Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 75
October 17, 2011
Carpace!
Toronto launch of Carapace
Laura Lush with Ariel Gordon
When: Wednesday, November 3, 6:30 pm
Location: Toronto Women's Bookstore (73 Harbord Street)
Cost: FREE!
Please join us for the Toronto launch of Laura Lush's fourth collection of poetry, Carapace, which will include selections focused on pregnancy and mothering.
* * *
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer. She is the 2010 recipient of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Writer and the 2011 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry / Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie. The chapbook How to Prepare for Flooding (JackPine Press), a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, will be launched in fall 2011. Gordon's first full-length collection, Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2010), is shaped by pregnancy and mothering: "month by month, stanza by stanza, Gordon attempts to adequately represent the wonder and devilment of being-with-child."
Laura Lush has an Honours B.A. in English and Creative Writing from York University and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from The University of Calgary. Her books include Hometown, which was nominated for the 1992 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, Fault Line, The First Day of Winter, in which selections of this book tied for second place in the 2002 CBC Literary Contest, and a collection of short stories, Going to the Zoo. Her latest collection, Carapace (Palimpsest Press, 2011), includes poems "told through the eyes of a new mother as she attempts to balance the complex and often-times conflicting emotions that accompany motherhood: joy, anger, uncertainty, awe and fear."
* * *
This should be SUCH great fun. And then I'm off to Words Aloud in Durham the next day, where I'm appearing with Ayub Nuri and Lillian Allen...
Laura Lush with Ariel Gordon
When: Wednesday, November 3, 6:30 pm
Location: Toronto Women's Bookstore (73 Harbord Street)
Cost: FREE!
Please join us for the Toronto launch of Laura Lush's fourth collection of poetry, Carapace, which will include selections focused on pregnancy and mothering.* * *
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer. She is the 2010 recipient of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Writer and the 2011 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry / Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie. The chapbook How to Prepare for Flooding (JackPine Press), a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, will be launched in fall 2011. Gordon's first full-length collection, Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2010), is shaped by pregnancy and mothering: "month by month, stanza by stanza, Gordon attempts to adequately represent the wonder and devilment of being-with-child."
Laura Lush has an Honours B.A. in English and Creative Writing from York University and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from The University of Calgary. Her books include Hometown, which was nominated for the 1992 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, Fault Line, The First Day of Winter, in which selections of this book tied for second place in the 2002 CBC Literary Contest, and a collection of short stories, Going to the Zoo. Her latest collection, Carapace (Palimpsest Press, 2011), includes poems "told through the eyes of a new mother as she attempts to balance the complex and often-times conflicting emotions that accompany motherhood: joy, anger, uncertainty, awe and fear."
* * *
This should be SUCH great fun. And then I'm off to Words Aloud in Durham the next day, where I'm appearing with Ayub Nuri and Lillian Allen...
October 16, 2011
Out-of-Town-Authors: Marina Endicott
From Shadow-puppets to the Shortlist
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
Marina Endicott's third novel, The Little Shadows, tells the story of the Aurora Belles, a vaudeville act that consists of three sisters in their teens.
[image error] The Edmonton resident, whose résumé includes stints as an actor, director and playwright, has been making appearances at festivals and bookstores across the country since the late summer.
This past week, The Little Shadows was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Fiction, which in the vernacular of the book, means it's officially hit the big time.
Marina Endicott will be appearing at McNally Robinson on Tuesday.
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?
I think everyone has an introverted and an extroverted side—and I love the conversation between those two. My introverted side spends years alone, in the company of gradually constructed shadow-puppets; then one day I let my extroversion out of the box, and put some of the work in front of an audience to see how it plays. I ran a reading series for many years in Cochrane, Alta., and now run another with Lynn Coady here in Edmonton. I've come to believe that public reading for a willing, intelligent crowd is the best testing ground a writer can have.
2) What do you want people to know about The Little Shadows?
That it's not a history, but a story of people and their work that happens to be set in vaudeville — that extroverted/introverted, backstage-shadow/footlight-glowing world.
3) Will this be your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I spent a very enjoyable week in Winnipeg last summer, giving a workshop at Canadian Mennonite University, with beautiful weather, great students, and visits with two of my writing friends, Joan Thomas and Ian Ross.
I have heard that Winnipeg is fah-reezing cold except for that one week in summer.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
The wagonload of very good Canadian books that have come out this year: just finishing Madeleine Thien's beautiful, difficult Dogs at the Perimeter, and for some leavening humour, Sue Sorenson's engaging and intelligent A Large Harmonium.
I'm in the early stages of a novel called Hughtopia, about an art gallery owner who attempts to achieve heaven on earth by fixing the lives of all his friends.
5) What were the challenges in writing/researching such a specific time and place (i.e. First World War-era vaudeville)?
I wanted to examine what it would have meant to be girls and women on the edge of respectability in those days; not unvirtuous, but living outside the general society, and not considered entirely decent. It's hard, now, for us to enter into (fall back down into) those old assumptions underlying every girl and woman's life then, the unquestioned beliefs about the limited natural rights and abilities, and the frailty, of woman.
Writing about performance was a challenge: trying to find a way to bring those delightful artistes, their skill and talents, to life on the page.
And underneath it all, I wanted to catch the physical life of 1912: as Alice Munro says, "Every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together—radiant, everlasting."
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
Marina Endicott's third novel, The Little Shadows, tells the story of the Aurora Belles, a vaudeville act that consists of three sisters in their teens.
[image error] The Edmonton resident, whose résumé includes stints as an actor, director and playwright, has been making appearances at festivals and bookstores across the country since the late summer.
This past week, The Little Shadows was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for Fiction, which in the vernacular of the book, means it's officially hit the big time.
Marina Endicott will be appearing at McNally Robinson on Tuesday.
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?
I think everyone has an introverted and an extroverted side—and I love the conversation between those two. My introverted side spends years alone, in the company of gradually constructed shadow-puppets; then one day I let my extroversion out of the box, and put some of the work in front of an audience to see how it plays. I ran a reading series for many years in Cochrane, Alta., and now run another with Lynn Coady here in Edmonton. I've come to believe that public reading for a willing, intelligent crowd is the best testing ground a writer can have.
2) What do you want people to know about The Little Shadows?
That it's not a history, but a story of people and their work that happens to be set in vaudeville — that extroverted/introverted, backstage-shadow/footlight-glowing world.
3) Will this be your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I spent a very enjoyable week in Winnipeg last summer, giving a workshop at Canadian Mennonite University, with beautiful weather, great students, and visits with two of my writing friends, Joan Thomas and Ian Ross.
I have heard that Winnipeg is fah-reezing cold except for that one week in summer.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
The wagonload of very good Canadian books that have come out this year: just finishing Madeleine Thien's beautiful, difficult Dogs at the Perimeter, and for some leavening humour, Sue Sorenson's engaging and intelligent A Large Harmonium.
I'm in the early stages of a novel called Hughtopia, about an art gallery owner who attempts to achieve heaven on earth by fixing the lives of all his friends.
5) What were the challenges in writing/researching such a specific time and place (i.e. First World War-era vaudeville)?
I wanted to examine what it would have meant to be girls and women on the edge of respectability in those days; not unvirtuous, but living outside the general society, and not considered entirely decent. It's hard, now, for us to enter into (fall back down into) those old assumptions underlying every girl and woman's life then, the unquestioned beliefs about the limited natural rights and abilities, and the frailty, of woman.
Writing about performance was a challenge: trying to find a way to bring those delightful artistes, their skill and talents, to life on the page.
And underneath it all, I wanted to catch the physical life of 1912: as Alice Munro says, "Every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together—radiant, everlasting."
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
October 11, 2011
Postering
* * *
In late spring, Aqua Books asked Julia Michaud to do a poster up for this year's Lansdowne Prize for Poetry Winner. Unlike event-specific posters, the Lansdowne posters were up permanently at the store.
Julia has done the majority of Aqua's posters, magnets, and logos...and so I was looking forward to seeing what she would do this year for me.
Since by this time Julia and I were deep into our collaboration on the JackPine chapbook How to Prepare for Flooding, it seemed natural that the poster would reflect that project.
Here's the final poster. It wasn't ultimately printed but that's not a huge surprise, given the upheaval at Aqua this summer.
October 9, 2011
Out-of-Town-Authors: Guy Gavriel Kay
Here's where the fantasy began
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
Toronto-based writer Guy Gavriel Kay has legions of fans, drawn both of from geekdom and the literati.
His pedigree is as epic as his books: in his 20s, he moved from Winnipeg to Oxford, England to help J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher, edit The Silmarillion.
In his 30s, he published The Fionavar Tapestry, a critically acclaimed trilogy of high-fantasy novels.
These days, Kay writes what he calls 'historical fantasy.' His latest, Under Heaven, won a Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic and was nominated for several other prizes.
Kay will be appearing at McNally Robinson on Thursday to celebrate the paperback release of Under Heaven.
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?
A good, complex question! There is a wide range of comfort among writers for the road show/performance aspect of the business. I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing. I get the most out of touring overseas, the exposure to completely different cultures (China, Croatia, Russia, France, Mexico...) and seeing how my work is received there. That's hugely rewarding on a personal level.
2) What do you want people to know about Under Heaven?
I lived with this book, researching, incubating, writing, for seven years, even through the writing of another novel. Because of this, the awards and honours it has received feel hugely reassuring: the idea that taking time, being careful, polishing, are still worthwhile in today's sped-up world. The novel is inspired by the Tang Dynasty of 8th-century China... the most glittering, dazzling period in their history. It embodies what has become my 'method'... close attention to real history and then a "quarter turn to the fantastic" as the Globe and Mail reviewer put it. (A phrase I like and have obviously stolen!)
3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
Um, well, gee...I grew up here! I've heard it all (well, probably not quite!): Kelekis, the BDI for ice cream and romantic walks over the bridge, Corydon, Osborne Village, Juniors for midnight hamburgers (the original one, opposite the train station!), Winnipeg Beach, Falcon Lake, mosquitoes, hitchhiking to campus in winter, the hockey rink behind Sir William Osler School (I pretty much grew up on that sheet of ice, or on the football field we used just north of Taylor, around Mathers Bay). The radiators of University College on campus (did some more growing up there), the River Heights library and Mary Scorer Books (dating myself), graham wafer pie at Salisbury House. What else have I heard? Rumour has it there's a hockey team again. Go Jets!
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
Just finished The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, nominated for a lot of awards this fall. I enjoyed it a lot. We share a film agent and he tells me the book's been optioned by John C. Reilly, the actor...and he'd be flat-out perfect for the lead role. I hope it happens. I'm in the middle of writing my next book. I never talk about books in progress, I could decide to change it to a series of seafood recipes, after all.
5) You've published 11 novels...and one book of poetry. Tell me about the urge towards poetry.
I started with poetry, first recognition, first awards. The impulse and the writing never went away; I just stopped sending them out to magazines around the time I released my first novel. The poems were the only thing I wrote that was not for everyone else. Then my editors at Penguin, who were also friends and had seen several of them, aggressively urged me to do a book. Editors can be aggressive, especially after drinks. That's how Beyond This Dark House appeared. There's a level at which, if you take poetry seriously, the focus it involves...that never goes away.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
Toronto-based writer Guy Gavriel Kay has legions of fans, drawn both of from geekdom and the literati.
His pedigree is as epic as his books: in his 20s, he moved from Winnipeg to Oxford, England to help J.R.R. Tolkien's son, Christopher, edit The Silmarillion.
In his 30s, he published The Fionavar Tapestry, a critically acclaimed trilogy of high-fantasy novels.These days, Kay writes what he calls 'historical fantasy.' His latest, Under Heaven, won a Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic and was nominated for several other prizes.
Kay will be appearing at McNally Robinson on Thursday to celebrate the paperback release of Under Heaven.
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?
A good, complex question! There is a wide range of comfort among writers for the road show/performance aspect of the business. I spent many years writing and directing in radio drama, so I am comfortable with an audience or a microphone, but I do worry about the blurring of an author's public persona with the work itself. A good 'performer' can make a mediocre book sound strong, and a shy author can leave listeners missing the excellence of his or her writing. I get the most out of touring overseas, the exposure to completely different cultures (China, Croatia, Russia, France, Mexico...) and seeing how my work is received there. That's hugely rewarding on a personal level.
2) What do you want people to know about Under Heaven?
I lived with this book, researching, incubating, writing, for seven years, even through the writing of another novel. Because of this, the awards and honours it has received feel hugely reassuring: the idea that taking time, being careful, polishing, are still worthwhile in today's sped-up world. The novel is inspired by the Tang Dynasty of 8th-century China... the most glittering, dazzling period in their history. It embodies what has become my 'method'... close attention to real history and then a "quarter turn to the fantastic" as the Globe and Mail reviewer put it. (A phrase I like and have obviously stolen!)
3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
Um, well, gee...I grew up here! I've heard it all (well, probably not quite!): Kelekis, the BDI for ice cream and romantic walks over the bridge, Corydon, Osborne Village, Juniors for midnight hamburgers (the original one, opposite the train station!), Winnipeg Beach, Falcon Lake, mosquitoes, hitchhiking to campus in winter, the hockey rink behind Sir William Osler School (I pretty much grew up on that sheet of ice, or on the football field we used just north of Taylor, around Mathers Bay). The radiators of University College on campus (did some more growing up there), the River Heights library and Mary Scorer Books (dating myself), graham wafer pie at Salisbury House. What else have I heard? Rumour has it there's a hockey team again. Go Jets!
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
Just finished The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, nominated for a lot of awards this fall. I enjoyed it a lot. We share a film agent and he tells me the book's been optioned by John C. Reilly, the actor...and he'd be flat-out perfect for the lead role. I hope it happens. I'm in the middle of writing my next book. I never talk about books in progress, I could decide to change it to a series of seafood recipes, after all.
5) You've published 11 novels...and one book of poetry. Tell me about the urge towards poetry.
I started with poetry, first recognition, first awards. The impulse and the writing never went away; I just stopped sending them out to magazines around the time I released my first novel. The poems were the only thing I wrote that was not for everyone else. Then my editors at Penguin, who were also friends and had seen several of them, aggressively urged me to do a book. Editors can be aggressive, especially after drinks. That's how Beyond This Dark House appeared. There's a level at which, if you take poetry seriously, the focus it involves...that never goes away.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
How to Launch a Chapbook
Lansdowne Prize for Poetry Series
Ariel Gordon, with Jennifer Still, Matthew TenBruggencate & Julia Michaud
When: Tuesday, November 2, 7 pm
Location: Aqua Books (274 Garry Street, between Graham and Portage)
Cost: FREE!
Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry / Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie is Manitoba's largest poetry prize. Based around the award and hosted in conjunction with the Writers' Collective of Manitoba, this series celebrates the best in Manitoba poetry.
The first event in the series features 2011 winner Ariel Gordon and includes the launch of her JackPine chapbook, How to Prepare for Flooding. Her guests include actor/Theatre by the River major domo Matthew TenBruggencate, poet Jennifer Still and designer/chapbook collaborator Julia Michaud.
* * *
Jennifer Still's first collection of poems, Saltations, was nominated for three Saskatchewan Book Awards. Poems from her new collection Girlwood (Brick Books, 2011) were finalists in the 2008 CBC Literary Awards. After living her adult years until just recently in Saskatchewan, Jennifer now lives in Winnipeg with her husband and two children.
Matthew TenBruggencate is a co-artistic head and a founding member of Theatre by the River, whose members he would gladly be marooned with on a desert island. Local acting credits include One Good Marriage, Habitat, Saint Joan, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The History of Theatre, Comedy of Errors, The Elfin Knight (Theatre by the River) Cherry Docs, Talk (Winnipeg Jewish Theatre) Stripped Down Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare in the Ruins) The Skriker, The Misadventurous Perils of Pauline (Echo Theatre) Troilus and Cressida, and Measure for Measure (Tom-Tom), among others.
Julia Michaud started off her fledgling design career in the 80s, drawing book report covers with smelly markers for her artistically-challenged classmates at St. Ignatius School. Julia joined the illustrious ranks of highly talented illustrator and designer graduates from RRC in 1999. Her first full job in the industry, doing black and white car ads at the Auto Trader, gave her the motivation to go after a more colourful position. Her first taste of design fame came via Brad Hughes at Fanfare Magazine Group, which produces publications with the highest hip factor anywhere – Ciao! and WHERE Magazines. After five years creating glamorous retail and restaurant ads, art-directing photoshoots at Amici and eating chef-created cuisine, it was time for new opportunities. Her company, Instant Noodles Design, serves clients like The Garden Room, the Folk Arts Council and Aqua Books.
Ariel Gordon is a writer whose first book of poetry, Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2011), won the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Prix Lansdowne de poésie at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards. How to Prepare for Flooding (JackPine Press, 2011), a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, will be launched with this event.
* * *
Whee! Fun!
Ariel Gordon, with Jennifer Still, Matthew TenBruggencate & Julia Michaud
When: Tuesday, November 2, 7 pm
Location: Aqua Books (274 Garry Street, between Graham and Portage)
Cost: FREE!
Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry / Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie is Manitoba's largest poetry prize. Based around the award and hosted in conjunction with the Writers' Collective of Manitoba, this series celebrates the best in Manitoba poetry.The first event in the series features 2011 winner Ariel Gordon and includes the launch of her JackPine chapbook, How to Prepare for Flooding. Her guests include actor/Theatre by the River major domo Matthew TenBruggencate, poet Jennifer Still and designer/chapbook collaborator Julia Michaud.
* * *
Jennifer Still's first collection of poems, Saltations, was nominated for three Saskatchewan Book Awards. Poems from her new collection Girlwood (Brick Books, 2011) were finalists in the 2008 CBC Literary Awards. After living her adult years until just recently in Saskatchewan, Jennifer now lives in Winnipeg with her husband and two children.
Matthew TenBruggencate is a co-artistic head and a founding member of Theatre by the River, whose members he would gladly be marooned with on a desert island. Local acting credits include One Good Marriage, Habitat, Saint Joan, Two Gentlemen of Verona, The History of Theatre, Comedy of Errors, The Elfin Knight (Theatre by the River) Cherry Docs, Talk (Winnipeg Jewish Theatre) Stripped Down Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare in the Ruins) The Skriker, The Misadventurous Perils of Pauline (Echo Theatre) Troilus and Cressida, and Measure for Measure (Tom-Tom), among others.
Julia Michaud started off her fledgling design career in the 80s, drawing book report covers with smelly markers for her artistically-challenged classmates at St. Ignatius School. Julia joined the illustrious ranks of highly talented illustrator and designer graduates from RRC in 1999. Her first full job in the industry, doing black and white car ads at the Auto Trader, gave her the motivation to go after a more colourful position. Her first taste of design fame came via Brad Hughes at Fanfare Magazine Group, which produces publications with the highest hip factor anywhere – Ciao! and WHERE Magazines. After five years creating glamorous retail and restaurant ads, art-directing photoshoots at Amici and eating chef-created cuisine, it was time for new opportunities. Her company, Instant Noodles Design, serves clients like The Garden Room, the Folk Arts Council and Aqua Books.
Ariel Gordon is a writer whose first book of poetry, Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2011), won the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Prix Lansdowne de poésie at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards. How to Prepare for Flooding (JackPine Press, 2011), a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, will be launched with this event.
* * *
Whee! Fun!
October 8, 2011
SPORED: Jenna Butler
From Jenna Butler's poem "Petroglyph Trail" in her aphelion (NeWest, 2010).
* * *
When the ONLY place, perversely, that mushrooms are growing is the boulevard in front of a neighbour's house...you make (figurative) hay.
Which means picking a few from the edges of the inky clumps and making spore prints! On poems!
First up is a gory print on a poem from Edmonton poet/publisher Jenna Butler. After Winnipeg and maybe Regina, I think Edmonton has one of the dreamiest poetry communities. So many good poets!
Still to come is a spore print on a poem from Robert Kroetsch's Too Bad. Which I'm saving for a (figuratively) rainy day.
October 7, 2011
clubbing
All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. October 7, 2011.
* * *
A terrible year for mushrooms, yes. But there are always consolations, especially on warm blustery days like today.
Shirtsleeves in October. The absolute yellow of that goddamn fall sun.
How my tea is still warm when I rise from my rusty crouch, having spotted these teeny-tiny club lichens on a log.
October 2, 2011
Out-of-Town-Authors: Terry Jordan
Meet your new WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
As of Oct. 1, Saskatoon-based writer Terry Jordan will be the Winnipeg Public Library's 2011-2012 writer-in-residence.
The award-winning writer and playwright, who recently led the fiction workshop at the Sage Hill Writing Experience, will be the twenty-second W-i-R since Sandra Birdsell kicked off the program in 1985.
Jordan will split his time in Winnipeg (October to April) between individual consultations with writers and working on his own writing.
Please consider this your introduction: Terry, Winnipeg. Winnipeg, Terry.
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?
As story, which exists as the world exists. Everything, every thing we can touch or imagine, is involved in various levels of at least one story. Books included. The process of writing them will contain stories, the text and spirit of them also, of course. It's just one of the reasons we read, but we, all of us, are storytellers to some extent. Often, what we find most interesting in other people are their stories and their ability to tell them. Different cultures give stories as gifts. Writers do, too. We like to give; we like to receive. Like all generosity, giving is receiving.
2) What do you want people to know about you?
My connectedness to writing and to people who love to write and read. I'm approachable: come see me at the library.
3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I have been to your city a few times for shorter periods, but this will be the first time in quite a while. A number of scenes from the novel I'm just completing, which depict fishing and whaling in the 19th century off Canada's eastern coast and south from there, were written in a cabin overlooking Lake Winnipeg.
The city itself owns a vibrancy that is much talked-about in other parts of Canada, and its reputation is well-deserved, I think.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I've always got about eight books on the go. I've just been looking through a book by the photographer Stephen Collector called Law of the Range: Portraits of Old-Time Brand Inspectors, which is striking and original. I'm wearing an editor's hat, so I'm immersed in a number of projects - fiction and non-fiction. I'm reading Catherine Bush's new novel The Thief in manuscript form, which is beautiful and to-be-looked-for when it is published. I've just started Guy Vanderhaeghe's A Good Man and finished David Homel's Midway, it's very moving. Dickens again, whom I love, because my daughter was asking that I read it to her. Lovely. Then Linda Hogan, James Welch and Gerald Stern. A book on Ireland's Nine Years War by Timothy O'Donnell.
I mentioned I just finishing writing a novel, Been in the Storm So Long, set in Nova Scotia and New Orleans, which follows, in a different sort of way, the migration of the Acadian people 100 years after their expulsion. I'm also at work on a book to follow this, the second of a trilogy I have planned, but I'm much too superstitious to say any more about it.
5) What are your goals for your term as W-i-R?
In meeting the all and, hopefully, many writers in my time in Winnipeg, talking to them, working with them to both celebrate and overcome the beauty of our imperfect language, our wonderful failure of expression. To quote Joy Williams, "None of this is what I long to say. I long to say other things. So I write stories in my attempt to say them."
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
As of Oct. 1, Saskatoon-based writer Terry Jordan will be the Winnipeg Public Library's 2011-2012 writer-in-residence.
The award-winning writer and playwright, who recently led the fiction workshop at the Sage Hill Writing Experience, will be the twenty-second W-i-R since Sandra Birdsell kicked off the program in 1985.Jordan will split his time in Winnipeg (October to April) between individual consultations with writers and working on his own writing.
Please consider this your introduction: Terry, Winnipeg. Winnipeg, Terry.
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?
As story, which exists as the world exists. Everything, every thing we can touch or imagine, is involved in various levels of at least one story. Books included. The process of writing them will contain stories, the text and spirit of them also, of course. It's just one of the reasons we read, but we, all of us, are storytellers to some extent. Often, what we find most interesting in other people are their stories and their ability to tell them. Different cultures give stories as gifts. Writers do, too. We like to give; we like to receive. Like all generosity, giving is receiving.
2) What do you want people to know about you?
My connectedness to writing and to people who love to write and read. I'm approachable: come see me at the library.
3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I have been to your city a few times for shorter periods, but this will be the first time in quite a while. A number of scenes from the novel I'm just completing, which depict fishing and whaling in the 19th century off Canada's eastern coast and south from there, were written in a cabin overlooking Lake Winnipeg.
The city itself owns a vibrancy that is much talked-about in other parts of Canada, and its reputation is well-deserved, I think.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I've always got about eight books on the go. I've just been looking through a book by the photographer Stephen Collector called Law of the Range: Portraits of Old-Time Brand Inspectors, which is striking and original. I'm wearing an editor's hat, so I'm immersed in a number of projects - fiction and non-fiction. I'm reading Catherine Bush's new novel The Thief in manuscript form, which is beautiful and to-be-looked-for when it is published. I've just started Guy Vanderhaeghe's A Good Man and finished David Homel's Midway, it's very moving. Dickens again, whom I love, because my daughter was asking that I read it to her. Lovely. Then Linda Hogan, James Welch and Gerald Stern. A book on Ireland's Nine Years War by Timothy O'Donnell.
I mentioned I just finishing writing a novel, Been in the Storm So Long, set in Nova Scotia and New Orleans, which follows, in a different sort of way, the migration of the Acadian people 100 years after their expulsion. I'm also at work on a book to follow this, the second of a trilogy I have planned, but I'm much too superstitious to say any more about it.
5) What are your goals for your term as W-i-R?
In meeting the all and, hopefully, many writers in my time in Winnipeg, talking to them, working with them to both celebrate and overcome the beauty of our imperfect language, our wonderful failure of expression. To quote Joy Williams, "None of this is what I long to say. I long to say other things. So I write stories in my attempt to say them."
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
September 24, 2011
poetry bashing
It's funny, but my interest in the bright world of writing and publishing has been dwindling of late.
I decided back in July, for instance, that I didn't want to HOT AIR this year (i.e. helm the THIN AIR blog) and so my attendance at this year's festival was spotty.
I didn't even bring my camera with me to Wednesday's Poetry Bash, which is scandalous, given that I've covetously photographed the winning poet's hand for the last handful of years. (Heh.)(I look this grainy darling with my iPhone...)
Not that I wasn't interested in the writers on offer. There were many readings and conversations and performances I wished I could have attended, but it just wasn't possible this week to make the life/writing life equation work in the festival's favour.
As I mentioned before, I've also given up the monthly poetry column in the Winnipeg Free Press that Jennifer Still and I co-helmed. And as of November, will no longer be haphazardly publicizing poetry for Palimpsest Press.
So in addition to clearing the decks, work-wise, I'm also withdrawing a bit from the bustle.
I'm not sure what's coming, in terms of the writing. Which project, precisely, needs this pace and this space. But I'm content to wait.
I'm also content to note that the Poetry Bash was lovely. Jenn Still's reading was lovely. I also greatly enjoyed UMP author Kim Anderson's event.
I decided back in July, for instance, that I didn't want to HOT AIR this year (i.e. helm the THIN AIR blog) and so my attendance at this year's festival was spotty.
I didn't even bring my camera with me to Wednesday's Poetry Bash, which is scandalous, given that I've covetously photographed the winning poet's hand for the last handful of years. (Heh.)(I look this grainy darling with my iPhone...)Not that I wasn't interested in the writers on offer. There were many readings and conversations and performances I wished I could have attended, but it just wasn't possible this week to make the life/writing life equation work in the festival's favour.
As I mentioned before, I've also given up the monthly poetry column in the Winnipeg Free Press that Jennifer Still and I co-helmed. And as of November, will no longer be haphazardly publicizing poetry for Palimpsest Press.
So in addition to clearing the decks, work-wise, I'm also withdrawing a bit from the bustle.
I'm not sure what's coming, in terms of the writing. Which project, precisely, needs this pace and this space. But I'm content to wait.
I'm also content to note that the Poetry Bash was lovely. Jenn Still's reading was lovely. I also greatly enjoyed UMP author Kim Anderson's event.
![[image error]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZbhMMoEdshs/TpuOxrBwJEI/AAAAAAAADTY/f4qsE-Bt2Qw/s1600/Marina-Endicott-300dpi.jpg){kind=link}