Hump-day: the slideshow

* * *

So three things are wrong with this video and/or me:

1) I overused the word "lovely." How COMPLETELY un-lovely.

2) I called poet/publisher Dawn Kresan "my publicist." But that was mostly because Perry Grosshans, who she sat beside at the event, posted something rambly to HIS blog talking about how he'd sat next to "Palimpest's publicist." Which was wrong and which I mocked him for...and then replicated in this video.

Sigh.

3) I wasn't ambitious enough to re-record the audio track after having realized the error(s) of my ways. Heh.

(If you'd like to see any of these pics more closely, have a gander at my flicker account, though I will note that it only allowed me to upload half of them. Come July 1, I'll upload the rest...)

Speaking of Speaking of Poets

Fellow Winnipeg poet Lori Cayer and I had a stint on campus/community radio station CKUW yesterday. Or, more properly, we pre-recorded our segment for later broadcast.

Since Lori and I were to share a mic, Lori had to stand on a step-stool, which we sourced from the CKUW offices.

...I didn't tell anyone, but the radio station's offices were once The Uniter's offices, where I spent four or five years while at the U of Wpg....

The format of Speaking of Poets, the show we were guests on, was that we each read one of each other's poems and one of our own.

And it was such a goddamn treat to hear Lori read my poem. I grinned throughout while also, you understand, tried not to move or make any joyous noise. (Those greedy microphones!)

And then I leaned in and read both the poem I'd picked out and the one host John Cunningham requested of me: Chorus and Nine months: swelling & swollen.

It was the first time I'd performed the latter, so reading it with no rehearsal was like running into a fond friend you've been neglecting and promising tea, sometime, somehow.

Debut collection polished, properly incomplete

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon

TO borrow from the patter of real-estate television, Melanie Siebert's debut ticks all the boxes.

Deepwater Vee (McClelland & Stewart, 96 pages, $19) is polished and also properly incomplete, euphoric in its use of language but also at the same time elegiac.

The Victoria-based poet surveys Canada's northern rivers, and her poems are full of the jargon of back-country campers and whitewater enthusiasts on the one hand and of resource extraction on the other.

In addition to these wetted-down works, Siebert writes from the point of view of three characters: an urban busker, a grandmother figure and Canadian explorer and fur trader Alexander Mackenzie.

Given that these poems are the most eco-critical, it makes sense that Siebert does not fully submerge herself in Mackenzie. He is a scowl she wears for the sake of the poems, as in her Mackenzie's Dream:

"Terrain in a-fig, with or without angina. / Bribes grease his lope, his long-legged, drill-rig gait."

Readers increasingly angered by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will find lots to think on here.

* * *

Robert Kroetsch is a senior poet - both in terms of chronology and reputation - and so it is a great relief to see that he still firmly believes in play.

In Too Bad: Sketches Towards a Self-Portrait (University of Alberta Press, 98 pages, $25), Kroetsch looks back as far his childhood in Alberta but dwells also on his recent past in Winnipeg.

Those more accustomed to Kroetsch's expansive use of the page in works such as Seed Catalogue will have to get used to a book full of three-line stanzas, some rhyming, some not.

But Kroetsch, in the poem Touch, has even wryly anticipated this adjustment period:

"Time is a kind of poet, writing three-line stanzas / on the blank above our eyes. We read the lines / with our fingers. We rush to the pharmacy."

The book's cover also brilliantly - and hilariously - summarizes Kroetsch's entire pervy oeuvre.

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

* * *

Learning to Count (Frontenac House, 88 pages, $16) is former Winnipegger Douglas Burnet Smith's 13th book.

This collection like its author, is constantly in transit, locating readers in France, Italy and Corsica.

Given Kroetsch's assertion that Burnet Smith "hears landscape," the poems in Learning to Count are best understood as site-specific recordings.

In Paris, for instance, Burnet Smith takes his son to school and is confronted every day by a plaque naming the murdered schoolchildren shipped to Auschwitz by Nazi collaborators.

And so the reader, in the title poem, is confronted with the image of "some small hands visible between slats, colder, colder, and only more / snow on the platform."

Burnet Smith's poems function as subtle accretions, as lilting songs that are not complete until the last line has been sung.

But the effect of his poems - and their range, capturing the instant and the epic equally well - is magnificent.

* * *

In Fallout (Hagios Press, 88 pages, $18), Ottawa resident Sandra Ridley pits the nuclear family against the nuclear age.

Her debut makes the link between the death of her elder sister in 1958 and the nuclear weapons testing in the U.S. around that time.

Ridley's family, like thousands of others in Canada and the U.S., were exposed to radiation downwind of the tests.

Ridley is somehow able to parse the emotion - and the science - of what would be a daunting subject to most writers.

And she does it with these marvellous matter-of-fact long lines, as in the poem Safety Intervals:

"Some sheep died. / Some unable to stand, bled. / Some were burned, but still stood. // Some sheep, the Commanders were certain, were not harmed at all -- / they ordered soldiers to find them."

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer and editor. Her first poetry collection, Hump, was released this spring by Ontario's Palimpsest Press.

Hands on: Michael Van Rooy

* * *

The timing of this edition of the Hands on Project is very neatly tied to the launch of his third book of crime-fic tonight. Which I intend to be at.

When I corralled Michael, he promptly turned around and grabbed his ass.

And then, re-considering, pulled this knife from his pocket. Which he apparently carries around with him everywhere.

He says he's earned his hands.

* * *

Michael Van Rooy was born in Kamloops, BC. He has worked as a restaurant manager, bartender, fishing guide, card dealer, news editor, freelance researcher, and cheesemaker. He now lives in Winnipeg.

*

This third instalment in the Monty Haaviko series takes a darker tone from the previous two episodes, An Ordinary Decent Criminal and Your Friendly Neighbourhood Criminal. This time, Monty is tangled in political intrigue, blackmail, corruption, and a long-standing feud in which he becomes a pawn. At the same time, a serial killer threatens the love of Monty’s life—his wife Claire, and soon, escape seems impossible.

Water water water water water

Time weighs on him like wet clothes
as he wades into the current
of conversation
as he stands over her
tugs
at her arm
so this can be something asked
and answered instead of only the running
monologue of disease


water water water water water

that's all there is

he says

I know

she says


Friends and family visit and revisit
the question with raised eyebrows but don't ask
because it is easier to make our way down
to the heaving dock with its cross currents
and cross purposes and watch as rocks
break free of waves for long moments learning
again about moment
by moment victories
like when he takes her hand
like when he strokes her face
and calls her sweetheart

But what about the defeats when he goes
dumb staring shy is it easier to pick
your way between shoals of dead
and dying mayflies down to the dock


water water water water water

that's all there is

he says


Is it easier to sit at the edge and let
the dock move you removing
the idea of control
there is no way to know which
wave will come but even so they will break
and you might
break
but not just yet
and you could still drop
off the edge
there is still that


I know

she says

* * *

My uncle, Harvey Barrett Gordon - Barry - died this past Sunday.

For years, I've been writing a poem about the annual drink-and-stink, what we all called opening weekend of the family cottage, while the men were all still healthy enough.

Barry's the central character in that poem. He can still be the central character in that poem, but he's gone now.

RIP.

Primipara

“A woman who is pregnant for the first time or who has borne just one child.” – Webster’s New World Dictionary.

If I had had twins, I would have eaten one,
like a smart-assed rabbit only
half-convinced the grass was gone.

If I had had twins, I would have cracked
a beatific smile. “Thanks,”
“but no.” And primly given it/them back.

If I had had twins, I would have tucked
them under my arms like footballs or small perfect
hand-grenades aimed at my breasts: fuck.

If I had had twins, I would have mothered
mortal enemies whose attacks each on the other
would have started in the womb. My belly a ring-side seat.

And me the usher.

* * *

I'm sure sure if this is my last pregnancy/mothering-a-newborn poem or not, given that the girl turned four this week.

And even though this one is nutty, I'm glad I'm once again processing the world-as-poetry instead of just receiving it as it is...

...which seems to be mostly repairs and other forms of maintenance. Muggy days where you snap at each other. Several consecutive days of rain.

(If you have twins, I'm glad for you and kind of awed that you made it through. Which is to say, no offence...or at least no more than usual.)

An open letter to Susan Antonacci

Dear Susan,

My name is Ariel Gordon and I'm a Winnipeg-based writer and editor.

I'm writing today to tell you that I really really liked that you listed McClelland & Stewart's Canadian Poetry 1920 to 1960 in the What's Inspiring Me This Month sidebar of your editorial in this month's Canadian Living.

There's a lot of very good Canadian poetry (and fiction and non-fiction) out there these days and I'm happy to see it in Canadian Living's pages, though I can't help but want more.

A Canadian books column? Interviews with Canadian writers?

Anyways, thanks again.

Yours,

Ariel

* * *

In case you also want to write Susan, her email address is: susan@canadianliving.com.

Wetland workshop this weekend!

Poetry Workshop
with Poet & Author Ariel Gordon

When: June 20, 3-6pm
Where: FortWhyte Alive, 1961 McCreary Rd.

Join us at the beautiful Siobhan Richardson Field Station for an afternoon workshop of poems and prose writing lead by Ariel, with readings from Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2010). Hump is a mash-up of pregnancy-and-mothering poems and urban/nature/love poems.

Start the session with a guided walk to the field station departing from the Alloway Reception Centre at 2:30pm.

Join us again and invite friends and family for a poetry reading on June 23rd from 7-8pm.

Pre-register at 989-8355
Fee: $45 for non-members and $40 for members

* * *

I hear there's still a spot or two left in this workshop. So if you like peeping at geese or visiting with bison while also writing poetry, give Fort Whyte a call, won't you?

Also, the photo above is one of M's, from a recent trip to Fort Whyte.

Be-league-red

So I spent the weekend at the League of Canadian Poets conference/AGM. And of course I took the red-eye, which functionally meant that I had three hours of sleep before I got up to fly to Toronto.

Luckily, I slept on the flight and then again after I'd checked into my dingy little room.

Whatever reserves I've built up over the past few weeks lasted me until Friday night at 10 pm, when I read as a part of the traditional New Members event.

The reading was held in Toronto's city hall, which was within a molotov-cocktail's throw from the U of T residence where we were staying. And while we were in what was called a committee room instead of the main council chambers, we still had the U shaped seats, each with their own (working) mic. (I checked.)

As there were fourteen of us (!), we were each allotted five minutes...and I wound up reading three-month span of poems from the navel gaze section of Hump.

This was mostly in the interest of keeping Lori Cayer and Alice Major, both of whom have heard me read from the book recently, and who were sitting in that first row of 'council' seats, amused.

But when they announced that they'd be doing an open-mic after the fourteen readings (and the two seminars and the lunch-time readings and the welcome event...), I went a little bleary.

So I made my apologies and wandered back to the residence. And, after stealing wi-fi from someone nearby (no wi-fi in the hotel! blargh!), I promptly collapsed.

The next day, Heather Spears' sketches were on the wall. And there I was, appropriately smudged.

Having seen Spears' sketches around for years and marveled at her goddamn something-from-nothing I was especially tickled to see my own likeness, so I snapped it up. And grinned foolishly...

* * *

Other highlights of the conference included seeing Karen Solie win this year's Pat Lowther Award for Pigeon.

Included cackling over dinner with Linda Frank and Marilyn Gear Piling and Carol Little and Danya O'Malley just before seeing KS win this year's PL Award and reading (for 3 min) just after, my Tit poem accompanied this time by a litany of search terms and locations.

(Poems about tits - boobies. Tit poems. Titty poems. Tits, poems.)

Included thinking and feeling my way through the seminar on three generations of experimental poets/poetry that included Lola Lemire Tostevin, Sina Queyras, and Jenny Sampirisi.

I'm also definitely planning to pick up the new collected Pat Lowther, after a weekend of hearing her poems on the tongues of so many other poets, even that of her daughter Christine Lowther.

Finally, I was pleased and honoured to be elected to the Manitoba Representative position on the LCP national council.

Which means that I've at least three more conferences/AGMs ahead of me...though hopefully not another three red-eyes. Goddamn red-eyes...

* * *

I've got the monthly poetry column for the Winnipeg Free Press due this Sunday.

And I'm also got my wetland workshop/reading at Fort Whyte Sunday and Wednesday, respectively.

To which I say: Urk! Sputter! Fun?

Hands on: Susan Musgrave

* * *

After her panel on making poetry "more visible" at the League of Canadian Poets conference, Musgrave clasped and reclasped her hands against her belly.

She mentioned that she frequently finds herself rubbing the bony brainpan of her bird ring.

Then she clasped her hands against her belly. And shifted and clasped them again, differently.


* * *

Susan Musgrave's most recent novel was Cargo of Orchids (Knopf, 2000) and latest collection of poetry was Obituary of Light: the Sangan River Meditations (Leaf Press, 2009). She has been nominated, and has received awards, in five different categories of writing: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, personal essay, children's writing and for her work as an editor. She teaches poetry in the University of British Columbia's Optional-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Programme. She lives on Haida Gwaii.

Pano at the Black Sheep

* * *

M went quiet for long minutes, over breakfast at the Black Sheep, our favourite breakfast place when it's just the two of us, as he took and then processed this panorama.

I have two thoughts regarding this image:

1) "M and his bloody devices!" (Though I do benefit from it, I'm rich in profile pics if nothing else...)

2) "I suppose I should figure out what I'm reading tonight/tomorrow/the next day, huh..."

The latter is because I've three readings in three days, starting tonight at Aqua with Chandra Mayor and Gillian Sze, then one Friday and Saturday nights at the League of Canadian Poets Conference in Toronto.

And I haven't even packed yet. Frocks and plane clothes and scarves, oh my!

Hands on: Colin Smith

* * *

"You're photographing my left hand, Ariel. I write with my right hand."

"Tell you about my hands?"

"Well, I run warm. And the texture of the skin on my hands is ridiculously soft. But I DON'T spa. And I DON'T put cream on them every night, yada yada."

* * *

Colin Smith is a poetry scalawag. Books = 8X8X7 (Krupskaya, 2008) and Multiple Poses (Tsunami, 1997). More current work pops up in CV2, The Collective Consciousness, and Dandelion. Rarely meets a curse he doesn't like.

dentition

mmmulch

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. June 7, 2010.

* * *

I really really enjoy watching for - and then seeing - the first few harbingers of spring/summer.

Like yellow lady's slipper orchids. Or those white mushrooms that look exactly like teeth. Or the variety of native violets, strawberries and other low shrubbery that is now in bloom.

And then there's that corridor where you're surrounded by wild roses. And the smell of being surrounded wild roses. I mean, it's no stinkhorn funk, but it's pretty nice.

Most fun, of course, is watching M sink in the soupy mulch mud puddles that is much of the forest right now, given all the rain we've had this month AND given that most of the paths in the forest are built of successive layers of mulch.

I particularly like it when he grunts and yelps as he blunders from one spot to the next. And then stops and looks back and me.

I laugh because what is a pratfall without an audience...and pick my way delicately to where he is, because I'm a delicate flower. Gentle. In need of protection from the elements.

By the time we got back to the parking lot, both of us were wet and mucky practically to the knees but we STILL kept an eye out for the woman and her leashless dogs-as-big-as-ponies we'd seen entering the forest just before us.

(M muttered, "I'm sure they chased down a deer..." "...And are now FEASTING." I finished.)

But it was great fun to meander after a haphazard go-go-go weekend. And it was good to walk repellent-free this one last time, because according to the great entomologist in the sky, they're going to be BAD this year.

I mean, I hate dousing myself with repellent (in my hair!) but I hate being infested with hungry bugs MORE.

Reprint: Night Table Recommendations

After my launch at McNally Robinson May 5, events coordinator John Toews asked me if I'd be interested in doing one of their Night Table Recommendations columns.

There were no parameters in terms of style or format or length or even date of release...

...which, given that I'm staring down another poetry column (ulp!), made writing this immensely pleasurable.

* * *

Ariel Gordon - Night Table Recommendations

Posted by McNally Robinson
Thursday, Jun 03, 2010 at 9:25am

I recently published my first book - Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2010) - so I'm firmly in rest-and-recover mode, re-visiting beloved books and authors before getting back to work on my (sadly languishing) manuscript of poems on American inventor Thomas Alva Edison.

As such, I thought I'd share some of the plums of this particular crop of reading...

I've recently re-immersed myself in the writing of Calgary-based but Scotland-born SF/fantasy author Dave Duncan.

Duncan's one of those people who waited until they retired to start writing...but since he's nearly 40 books into his second career, I can't quibble. Also, the writing is very good, second career or no. Which is sort of hateful, but...it's better, I think, that I spent the time I would have otherwise wasted on envy reading his books.

As such, I spent much of my twenties trolling used bookstores for installments of his A Man of His Word / A Handful of Men series and so when I spied the first of his The Great Game trilogy, I picked it up.

I appreciate his re-creation of WWI-era England, of private schools and military hospitals and small villages. I also quite like how he telescopes out to inter/intraplanetary travel between a world at war and another with a pantheon of squabbling all-too-human gods.

I'm also slowly picking up the books I read as a child for my daughter. The most recent acquisition is a box set of Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quartette, which, along with Frank Herbert's Dune books and Lloyd Alexander's Pyrdain Chronicles formed much of my adolescent reading.

I think L'Engle's girls-as-scientists/heroes approach to fantasy is spiffy. Nifty. Neato. To sum, bookish girls could do MUCH worse than to identify with Meg Murry. (I'm hoping my girl thinks so too...)

In terms of my current reading / writing practices, I'm just about to read / re-read the verse memoir of former Winnipegger Robert Kroetsch, entitled Too Bad: Sketches Toward a Self-Portrait (University of Alberta Press, 2010).

The book is worth picking up just for the cover, which I think neatly summarizes Kroetsch's pervy oeuvre.

I have to admit, I have a bit of a lit-crush on Kroetsch, most specifically because of his novels: The Studhorse Man, Alibi, The Puppeteer, Badlands. They're all so very very good. Even mythic. But his poetry is becoming more of an influence, specifically his long poems...

(Kroetsch blurbed my book this spring and my thought process in approaching him ran something like this: Robert. Kroetsch. Reading. My. Poems. Oh. My.)

Finally, I'd like to urge you to read a book by Edmonton poet/non-fiction specialist Shawna Lemay, Calm Things (Palimpsest Press, 2008).

The beauty of this book - the robin's egg blue interior pages! the matte cream-coloured paper of the cover! - is what made me submit my manuscript to Palimpsest.

But the pleasure of holding the book is only one of its graces: it's a nuanced examination of how and why Shawna and her husband, painter Rob Lemay, invite stillness - and a great deal of precariousness, as a result - into their lives through art-making.

Something about these essays on painting and still life (Rob's preferred mode) and shells and bird's nests and poetry touch me very deeply. I suppose I wish for a bit more thing-ness in my life...

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Ariel Gordon's first book of poetry, Hump, was published by Ontario's Palimpsest Press in spring 2010. She recently won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer at the Manitoba Book Awards. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.

Wetland workshop/reading

* * *

Here's a screen-capture taken from Fort Whyte's summer 2010 newsletter.

I'm highly excited to be teaching a workshop at Fort Whyte, as it's one of my favourite half-wild places in Winnipeg. Weekends often find us there, walking the trails or visiting with their resident herd of bison (!) or wandering around the interpretive centre, where they're apparently scheming to get a burrowing owl exhibit up and running.

In the meantime, they're having me. Teach a course that is. And then do a reading.

The workshop should be great fun, given that it'll be on nature poetry and be located at the rather exclusive research centre on-site, but I'm most looking forward to the reading that follows the workshop...

...my first wetland reading! Squee!

(I'm so embarrassed. Squee!-ing in public. Tsk.)

* * *

And now for the text-only version...

Poetry Workshop
with Poet & Author Ariel Gordon

When: June 20, 3-6pm
Where: FortWhyte Alive, 1961 McCreary Rd.

Join us at the beautiful Siobhan Richardson Field Station for an afternoon
workshop of poems and prose writing lead by Ariel, with readings from Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2010). Hump is a mash-up of pregnancy-and-mothering poems and urban/nature/love poems.

Start the session with a guided walk to the field station departing from the Alloway Reception Centre at 2:30pm.

Join us again and invite friends and family for a poetry reading on June 23rd from 7-8pm.

Pre-register at 989-8355
Fee: $45 for non-members and $40 for members