Ariel Gordon's Blog, page 98

SPORED: Barbara Nickel

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Barbara Nickel and her poem Annular, from Domain (House of Anansi Press, 2007).

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So I mentioned that I had attempted to do spore prints last week. And that the mushrooms I picked had white spores and so didn't produce a visible print.

I figured out this was likely to be my outcome as the mushrooms wilted on the windowsill, so I pulled out my camera.

So these are resultant spore prints, just ones overly um, influenced by the notion of palimpsest.

Heh.

Hands on: Patrick Pilarski & Nicole Pakan

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Nicole Pakan and Patrick Pilarski are Edmonton poets who are engaged to be married.

And performance is important to both of them, so part of their process is rehearsing to each other.

So it's probably inevitable that when they're reading, they tap out the beats of each other's poems by bobbing their head or drumming fingers on an available surfaces.

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Patrick Pilarski is the co-editor of DailyHaiku, an international journal of contemporary English-language haiku, and poetry editor for ...

spinster

arrest

I have no idea what mushroom this is. It reminds me of a handful of rind, or worse yet, a heart. It's all bloody tissue and no artifice. But I get a secret thrill every time I spy it in the underbrush.

outstretch

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. July 29, 2010.

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A cloudy cool day after several scorchers seemed eminently suited for a walk in the forest.

I was hoping for plentiful mushrooming but most everything from the wet week or two last month has long since shriveled. Luckily, shrivel is visually interesting.

This is another of those toothy mushrooms. They're an old standby in that they're interesting to photograph throughout their life-cycle...

...which I can't say for the only other mu...

Blue-ing

Photo from the Living Prairie Museum, Winnipeg, MB. July 18, 2010.

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We attended the Monarch Butterfly Festival at the Living Prairie Museum today, which included the usual gamut of face painting-crafts-activities for the girl but ALSO entertainments for us adults, including a naturalist-guided walk of the tallgrass prairie.

I got to explain what galls where. And stand at the edge of a grown-over bison wallow. And fondle prairie sage.

Of course, I WOULD be drawn to the one native plant the (v...

Reprint: Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
July 10, 2010

Gordon makes splash with simplicity
Reviewed by Zanna Joyce

In this debut volume of poetry, Winnipeg's own Ariel Gordon makes a major splash with simplicity and verve.

Winner of this year's John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba writer, Gordon writes about life with a wry twist, describing walking in the park, interacting with her spouse and moving through the many steps of the process of becoming a mother.

Some of these 43 poems have seen pu...

gotch-a

underwhere

bloomers

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. July 9, 2010.

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So after a rather limp week, I got me to the forest this morning, with a full-sugar tea in one hand and my camera in the other.

(Though it often seems extremely ill-advised, I'm cutting the actual sugar in my tea with modified sugar, i.e. sucralose. In the interest of goddamn fitness.)

It being full summer, everything is full-blown. The mushrooms. The grasses. The wildflowers, including this variety. I've never seen it before but t...