because organizers were concerned that we wouldn't have enough time to eat before our performance otherwise.
I got frocked up and was driven to Durham's art gallery where the mainstage performances were. And although we weren't able to get my laptop - containing a slide show of images from How to Prepare for Flooding - to talk to the digital projector, I felt, well, ready.
Even though my set was slated for 35 minutes and I've never done more than 20-25. Even though Lillian Allen and Ayub Nuri were also on the bill. Even though Anne Simpson, Steven Heighton and John Giorno were in the room, watching...
I was the first performer. And so I wasn't prepared for the applause after I read "Tit Poem," but it was just...so much goddamn fun.
To listen to the audience and to know that they were listening hard, that they were prepared to come with me wherever I wanted to go. That they were willing to laugh and sigh.
And, somehow, even though I'm usually timed down to the minute, I made the ultimate rookie mistake: I read too long.
I don't know when again I'll have the problem of such a generous audience, but I've made a mental note to get a stopwatch that BINGS at me when I'm near time. Because the LAST thing I want is to get a reputation for reading over time...
And then I was done. I stepped down from the stage, took a sip of water, and settled in for the rest of the festival. Which was a lively thing, with afterparties and dinners and readings. And I even got in two sessions of mushrooming, of walking Durham's streets, before I was driven back to Toronto airport, snoozing in the passenger seat.
So, to sum: This was my first festival as an out of town author and now I'm ruined.
I've still got things to say about about the Winnipeg launch of How to Prepare for Flooding and the reading with Laura Lush at Toronto Women's Bookstore, but that'll have to wait for another day.
(Thanks to Artistic Director Liz Zetlin for the pic: I somehow managed not to take any photos of the festival itself while I was there...)
I think Words Aloud - the authors, the audiences, the organizers - has ruined me for subsequent festivals. I spit on superlatives normally, but it was probably the best experience I've ever had as a writer.
To start, instead of making me take the bus from Toronto and Durham (which can be as long as six hours) I was picked up at the airport and enjoyed two hours of chatter with festival authors.Then I was driven to the Riverstone Retreat just outside of Durham, a beautiful place enclosed by cedar woods. And then we were fed homemade soup and pizza, because organizers were concerned that we wouldn't have enough time to eat before our performance otherwise.
I got frocked up and was driven to Durham's art gallery where the mainstage performances were. And although we weren't able to get my laptop - containing a slide show of images from How to Prepare for Flooding - to talk to the digital projector, I felt, well, ready.
Even though my set was slated for 35 minutes and I've never done more than 20-25. Even though Lillian Allen and Ayub Nuri were also on the bill. Even though Anne Simpson, Steven Heighton and John Giorno were in the room, watching...
I was the first performer. And so I wasn't prepared for the applause after I read "Tit Poem," but it was just...so much goddamn fun.
To listen to the audience and to know that they were listening hard, that they were prepared to come with me wherever I wanted to go. That they were willing to laugh and sigh.
And, somehow, even though I'm usually timed down to the minute, I made the ultimate rookie mistake: I read too long.
I don't know when again I'll have the problem of such a generous audience, but I've made a mental note to get a stopwatch that BINGS at me when I'm near time. Because the LAST thing I want is to get a reputation for reading over time...
And then I was done. I stepped down from the stage, took a sip of water, and settled in for the rest of the festival. Which was a lively thing, with afterparties and dinners and readings. And I even got in two sessions of mushrooming, of walking Durham's streets, before I was driven back to Toronto airport, snoozing in the passenger seat.
So, to sum: This was my first festival as an out of town author and now I'm ruined.
I've still got things to say about about the Winnipeg launch of How to Prepare for Flooding and the reading with Laura Lush at Toronto Women's Bookstore, but that'll have to wait for another day.
(Thanks to Artistic Director Liz Zetlin for the pic: I somehow managed not to take any photos of the festival itself while I was there...)
November 8, 2011
the ORDER
The order for this Thursday's PechaKucha thinger has just been announced.
(Julia and I worked up our slides, which include a yawning cat and a plane crash and a button between my lips and a flooded house from the 1950s flood, yesterday over excellent tomato soup...)
I like being before the beer, because it means that I can sit after I'm done and then continue sitting after the beer and just enjoy myself...
ML Kenneth
Nick Kolisnyk
Ariel Gordon/Julia Michaud
Joe Kerr
Jason Boychuk
Celes Davar
BEER BREAK
PKN Video
David Pensato
Albertine Watson
Paul Nolin
Sarah Hodges
Blair McEvoy
* * *
What: PechaKucha Night, Vol. 8 in Winnipeg
When: Thursday November 10 - doors open at 7:30 pm (first speaker hits the stage at 8:20 pm)
Where: Park Theatre, 698 Osborne Street
How Much: $5 (suggested donation, at the door)
PechaKucha events fill the room fast - so grab your seat early or you'll end up walking in the cold November rain.
(Julia and I worked up our slides, which include a yawning cat and a plane crash and a button between my lips and a flooded house from the 1950s flood, yesterday over excellent tomato soup...)
I like being before the beer, because it means that I can sit after I'm done and then continue sitting after the beer and just enjoy myself...
ML KennethNick Kolisnyk
Ariel Gordon/Julia Michaud
Joe Kerr
Jason Boychuk
Celes Davar
BEER BREAK
PKN Video
David Pensato
Albertine Watson
Paul Nolin
Sarah Hodges
Blair McEvoy
* * *
What: PechaKucha Night, Vol. 8 in Winnipeg
When: Thursday November 10 - doors open at 7:30 pm (first speaker hits the stage at 8:20 pm)
Where: Park Theatre, 698 Osborne Street
How Much: $5 (suggested donation, at the door)
PechaKucha events fill the room fast - so grab your seat early or you'll end up walking in the cold November rain.
November 7, 2011
Out-of-Town-Authors: Michael Rowe
ENTER, anti-Twilight
Winnipeg occupies big spot in the heart of vampire-novelist Michael Rowe
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
On the surface of things, it may appear that Toronto-based writer and journalist Michael Rowe is coming to town to launch his new vampire novel, Enter, Night (ChiZine Publications).
But the true horror lies deeper: the event is also a high school reunion of sorts for Rowe, who attended St. John's Cathedral Boys' School in Selkirk from 1977 to 1981.
"I came to St. John's from a private school in Geneva, Switzerland," says Rowe, whose father was a diplomat. "My parents were a little concerned at the level of privilege I was growing up around in the mid-70s. I had a cousin who'd gone to St. John's, so it was a logical family choice. They thought St. John's would challenge me and toughen me up."
The school was renowned for its outdoor sports program, which included snowshoeing and canoeing.
"Over the four years I was at St. John's, I canoed something like 2,200 miles through the northern Ontario and Manitoba wilderness," says Rowe. "It made an impression. The Canadian hinterlands are really gothic if looked at just the right way. For a burgeoning horror writer, which I probably was even at 16, they're almost Canada's Transylvania - a wild, untamed part of the world where almost anything could happen."
It seems logical, then, that Rowe's first full-length work of fiction would be set in a northern Ontario mining town - as does his choice to name the fictional Parr's Landing after his SJC history teacher, Fred Parr.
"I love small towns," says Rowe. "I lived in a small town in Switzerland when my dad was at the UN. Selkirk was a small town. I lived in Milton, Ont., for six years in the late '80s and early '90s. It's largely a suburb now, but then it was a small town surrounded by farmland. Small towns are great places for writers with my interests to watch people."
Enter, Night represents something new for Rowe, who has also published three books of non-fiction and edited two anthologies of queer horror fiction.
"My work up till now, with a few exceptions, including a handful of short stories and a novella, has all been essays and journalism," says Rowe. "In many ways, although Enter, Night is tangentially about vampires, it's about a lot of the things I usually write about - for instance families, bullying, the corrosive effect of power on vulnerable people, and how human beings treat each other, especially in the face of a crisis."
"When I decided to write this novel, I'd anticipated a light supernatural romp, but in many ways it's the deepest, darkest, and most soul-scouring story I've ever written."
That darkness is probably what prompted Rowe's publisher, respected horror press ChiZine, to dub Enter, Night "the anti-Twilight."
"In many ways, I guess, Enter, Night is a very retro vampire novel," says Rowe. "The devastation that vampirism wreaks on the population it infects is significant in the book. In many ways, it mirrors the devastation that other parasitic elements in the story also wreak - anti-Indian prejudice, homophobia, tyrannical families, and carnivorous small towns.
"And underlying it, of course, is the fact that the vampire himself is a resurrected Catholic priest who came to Canada in the 17th century to colonize the Indians. The concept of colonialism is surely the ultimate vampirism - feeding off an indigenous population, consuming them, and making them like you."
Though Rowe is currently hard at work on his next book, a ghost story called Wild Fell, he is glad to have the chance to share Enter, Night with Winnipeg readers.
"I've always considered Winnipeg one of my 'homes,' one of the cities of my heart," says Rowe, who has since lived in Beirut, Havana and Paris. "In a very real sense, this is a homecoming. My book is part of what I have to show for my 32 years away, roaming the world."
Michael Rowe will launch Enter, Night at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Thursday at 7 p.m. He will be introduced by fellow horror writer Susie Moloney.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
* * *
This was a one-off article about former Manitoban writer Michael Rowe. It appeared on the same page as my regular Out of Town Authors interview with Will Ferguson.
Winnipeg occupies big spot in the heart of vampire-novelist Michael Rowe
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
On the surface of things, it may appear that Toronto-based writer and journalist Michael Rowe is coming to town to launch his new vampire novel, Enter, Night (ChiZine Publications).
But the true horror lies deeper: the event is also a high school reunion of sorts for Rowe, who attended St. John's Cathedral Boys' School in Selkirk from 1977 to 1981."I came to St. John's from a private school in Geneva, Switzerland," says Rowe, whose father was a diplomat. "My parents were a little concerned at the level of privilege I was growing up around in the mid-70s. I had a cousin who'd gone to St. John's, so it was a logical family choice. They thought St. John's would challenge me and toughen me up."
The school was renowned for its outdoor sports program, which included snowshoeing and canoeing.
"Over the four years I was at St. John's, I canoed something like 2,200 miles through the northern Ontario and Manitoba wilderness," says Rowe. "It made an impression. The Canadian hinterlands are really gothic if looked at just the right way. For a burgeoning horror writer, which I probably was even at 16, they're almost Canada's Transylvania - a wild, untamed part of the world where almost anything could happen."
It seems logical, then, that Rowe's first full-length work of fiction would be set in a northern Ontario mining town - as does his choice to name the fictional Parr's Landing after his SJC history teacher, Fred Parr.
"I love small towns," says Rowe. "I lived in a small town in Switzerland when my dad was at the UN. Selkirk was a small town. I lived in Milton, Ont., for six years in the late '80s and early '90s. It's largely a suburb now, but then it was a small town surrounded by farmland. Small towns are great places for writers with my interests to watch people."
Enter, Night represents something new for Rowe, who has also published three books of non-fiction and edited two anthologies of queer horror fiction.
"My work up till now, with a few exceptions, including a handful of short stories and a novella, has all been essays and journalism," says Rowe. "In many ways, although Enter, Night is tangentially about vampires, it's about a lot of the things I usually write about - for instance families, bullying, the corrosive effect of power on vulnerable people, and how human beings treat each other, especially in the face of a crisis."
"When I decided to write this novel, I'd anticipated a light supernatural romp, but in many ways it's the deepest, darkest, and most soul-scouring story I've ever written."
That darkness is probably what prompted Rowe's publisher, respected horror press ChiZine, to dub Enter, Night "the anti-Twilight."
"In many ways, I guess, Enter, Night is a very retro vampire novel," says Rowe. "The devastation that vampirism wreaks on the population it infects is significant in the book. In many ways, it mirrors the devastation that other parasitic elements in the story also wreak - anti-Indian prejudice, homophobia, tyrannical families, and carnivorous small towns.
"And underlying it, of course, is the fact that the vampire himself is a resurrected Catholic priest who came to Canada in the 17th century to colonize the Indians. The concept of colonialism is surely the ultimate vampirism - feeding off an indigenous population, consuming them, and making them like you."
Though Rowe is currently hard at work on his next book, a ghost story called Wild Fell, he is glad to have the chance to share Enter, Night with Winnipeg readers.
"I've always considered Winnipeg one of my 'homes,' one of the cities of my heart," says Rowe, who has since lived in Beirut, Havana and Paris. "In a very real sense, this is a homecoming. My book is part of what I have to show for my 32 years away, roaming the world."
Michael Rowe will launch Enter, Night at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Thursday at 7 p.m. He will be introduced by fellow horror writer Susie Moloney.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
* * *
This was a one-off article about former Manitoban writer Michael Rowe. It appeared on the same page as my regular Out of Town Authors interview with Will Ferguson.
Out-of-Town-Authors: Will Ferguson
Riel: Check. Now, how about Burton?
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
Calgary-based writer Will Ferguson's biography is quintessentially Canadian.
Born in northern Alberta and raised by a single parent, Ferguson traveled Canada with Katimavik and abroad with Canada World Youth. Then he taught English in Japan and, after returning to Canada, worked for a company that gave tours of Anne of Green Gables sites in P.E.I.
And then he wrote about all of it and won three Leacock Medals for Humour in addition to selling a pile of books.
Ferguson will launch his ninth book, a collection of essays entitled Canadian Pie, on Wednesday at McNally Robinson Booksellers.
1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?
Writing is a solitary pursuit, which I enjoy, but it can make one a little stir-crazy. I try to write travel articles and travel memoirs regularly if only to get me out of the house.
2) What do you want people to know about Canadian Pie?
It's a collection of work that spans 15 years, starting with the very first thing I ever wrote for publication (a travel piece about a Shinto retreat I attended in Japan) up to my work on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics closing ceremonies. It's a wide swath of work, from humour to travel to personal essays.
3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I've been to Winnipeg several times and have always enjoyed it. Last time, I popped across the river to see Riel's grave. Always up for a late-night visit to Salisbury House, as well. I keep hoping I'll run into Burton Cummings. He still hangs out at Sals, right?
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I'm reading a history of Nigeria. It's background for a novel I have coming out next year about a woman who gets caught up in an Internet scam, titled 419.
5) You're a three-time winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour. Have you ever thought of doing stand-up? Or writing tragedy?
Spoken comedy is so much different than stand-up (even a book reading and comedic talk isn't the same), I don't think I'd have the guts. My next novel is not comedic, though. It's a much sadder, darker tale than I usually write. It was a new experience for me - very cathartic.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
Calgary-based writer Will Ferguson's biography is quintessentially Canadian.
Born in northern Alberta and raised by a single parent, Ferguson traveled Canada with Katimavik and abroad with Canada World Youth. Then he taught English in Japan and, after returning to Canada, worked for a company that gave tours of Anne of Green Gables sites in P.E.I.And then he wrote about all of it and won three Leacock Medals for Humour in addition to selling a pile of books.
Ferguson will launch his ninth book, a collection of essays entitled Canadian Pie, on Wednesday at McNally Robinson Booksellers.
1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?
Writing is a solitary pursuit, which I enjoy, but it can make one a little stir-crazy. I try to write travel articles and travel memoirs regularly if only to get me out of the house.
2) What do you want people to know about Canadian Pie?
It's a collection of work that spans 15 years, starting with the very first thing I ever wrote for publication (a travel piece about a Shinto retreat I attended in Japan) up to my work on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics closing ceremonies. It's a wide swath of work, from humour to travel to personal essays.
3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I've been to Winnipeg several times and have always enjoyed it. Last time, I popped across the river to see Riel's grave. Always up for a late-night visit to Salisbury House, as well. I keep hoping I'll run into Burton Cummings. He still hangs out at Sals, right?
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I'm reading a history of Nigeria. It's background for a novel I have coming out next year about a woman who gets caught up in an Internet scam, titled 419.
5) You're a three-time winner of the Leacock Medal for Humour. Have you ever thought of doing stand-up? Or writing tragedy?
Spoken comedy is so much different than stand-up (even a book reading and comedic talk isn't the same), I don't think I'd have the guts. My next novel is not comedic, though. It's a much sadder, darker tale than I usually write. It was a new experience for me - very cathartic.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
