Nightowls & Newborns

It's been nigh-on-nutso since I returned from Sage Hill two weeks ago.

On top of the poison ivy, acquired while mushrooming in Lumsden, there was heat rash. On top of the heat rash was the fact that scheduling quirks and other obligations meant that I haven't had a writing day since I returned.

So I'm itchy but I've got some soothing balms on the horizon, which I will quickly list here.

I'm currently planning fall events for Aqua, which will include several new bi-monthly series as well as one-off book launches and readings. Very inspiring to be a part of Kelly Hughes' (self-proclaimed) cultural city hall...when he takes a deep breath, that is, and sits down for a minute or two to think.

Unless things go drastically wrong, I'll also be blogging THIN AIR, the Winnipeg International Writers' Festival again this year. But this time for money! (Shh! don't scare away the money...)

Another plum is that I'll be facilitating the Senior Citizens' Writing Workshop over at Creative Retirement Manitoba again this year. Eight monthly classes, eight lesson plans, eight sessions of talk about poetry...fun!

Then there's the tour to launch The navel gaze with fellow May Day-er Kerry Ryan. Kerry published her humdinger of a first book, The Sleeping Life, with The Muses' Company this spring. I was urging her to put together a tour when she asked me if I'd go with her. And since I have a lovely chapbook to launch, I accepted.

Since Kerry's book is mostly love/nature/not sleeping poems and mine is mostly knocked up/nature/love poems, we thought Nightowls & Newborns was an apt title. Mostly, we're just glad to be done with the naming part...

We'll be hitting Regina, Saskatoon, Prince Albert and Edmonton October 5-12. There are a bunch of people helping us to put the tour together, who've offered their classrooms and contacts and even their poetry (as co-readers of course...) and hopefully it'll all smooth out eventually. Right now it looks like a logistical tangle, but, but...it's the thing I'm most looking forward to this fall.

(There's going to be tour posters/t-shirts, designed by Kerry's graphic designer/illustrator/artist partner Jeope!)

(There's going to be a beautifully designed chapbook by the valiant and cheeky Dawn Kresan under her Palimpsest Press label!)

Also in October, a mothering poem of mine should appear on e-mag nth position.

And then, starting in January, I'll be taking a creative writing course on poetry at the U of Winnipeg under Catherine Hunter, "designed for students who wish to concentrate on the craft of writing poetry. Topics include metre, rhythm, lineation, imagery and various elements of poetic language."

Of course, it looks as though the course will fall on the same day as the Creative Retirement workshop, so I'll have to go from facilitating to participating in discussions around poetry with only a breath or two in between, but that should be stimulating too...