Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 93

blurbing others

My first blurb!

Which was cribbed from the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book jury citation at the 2010 Manitoba Book Awards and (correctly, as it turns out...) attributed to me.

Heh.

If short-ish book reviews are small cunning puzzles, blurbs are pencils up the nose - i.e. torture.

Writing this one literally took me weeks.

All of which is to say that you should attend the upcoming launch of book two...

* * *

The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two
GMB Chomichuk, John Toone and James Rewucki

Thursday Oct 28 2010 7:30 pm
McNally Robinson Grant Park in the Atrium

Alchemical Press hosts an evening of strangeness featuring members of the Imaginary Army and the launch of The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two. GMB Chomichuk, John Toone and James Rewucki invite you to this literary experiment where robots, ghost, superheroes, monsters, and cowboys create the sites, sounds and stories of a darkly beautiful imagined nation. WARNING: May contain mind-altering agents, the unimaginable, terrorists, and human error.

The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two is a graphic (as in bloody) novel about robots, superheroes, monsters, and cowboys that decide our future will be dark, beautiful, and illusive. Writer/Artist GMB Chomichuk mashes the poetry of John Toone and the screenplay of James Rewucki into this literary experiment where mind-altering agents and the unimaginable define the cosmopolitan as something scary. Book Two of this serial epic conjures four unique stories and is a creation of the strange folks at Alchemical Press in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

macro forest

micro forest

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. October 18, 2010.

* * *

Somehow, this photo makes me happy.

Giller light

I'll be in full-on fiction-reviewing mode on November 9 at McNally Robinson, as I take part in the Winnipeg edition of the Scotiabank Giller Light Bash.

This event functions as a fundraiser for Frontier College, which is apparently Canada's original literacy organization.

Which mostly means I get to be mouthy about books in public...all in the name of literacy.

Anyways, I'll be advocating for Johanna Skribsrud's debut novel, The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press).

I've got her latest book of poetry but haven't yet read the fiction...and I'm greatly looking forward to it.

* * *

Scotiabank Giller Light Bash
Tuesday November 09, 6:00 pm
McNally Robinson Grant Park in Prairie Ink Restaurant

Join us for an exciting, interactive night of literature, entertainment and great food and drink as local literary luminaries advocate their favourite Giller-nominated book.

Tickets go on sale October 5th. They are $40 per person and can be purchased at Prairie Ink Restaurant, Grant Park in person or by calling 975-2659.

Funds raised at the evening will support the work of Frontier College - Canada's oldest national literacy organization. A $100 dollar ticket that includes a $60 tax deductible donation to the College is also available.

infest

cluster

glans

(I mean, could there BE a more penis-y mushroom than the stinkhorn?)

colony

idyll

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. October 12, 2010.

* * *

Today was kind-of-sort-of idyllic. I mean, we had to get up so we could get the girl to school. And NONE of us wanted to get up. But other than that, we had the day to ourselves...

...so we had breakfast at The Black Sheep (kale for breakfast, which sounds wretched but isn't...). And then got takeaway tea and made our way to the forest.

And we walked in the forest the same way we ate breakfast together: separate yet together.

We'd walk until one or both of us saw something worth taking pictures of and crouch unbecomingly in the leaf litter. The other person would keep going and then stop in her/his turn ten or twenty feet further down the path...and would eventually be overtaken.

And except for the twig-up-the-nose when I stepped into the woods proper to look at something, except for my tipping-over of my tea whilst shooting teeny-tiny lichens, it was almost EXACTLY what I would want to be doing on a day like today.

branching out

I have three poems from Hump in the fall issue of on-line lit mag Branch, whose theme is/was hunger.

As Hump is basically hunger and tits, I probably could have sent any of the poems, but in the end settled on two prose poems and a one-pager...all of which I performed frequently on tour, so I'm rather fond of them at the moment.

None of them saw the light of day before being published in book form, so I like that they're getting an individual airing now.

My thanks to Branch empresarios Gillian Sze, recent Aqua WiR/former Winnipegger, and Robertutsu, current Winnipegger (I think...his is a coy bio.).