La!

After a week of illness and through a haze of fuzzy-headedness, I am pleased to report that I was alert enough to read my email update from the MWG...and then to actually submit nine pages (or 1,508 words) of poetry for the CBC Literary Awards.

I chose poems from The Navel Gaze section (50 pages and growing) of my manuscript, which needs must reach a kind of completion, as the WFNB's Alfred G. Baily deadline (my self-imposed-otherwise-it'd-take-forever deadline) is drawing nigh.

Nice that better-late-than-never types like me can beam submissions to CBC entirely via the sparkly interweb.

(Almost bought a 70s logo t-shirt while I was in the CBC shop, but resisted....)

* * *

Speaking of submission, I submitted an individual artist grant application to the Winnipeg Arts Council yesterday, as they were kind enough to add another deadline just as I evolved a project that needed funding.

To sum, I'd been sniffing around for another collaboration for much of the summer but things really got going when David Raphael Scott approached me with the idea of crafting a chamber opera together a few weeks ago.

If you'll recall, I wrote a libretto for David's CBC Radio commission to commemorate the 2004 tsunami in Asia. Called Tranquility and Order, the piece had its premiere at the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra's 2006 New Music Festival and was broadcast (and re-broadcast) on CBC Radio Two.

The completed piece will be performed by the Brandon ensemble Emerado as part of the 2009/10 Groundswell season and this time, the workshopping David and I did informally will be integral to the process.

* * *

Though my copy of A/Cross Sections: New Manitoba Writing has already made it onto the shelf in my office where my publications go, the Manitoba Writers' Guild will be launching their twenty-fifth anniversary anthology tomorrow at the swanky Inn at the Forks.

With ninety-one contributors, the MWG had to figure out a way to choose readers for the launch. So they held a lottery. I didn't win, but since I've read heaps lately, I don't mind....

I'm looking forward to the modicum of grooming, the half-glass of indifferent wine, and the company...

...but enough bloggy procrastinating, back to the ms.!