Sketch by GMB Chomichuk of Alchemical Press.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Manifesto-ing
So I ran from work at Aqua Books yesterday to attend the launch of the second volume of Alchemical Press' Imagination Manifesto.
I was in a writing group with Greg Chomichuk - the artist/writer behind Alchemical Press - the summer before I got knocked up, and I'm really impressed with what he's come up with since then, what he's trying to do, what he IS doing.
At the launch, he did a exercize with audience members called the Exquisite Corpse.
He had different people draw the head, torso and legs of a monster on pieces of paper, which he then collected for use in the next issue of the Imagination Manifesto.
Which is both clever AND interactive, to my mind.
Except I was too tired to play along and so just sat there with my launch wine, watching Greg badger people into drawing just one more set of legs or another head...and even making sure that the penis-head someone drew wasn't given to his high school students for completion.
And then he picked one corpse at random and drew it on the canvas that was sitting on an easel next to the podium.
He drew this monster in five minutes. (The skyline was already present...) Which is hateful, I know. Especially when you consider that the stories underlying the images are just as strong.
When I went up to get my book 'signed' - which means both a signature and a sketch in graphic novel-land - Greg squinted at me.
"Do you want a hero or a monster?" he asked.
Given that my book title was on the cover as a part of the blurb I'd given them via my participation on the jury for Best First Book at last year's Manitoba Book Awards - and that my book is mostly about tits - there was only one possible answer to that question.
"I want a tit monster!" I said.
And that is what I got.
I also got really drunk very quickly on launch wine, given that I had run straight from work and not had dinner. (They had eight bottles of wine for the event! Eight! So the four glasses I drank was not so entirely gluttonous...)
Yay! Fun!
I was in a writing group with Greg Chomichuk - the artist/writer behind Alchemical Press - the summer before I got knocked up, and I'm really impressed with what he's come up with since then, what he's trying to do, what he IS doing.At the launch, he did a exercize with audience members called the Exquisite Corpse.
He had different people draw the head, torso and legs of a monster on pieces of paper, which he then collected for use in the next issue of the Imagination Manifesto.
Which is both clever AND interactive, to my mind.
Except I was too tired to play along and so just sat there with my launch wine, watching Greg badger people into drawing just one more set of legs or another head...and even making sure that the penis-head someone drew wasn't given to his high school students for completion.
And then he picked one corpse at random and drew it on the canvas that was sitting on an easel next to the podium.
He drew this monster in five minutes. (The skyline was already present...) Which is hateful, I know. Especially when you consider that the stories underlying the images are just as strong.
When I went up to get my book 'signed' - which means both a signature and a sketch in graphic novel-land - Greg squinted at me.
"Do you want a hero or a monster?" he asked.
Given that my book title was on the cover as a part of the blurb I'd given them via my participation on the jury for Best First Book at last year's Manitoba Book Awards - and that my book is mostly about tits - there was only one possible answer to that question.
"I want a tit monster!" I said.
And that is what I got.
I also got really drunk very quickly on launch wine, given that I had run straight from work and not had dinner. (They had eight bottles of wine for the event! Eight! So the four glasses I drank was not so entirely gluttonous...)
Yay! Fun!
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Gary Barwin collection firmly in experimental tradition
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon
HAMILTON writer Gary Barwin's latest collection, The Porcupinity of the Stars (Coach House Books, 96 pages, $17), is firmly in the experimental tradition.
Even though Barwin has supplemented what he calls his "old-school English language technology" (i.e. writing) with poetry-generating software, it is important to note that this is not a dispassionate surrealism.
There's a real depth of feeling and a surprising lyricism in these poems, such as "Inside H":
"we mist the sky with our blue plum lungs / make heaven heron-dark with our breathing / fog the limits with spirit and blue exhalation."
Those who enjoy playing connect-the-dots can follow this poem back to Vancouver's bpNichol, who grew up in the H section of Winnipeg's Wildwood Park.
Literary sleuthing aside, this is a collection for both the heart and the head. Highly recommended.
* * *
You could argue that every poet has a crow poem in them. It turns out that Winnipeg's Ken Kowal had a book's worth.
Though he has been writing and publishing for many years, Gimp Crow (Turnstone Press, 70 pages, $17) is his first full collection.
That maturity shows in Gimp Crow's dissonant musicality, its playfulness with language and structure that's undercut but also underlined by the poet's short, tight stanzas.
See his "parting shot": "Bad bye Gimp Crow / Un great full duck / Go wander coop Blow / Get lightning struck."
In addition to its clever anthropomorphism, Gimp Crow also explores the age-old exhortation "Go west, young man," which is as relevant now as it was when Manitoba was founded.
Which means, of course, travel poetry from the point of view of a crow. And other strange pleasures.
* * *
Toronto poet/prof Catherine Graham's latest book, Winterkill (Insomniac Press, 64 pages, $12), is the last of a trilogy written from the bottom of a water-filled limestone quarry.
Given that the quarry adjoined Graham's childhood home - and that she lost both her parents as a young woman - it should come as no surprise that the depths she's been plumbing here are largely those of grief.
And so, like grieving, working through this poetry is a slightly irrational process.
For instance, Graham invests the colours red and green with layers of meaning to the point that it verges on self-induced synesthesia.
But the repetition of this and other motifs (wings, water) is incantatory - and effective.
* * *
Victoria resident Gary Geddes has published more than 35 books over his long and distinguished career.
His new collection of poetry, Swimming Ginger (Goose Lane, 96 pages, $20), consists of ekphrastic poetry based on the Qingming Shanghe Tu scroll, an artwork from approximately 1127 AD that depicts the city of Bianliang (modern-day Kaifeng in northeast China).
Compliments are due Fredericton-based Goose Lane, which it seems has spared no expense in publishing it, including full-colour reproductions of the scroll.
French flaps notwithstanding, Swimming Ginger is specifically written from the point of the view of people depicted on the scroll.
As such, it follows the same modus operandi as Geddes' The Terracotta Army. That book - originally published in 1984 and reissued this fall by Goose Lane - was written from the point of view of a handful of the more than 8,000 individually sculpted life-sized statues interred with the first emperor of China.
Swimming Ginger takes the conceit one step further than its predecessor, however, in that Geddes gives the scroll's creator house room.
He then permits himself a long poem in his own voice on perils of life and art-making that impishly slips in and out of the vernacular of the other poems:
"This is neither ballad nor hymn, / my friend. 'Song' among the classics / refers to dancing, so get up // off your butt and shake those buns."
Winnipegger Ariel Gordon's first book of poetry, Hump, was published this past spring.
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon
HAMILTON writer Gary Barwin's latest collection, The Porcupinity of the Stars (Coach House Books, 96 pages, $17), is firmly in the experimental tradition.
Even though Barwin has supplemented what he calls his "old-school English language technology" (i.e. writing) with poetry-generating software, it is important to note that this is not a dispassionate surrealism.There's a real depth of feeling and a surprising lyricism in these poems, such as "Inside H":
"we mist the sky with our blue plum lungs / make heaven heron-dark with our breathing / fog the limits with spirit and blue exhalation."
Those who enjoy playing connect-the-dots can follow this poem back to Vancouver's bpNichol, who grew up in the H section of Winnipeg's Wildwood Park.
Literary sleuthing aside, this is a collection for both the heart and the head. Highly recommended.
* * *
You could argue that every poet has a crow poem in them. It turns out that Winnipeg's Ken Kowal had a book's worth.
Though he has been writing and publishing for many years, Gimp Crow (Turnstone Press, 70 pages, $17) is his first full collection.
That maturity shows in Gimp Crow's dissonant musicality, its playfulness with language and structure that's undercut but also underlined by the poet's short, tight stanzas.
See his "parting shot": "Bad bye Gimp Crow / Un great full duck / Go wander coop Blow / Get lightning struck."
In addition to its clever anthropomorphism, Gimp Crow also explores the age-old exhortation "Go west, young man," which is as relevant now as it was when Manitoba was founded.
Which means, of course, travel poetry from the point of view of a crow. And other strange pleasures.
* * *
Toronto poet/prof Catherine Graham's latest book, Winterkill (Insomniac Press, 64 pages, $12), is the last of a trilogy written from the bottom of a water-filled limestone quarry.
Given that the quarry adjoined Graham's childhood home - and that she lost both her parents as a young woman - it should come as no surprise that the depths she's been plumbing here are largely those of grief.
And so, like grieving, working through this poetry is a slightly irrational process.
For instance, Graham invests the colours red and green with layers of meaning to the point that it verges on self-induced synesthesia.
But the repetition of this and other motifs (wings, water) is incantatory - and effective.
* * *
Victoria resident Gary Geddes has published more than 35 books over his long and distinguished career.
His new collection of poetry, Swimming Ginger (Goose Lane, 96 pages, $20), consists of ekphrastic poetry based on the Qingming Shanghe Tu scroll, an artwork from approximately 1127 AD that depicts the city of Bianliang (modern-day Kaifeng in northeast China).
Compliments are due Fredericton-based Goose Lane, which it seems has spared no expense in publishing it, including full-colour reproductions of the scroll.
French flaps notwithstanding, Swimming Ginger is specifically written from the point of the view of people depicted on the scroll.
As such, it follows the same modus operandi as Geddes' The Terracotta Army. That book - originally published in 1984 and reissued this fall by Goose Lane - was written from the point of view of a handful of the more than 8,000 individually sculpted life-sized statues interred with the first emperor of China.
Swimming Ginger takes the conceit one step further than its predecessor, however, in that Geddes gives the scroll's creator house room.
He then permits himself a long poem in his own voice on perils of life and art-making that impishly slips in and out of the vernacular of the other poems:
"This is neither ballad nor hymn, / my friend. 'Song' among the classics / refers to dancing, so get up // off your butt and shake those buns."
Winnipegger Ariel Gordon's first book of poetry, Hump, was published this past spring.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
blurbing others
My first blurb! 
Which was cribbed from the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book jury citation at the 2010 Manitoba Book Awards and (correctly, as it turns out...) attributed to me.
Heh.
If short-ish book reviews are small cunning puzzles, blurbs are pencils up the nose - i.e. torture.
Writing this one literally took me weeks.
All of which is to say that you should attend the upcoming launch of book two...
* * *
The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two
GMB Chomichuk, John Toone and James Rewucki
Thursday Oct 28 2010 7:30 pm
McNally Robinson Grant Park in the Atrium
Alchemical Press hosts an evening of strangeness featuring members of the Imaginary Army and the launch of The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two. GMB Chomichuk, John Toone and James Rewucki invite you to this literary experiment where robots, ghost, superheroes, monsters, and cowboys create the sites, sounds and stories of a darkly beautiful imagined nation. WARNING: May contain mind-altering agents, the unimaginable, terrorists, and human error.
The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two is a graphic (as in bloody) novel about robots, superheroes, monsters, and cowboys that decide our future will be dark, beautiful, and illusive. Writer/Artist GMB Chomichuk mashes the poetry of John Toone and the screenplay of James Rewucki into this literary experiment where mind-altering agents and the unimaginable define the cosmopolitan as something scary. Book Two of this serial epic conjures four unique stories and is a creation of the strange folks at Alchemical Press in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Which was cribbed from the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book jury citation at the 2010 Manitoba Book Awards and (correctly, as it turns out...) attributed to me.
Heh.
If short-ish book reviews are small cunning puzzles, blurbs are pencils up the nose - i.e. torture.
Writing this one literally took me weeks.
All of which is to say that you should attend the upcoming launch of book two...
* * *
The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two
GMB Chomichuk, John Toone and James Rewucki
Thursday Oct 28 2010 7:30 pm
McNally Robinson Grant Park in the Atrium
Alchemical Press hosts an evening of strangeness featuring members of the Imaginary Army and the launch of The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two. GMB Chomichuk, John Toone and James Rewucki invite you to this literary experiment where robots, ghost, superheroes, monsters, and cowboys create the sites, sounds and stories of a darkly beautiful imagined nation. WARNING: May contain mind-altering agents, the unimaginable, terrorists, and human error.
The Imagination Manifesto: Book Two is a graphic (as in bloody) novel about robots, superheroes, monsters, and cowboys that decide our future will be dark, beautiful, and illusive. Writer/Artist GMB Chomichuk mashes the poetry of John Toone and the screenplay of James Rewucki into this literary experiment where mind-altering agents and the unimaginable define the cosmopolitan as something scary. Book Two of this serial epic conjures four unique stories and is a creation of the strange folks at Alchemical Press in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
micro forest
All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. October 18, 2010.
* * *
Somehow, this photo makes me happy.
Friday, October 15, 2010
Giller light
I'll be in full-on fiction-reviewing mode on November 9 at McNally Robinson, as I take part in the Winnipeg edition of the Scotiabank Giller Light Bash.
This event functions as a fundraiser for Frontier College, which is apparently "Canada’s original literacy organization."
Which mostly means I get to be mouthy about books...in the name of literacy.
Anyways, I'll be advocating for Johanna Skribsrud's debut novel, The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press).
I've got her latest book of poetry but haven't yet read the fiction...and I'm greatly looking forward to it.
* * *
Scotiabank Giller Light Bash
Tuesday November 09, 6:00 pm
McNally Robinson Grant Park in Prairie Ink Restaurant
Join us for an exciting, interactive night of literature, entertainment and great food and drink as local literary luminaries advocate their favourite Giller-nominated book.
Tickets go on sale October 5th. They are $40 per person and can be purchased at Prairie Ink Restaurant, Grant Park in person or by calling 975-2659.
Funds raised at the evening will support the work of Frontier College - Canada’s oldest national literacy organization. A $100 dollar ticket that includes a $60 tax deductible donation to the College is also available.
This event functions as a fundraiser for Frontier College, which is apparently "Canada’s original literacy organization."Which mostly means I get to be mouthy about books...in the name of literacy.
Anyways, I'll be advocating for Johanna Skribsrud's debut novel, The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press).
I've got her latest book of poetry but haven't yet read the fiction...and I'm greatly looking forward to it.
* * *
Scotiabank Giller Light Bash
Tuesday November 09, 6:00 pm
McNally Robinson Grant Park in Prairie Ink Restaurant
Join us for an exciting, interactive night of literature, entertainment and great food and drink as local literary luminaries advocate their favourite Giller-nominated book.
Tickets go on sale October 5th. They are $40 per person and can be purchased at Prairie Ink Restaurant, Grant Park in person or by calling 975-2659.
Funds raised at the evening will support the work of Frontier College - Canada’s oldest national literacy organization. A $100 dollar ticket that includes a $60 tax deductible donation to the College is also available.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
idyll
All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. October 12, 2010.
* * *
Today was kind-of-sort-of idyllic. I mean, we had to get up so we could get the girl to school. And NONE of us wanted to get up. But other than that, we had the day to ourselves...
...so we had breakfast at The Black Sheep (kale for breakfast, which sounds wretched but isn't...). And then got takeaway tea and made our way to the forest.
And we walked in the forest the same way we ate breakfast together: separate yet together.
We'd walk until one or both of us saw something worth taking pictures of and crouch unbecomingly in the leaf litter. The other person would keep going and then stop in her/his turn ten or twenty feet further down the path...and would eventually be overtaken.
And except for the twig-up-the-nose when I stepped into the woods proper to look at something, except for my tipping-over of my tea whilst shooting teeny-tiny lichens, it was almost EXACTLY what I would want to be doing on a day like today.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
branching out
I have three poems from Hump in the fall issue of on-line lit mag Branch, whose theme is/was hunger.
As Hump is basically hunger and tits, I probably could have sent any of the poems, but in the end settled on two prose poems and a one-pager...all of which I performed frequently on tour, so I'm rather fond of them at the moment.
None of them saw the light of day before being published in book form, so I like that they're getting an individual airing now.
My thanks to Branch empresarios Gillian Sze, recent Aqua WiR/former Winnipegger, and Robertutsu, current Winnipegger (I think...his is a coy bio.).
As Hump is basically hunger and tits, I probably could have sent any of the poems, but in the end settled on two prose poems and a one-pager...all of which I performed frequently on tour, so I'm rather fond of them at the moment.None of them saw the light of day before being published in book form, so I like that they're getting an individual airing now.
My thanks to Branch empresarios Gillian Sze, recent Aqua WiR/former Winnipegger, and Robertutsu, current Winnipegger (I think...his is a coy bio.).
Saturday, October 09, 2010
eggs
All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. October 9, 2010.
* * *
I really love stinkhorns. They're lurid. And they're reliable.
As in, they were practically the only mushrooms I could find in this fall's forest, which is soupy-wet in spots and bone dry in others.
(These are the 'eggs' from which the 'shaft' of the mushroom emerges...really.)
Reprint: Véhicule Press blog
Carmine Starnino posted the following recommendations to the Véhicule Press blog today. And I'm so so honoured to be on his list...
In anticipation of the GG shortlist announcement on Wednesday, I thought I'd take a moment to mention the Canadian poetry I enjoyed this year.Excluded is The Crow's Vow, a Signal book and therefore, according to industry etiquette, not eligible for objective recommendation.
I would, however, like make a plug (plea?) for Michael Harris's Circus which, except for a few notices, has been roundly ignored. And I think that's just criminal.
I suppose I should also disclose that I provided blurbs for two books on this list (Patternicity and Complete Physical). But I don't see why that should make any difference. I blurbed them precisely because I admired them.
For and Against (Goose Lane), Sharon McCartney.
Patternicity (Nightwood), Jim Johnstone.
Bloom (Anansi), Michael Lista
Welling (Your Scrivener Press), Margaret Christakos
Tiny, Frantic, Stronger (Insomniac), Jeff Latosik
Hump (Palimpsest), Ariel Gordon
Complete Physical (Porcupine's Quill), Shane Neilson
Saturday, October 02, 2010
hands and gnawed-off nipples
* * *
If all goes well, I'll be halfway to Brandon by the time you see this.
And then onto Saskatoon, Regina, Ottawa and Toronto, where I'll read from Hump and tell my terrible story about the gnawed-off nipple (NOT mine), over and over.
I'm looking forward to hearing Jonathan Ball, John Toone, Tracy Hamon, Christine McNair, Pearl Pirie, Damien Rogers, and Melanie Janesse read along the way.
Do join me if you're in any of those cities and read this blog. Which is a pretty long long shot, I know, but...
Friday, October 01, 2010
Reprise: a walk in the park
I took Sally Ito's creative writing class at the Canadian Memmonite University on a rather buggy/mucky walk in Assiniboine Forest yesterday.
(I wore my new suede shoes. I drowned my new suede shoes. Which is only really me being punished for my must-look-like-a-writer vanity...so I can't complain.)
At various points, I stopped and 'fed' them information of various types - species lists, newspaper articles, the field guide entry for trembling aspen, gossipy stories about the forest perv, the sound of the forest itself - and then had them write for a minute or so.
Then we marched on. Sometimes I pointed out mushrooms or how the wild roses had gone scarlet in the meadow at the end of our walk.
Writing to this built-by-forest-ruining-delinquents tree-fort wasn't part of my plan, but when I peeked inside, I couldn't NOT have them write to what I found inside.
Thanks to Sally for inviting me to walk the forest, talking poetry, for money (!).
Thanks too to the 18 students in her class who played along and swatted and wrote and laughed at my naked-man stories.
And DEEP appreciation to the two students who went barefoot and handed the rest of their classmates across a slippery log in the middle of a puddle, mid-forest.
Fun!
(I wore my new suede shoes. I drowned my new suede shoes. Which is only really me being punished for my must-look-like-a-writer vanity...so I can't complain.)
At various points, I stopped and 'fed' them information of various types - species lists, newspaper articles, the field guide entry for trembling aspen, gossipy stories about the forest perv, the sound of the forest itself - and then had them write for a minute or so.
Then we marched on. Sometimes I pointed out mushrooms or how the wild roses had gone scarlet in the meadow at the end of our walk.
Writing to this built-by-forest-ruining-delinquents tree-fort wasn't part of my plan, but when I peeked inside, I couldn't NOT have them write to what I found inside.
Thanks to Sally for inviting me to walk the forest, talking poetry, for money (!).
Thanks too to the 18 students in her class who played along and swatted and wrote and laughed at my naked-man stories.
And DEEP appreciation to the two students who went barefoot and handed the rest of their classmates across a slippery log in the middle of a puddle, mid-forest.
Fun!
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