Out-of-Town-Authors: Irshad Manji

Finding Mecca on my bookshelves

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon

The Manhattan-based but Vancouver-raised journalist Irshad Manji heads up the Moral Courage Project at New York University.

She has published two books, including 2003’s The Trouble with Islam Today (Random House) and produced an Emmy-nominated documentary, Faith Without Fear.

Manji will be in Winnipeg on Wednesday at McNally Robinson, launching the paperback edition of Allah, Liberty & Love: The Courage to Reconcile Faith and Freedom.

1) As a writer, how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?

As a person of faith — and not just as a writer — I believe that humans pay tribute to God’s creative powers when we use our own. Writing is a tribute to the creativity with which the Source has endowed all of us. In Allah, Liberty & Love, I explain that I’ve recently unfurled my childhood prayer rug and oriented it towards the bookshelves that line my apartment. That’s my Mecca, because the bookcases reveal the majesty of a Creator that has gifted each of us with the power of expression. Not everyone wishes to write, of course, but everyone has the capacity to express creativity even in the seemingly mundane task of how we frame reality. For each of us, every day is a performance of sorts. But is that performance motivated by pure ego — or by higher virtues, such as gratitude? I try to live the latter choice.

2) What do you want people to know about Allah, Liberty & Love?

I want readers to know that Allah, Liberty & Love is about — and for — all of us, not only Muslims or people who are already curious about culture, religion and global politics. Actually, the book is a series of lessons about how to live honestly. I’ve written it through the unique yet universal lens of individuals who show us what it is to be alive even in the midst of death threats. The first lesson is: Some things are more important than fear. The final lesson is: Lack of meaning is the real death threat. In-between are lessons that will equip individuals of various creeds to live "faithfully free."

3) Will this be your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?

I’ve long cooed to friends that Winnipeg seems to produce a disproportionate number of creative types. For a small city, you folks make a big artistic splash. And no, this won’t be my first time in Winnipeg. Lord willing, it also won’t be my last.

3) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?

I’m in Morocco, and I’m reading a tweet that refers to me as an "illiterate whore." But every morning when I’m not traveling, I pluck a random book off my shelves, open it somewhere in the middle, and read a couple pages. Then I read the first few pages to put the ideas into context. This wakes up my mind so I can think more deeply about the rest of my day. It’s also a reminder about the virtues of being still, given the craziness that lies ahead of me. So what did I read this morning? I won’t tell. It’s the discipline of reading and reflecting that matters. As for what I’m writing — a friendly response to the "illiterate whore" tweet.

4) What is moral courage?

Simply put, moral courage is the willingness to speak up when everyone wants to shut you up. It’s about daring to develop your individuality and, in that way, resisting conformity. I believe moral courage is crucial to diversity. Too often, we conflate diversity with labels — "woman," "queer," "Muslim," whatever. The pressure to identify with your "own" reduces pluralism to groupthink. That’s dishonest diversity. True diversity comes when you exercise your unique voice. That’s when you’re contributing to diversity of thought, not just of appearance. Sure, you’ll get backlash from your community for being different, but the beauty is, your community grows from talent that would otherwise be lost to self-censorship. The delicious paradox of moral courage is this: Individuality expands community.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.

Stuffed outtake

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When I was asked to contribute to the WFP's My Stuff column, it was convenient to have a WFP photog in the house. Except that I was trying to be solemn and he and the girl mugged unmercifully behind the camera. And so...I drooled a little.

Reprint: My Stuff

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by staff writer

Ariel Gordon, Poet

If your house were on fire, heaven forbid, what's the one item contained within that you would try to take with you? (People, pets and computers not included.)

OK, according to these parameters my poems are backed-up off-site (aren't I clever!) and my daughter's fish are sloshing around in a fireman's helmet. So what would I try to take with...you know, I can't think of a single thing. I mean, I like my things, but there isn't anything that isn't replaceable. (And think of how fun it would be to replace everything, once the shock of it all vanishing simultaneously had subsided!)

What's the one clothing/fashion item you can't live without?

Scarves. Not woolen winter scarves, but those flouncy bits of fabric you tie around your neck in elaborate ways. They're useful pieces when you're a child of the matchy-matchy '80s.

What's your favourite knick-knack and why?

While on book tour a few years ago, we did a reading in Edmonton at a community college. We were a few minutes early, so Regina poet Tracy Hamon and I browsed the campus bookstore. I found a wooden hand with jointed fingers that I believe was meant for the college's art students, hands being generally very hard to draw. I like to fiddle with it when I'm writing. (It only bothers me a very little bit that the thumb isn't anatomically correct...)

What's the oldest thing you own?

I'm not sure if it's the oldest thing I own, but I've been intrigued of late with my maternal grandfather's U.K. driver's licence. It's an elegant little red booklet, rather unlike our laminated cards, that records that he took out the licence in 1934 and renewed it twice. He was apparently caught "driving in a built-up area at a speed exceeding 30 miles per hour" in July 1937 and fined £20.

My grandfather became a spy under Sir William Stephenson after the Second World War broke out and was required to change his name so as to protect relatives in Europe, so it's sort of startling to see his original name on the licence.

Describe your most beloved piece of furniture.

I hesitate to use the word "beloved" when describing furniture, but I probably spend the most time with our couch/loveseat, which are upholstered in a crazy '70s print that is mostly triangles and flowers. We inherited them from my partner's parents when we bought our first house. They only had the one child, so, like most of the items in their house, the couch and loveseat looked virtually unused when we got them. A few years ago, instead of reupholstering, we re-foamed.

Is there an edible item we'll always find in your pantry or fridge?

My item is a three-for-the-price-of-one, in grand old Winnipeg style: teabags and sugar in the pantry and cream in the fridge. Together, they make hot, sweet milky tea: workingman's tea. Which saves my life regularly...

Symposium video outtake

Photo Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. January 22, 2012.

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This is what you DO to the uppity image-makers! You turn them into subjects too!

Symposium-ed!

So the Manitoba Writers Guild will be presenting a Symposium on Manitoba Writing May 9-12.

About a month ago, I was contacted and asked if I'd like to be in a promotional video for the symposium. I said yes and said that I'd love to shoot same in Assiniboine Forest.

So I met the videographer, Christopher Paetkau, at the forest in my bright red jacket. And my bright red hat. And my big black snowpants. Because it was winter and we'd be tromping around in the snow, right?

SYMPOSIUM ON MANITOBA WRITING: Ariel Gordon from Manitoba Writers' Guild on Vimeo.

Monsieur Petkau hated my 'ensemble.' So I wound up doing multiple readings with my snowpants pushed down around my ankles and my jacket, hat and scarf in the snow next to me.

I spent the whole time thinking about what scarf I would have worn if I'd known my underpinnings would be showing.

Well, maybe not the whole time. But certainly some of the time.

They've just announced the line-up for the Symposium. I won't be reading but Luann Hiebert will be presenting a paper entitled "Great Expectations: Ariel Gordon’s Hump & Reader/Writer Conceptions" at a session entitled Lives of Girls and Women.

Thanks to Christopher and the MWG for the chance to be videographer-ed! Even though I had to pull down my pants!

MARATHON reading

For a bunch of years, I did the Freedom to Read 24 hour marathon that the MWG did, usually with my writing group, usually sometime after midnight.

But for the past coupla years, I've done a different kind of marathon. A MARATHON reading, of a text, usually a long poem but sometimes an entire book. With thirty or so other readers.

We read the work, beginning to end, without cumbersome introductions or preambles. We just step to the mic, read our assigned page, and then step away. And then another writer/poet/interested party steps up to the mic.

In years past, as a part of Aqua's Mondo! Poetry festival, we've done MARATHON readings of Robert Kroetsch's Seed Catalogue and George Elliott Clarke's Execution Poems.

On Tuesday, a bunch of us - locals and family and out-of-towners - read Anne Szumigalski's Risks. Which is thirty-two or thirty-eight pages, but really only consists of a stanza a page (i.e. sweet but short...).

And so, when we were done, we read it again.

Let me tell you how much of a goddamn pleasure it is to be part of a chorus, to hear all the voices all over the work. To hear the work so differently.

(Yay! Fun!)

Art-in-the-Mail

The March edition of Montreal-based art-in-the-mail outfit Papirmasse has gone live to their website, so I thought I'd share them here!



This edition is called Papirmasse 27:Rebecca Adams & Ariel Gordon.

Apparently, it's an accordion folded booklet, so you'll have to imagine creases between each block of images/poem.



(If you sign up by March 10, you too can get monthly installments of art-in-the-mail, which means visual art and words, poems and prose...)

I know it's my standard response, but...Yay! Fun! (Many thanks to Papirmasse's Kirsten McRae!)

How to Treat Boils

“Tip #1: Apply a slice of a raw potato to the affected area. Raw cabbage leaf is also very good for reducing inflammation and promoting healing.” – How to Treat Boils, wikiHow.

When I am so run down that it feels as though my eyes might bleed, I get canker sores the size of overwintering ladybugs on my gums.

When I arrive home after a trip, I usually wind up in a doctor’s office, showing her a weepy rash. Look what I found in my armpit!

My favourite thing, mid-infection? To make people palpitate the tender lymph nodes under my chin. Ow. OW! (See?)

Vectors include white-footed field mice, deer, raccoons, opossums, skunks, weasels, foxes, shrews, moles, chipmunks, squirrels and horses.

I once had a pebbly rash that almost completely covered my back & stomach & breasts but once I slipped on a t-shirt you couldn’t tell.

I get hives from budgies, cats, chinchillas, dogs, ferrets, gerbils, hamsters, mice and rats. Anything furry. I once went to a Christian horsemanship camp & spent my week in the saddle with a runny nose.

Over the course of the infection, I manfully gargle hot salt water & touch the sore with my tongue tens of thousands of times a day.

I deeply appreciated the doctor’s shocked inspiration when I carefully took off my shirt.

Fly away fly away fly away home.

Poem(s) in Earthlines!

My poems "Downed Trees", written out of the years when I was at the zoo twice a week with the girl, will be included in EarthLines, a new lit mag from Scotland's Two Ravens Press.

Here's the TOC for the first issue, which should be out in the world in May.

For those of you interested in submitting to EarthLines, here's the mission statement:

"EarthLines is a full-colour A4-sized quarterly magazine of around 64 pages, dedicated to high quality writing on nature, place and the environment. Our focus is on writing which explores the relationship between people and the natural world, and encourages reconnection. We want to help forge a new ecoliterature that is truly responsive to, and that deeply and meaningfully engages with, the challenges we face. That doesn't just acknowledge, but that actively embraces all the contradictions and discomforts inherent in our relationship with the natural world – those contradictions which surface in all of our genuine attempts to reconnect.

Uniquely, EarthLines includes work by writers, storytellers, artists, scientists, and others who live close to or work with the natural world – we aim to be as inclusive as possible. We strongly believe that the future of ecoliterature is interdisciplinary: that inspiration for the kind of transformative work we're looking for will derive in good part from exposure to the ideas of philosophers, psychologists, ecologists, anthropologists, storytellers, mythographers, visual artists ... and a wide range of other fields of endeavour."

Two Ravens is also putting out an anthology of ecoliterature in 2012 called Entanglements, for which they've accepted a further three poems of mine. (Yay! My first international publication!)

The deadline for the anthology isn't until April, so if you've got something apt, submit! Submit!