Collection achieves ambiguous wisdom

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon

Though Regina writer Andrew Stubbs has published three books in his other life as a professor of rhetoric and composition, White Light Primitive (Hagios Press, 96 pages, $18) is his first collection of poetry.

Taken as a whole, Stubbs' work achieves what most writers hope for in mid-career: an ambiguous wisdom that escapes most Young Turks.

The poems on offer here eschew title case and in most cases punctuation, and his line breaks intend uncertainty. But Stubbs is still somehow able to parse shifts in feeling and thought precisely.

Particularly good is the long poem war, where Stubbs re-inscribes his father's experience as a soldier in the Second World War:

"war is in our bodies. we see / with war, all dead things becoming gentle, / restful. the living are the / smell. rubble. hunger. / without death there / wouldn't be anything to talk / about, memories to make us powerful, empty."

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The first half of Toronto writer Soraya Peerbaye's first book, Poems for the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (Goose Lane, 108 pages, $19), is comprised of a poem-by-poem contemplation of the relationship between objects and people, what we choose to share with each other, "what our hands have held."

Peerbaye, whose ancestral home is Mauritius, lapses delightfully into (fully glossed) French and Creole as she writes warmly of pistachios and mangos but also stethoscopes and harmonicas.

Once the title sequence is reached, however, the book changes pace.

Drawn from a trip Peerbaye made to the Antarctic, the poems travel blindingly fast, moving from the informed zeal of eco-poetry on whaling and long-line fishing, to the wistful intimacy of family poems, to the elegiac reach of writing on a chapter of Tierra del Fuego's colonial history.

But despite the range of work here and the number of registers Peerbaye is working in, she is always in control of her material. Highly recommended.

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(Two more review-lets after the turn...)




The Exile Book of Poetry in Translation: 20 Canadian Poets Take on the World (Exile Editions, 299 pages, $25) is Toronto poet and novelist Priscila Uppal's response to a call to action from W.H. Auden.

Auden famously asserted that a writer's only political duty is "to translate the fiction and poetry of other countries so as to make them available to readers in his own."

Uppal Canadian responses are varied, from Christian Bok's homophonic translations of Arthur Rimbaud's Voyelles and George Elliot Clarke's translations of other literary translations of Alexander Pushkin to Paul Vermeersch's translations of literal translations.

The introductions that each poet provides to their works-in-translation are easily as fascinating as the poems themselves. Dionne Brand, for instance, admits to taking Spanish lessons over a period of years so she could translate Pablo Neruda more faithfully.

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Vancouver Island writer Maleea Acker's first book, The Reflecting Pool (Pedlar Press, 94 pages, $20), reflects a lineage that includes an MFA from the University of Victoria as well as five summers in remote Alberta firetowers.

In poems tha t are canny mash-ups of city/travel/nature poetry, Acker touches down in urban Mexico, semi-urban Spain and rural Saskatchewan.

The poems, many of which are built of two-line stanzas, reach for grace, for release, for ways to encapsulate and order the world:

"Ours was the happening in between, / a diffusion of streets into history, an environment // defined by you, unrolling, alleys, not drawn but born."

In the book's third section, however, Acker goes home, writing about her father, a familiar landscape. The well-crafted, well-considered elegance of the earlier poems slips a bit as the poet is forced to contemplate losing her home base:

"Someday my father will die: the place // will be the one I return to the rest of my life, / to recall the sorrow, to swim past dark in its dry husk."

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her first book of poetry will be published in the spring by Palimpsest Press of Kingsville, Ont.

Hands on: John Barton

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Given that THIN AIR is over - and I didn't have the handy excuse of the bloggy blog with its monstrous need for content - John Barton wanted to know what I was going to do with his hands before he would plunk his tastefully adorned fingers down on the signing table at McNally's.

I'm not sure if it helped or hurt that I'd just finished reading in support of his trip to Winnipeg. (Heh.)

All of that notwithstanding, I think Barton OWNS that pinkie ring.

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John Barton has published nine books of poetry and five chapbooks, including Designs from the Interior, Sweet Ellipsis, Hypothesis, and Hymn, which was released by Brick Books in August. A third and bilingual edition of West of Darkness: Emily Carr, a self-portrait, his third book, was published by Buschek Books in 2006. Co-editor of Seminal: The Anthology of Canada's Gay-Male Poets, he has won three Archibald Lampman Awards, an Ottawa Book Award, a 2003 CBC Literary Award, and a 2006 National Magazine Award. He lives in Victoria where he is the editor of The Malahat Review.

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I think I'm going to keep on doing what I'm calling the Hands On Project.

Partly because I'd much rather have a picture of a writer's hands than their autograph in a book but mostly I'm curious about what different writers' hands look like and the intersection of function and aesthetic.

Also, taking a picture of hands at rest is similar to taking pictures of mushrooms. Everyone knows what a mushroom is, but it's only when you examine them up close that you get to see the exquisite details...

Finally, I'm curious about the different intimacy of shooting someone's hands, of observing what the writers say about their hands as I'm shooting them.

Except John Barton. And Margaret Sweatman. Both kept their silence.

squash

I've been thinking, over the past week or so, about what to submit for this year's Art from the Heart show. (Because I always do things to deadline and not a day before...

...which isn't a choice, necessarily, but it is how I operate.)

The first year, I did three HUGE macro photos of mushrooms. They were the best that I could do, my camera, the forest.

But they didn't sell and I couldn't afford, the second year, to spend as much money on printing/framing.

So I changed my focus a bit and did what felt like a triptych. The images were scans that juxtaposed household objects with some natural counterpoint.

Pink ribbons and Manitoba Maple seeds.

A tiny ceramic crucible, face down, and half a stinkhorn egg.

And they sold, which doesn't mean anything except that I had proof that one person liked the images.

This year, I was a bit torn. I had a few scans I really liked, but nothing that felt balanced as a trio. I had a handful of good macro pics but I didn't want my images, as a group, to (only) shout: REALLY BIG MUSHROOMS.

Because not everyone grooves on mushrooms the way I do. (The silly fools...)

So I found three images, scans AND photos, that seemed to be on speaking terms. And I made M process them when he should have been renouncing anything work-like, because I'm like that.

And now I just have to get them mounted. Hopefully I'll have time to get them mounted in time for art drop-off day, but if not, I can always get M to do it again.

While I fret.

(Poor M!)

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Oh! I almost forgot. This was one of the scans that didn't make it into the final three.

But I liked it enough to post it here, so...here's its provenance:

The squash is from the Roland Pumpkin Festival, which I attended every year with my dear friend Tessa when I was fancy-free. Now I go every year with M and Aa and always hope to spend some time rubbing shoulders with Tessa and her various initials.

The cufflinks are from M's infamous grandfather. That I never met. That I think I would have liked, most of the time, and thought was deranged the rest of the time. Which is only a feeling, based on meeting his sons and co-mingling genes with his grandson, but...

M's mum passed these to me, knowing my enjoyment of heavy frippery, with a lump in her throat.

And the ladybug carapace I found on my bedroom floor, the beetle having hidden somewhere on my person or on M as it tried to find somewhere warm for the winter.

How to Entertain a Baby While Traveling in Hot Climates

Hey all,

Here's a clip the everloving M shot at Thursday's reading with Clarise Foster & John Barton...specifically, the second of three poems I read.

Though I pulled it back a draft or two from being a pure example of the form, this is my first sonnet, written on deadline for Catherine Hunter's poetry course last year.

I introduced it as my first and probably my last sonnet, given that the writing of it tied me in knots and made me crazy.




The reading was fun, though I have to say I enjoyed rehearsing the poems beforehand than performing them, this time round...for whatever reason, I felt flustered all afternoon and so never felt really settled beforehand.

Which is to say that I flubbed a few lines and didn't necessarily sell every line. Which, on a good night, I can (mostly kind of) do.

The best part of the evening, honestly, was hearing Aa's ringing shout behind the door "My Mummy is here! My Mummy is here!" when I arrived at M's mum's place.

All of that said, I'd like to convey my thanks to Prairie Fire for organizing the events, both at McNally's Thursday and at Aqua on Friday.

Thanks, too, for asking me to read! Which is a separate undertaking, as far as I'm concerned...

wallpaper

installation

montage

triptych

Froth

I'm beginning and ending several things this week, this month, this season.


The manuscript, which started with heaves and broad gestures, is now filling with puffy half-breaths before wobbling off. It has started to take on a shape of its own, which is what I always hope for with a poem, nevermind a book.

(I've never thought before on the scale of the book...)

I've also started working on what will be my first poetry review for the October edition of the monthly poetry column in the Winnipeg Free Press.

Poet Jennifer Still, who'd inherited the column from longtime reviewer/poet Maurice Mierau, asked if I'd be amenable to sharing the bloody thing.

Which means a review every second month and SOME reading that's not on-topic. And we've pledged to exchange books and then talk about them, which is actually the most exciting part of the whole parcel.

It should go without saying that despite my 30+ fiction reviews, I've got tremours. The usual: fear that I'll be found out for posing-as-a-poet-when-I'm-really-NOT, as unintelligent, as unlettered.

But it feels like something I should be doing, even if, again, I'm wobbly. And I think I'm ready.

Big breath in...

Art & Language Games

Amy Karlinsky, arts critic extraordinaire, will giving the Keynote Address (Art in Context: The 100 Mile Art Diet: Manitoba Art and Artists from A to Z) at the upcoming Manitoba Association for Art Education portion of the Manitoba Teachers' Society's Special Area Groups mega-conference.

(I know I know, it seems complex, but to teachers it is very logical. Art teachers go here, English teachers go there...

And everyone gets professional development and probably also squares of marble cheese on the buffet table.)

Anyways, she's very kindly asked me to co-teach her Keynote Breakout Session (i.e. the workshop that immediately follows her lecture) on poetry + art (i.e. ekphrasis) with her.

Very fun, even if now I must think curriculum...

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MAAE presents:
Think Locally!
Art in Our Lives and Our Community

October 22–23, 2009
The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 300 Memorial Blvd.

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Re-presenting the Re-presentation: Art and Language Games
Amy Karlinsky and Ariel Gordon, Keynote Breakout Session
October 23, 2009

Enter the hybrid and interdisciplinary world of language and art. Be inspired to write by using one of the featured images in the morning’s keynote address about Manitoba artists. This experiential workshop is for those who want to write about art and use visual representations in their Art or English classes. Let’s write and talk about art together!

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based poet and editor.

Code: AE1 Grades: All Limit: 40

Amy Karlinsky is a writer, curator, and teacher. She has curated exhibitions for Nunatta Sunaqutangit in Iqaluit, The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Gallery 111, and St. John’s College; and has undertaken art education programs for Canadian galleries, museums and universities. She has published over 100 reviews and essays in journals, magazines and newspapers, including Canadian Art, Border Crossings and the Winnipeg Free Press. She writes about artists on behalf of galleries and artist-run centres and has taught Theory, Writing, and Canadian and Inuit Art History in western Canada. Her writing has been shortlisted twice for the Manitoba Book Awards and she has received an innovation award in teaching at the U of M where she was a Sessional with the School of Art, Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College and Adjunct Professor in Native Studies. She has mentored artists for MAWA and has taught for the private and public school systems in rural, urban and remote locations. She currently teaches for the Winnipeg School Division.

A killing frost

Despite my neglect of my yard this year, in favour of finishing the ms., in favour of avoiding the summer's bad weather, when it came time to strip down the garden, it took me most of the evening to process the bounty.

The thing that made me happiest was the two bunches of rosemary I pulled off my rosemary plant.

Rosemary is my favourite herb. It looks and smells sort of pine-y but something about it transports me the way Xmas trees can't.

It says roast chicken all through the house, roast chicken greeting people at the door before I can.

(Maybe that's because our last Xmas tree, that we cut ourselves from an Xmas tree farm, had been partially spray painted green.

And didn't smell like very much.)

Anyways, I also got a laundry basket-full of ornately shaped green tomatoes and multiple bunches of last year's mint, which appeared elsewhere in the garden.

And oregano and lemon thyme.

These last I strung up, but I popsickled my sparse but fragrant basil plants, on the advice of the internet.

And now I must return to the ms.

But it was distinctly satisfying, even when I made an 11 pm raid on what was left of the basil, the chill, the night.