Reprint: 12 or 20 Questions

Hey all, I'm featured today on rob mclennan's blog as a part of his 12 or 20 Questions series.

As with all my off-page (i.e. writing life versus writing) endeavors, I'm mostly trying not to embarrass myself...

Here's an excerpt:

6 – Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Why are such different roles and different expectations assigned to men and women, especially around parenting? Why is being an absent parent so gendered? What does it mean that writing about absent parents means absenting myself, at least to some degree, from my daughter’s life?

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I’m going to loosely paraphrase a section from Rutting Season, a recent poetry + conversation anthology from Montreal’s Buffalo Runs Press that I’m in by saying that I believe that poets and other writers present people with ways of being and feeling in the world, with choices, with conversation. And I’m all for conversation, even if it’s a limited and stuttering conversation, with many uncomfortable silences. I also believe that as writers we tell ourselves stories as much as we tell other people stories. That that comfort is there for us as writers, even if the material itself isn't comforting…

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I’m just about to start editing my first full collection and have to say that working with an editor is the part of the process I’m most looking forward to…

Basically, I see the manuscript as a drum and I’m so looking forward to having someone pick it up and give it a good goddamn bang. I want to see what falls out, but most of all, I want to see how it sounds to someone whose ear I trust.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

I hate advice, but my favourite northern mining-town gothic poet (i.e. Brenda Schmidt) keeps giving it. The most simple and direct and therefore the most effective so far has been: “Good grief! Get to work!”

Reprint: Paperchase

I was kind of tickled yesterday to open the Sunday Books section of the Winnipeg Free Press and find the following in Michael Van Rooy's Paperchase column:

"The Manitoba John Howard Society is raffling off signed titles by local authors at its annual general meeting.

The money raised will be used to support the organization's programs serving men in remand and prison.

Only 300 tickets will be sold at $2 each.

Among the many authors donating are Struan Sinclair, Ariel Gordon and Joan Thomas."

That Michael Van Rooy is a peach. Or, which is more appealing to yours truly, a rock-hard nectarine.

The following snippet, which came from the Manitoba Writers' Guild e-update, contained a bit more info about the draw itself (even if it wasn't as...satisfying...to my ego):

"MANITOBA AUTHORS: Donate a copy of your book to a great cause! The John Howard Society seeks donations of signed books to comprise a library to be raffled off in support of their programs, including their literacy program. The literacy program serves individuals on remand, as well as at provincial institutions, by helping them improve basic reading, writing, and math skills through workbooks designed to also educate on topics such as parenting, gangs, alcohol and drug dependency, anger, and listening. The raffle will be drawn on September 23rd at the John Howard Society's AGM."

I donated one of my last copies of Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999, so if you haven't gotten one yet, you'll have to wait for Rubicon to re-print sometime this fall (more on a possible Edmonton launch later...O), buy one of two left at Aqua Books, or buy a raffle ticket.

So, to sum: fun to be in such an August assembly of authors! And also that I should really look into getting a raffle ticket or three...

Carousel-ing

Hey all,

The first of my how-to poems have seen the light of day, specifically in Guelph art-lit mag Carousel.

How to Sew a Button (for an early draft, click here) was one of my earliest attempts at the how-to excercize, which I developed for my Creative Retirement Manitoba workshop last year.

To sum: pick a semi-ridiculous how-to from the list over at wiki-How. Read it over thoroughly then put it down. Sit for 30 minutes to an hour. Write a poem with the title of your how-to, without consulting the how-to. Repeat.

I've got a good chunk of these poems now, but the tone/content has veered wildly, from satiric imperative poems to historical character-based poems...

I'm grateful for all the poems I've wound up with this way but must admit to liking the humourous ones best. Partly because when I read it/them at Sage Hill, everyone laughed uproariously but also partly because its a different register for me, poetically, and incorporates some of my everyday smart-ass-ery.

Anyways, I'm glad Carousel bit. It's a pretty nifty mag.

The issue should be on the shelves in September.

Three words

The process for putting together the cover for Hump, my first trade collection with Ontario's Palimpsest Press, began with the following request from poet/publisher Dawn Kresan:

"Tell me what you have in mind for the cover. Don't suggest a certain artist but give me some adjectives on the look. Is the look adventurous, curious, wild or conservative. Three adjectives should give me the feel you want."

I'm not particularly good at restricting myself to a few words but, but...

My three adjectives: visceral, subtle, ambiguous.

Now I only have to get a leg up on my Author Questionnaire. And edit the ms. Heh.

Reprint: Putting Heads Together

From the Vehicule Press blog, as pointed out by the ever-vigilant Brenda Schmidt:

Thursday, 6 August 2009

"Last week, I visited the Word and picked up, among other things, a copy of Rutting Season, a "mini-anthology" by Montreal micro-publisher Buffalo Runs Press. The concept is super-simple: a generous selection of poems by three young poets - in this case, Ariel Gordon, Michael Lithgow and Linda Besner - bookended by some shop talk as the poets discuss each other's work. I'll admit to some bias as we're publishing Linda Besner's first book in 2011, but the other poets (new to me) were definitely worth my time."

Posted by Carmine Starnino at 10:34

The consolation of beets

So, I've got a bunch of submissions out in the world and I'm meant to start editing Hump - my first trade book of poetry - sometime in September.

All of which mean waiting.

Waiting more-or-less patiently, because no amount of thinking/dreaming/scheming can make it/them happen any sooner.

(Did I mention I'm the most impatient patient person in the world? Or is that the most patient impatient person...)

Early in the summer, I consoled myself with the fact that the Edison manuscript, the one I'm working on now, is full of longing but also trains. And Morse Code. And frantic silence.

Deeper into this cool and wet summer, when I wasn't able to schedule writing days, consolation could be found in bushel baskets of strawberries & raspberries from a u-pick-it farm, with 101 summer salads, with heritage beets from a local market and old-school crabapples, picked from my mother-in-law's backyard tree.

(More after the turn...)

And then, of course, mashing and bashing, freezing and canning, eating and bleating about how good it all is...

But no matter how pleasantly distracting all of this has been, I miss my regular writing days. I miss being able to regularly visit the forest, camera in one hand, tea in the other.

So here's to the long hazy fall we're due, to scritch-scratching the ms. into something bleeding but beautiful, to seeing friends old and new at the Writers' Festival.

Finally, looking a bit further, here's to the friends who will also have books out in 2010: Tracy Hamon, Anna Swanson, Lori Cayer. (second-first-second book)

TWAB

For those of you who (sadly, sadly...) missed the June 4 launch of Guidelines & Rutting Season at Aqua Books, Bookstore owner Kelly Hughes included the following snippet in his amusingly scornful e-newsletter, This Week @ Aqua Books:

Audio: Podcasts are now up for Méira Cook's June Speaking Crow stint, plus the Ariel Gordon/Sharon Caseburg launch.

They're #3 and #1 here: http://aquabooks.ca/audio.php, respectively.

mouthful

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. August 4, 2009.

(More photos after the turn...)