arrest

I have no idea what mushroom this is. It reminds me of a handful of rind, or worse yet, a heart. It's all bloody tissue and no artifice. But I get a secret thrill every time I spy it in the underbrush.

spinster

outstretch

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. July 29, 2010.

* * *

A cloudy cool day after several scorchers seemed eminently suited for a walk in the forest.

I was hoping for plentiful mushrooming but most everything from the wet week or two last month has long since shriveled. Luckily, shrivel is visually interesting.

This is another of those toothy mushrooms. They're an old standby in that they're worth photographing throughout their life-cycle...

...which I can't say for the only other mushrooms on offer in the forest, the starchy gilled things that are nearly impossible to shoot.

So I decided that I would try shooting their sturdy white stems and collect a few for spore printing. Which means, several hours later, that I have already desecrated books/poems by Jonathan Ball, Barbara Nickel, and Anna Swanson.

Heh.

UPDATE: the magnificent ruin I had intended for several good poems will have to wait, as the ugly old mushrooms on offer in the forest had white spores and so made nary an impression on the page.

Blue-ing

Photo from the Living Prairie Museum, Winnipeg, MB. July 18, 2010.

* * *

We attended the Monarch Butterfly Festival at the Living Prairie Museum today, which included the usual gamut of face painting-crafts-activities for the girl but ALSO entertainments for us adults, including a naturalist-guided walk of the tallgrass prairie.

I got to explain what galls where. And stand at the edge of a grown-over bison wallow. And fondle prairie sage.

Of course, I WOULD be drawn to the one native plant the (volunteer) naturalist couldn't identify.

You can't quite see it from this pic, but it had silvery foliage. And it was in bloom all over the field.

Fun!

(I'm still sad I didn't get the Artist-in-Residence gig they had at the LPM a few years ago...I wasn't ready but it would have been divine!)

Reprint: Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
July 10, 2010

Gordon makes splash with simplicity
Reviewed by Zanna Joyce

In this debut volume of poetry, Winnipeg's own Ariel Gordon makes a major splash with simplicity and verve.

Winner of this year's John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba writer, Gordon writes about life with a wry twist, describing walking in the park, interacting with her spouse and moving through the many steps of the process of becoming a mother.

Some of these 43 poems have seen publication in literary journals. Also making a return appearance are the mushrooms Gordon has shown off in her photography.

At times so personal as to be enigmatic to the outside participant, her conversation nevertheless captivates with small details.

Gordon makes many local references - even Winnipeg's cankerworms make a lyric appearance. But while Leo Mol is known in many places that people treasure art, one has to wonder how Don's Deli will play in Vancouver.

Her poems on fall in Assiniboine Park are stark and written in high contrast:

"On the last good day we shiver // at the traffic noise of geese that don't know whether they're coming or going // up/down the lakes the ditches the half-frozen fields // & as the wind climbs over this stand of trees // it doesn't matter what's green, what's fallen // what's about to fall. // It will all // fall."

But it is Tit Poem that bites deep. The recounting of a mastectomy, it contains none of the pity that women who have undergone the experience speak of disdainfully.

"Handle with care!" is written across the patient's chest in bold permanent marker. Afterward, she shows off her bandage with something like pride.

The odd speculations of hospital staff leave her puzzled. Maybe she was the sort of woman who would leave home without her underwear?

The bulk of the volume is about going from non-motherhood to motherhood, from the less-than-romantic Pre-conception ("but he has no idea / / I am his axis that I make him rotate // until his back-throat black-hole // is as far from me as it can get") to the drippy, mushy months of pregnancy and the curious sensation of being mauled from within by tiny hands and feet.

Not so much sweetness and light, Gordon channels Adrienne Rich's dichotomy of love and frustration with her realism.

Let's hope that she eventually finds some reprieve from the omnipresent demands that infuse even the most unrelated of activities.

From For:

"The city's tinkling bracelet of sirens// your fingers rasping over // soft flesh sudden alarm // of teeth."

Gordon, a Free Press poetry columnist, has written a personal and observant collection that takes us to familiar places but forces us to look at them with fresh eyes.

Zanna Joyce is a Winnipeg project development specialist, a freelance writer and a mother.

gotch-a

underwhere

bloomers

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. July 9, 2010.

* * *

So after a rather limp week, I got me to the forest this morning, with a full-sugar tea in one hand and my camera in the other.

(Though it often seems extremely ill-advised, I'm cutting the actual sugar in my tea with modified sugar, i.e. sucralose. In the interest of goddamn fitness.)

It being full summer, everything is full-blown. The mushrooms. The grasses. The wildflowers, including this variety. I've never seen it before but this summer it's everywhere...

Monday's Poem

A slightly more refined version of my poem Primipara is up on Leaf Press' website as this week's Monday's Poem.

And when I say slightly more refined, I mean in terms of the shape/size of the poem and not the content.

Because it's still pretty bad. Heh.

(Leaf Publisher Ursula Vaira sent what, to my mind, is the best acceptance ever: "Some poem!")

(The other thing worth remarking on is the fact that I've used the second of the sketches poet/artist Heather Spears did of me at the recent LCP conference as my author pic.)

On the beach

* * *

On the stump halfway along the rock wall that lines the beach at Clearwater, MB.

On the road

All photos Riding Mountain National Park, MB. July long weekend, 2010.

* * *

We drove into/among the herd in the Bison Enclosure at Riding Mountain National Park on Friday.

Since we were creeping forward inches at a time, we let the girls stand with their heads out the window like the small yappy dogs they sometimes resemble.

It was fun to watch them and then to watch the caramel calves - or infant bison - weave in and out of the herd that moved from a rainy morning in the meadow to a hot afternoon in the trees.

And then we went to the beach. And had ice cream.

Reprint: Giving birth to babies and books

Local writer Ariel Gordon discusses her new poetry collection, Hump
by Kristy Hoffman (Volunteer)

June 29th 2010 edition of the Uniter

Love, nature, the city and being knocked up are all central themes in the poetry comprising Hump, a collection by Winnipeg writer Ariel Gordon.

Mindfully crafted with language that is simple and engaging, it is the first full book of poetry the 37-year-old has published. It is preceded only by two chapbooks: 2008’s The Navel Gaze and 2009’s Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999.

Observant narrative describes an eclectic assortment of experience occurring before, during and after pregnancy. The book, as a result, displays three parts, each bearing clever peculiarities that make the read memorable.

The works in Part I (some written as early as 2005) often bring into focus recognized Winnipeg scenery, such as the Assiniboine Park Zoo and the Leo Mol Sculpture Garden.

Part II is subdivided by titles that parallel various stages of pregnancy. The poems found here were written “while preggers” and Gordon attributes this to a mind busied by the topic.

The poetry found in Part III is the most recent, as it concerns life with a child. Gordon completed the manuscript in late 2008 and the book was published this past April.

“I firmly believe that books are mostly just containers for human conversation, thoughts and feelings and opinions,” she said by e-mail at the end of June. “And I suppose I hope that my book ‘talks’ to people, that the poems are interesting to them in terms of language but also theme and setting.”

Gordon’s own experiences, even if not always literal, serve as the foundation upon which all of the poetry is based.

“A synopsis (of Hump) would look something like this: Girl meets boy, girl colonizes boy, girl eventually gets knocked up. Baby then colonizes girl and boy (but mostly girl) and also their entire life.”

On the significance of the connection between the book’s title, the poem “Hump” and the collection in its entirety, Gordon notes that she was looking for a title that is a good mouthful.

“(The) word ‘hump,’ with its toothy consonants and that beautiful ‘u,’ seemed to fit the bill.”

There is more to it than that, however, as the title awakens every meaning of the word. According to Gordon, ‘Hump’ simultaneously invoked (and rhymed with) ‘bump’ (as in baby bump), and the word also describes a mound of earth, or slang for sex.

“(And) without sex, there’s no babies, right?”

But ultimately, it’s not just mothers who will enjoy Hump - most Winnipeggers will find some aspect in the poetry to relate to.

“I wanted to see Winnipeg represented in poetry, to have this book be as much a love poem to the city as to my partner and our child,” Gordon said.