Hump cover up on Palimpsest site!

"Hump is a mash-up of pregnancy-and-mothering poems and urban/nature/love poems that functions as an anti-sentiment manifesto from Winnipeg writer Ariel Gordon.

Month by month, stanza by stanza, Gordon attempts to adequately represent the wonder and devilment of being-with-child.

Hump is a love poem written simultaneously to a father and child, to a lover and the glimmer in his eye, and to a city that is gritty, faded, but still greener-than-most."

* * *

The cover is here! The cover is here!

(And yes, for those of you that have a copy of The navel gaze, the back cover bumf is the same. I thought it still worked, so...)

Cream of the '09 crop

Free Press reviewers recall favourite reads this year
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Fiction

All the Living, by C.E. Morgan
"It might seem strange to recommend a novel about a drought set in the U.S. south in a year that we endured our own northern flood. But a conflagration is a conflagration, and Kentuckian C.E. Morgan's All the Living is a damn fine distraction." -- Ariel Gordon

Border Songs, by Jim Lynch
"[An] unusual hybrid of character study, poetic nature writing and ripped-from-the-headlines crime novel." -- Bob Armstrong

Between the Assassinations, by Aravind Adiga
"Adiga's slumdogs want what other slumdogs want, and he tells their stories in all their urgency. Just don't expect a Hollywood ending." -- Reinhold Kramer

[...]

Non-fiction

The Ascent of Money, by Niall Ferguson
"In an ode to Darwin, Ferguson concludes with a chapter on the evolution of finance and remarks: 'until we fully understand the origins of financial species, we shall never understand the fundamental truth about money." -- Scott Forbes

Beyond Belfast, by Will Ferguson
"A smart, engaging travel memoir about sore feet, Northern Ireland and coming to terms with who you are and from where you came." -- Julie Kentner

Burmese Lessons, by Karen Connelly
"[F]rom the messy mix Connelly extrudes both keen analysis of the many faces of opposition to the Burmese generals and an intimate account of love, jealousy and guilt." -- Douglas J. Johnston

For the rest of the best-of list, click here.

Done and done!

In in a fit of get-it-off-my-desk-i-ness, I submitted my perfectly imperfect manuscript to Palimpsest Press, who in the weeks and months to come will turn it into my first trade publication.

I've got a teetering stack of must-read to attend to now and all the to-ings and fro-ings that surround the holidays, but I must say I feel, well, um, good.

Partly that's because somewhere along the line, I finally stopped mentally referring to the ms. as that-hateful-thing and sort of started a muted-sure-to-be-fleeting sense of accomplishment at having produced such-a-thing.

And so, I'd like to thank my editor Jeanette Lynes for all the ruthless/gentlenesses.

Thanks too to Dawn Kresan, poet/publisher, for her patience with all my moving-house-related foolishness.

I can't wait to see this stack of paper turn into a g-d book!

PBN: Thomas Trofimuk

From the winter 2009 issue of Prairie books NOW.

The writing life

A month or so ago, I was asked if I wanted to co-judge the Writers' Collective's annual poetry contest.

I gladly accepted, as I gladly accepted each of the other two times I've judged their contests for them.

(And gladly accepted third prize when I entered the poetry contest myself last year...)

Judging for the Writers' Collective has a private and a public face.

The private part of the undertaking is probably typical to every other writing contest: a batch of anonymous entries, each inscribed with a number.

Which is not to say that identifying markers have been stripped away.

Though most contest guidelines indicate that people should use something like Times New Roman, 12 pt., most people have a preferred font and a preferred font size for presenting their poetry.

Which gives the submissions a flavour and a tone that sets them apart from each other.

Interestingly, a number of entrants this year presented each poem in a different font/font size, which made me think they were all from a single creative writing class and varying the font/font size was a 'tip' they'd been given.

"Varying the font/font size is refreshing to the eye!" Or some such bunk.

(More after the turn...)

Sometimes, given that this is a local poetry contest, it is possible to guess the identity of entrants, given the general mien of their poetry or even specific poems.

Which is nothing more than a private parlour trick, unless that recognition signals that there's a conflict.

This year, I didn't recognize any of the poets behind the submissions, either while anonymous or when faces had been put to names. Which I actually prefer, come to think of it...

In any event, the public face of judging this contest involves more than coming to a decision on win-place-show with your co-judge.

You also have to come up with reasonably coherent judges' comments for each of the three winners and present said winners with their prizes at the awards ceremony.

And agree on who's going to say what. And who's going to hand out the certificates. And who's going to read the poems of winners who aren't present.

Finally, after all's said and done, you also have to stand at one end of the room for a group photograph.

Which is where this photo comes in. Co-judge Jennifer Still and I with two of the winners and two of four honourable mentions.

(What can I say, we turned out to be soft touches for promising poets...)

It should go without saying that I am grateful to the Writers' Collective for the opportunity to judge their contests for a third time.

I am grateful too for the excuse the contest gave Jennifer and I to talk poetry, in a week and a month when I spent all my time in boxes instead of in books.

Finally, I am grateful to have had another excuse to attend a Writers' Collective awards ceremony, which are always warm and hopeful and brimful of people attempting the writing life.

Fun!