substitution 10

The heavy drops runneling down
the car’s warm sides just before they turn
to fist-sized catastrophe
for the tears that gutter
down your cheeks pool in your ears
as you move from sound asleep
to salty anguish
with one breath

bolus branches

Photo Assiniboine Forest, Wpg, MB. February 26, 2007.

landscape with blue box

cleft

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Wpg, MB. February 23, 2007.

unfurl

A left-over pic on a left-over day...another walk (and, hopefully, more pics) tomorrow.

thriller

All photos from FYM: Thriller, Aqua Books. February 21, 2007.

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...

The Aqua Books / Writers' Collective
Free Your Mind Reading Series

FYM is a new monthly multi-genre reading series. Hosted by Aqua Books, a bright and cheery second-hand bookstore in Winnipeg’s Exchange District, each event will feature meaty readings from two established and one emerging writer.

* * *

FYM: Thriller
February 21 / Aqua Books / 7:30 pm

Featured readers: Susie Moloney, David Annandale, Kyle Martin

Susie Moloney is an award-winning humourist and the author of three novels, The Dwelling, Bastion Falls, and A Dry Spell. Her books have been published all over the world. She lives in Winnipeg.

David Annandale did his MA on the Marquis de Sade at the University of Manitoba, and his PhD on horror fiction and film at the University of Alberta. His novels are the thrillers Crown Fire and Kornukopia, and he is working on the third entry in the Jen Blaylock series: The Valedictorians. His short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies of horror fiction. His Fringe plays include The Switchblade Oratorio, Phantom Limb and The Smiling Crematorium. He teaches literature and film at the University of Manitoba.

Kyle Martin earned his Bachelor of Arts, majoring in English, from the University of Winnipeg, and is currently enrolled in Red River College, as an Advertising major in the Creative Communications program. The thriller Comfort Food is his first novella, undertaken as the major creative Independent Professional Project that is requisite in order to complete the Creative Communications program.

* * *

Opened in 1999, Aqua Books is located at 89 Princess Street, between McDermot and Bannatyne. One of the top two used bookstores in Uptown's 2006 Readers' Choice Awards, Aqua is home to 20,000 books priced under $10. Aqua Books is open Tuesday-Thursday 11am-7pm, Friday and Saturday 11am-9pm.

break your mother's back!

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. February 19, 2007.

crack!

crick!

outing

So we got to go outside today. It was still cold, it was still a day in a park peopled only by bundled dogwalkers and dogs with snow anklets, but it wasn't unbearable.

We piled a bundle of fabric that only faintly resembled our sleeping daughter onto her sled, did up the faintly ridiculous plastic windbreak that zips on top, and off we went.

And even though my mittens - the fingers packed with the extra cotton batting of cold - made me clumsy, I was still holding the camera.

I was still able to scan the trees, the path next to the trees, and the sky...for a photo.


Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. February 18th, 2007.

I didn't come back with much but it wouldn't have mattered if I'd forgotten to take off the lens cover and filled my card with matte black...

Walking today and walking as much as I can over the next few days is what will break the back of winter.

And I know we all need it broken.

What beats excelsior?

So....my poem, Willful, was one of several poems chosen by Julia Copus for The Guardian Unlimited's January Poetry Workshop...

Here are her general notes:

I was gratified by the overwhelming number of entries to this workshop, and impressed by the variety of the shortlisted poems.

It was good to see how some poems (such as Sally Goldsmith's wonderful The Singer, and Anna Hansell's An old British passport up on the shelf) stuck closely to the workshop guidelines, while others (like Cathy Grindrod's nightmarish Open) used the workshop as a springboard for a freer structure.

In general, I was moved by the emotional candour of these poems - peopled, as they are, with daughters, mothers, fathers, ex-husbands and lovers - and the direct way in which the writers handled their often emotive subject matter.

Inevitably some of these poems are more "finished" than others, and in many cases I have offered suggestions for revision.

There is no correlation, however, between the length of my commentaries and the quality of the poems.

Yay! (and also, whew!)

Thanks to Sheila Simonson, all around smarty-pants, for her last-minute-yet-fully-considered edit of the poem, and to M for reading the poem in its several many incarnations (and only asking once "This is different HOW from the last draft?").

(To see my first Guardian Unlimited poem, chosen for the April Poetry Workshop, click here.)

excelsior!

Hey all,

Over the past few weeks, I've had news of three acceptances and have been quietly, privately, tickled.

Since I'm not especially good at either private or quiet, I thought I'd share the good tidings.

First off, two fallbackian poems, warming the engine and off leash, appeared in PRISM International, now under Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award HM / ARC Poem of the Year winner Bren Simmer's watch.

One of the nicer things about appearing in PRISM, besides it being resume fodder, is the exquisite company I get to keep: Barry Dempster, Maureen Hynes, and Tracy Hamon.

Secondly, a poem entitled To make a charm against love, composed in the narrow Charlotte Bronte room at Hawthornden Castle in June 2005 will be appearing in the Manitoba Writers' Guild silver anniversary anthology.


With my acceptance came notification of the anthology's title and its anticipated publication date (A/Cross Sections: New Manitoba Writing, and September 2007 respectively).

Though I know this only from behind-the-scenes whisperings, apparently a few other members of my new poetry-only writing group will have also work in the anthology

(i.e. yay, both for the fact that the as-yet-unnamed group exists and for the individual members and their individual acceptances...).

Finally, a long(ish) poem from Guidelines, my manuscript-in-the-making of travel poetry, will be appearing in a special supplement to the spring issue of Prairie Fire magazine.

The supplement, entitled Home Place, "will feature new poems by established and emerging poets who live in Winnipeg. The purpose is to draw attention to Winnipeg's fine poets and also to celebrate Manitoba's new poetry prize."

The poem, entitled Wallow, is about a (waterbuffalo) bullfight I attended in Indonesia in 1999.

Though this was the last of the acceptances, the issue will be on the newsstands in April and will be launched during Manitoba Book Week.

It's amazing how long you can coast on tickled...