Stegner house: a mostly-inside-day

Twenty-eight lines to leave you by

The rainstorms, one for each atrophied leg
of my leaving, clear you out entirely, my girl:
I’ve no muggy fingers on the bones
of my wrist, no sluggish midsummer pulse.

Here, the rusty quartzes in the gravel road
are yellowed teeth & a mouth full
of light, are knots of russet hair
at the day’s blueing nape. The robin hopping

from the road, all ruddy herself, all early
evening, flickers once, twice,
then drops into shin-high grasses
& is gone.

Here, I pull on socks against ice-box evenings
& peer between lace, learn early
to startle at lonely evening cars rattling
down the lane. The streets are as wide

as a page. The river kinks just beyond the yard
& the horned skulls in flowerbeds are sweetened
by stands of white lilacs
their back-of-knee pulp all over.

You are pale, my girl, & insistent:
the last few days, you wanted me
within earshot, wanted me no further than think
thought...until I muttered that I was going

& I went. The sky here is too sure of itself,
the sky here is too sure & I revise
this dappled manuscript every time
you refuse to come to the phone.

Stegner house: the ridge above the town, pt. 2

Stegner house: the ridge above the town

* * *

A good day. Stegner's Wolf Willow after breakfast, the strange familiarity of being inside the town & the house written so well in the book. I'm also surprisingly familiar with his broader historical swathes, as Winnipeg was the starting point for many of the movements/peoples/politics that wound up in the Cypress Hills.

Then a complete revision of the Edisonia I composed for this year's May Day Poetry Project. This latest cluster of Edison-focued poems were all based in his childhood and somehow got written from Edison's point of view as opposed to that of his daughter, Dot. Who is my way into the project, my preferred stance....


I don't know if I'm being ungenerous to Edison or that I want to avoid playing puppetmaster for such a monumentally well-documented figure, but having him narrate his stories felt...wonky.

While I was writing the poems, however, another character emerged: Michael Oates. He was a recent immigrant from Holland to Michigan and was the Edisons' hired boy. Eventually, he worked for the much younger Edison in most if not all of his schemes: market gardener, candy butcher, newsboy, printer.

Michael had already narrated one poem of the bunch, The Ballad of Michael Oates. As I drove out to Eastend on Sunday, half out of my head with logistics and lack of sleep, it occurred to me that he could have the rest of the poems too.

(And that was the only real thought I had before a thunderstorm stopped me in Regina...)

So I spent the early afternoon swinging the camera around. And then, vaguely sore from spending half the day in a computer chair, I bolted from the house and set out for the stretch of hills nearest me.

I got back in time for a visit to the Eastend Museum, and, after that, a stop-in at a community picnic sponsored by the chamber of commerce.

(Interestingly, the man at the bar who told me that they were "low-class" and only had "cold beer" when I hopefully asked after a G&T turned out to be the mayor. He later spoke at quite a clip about the need for newcomers to Eastend, the new subdivision they're building, etc. etc.)

(He also lied. They had caesar makings, including celery salt and Worcestershire sauce but not including limes and celery. They did let me take as much ice as I wanted, an important consideration in the unventilated Kinsmen clubhouse.)

Yay! Fun!

blogging 'blogging and the creative process'

Hey all, here's a thumbnail of the interview Shawna Lemay conducted with me on blogging and the creative process over at her Capacious Hold-All.

(There are also better, more thoughtful interviews with Brenda Schmidt and Marita Dachsel...)

(Maybe I should also create a 'self-deprecating' tag, eh?)



In other news, I've been at the Stegner House nearly twenty-four hours. Enough time for four cups of tea, a bath, a shower, and half of the UK edition of Michael Ondaatje's Billy the Kid. And, this morning, grocery shopping...


I'm scheming to see if I can find someone local with a herb garden as there are no fresh herbs available at the grocery stores in Eastend and my kitchen garden is 954 kms away...

But at least one of my retreat rituals is complete: finding a big mug with a satisfying handle made by a local potter.

Unlike the other small SK town of my acquaintance, Lumsden, there are several potters / galleries in town. But the Whitemud Clay Studio was especially recommended to me by the Cypress Gallery owner, and, better yet, it was half a block away.

My Eastend mug is blue on the outside and blue/brown on the inside. The brown glaze inside is nearly to the level that I'd pour my tea, which is strangely satisfying. Tea or the illusion of tea, it doesn't matter...

While I briefly considered some of the brown mugs produced by Whitemud (according to their literature, they "win" or dig the clay from the surrounding hills), the blue felt best in my hand.

Half-cocked

I leave for Eastend, SK and the Wallace Stegner House on Sunday and I'm feeling a bit half-cocked, like this week is a firearm that will probably go off but also somehow aim itself at my formerly-fetching ankles.

So I've blown off my shins but somehow, I'll be in Eastend Sunday night or early Monday morning.

After years of overpacking - both in terms of fripperies like sun hats and scarves to wend around my neck whilst hiking and appallingly necessary necessaries like books - I've decided to pack light this time.

Partly, that's because I know what I'll need. Stretches under the trees with my camera, a few Edison texts so that I may tread in facts like tannin-laced bogwater and then gratefully emerge, biographical detail studding my skin like sated leeches...

Where was I?

Oh yes: and then lots of time having at the notebook/reading/thinking.

I've a week all to myself at Stegner, just long enough to savour being alone and also to begin missing M + Aa and their grand chaos. And then when they turn up, three days a week of childcare so that I may still get work done.

I'm leaving M on father's day but rejoining him in time for our tenth anniversary, which is sort of fun. And hopefully Aa won't mind the daycare, her first quasi-institutional setting. But I heard they swim every day, so how bad can it be?

Since I picked up the habit of grass-swimming at Sage Hill, I think I might just try to find somewhere I can swim every day too.


In other news, I've been interview-mad of late: I'll be a featured alumna for the upcoming Sage Hill newsletter thing-y, rob mclennan sent me his 12 or 20 questions survey which I even answered (saints above!) for his blog, and Shawna Lemay asked me a few questions about blogging and the creative process for her jewel-box of a blog, Capacious Hold-all.

It should go without saying that I'm exceedingly grateful for the opportunities but it seems like all I do of late is try VERY hard not to sound flippant/dumb/strident in text.

* * *

Apparently, I'm meant to set up a reading in Eastend before my term there is done.

Since I'm going to be flexing my event-coordinating muscles, so honed at Aqua o'er the past year, I was contemplating trying to set something up on the swing home too.

But I think I might just look for moose by the side of the road and sing-song Aa all the way home instead.

Besides, there are rumblings that I might get to do another western mini-tour this fall in support of the lovely lovely Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999.

I'll let you know when the dates/times for any of these these firm up...

* * *

In other other news, I officially have an editor for Hump, in whose service I will expend my last spasm of still-in-town energy by sending her/him my manuscript tomorrow.

Having an editor is like having a secret boyfriend/girlfriend. You wonder if they're thinking of you (and your blessed infinite work), then hope they're not thinking of you (and your poor vulnerable work), then back again.

So I'm terrified and elated but she/he and I have what's left of the summer for a good mull on the thing before we start actively editing.

I think working with she/he is the part of the process I'm most looking forward to...I'm sure it'll feel like all the bones in my body are being manually shifted while it's happening, but I need to be stretched. The work needs to be stretched.

As B often says (okay, natters at me incessantly) when we're on walks: Extend! Extend!

(I'm sorry if I wasn't meant to keep his/her identity a secret! I never know which things are meant to be secret!)

A bag for my goat-ish books

A while back, Edmonton poet Shawna Lemay asked me to contribute to her Capacious Project, which was a clever and sensitive response to women's spaces and women's concerns.

But she said it better than I can:

"There has been a fascination with artist’s and writer’s workspaces – one can find pools of photos on flickr and books of photographs as well. But I’m interested in what we carry. How we carry. To paraphrase Anna Johnson, the purse has been seen as an honest time capsule, an archive, a little house, a portable boudoir. What do you take away with you in your hold-all? Is it flimsy, sturdy, practical, frivolous? What secrets does it contain?

This is the first in a series, in which I ask writers to creatively engage with these questions. Responses may take the form of a list (made up or real, mischievous or serious), a snapshot, a poem, a story, an impression, a rant, a rhapsody, a drawing."

I started and stopped my response, stopped and started, but never quite finished. It just didn't feel right.

But today, feeling pleasantly quiet and unoccupied the day after my One Night in June launch, I thought I'd riff on the Capacious Project and show you my only-somewhat-artfully-arranged 'launch bag'...


In my reading over on Shawna Lemay's Capacious Hold-all blog, I realized that some writers have a 'book bag' in which they carry the reading copy of a book during the life of a book, by which I mean the variety of events the book takes them to.

The idea appealed. I'm not especially motivated by shoes or purses but have a collection of mostly second-hand bags, including p/leather briefcases, day bags, and computer/messenger bags.

Which are mostly bags to hold notebooks and novels and my wallet and even a last minute apple as I leave the house. Bags for living and working and being in the world.

So I started looking for just the right bag in which to enclose my goat-ish chappies and found it on another Lemay-based blog: Keiskamma Canada.

This site functions as the Canadian portal for Keiskamma, which is

A not-for-profit organization dedicated to the holistic care of the communites that live in the area alongside the Keiskamma River in the Eastern Cape. The Keiskamma Trust combines health, art, music and education initiatives in an integrated fight against poverty and HIV/AIDS.

Shawna's been auctioning pillow covers and tote bags by participants in the project in Africa and I was fortunate enough to win the auction for this bag.

Like the Rutting Season book, whose spine you can see peeking out of the bag, the bag is smaller than I'd expected but lovely. And like the Guidelines book, which features Tim Schouten's hooves on the outside and waterbuffaloes inside, it is a brilliant beautiful orange.

At first, the bag only held the books and was slung over the back of my chair. But as the night progressed, other things were added to it.

Like M's late model Mac computer, which sat on the edge of the stage, hooked up to the digital projector and to the sound system, so I could both display 100 of Tim Schouten's horses from his In The Absence of Horses series during my reading and then later play an audio clip of Linda Besner reading a few of her poems from Rutting Season.

Also, the CD with Tim's images on it. He dropped into Aqua earlier in the day, so we could ensure that all the necessary connections worked, because tech is always temperamental. And we had a lovely chat and he invited me to next weekend's rural tour of artists' studios, which will also include his Petersfield studio...

Like the box of assorted Morden's chocolates from writer Anita Daher, who came into Aqua on the way to the barn, where she's tending to a seriously ill horse, just to bring me a confectionary launch-present and hugs. I'm not always a huggy person, but I'll accept a hug from Anita anytime...

Like Sharon Caseburg's gorgeous chapbook from Jackpine Press. I generally consider chapbooks to be fetish objects, but you should know that Sharon's sleepwalking is well worth fete-ing/fetish-izing. It feels ancient and precious...and I'm glad to have been one of five people who got to buy one last night.

Sharon also brought several intestine-loops of tawny raw silk to the launch, to give people an idea of what her sister Debbie Caseburg Tyson's process was while creating the felted silk covers.

My eyes gleamed at the sight of the silk. I coveted those tumbling curves more than I have ever coveted anything and so Sharon, being Sharon, gave it to me. There was enough of it that I could give 'locks' to other writers present and still have a good length to drape around my neck.

And yes, in case you were wondering, it's the softest goddamn thing I've ever touched...

And that's about it, except for the thanks.

To those who attended and to those who wrote to say they couldn't make it, life being not-especially-artfully-arranged at the best of times...

To Jenna Butler at Rubicon Press, who told me this morning that the first print run of Guidelines is already sold out...

To Correy Baldwin at Buffalo Runs Press and Linda Besner and even her uncle Neil Besner, a Winnipeg lit community stalwart and U of Wpg VP International who did his best to sneak out on last night's convocation for our event...

Many many thanks.

Yay! Fun!

Songwriting course for poets at Aqua

Hey all,

There are only a few spots left in this workshop by singer/songwriter Jaylene Johnson (who, incidentally, went to junior high with me...), so if you're at all interested in setting your words to music, call bookstore owner Kelly Hughes at 943-7555.

* * *

Aqua Books presents: From Words to Music
A songwriting workshop by Aqua Books Songwriter-in-Residence Jaylene Johnson

When: Saturday, June 6/09, 10:00am-3:30pm
Cost: $60

Notes: Registration is limited to 20 people. Bring a notebook and pen (or laptop); the ability to play music is not required, but musicians may bring their instruments; recording devices are encouraged though not necessary.

* * *

Are you a musician who wants to compose original material but you aren’t sure where to start? Do you have a poem or idea tucked away that you think could make a great song?

Join Jaylene Johnson, Aqua's Songwriter in Residence for the month of June, as she shares from her own experiences as a songwriter and acts as your guide through the process of co-writing songs.

Jaylene Johnson has a deep passion for songwriting and the power of music and lyrics. Since releasing her first record (Not Forgotten) in 2000, she has worked and travelled all over North America. She has received nominations and awards and her music has used for notable television shows like Dawson’s Creek (CBS/Sony) and Being Ericka (CBC Television). Jaylene's latest project, Happiness, will be released this year, and is her first record to feature a majority of co-written songs. Sharing knowledge and skills is important to Jaylene, and with over ten years in the performing, creative and administrative sides of the music industry, she has much to share. She currently resides in Winnipeg, teaching high school English and preparing to launch her new record.

Coming down

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Wpg, MB. June 2, 2009.

from the

Tuesday trees...

Edisonia: Corporal of the Guard, No. 1

1.
Our boy, having dismounted from the train
after a long day of pulp & newsprint shadows,
walked to the paddock, his empty belly

a drum, his extra papers a suit of armour,
a sensational buffer between his small bed
& the long shelves & heavy

afternoons in the Detroit Public Library.
Michael Oates, footsore, dirty, swayed behind him
on the horse as it ambled through the ink-pot night

its hooves setting clip-clop type,
its gait as smooth
& predictable as a page turn.

They’d pass the lit & bustling fort
& nearly every night a relay
from man to man would sound through

the cooling night:
Corporal of the Guard,
No. 1!

And Edison would stop the horse & startle
Michael & watch until the man himself
appeared, wrapped in his war

like a cloak. A big battle
meant papers flew out of our boy’s hands,
bad news a homing pigeon

that always returned to him.
But the war wasn’t chemistry,
it wasn’t intermediate or even basic telegraphy:

his family had no slaves. His family
had no slaves & nothing would change
if the north won.

Our boy wasn’t officer material,
but, one night, when the call didn’t go out,
Edison piped up:

Corporal
of the Guard,
No.1!

Oh, it was relief to shout
after the quiet of the library
and the chuchotement of the train

on the track, all those miles
covered, all those muffled metal
miles behind and in front of him.

And the words were picked up & passed
to the next man & the next. And the Corporal
appeared, his brows creased

& his horse pawing the dirt, nickering
at the soft nag he could smell
out there. Three nights running,

our boy shouted into the blissful
dark. But the third night, the dark exploded
with men, teeth and eyes

gleaming as ordnance gleams
when it lands at your feet
and you stand there,

curiously unharmed. Michael Oates smiled
awkwardly as a soldier caught up
the reins

but our boy slid down
in the hubbub
and lit out for home.


2.
The soliders followed. The soldiers

followed, determined to shake the boy

like a fist full

of dice. Edison stammered

down

the cellar stairs,

making for that almost-empty barrel

of potatoes


(having carried up a eye-full
arm-full of soft tubers
and reproduced his mother's soft sigh
at things undone the night
before).


He crouched, pulled the empty

cask over his head

and sat in the stinking resinous

dark, rotten rot up

his nose while feet tromped through

the cellar, voices calling

out to his father, who’d been eager

for news

of the war, until half an armed regiment

stood in his sitting room,

bristling mad.


You’d think he was the enslaving

enemy, those soldiers

glowered

so.


3.
Do I need to say that Samuel
aped an overlord
with a switch

the next morning, having found our boy
laid out in his bed, stinking,
happy?

* * *

This was my last May Day Poetry Project contribution. I wrote thirteen poems this go-round, which is middling but better than 2006 (when I was heavily knocked up) or 2007 (when I had an infant on hand and underfoot) or even 2008 (um, when I was tired?).

I'm looking forward to putting all the new Edison poems into my ms. binder. I'm not usually one to keep a printed version of work on hand ("look! proof! I'm writing!") but I'm sort of enjoying watching the ms. grow, so...into the binder they'll go.

One of the reasons I only got 13 poems up was because over the last week of May Day my focus shifted to the launch of the two new books I have on hand, namely Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 (Edmonton, Rubicon Press) and Rutting Season: poetry + conversation (Montreal, Buffalo Runs Press).

The invites are all out, the cake & tea has been ordered, and the launch frock selected. Now I just have to pick what poems I'm going to read. And then practice reading them.

(It sounds so simple, doesn't it...)

In other news, I got an acceptance from Descant magazine while in St. Georges, which is sort of fun. And the issue of Carousel I'm in should hit the stands in June sometime, which makes my inclusion in Mark Laliberte-helmed magazines 2-0 (me/mags).