smudge

roofing

eaten

planting

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. April 28, 2009.

* * *

It's astounding how long you can go on feeling tired. But when I feel tired - or, more correctly, too tired to write - I can always go for a walk. In the forest.

So after signing Aa up for soccer (it begins! sigh...), I headed to the forest.

And wore the BIG boots. And tromped around in what was left of the meltwater, because I'd bothered to pull them out.

I surveyed last year's mushrooms, the ones I'd already photographed, many of them now with gnaw marks. I found a few new mushrooms, on the most sheltered logs, and snapped some pics.

Then I looked down at the wet mud/mulch combination on the path and thought longingly of several weeks of sun in a row. Not too much sun, mind you. Enough to make me happy and start the mushrooms patches, the ones I know and the ones that will appear this year, what with its this-year sun and this-year rain, going.

chivied

Provenance: M and I are up to our elbows in last year's garden, the coiling vines of my tomato plants shattering into garbage bags. Crisped strawberry leaves come away in handfuls, revealing sleepy ladybugs and wizened turds. In the beds along the house, clumps of chives have sprouted in their corner, with singletons appearing where my lettuce will be, where my mint and red-veined sorrel will be. As I pull the volunteers, combing tiny clods out of the roots and putting them aside, Aa comes up behind me. She has dirt on her upper lip, her (pink) hat is askew, but she's excited by the plastic frog she found in what she's calling her 'area.' When you live next to a house with seven kids, a fair number of volunteers wind up in your yard. This spring's tally? One large Dora ball, one large-ish fluorescent yellow superball, and the frog.

skinned

Provenance: A mid-winter shop, the aisles full of what-can-you-expect, and I notice a grocery clerk stripping Spanish onions of their outer skins. He's emptying twenty pound bags into the bins, his fingertips lined and re-lined with onion skin, his breast pocket filling with white fragments. He's already filled and tied off one produce bag, which I gesture towards. He thinks I think it's a bag of onions, so the contemplative look on his face shifts into a species of dismay until he realizes I want the skins and NOT the onions, at which point he shrugs. The mushrooms from a dollar store browse, the small sharp representations perfect for a February. Imagine cookies made from these cutters. (Imagine the forest.)

Ambitious story told from seven points of view

Perfecting
By Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
Goose Lane Editions, 336 pages, $23

Reviewed by Ariel Gordon

TWO novels and a short-story collection into her writing and publishing career, Toronto literary writer Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer has made two things patently obvious.

First, she's eerily good at writing both sex and violence. Second, her stories feature elaborate storylines that are almost impossible to summarize in a few sentences.

Kuitenbrouwer's first novel, The Nettle Spinner (2005), set up all kinds of interesting parallels between an utterly contemporary story of a rape in a tree-planting camp in northern Ontario and a Flemish folktale that rivals any of the Brothers Grimm stories for, well, grimness.

Her ambitious new novel, Perfecting, tells the story of Curtis and Martha, who met when the New Mexico-born Curtis stepped off a bus full of Vietnam War-fleeing conscientious objectors in 1970s Toronto.

With Martha's help, Curtis founds a religious community they dub Soltane in eastern Ontario.

Thirty years on, Martha finds Curtis's gun under a floorboard, and their life together begins to unravel. That's because Perfecting is also the story of Curtis and Edgar, the half-brother Curtis was ordered to kill by their abusive yet charismatic father Hollis.

Piecing together what she knows of Curtis and what she thinks she knows of Curtis, Martha leaves Soltane and travels south. Curtis follows, deeply anxious about his past and his future:

"Curtis thought suddenly how a person could not ever pay for what he'd done. You did it and it owned you; you did it and you were created by it. You could run, you could hide, but you could not expect to be free."

But as difficult as Kuitenbrouwer's plots are to diagram, her main project to date is crystal clear: exploring the radiating effects of violence. In The Nettle Spinner, the violence in question is rape. In Perfecting, it's murder.

What makes Perfecting such an interesting novel are the risks that Kuitenbrouwer took in writing it.

She had spent time as a tree planter and lumberjack before writing The Nettle Spinner, and the book benefited enormously from details of the industrial/natural life on offer in those professions.

But despite its strange and surprising content, the novel was fairly simple, structurally, told from the point of view of the rape victim and working off the contrast between the fable and the main story.

Perfecting, on the other hand, is told from the point of view of seven different characters: Curtis, Martha, Hollis, Hollis's mistress, and three of Curtis's half-brothers.

Each voice is distinct and each believable, which would be reason enough to pick up this novel, but Kuitenbrouwer also writes exceptionally well about subjects she presumably has no first-hand knowledge of, including religious communities, fratricide and war rugs.

None of which means that Perfecting is an easy read. Kuitenbrouwer does not believe in handling her readers with kid gloves and so, like Curtis's father, Perfecting is compelling but brutal.

Unlike British Columbian Eden Robinson's equally dark work - her latest novel, Blood Sports (2006), contained scenes of torture - there is no good guy or redeeming romance to root for here.

No, Perfecting more closely resembles Winnipegger David Bergen's The Time in Between (2005), where ambiguity reigns and stories are told because they must be told.

But still, it must be said: Brava!

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer and editor.

May Day motto

Monday was a bright day. I worked all day and most of the evening and met three deadlines (as the tailor said, "nine at a blow!") and by the end of the day, paradoxically, felt a burst of energy.

It'll soon pass, I'm sure, but in the meantime I've been joyfully reading.

And in my reading, I found snippet of poetry that I think will be my motto for this wretched spring, for my upcoming contributions to May Day, for the bright summer to come, when I will be editing Hump with an as-yet-named editor for spring 2010 publication:

Trust me. You're not sick or flawed
enough to be cured yet. Read what you wrote.
Sleep when you can. Make careful notes.

- from the Smart Mouth section of Tanis MacDonald's Rue the Day (Turnstone, 2008).

M'aidez!

On May 1st, the fifth year of the May Day Poetry Project will whir and hum and kick and come to life again.

This means poets and poetry and commentary on said poetry.

For me, it means thinking about the poem I'm going to write today, tomorrow, later this week. Thinking incessantly about poetry.

Fun, especially after the month I've had...illness and deadlines and nasty unrelenting weather. And then the nice hippy lady that enables my writing by accepting money to care for Aa did something bad to her knee. ..

(Um, before I forget myself, what with the complaining: email me if you want to sign up!)

* * *

UPDATE: Last night, M and I trolled the internet in search of a spring hat for May Day (i.e. a new template).

We found a modified Wordpress template called Coffee Desk and installed all its bells and whistles in less than an hour.

And so, I would like to take this opportunity to take back all my complaints about M's various internet frenzies...

I would also like to note that almost all our regulars are back this year. We've got one new poet - Linda Besner, my fellow Rutting Season author - and I'm looking forward to one or two more tyros.

crook

glob

fodder

limb

pixie-ish

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. April 13, 2009.

* * *

These are pixie cups. They're teeny-tiny, slow-growing, and almost out of the range of the super-macro function of my digital camera. And I was wearing M's hip-waders and crouching by the side of the log where these lichen were growing, after a two-hour hike.

I focused and re-focused the camera, hoping that I'd get one shot where something was sharp.

And this was the one.

Thanks to M for letting me wear his work hip-waders in the flooded forest, for following behind me in the BIG boots and, when he caught up with me the odd time, catching my hand.

It was a marvelous walk. My second in a week when I was floundering, inundated with deadlines if not literal water. And it was fun to crouch on the ground without getting soggy or to wade through the deepest ditches without worrying about a full boot.

(Speaking of water, did I mention that my roof leaked this week?)

scraper

* * *

This is the image I walked around with a wet bum all afternoon for...

cluster

moss/ice

whitened

chipped

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. April 10, 2009.

* * *

After a long couple of weeks, where M and I were both over-committed and then, predictably, both sick with one of Aa's new-kid-in-town colds, I finally had a bought-and-paid-for writing day.

Except I was too tired to write, so I spent the morning reading and swilling cup after cup of tea. And then, after driving M to work, I decided to spend the hours between the drop-off and Aa's pick-up from childcare in Assiniboine Forest.

I anticipated that the forest would be wet, given that the floodplain that is Winnipeg et environs is currently, well, flooded and the fact that forest, specifically, has poor drainage.

All of which meant that I needed the BIG boots.

For some reason, as an family we have one pair of knee-high boots and a pair that look like hiking boots that end at the ankle. Oh, and now thanks to the flood and M's newspaper job, we now have chest waders.

Basically, as I dropped M off, I told him that if he needed to puddle jump in the name of his job, it would have to be in the waders. And then I floored it out of the parking lot.

Anyways, I was ten minutes into my walk in the forest, clumping along in the BIG boots, when I spied a cluster of mushrooms on a log in the middle of one of the semi-frozen ditches to either side of the path.

Being intrepid but none too bright, I shimmied down the length of the icy log, holding onto branches on either side. And then there was the three feet between where I was standing and the clump of mushrooms, with no intervening branches.

But I have good balance, right?

Wrong.

I wound up with one leg through the ice to one side of the rather slippery log, to an inch of the top of the boots. With my camera in one hand and my bag sliding around at my hip, I was not especially agile, but did manage to get back on the log around where the mushrooms were without getting too wet.

And then I tried to turn on the log so I was facing the mushrooms. And I toppled over.

So my bum was wet, the sweater tied around my waist was wet, the scarf tied to the strap of my bag was wet. But given all my layers, I wasn't sopping and, after I winched myself up, I got the shot.

And I was only ten minutes into my walk. No way was I going to haul myself home on what was my first walk in the forest in weeks (brutal nasty long weeks, too...).

I was mostly dry by the time I picked up Aa. And I'd gotten in a full complement of shooting emerging and withered mushrooms...as well as a full complement of ill-wishing various dog walkers, who squawked loudly while their off-leash dogs pawed me and pooped off-path (i.e in the nature).

Instead of haranguing the dogs and their walkers, which is sometimes M's wont, I pointedly ignored them and tried to pretend I was all alone in the glorious space that is the forest.

* * *

In other forest-related news, I'm contemplating getting greeting cards made from some of my forest photos.

M helped me to choose two sets of four from the 136 assembled for the screening at the Cinematheque a few weeks back. I thought it would be difficult, but it only took a few minutes.

We narrowed it down to 38 and then spent a minute or two looking at them.

And then M pointed to a favourite of his, which featured a highly textured white mushroom. And then it seemed natural to pair that with a picture that could also be described as 'highly-textured' and 'white' but this second image was of a tree mushroom as opposed to a ground mushroom and therefore a completely different shape.

Having quickly assembled four 'white' images, we thought ourselves done. But before closing Photo Mechanic, I pointed to a favourite image of mine, which happened to be predominantly orange.

And so we repeated the exercize and had four 'orange' images.

Now I have to decide how many to make and where I'd like to try to sell them.

MBA at Aqua!

Hey all,

The Manitoba Book Awards celebrates its 21st anniversary with the presentation of 13 awards celebrating Manitoba’s writers and publishers on April 25 at the WAG.

While we'd like to encourage people to show up at the awards, if only to witness bookstore owner Kelly Hughes present the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry, we have what we think will be a far meatier invitation...

Aqua Books is reviving the practice of holding MBA nominee readings in the weeks before the awards.

And so, we're pleased to invite you to join us for one/all of these events. (I think they'll be gobs of fun!)

Yours,

Ariel

* * *

Aqua Books presents: 2009 Manitoba Book Awards Nominee Readings

Saturday April 4, 2pm
Best Illustrated Book of the Year / Manuela Dias Book Design of the Year
- nominees Patricia Bovey, Louise Duguay, Jane Heinrichs, Bernard Leveille, and Diana Thorneycroft.

Wednesday April 8, 7pm
Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book
- nominees Jan Guenther Braun, Andrew Davidson, Christina Penner, and Daria Salamon.

Thursday April 9, 7pm
Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry Series
- 2009 nominees Rosanna Deerchild, Maurice Mierau, Laurent Poliquin, and Kerry Ryan.

Saturday April 11, 2pm
Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction
- nominees Patricia Bovey, Amy Karlinsky, and Cecil Rosner.

Saturday April 18, 7pm
The Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction
- nominees Miriam Toews and David Bergen.

Wednesday April 22, 7pm
Le Prix littéraire Rue-Deschambault
- nominees Louise Duguay and Lise Gaboury-Diallo.

* * *

UPDATES:

Diana Thorneycroft presented at the April 4 event.

Joan Thomas will be appearing at the April 8 and 18th events.

Tatiana Arcand will read at the April 22 event.

Sexy, muscular writing and an old piano that sounds like meat

All the Living
By C.E. Morgan
Knopf Canada, 208 pages, $30

Reviewed by Ariel Gordon

IT might seem strange to recommend a novel about a drought set in the U.S. south while we endure our northern flood.

But a conflagration is a conflagration, and Kentuckian C.E. Morgan's All the Living is a damn fine distraction.

This lean little novel, Morgan's first, tells the story of Aloma and Orren, a young couple who attempt to run the family farm after Orren's mother and brother die in a tragic accident. Two things get in their way: the drought that has settled over the region and the fact Aloma and Orren's relationship isn't sanctified by marriage.

While we don't know precisely when the novel is set, in the Kentucky small-town time and place they inhabit, it matters that Aloma and Orren aren't married.

And if that isn't enough, worry over losing the crop - and, by extension, the farm - is turning the grief-stricken Orren inside out.

Aloma - from whose point-of-view the novel is told - agreed to join Orren at the farm and act as farm wife because she loves him but also because she doesn't know what else to do.

What she doesn't understand is running a farm, never having even lived in a house before.

Another thorn is that Aloma discovered at school that she was a gifted pianist. And the piano at the house that Orren promised was in working condition is ruined - "the sound was spoiled like meat."

While she can learn to cook and clean, to feed the chickens and hope for rain, Aloma can't unlearn her ambition, and it only take a month without playing the piano before she gets a job playing hymns at a local church.

This is where Aloma meets Bell Johnson, a farmer whose version of noblesse oblige means that he, like his father, half ruins his own farm so he can also preach at the church.

Bell, a bachelor with a suspicious mother and, worse, a ruined piano of his own at home, is drawn to Aloma, or, rather, to Aloma at the piano.

Aloma likes that Bell can talk circles around what is bothering him and that he seems to need her, unlike the flinty, distant Orren. But she is trapped playing house with Orren, and it is questionable whether marriage to Bell would satisfy her ambition any more than marriage to Orren would.

But no matter your notions of duty versus ambition or marriage versus living in sin, it is hard to ignore the sexy, muscular writing on offer here. Also of note is Morgan's skill in depicting the desperate but aimless energy of early adulthood, particularly from a female perspective.

Although the book does nod towards Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer-winning Gilead (2004) - in some ways, All the Living feels like a reverse-angle telling of that story - Morgan is more interested in exploring dissonance than harmony.

And while Morgan's master's in theology from Harvard Divinity School shows in her rendition of entire sermons, Bell's is a small, practical theology, heartfelt and palatable even to those who prefer their fiction secular.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer and editor.

* * *

I would like to note - all deference to Books Editor Morley Walker aside - that that is NOT my headline.

Heh.