flurry

downed

pond

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. January 26, 2010

* * *

I was crabby this morning, after yesterday's sick child/wailing blizzard, the re-appearance of winter's blue static crackles and dry throat.

So I pulled out the BIG coat, tore thru the baskets of hats and mitts, and ventured out.

And I was alone in the forest, except for the older made-of-sticks man who has the oldest X-country skis in the whole world and wears a baseball cap to ski in. No scarf. Not even a turtleneck.

But he's been there every time I've been there of late, both of us plodding along, both of us clearly pleased with our ourselves. He asked me, as we cross paths, if my coffee was still warm.

I said it was. And it mostly was.

And then I kept breaking snow and scanning downed logs for mushrooms. Not expecting much now that we'd had another big snow.

But then I happened to take the path that circles the pond in the middle of the forest, in an effort to avoid a pair of yuppies with unleashed dogs and cellphones held up to their ears.

I realized, halfway around, that I could get to the island in the middle of the pond, usually only the domain of beaver and summer geese.

So I spent a good twenty minutes behind a curtain of burnt bullrushes, happily looking for - and finding - mushrooms.

What a good winter it's been for the forest. Which is something to be grateful for. Something I almost never find myself saying during the deepfreeze months, either unwilling to get cold or to make the time, when it feels like there's so little light and so much to get done.

But I've got a book coming out this spring and I'm a little restless. And it's my last writing/thinking/reading Tuesday before my M-i-L heads south for a few months. And the deadlines will wait. They always do.

Montreal's whisky damp permeates first collection

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon

Chris Hutchinson, who was born in Montreal but spent long enough in Vancouver for its whisky damp to permeate his first collection of poetry, is nothing if not consistent.

As that book, Unfamiliar Weather, ended with a poem that referenced Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, so his new collection Other People's Lives (Brick Books, 128 pages, $19), begins with one.

His sophomore effort also continues Unfamiliar Weather's extended abstract examinations of feelings and states of mind.

"Somewhere floats emptiness, / untwisted space, voluminous cavity // in the air which is the air not rushing anywhere - / just stillness, hoving pure, suspended // like a word bubble where nothing is written." (Vocation)

Fortunately, Hutchinson's almost morbid self-awareness comes bundled with wit, intelligence and heart.

In the long poem sequence Cross-Sections, he writes:

"I admit / I arrived complaining. I had colic for a year. / On each sip of consciousness my stomach / swung on its hinge. But you were gone. / So I began to sing."

***

In his first collection, Never More There (Nightwood Editions, 88 pages, $18), Newfoundland's Stephen Rowe tackles some of life's largest questions.

This comes in to sharpest focus in the long poem in the book's first section on Rowe's father and grandfather.

Rowe is after what it means to be a man - and a bookish male poet, to boot - especially when the grandfather you revere was an über-male: bear-like, equally at home in a wrestling ring or a logging camp.

A few poems further in, facing a landscape named and numbered by his grandfather's generation, Rowe states his poetic thesis:

"Is there any wonder / I want to give these places names of my own? / Brand them with moments / like memories, but more real: / walk through this place in sunlight, / surefooted, / hands swinging by my side." (At Heart’s Content)

Rowe recasts the small tragedies of his life in Gander as soaring for-the-ages tragedy in what amounts to a memorable debut.

***

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

The Al Purdy A-frame Anthology (Harbour, 160 pages, $27) comes with a warning from Harbour publisher Howard White: "if this doesn't look quite like any book you've ever seen before, don't worry. You're not imagining it."

The book is part homage to the late poet Al Purdy, part biography of the phase of Purdy's career when he and his wife built a cottage in rural Ontario, and part fundraising brochure for the titular A-frame.

But it is also lovingly and luxuriously designed, with scads of illustrations and photos alongside contributions from Canlit luminaries such as Dennis Lee, Stan Dragland and Margaret Atwood.

Though not all of the texts pass muster (how many times do the same anecdotes need to be trotted out?), it is lovely to have a reason to re-read Purdy's poems on the A-frame as well as on the wider Prince Edward County it was situated in:

"Something is about to happen. Leaves are still / Two shores away, a man hammering in the sky. / Perhaps he will fall." (Wilderness Gothic)

***

Regina writer Dave Margoshes' life and work bears a passing resemblance to Purdy's.

They share a certain swagger, an early unwillingness to settle, and, in addition to both having been writers-in-residence in Winnipeg, both at some point in their lives inhabited renovated chicken coops.

Margoshes' poetry, however, is more tender than Purdy's, perhaps because Margoshes has always had a trio of muses - his two older sisters and his now ex-wife - to write to.

The Horse Knows the Way (BushekBooks, 120 pages, $17.50), Margoshes' fourth collection of poetry and 13th book overall, resembles his earlier collections but also marks a new direction.

In addition to the Margoshes formula of love poems intermingled with voice poems and occasional poems, poems about being in Saskatchewan, Banff, and Emma Lake and poems about the weather, Margoshes is, for the first time, looking back to childhood.

And while his poetry isn't aggressive - or even passive aggressive - when it works it's bloody wonderful.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her first book of poetry, Hump, will be published in April by Palimpsest Press.

storied

mottled

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, Mb. January 15, 2010.

* * *

Two walks in Assiniboine Forest in one week! I'm the envy of everyone I know...or, rather, of M and Cynthia. But I talk to those two a lot, so that's a lot of envy.

(It was dreamy...)

Reprint: 8-Ball

JB: What is your ambition as a writer—what do you want to accomplish, personally and professionally?

AG: I see books – and individual units of writing such as poems, poem sequences, short stories, and novels – as records of human endeavour. We natter to ourselves, we natter to our readers. Something changes.

As someone whose first book is coming out this year, I’m greatly anticipating being part of the larger conversation…

Beyond that, I mostly want to be able to negotiate a relatively secure insecurity for myself, which translates into time and space in which to write the next thing and the thing after that, always reaching for what I’m not currently capable of.

The rest of it I have very little control over, so I won’t speculate...

* * *

Sometime before Xmas, Winnipeg/Calgary/Winnipeg poet Jonathan Ball asked me if I would agree to an e-interview, to accompany the growing legions of e-interviews of poets on his blog.

(The gimmick being that he asks each poet the same eight questions...)

I wasn't able to get to it until early January and, even so, I had to set up my computer on my dining room table, as I haven't yet unpacked my 3rd floor office.

I'm sort of tickled that it appeared on his blog the same week as the launch of his first book, as it feels sort of apt...

Anyways, for the answers to the other seven questions Jonathan Ball put to me (and every single other poet), click here.

Fun! (And: Congrats, Jonathan!)

spine

earful

crook

* * *

Today was the first time this winter that I've been able to go for a walk in Assiniboine Forest.

I had very properly decided that, despite the good weather, I had too much work to do to go for a walk.

Then I put my jacket on, located my camera, located an extra set of batteries (because, sob, I couldn't remember the last time the camera had been used), and threw myself in the car.

I didn't even bring a few of the books from my must-read pile, even though they'd been next to my bag and would have gotten me a pass for a working-lunch.

I got jumped on twice by dogs. Whose owners didn't apologize. I got snow on the camera. The snow itself was beat-up and flabby, being the only deep snowfall we've had so far this winter.

But the sun was shining - not bright and brilliant but bent and warm, somehow - and I was marching along gleefully ignoring everyone else, looking for something worth shooting, looking for that blue-ish lichen that sometimes catches my eyes on winter walks. Just looking.

The only thing that would have made it any better is being able to dip my shooting-chilled hands in M's warm pockets.

The only thing that will make it better is figuring out how to get there as many times as possible during this warm snap.

* * *

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. January 12, 2010.

In media res

Oddly enough, I've done two TV interviews in two weeks.

The first was in my role as Events Coordinator at Aqua Books when City TV came calling, two days after McNally Robinson booksellers announced they were closing two of four of their stores...and bookstore owner Kelly Hughes was out of town.

Horrors! Kelly is such a dab hand at dealing with the media that I've never had to worry about speaking for the bookstore before.

Problem is, I've only worked at Aqua for two years...and I've been a part of this community for nearly fifteen.

Being part of the community over this span meant being thrilled when I got asked to read at McNally's, meant many hours browsing and buying books in the various stores, meant eating in the restaurant.

(More after the turn...)

My favourite McNally's memory is actually partially a Prairie Fire memory. I got a job as Administrative Assistant at the venerable lit mag one summer when I was still at the U of Wpg, and one of my duties was to help prepare for launch parties.

PF was launching their Carol Shields issue at the Osborne Village McNally's store and, since Shields had graciously agreed to be in attendance, Managing Editor Andris Taskans and the rest of the staff wanted to do something, well, gracious, in return.

No one had a car and so anything elaborate was out of the question, but I was promptly sent out into the day with a wad of cash and told to get flowers.

Which I did, at Safeway, because there wasn't another florist within walking distance. Which somehow didn't feel very gracious, as I marched back to the bookstore, but as soon as the flowers were in a vase, we all felt somehow that we'd marked the occasion.

...which is a long digression when all I was attempting to say was how difficult it was speaking as a representative of the bookstore and not just as a writer, mourning the difficulties McNally's seems to be in. Which is what the news story was about.

Anyways, I seemed to do okay in the interview, even if I didn't admit to great concern over Aqua's prospects based on McNally's difficulties. As the reporter would have obviously preferred, since she asked variants of the same leading question over and over.

The next week, we were asked to participate in another "McNally's Aftershock" story - this one about the growth of e-books with Global TV.

(If you've been following the McNally's story, their financial difficulty has been variously attributed to their expansion into the Toronto market during a recession and and the growth of e-books - i.e. the DEATH of paper-and-glue books.)

Since Kelly had returned from his travels, I thought I was off the hook. Until Kelly appeared and said that the reporter wanted to get the perspective of "a local author."

Which meant me.

I said semi-coherent things about e-books and real books and how we read different kinds of books. How poetry doesn't yet work on e-readers. I even used visual aids, pulling down a romance and also Gillian Wigmore's Soft Geography.

And then, after we were done, I showed them the cover for my book on the computer behind the counter, mostly because I was excited about having a cover to show people.

They got excited about that. And that's what they wound up using.

(Relatively) fun!

12 months, 12 first lines

Because I hate resolutions. Because I hate advice.

Because I still somehow wanted to mark the passing of 2009, I stole this idea from Rebecca Rosenblum's Rose-coloured post on the same topic.

Basically, the gimmick is to take the first sentence of the first post of every month. But, since some of my first lines were entire stanzas, I decided they "counted" too.

I sort of like the haphazard narrative that emerges. All my favourite things: mushrooms, hikes, books, writing. I also like that it's fragmentary, just like my 2009.

* * *


This gory pinwheel is what happens when you neglect a spore print, leaving the mushroom to decompose on your careful verses...


Lately, I've had two full days a week, bought and paid for, for writing.


There's a splendid documentary called Know Your Mushrooms appearing at Winnipeg's Cinematheque March 13 & 14.


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


1.
A boy worth his salt, having stayed
for a last weary swim, finds
himself at the bottom
of the canal.


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


How she used to look when she’d come out
onto the big stoop
of the house and call Alva!


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


This from our walk last week, in which there were many bugs and not many good pictures.


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.


We moved all this junk on the weekend, mostly because we suddenly bought a new house a week and a half ago and so suddenly had to have our old house clean and tidy.


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