Wine & Words, part the second

* * *

I couldn't help but post this gorgeous poster.

I've submitted my How to Sew a Button poem for this year's edition of Wine & Words. And am highly curious to see who will read it...

Last year, actor Kevin Anderson read one of my Edison poems. He later told me that he'd forwarded the poem to Matthew Edison, an actor who has spent time in Winnipeg who happens to be a great, great, great grand-nephew of Thomas Edison.

Which made for a sort of ticklish pleased feeling...

Wine & Words

Avner Mandelman, Victoria Stagg, Di Brandt, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden, Joyce Maynard, Katherine Govier, Kenneth J Harvey, Stephanie Plaitin, Melissa McQuade, Maureen Hunter, Michelle Elrick, Patrick Lane, Patrick Taylor, Ariel Gordon, Pierre DesRuisseaux, Rick Chafe, Talia Pura, Robert Hough, Sarah Selecky, Trevor Cole, Rabindranath Maharaj, Uma Parameswaran, Bob Armstrong, Vincent Lam, Adam Lewis Schroeder, Andrea Geary, Deborah Schnitzer

...Being the list of authors whose works will be featured at Theatre by the River's Wine & Words: New Writings evening Saturday April 9 at RRC's Princess Street Campus.

Somewhere in the middle

Bottom

(Literally the same log as in Top. I'm not sure if I'm the same bump on the log, but...)

Top

All photos Assiniboine Forest, Winnipeg, MB. March 30, 2011.

* * *

It was a perfect day for exploring the last of the winter woods. Warm enough that we could wear spring coats but cool enough that there was soapy snow on the ground and not slush and endless puddles.

So we last-chance-d those stumps deep in the woods that are covered head to toe stem to stern in mushrooms. M even walked a few feet into the still-frozen marsh to get him some toppling bullrushes.

And I deeply appreciated how each of the trees has a meltwater halo.

How I can have a camera and a bottle of water and M somewhere nearby in the woods and my jacket flapping in the breeze and my nose running...and be perfectly content.

Poetry NOONERS!

Every spring, the League of Canadian Poets celebrates National Poetry Month, which is dedicated to reading, writing, speaking and promoting poetry.

In 2011, the League of Canadian Poets will also celebrate 25 years of the Public Lending Right in Canada, which attempts to both nurture poets and provide free access to their work.

This spring, explore Poets + Libraries = PLR for National Poetry Month!

* * *

This spring, it fell to me as Manitoba rep to organize the National Poetry Month events. It was natural (nurture-l?) to partner with the Millennium Library, given their support of Manitoba's poetry community but also the PLR tie-in.

Given the daytime population of the library and of the wider downtown area, we thought we'd try a couple of lunchtime events, with two poets per event.

Thanks to the readers, the LCP, and thanks to Tannis Gretzinger at the Millennium Branch of the Winnipeg Public Library for all her help.

So, to sum: Yay to LCP/PLR! And yay to poetry NOONERS!

* * *

National Poetry Month Reading #1
Featuring Charles Leblanc & Alison Calder

When: Tuesday, April 12, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Where: Main floor, Millennium Library (251 Donald Street)
Cost: FREE!

*
Charles Leblanc is a St. Boniface translator, writer, actor and poet. He is a founding member of the Collectif post-néo-rieliste, and helps to create the Foyer des écrivains, the Winnipeg International Writers Festival’s francophone programming. He won Manitoba’s Prix littéraire Rue-Deschambault in 2005 for l’appétit du compteur. Last title: des briques pour un vitrail (collected works) (2008).

Alison Calder’s poetry collection, Wolf Tree (Coteau 2007), won two Manitoba Book Awards and was a finalist for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Her collaboration with Jeanette Lynes led to the chapbook Ghost Works: Improvisations in Letters and Poems (Jackpine Press 2007). She’s taught creative writing in Germany and China, and been invited to read her work in France and the United States. Alison lives in Winnipeg, where she teaches Canadian literature and creative writing in the Department of English, Film, and Theatre at the University of Manitoba.

* * *

NPM Reading #2
Featuring Colin Smith & Deborah Schnitzer

When: Tuesday, April 26, 12:00 - 1:00 pm
Where: Main floor, Millennium Library (251 Donald Street)
Cost: FREE!

*
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.

Deborah Schnitzer is co-editor of the award-winning collection, The Madwoman in the Academy: 43 Women Boldly Take on the Ivory Tower, whose creative writing includes the long poem, lovinggertrudestein, Loving Gertrude, the novel gertrude unmanageable, and most recently, An Unexpected Break in the Weather, winner of the 2010 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction. She has collaborated with Shelagh Carter on three short experimental films, rifting/blue, resolve, and Canoe, and with River on the Run North, an eco-arts collective examining environmental challenges to Lake Winnipeg. Deborah is currently at work landscaping a new novel, the woman who swallowed West Hawk Lake and the long poem, water^woman.

Reprint: Magical MUSHROOMS

Assiniboine Forest a great place for fungi (and I don't mean that naked guy)
OUR WINNIPEG

Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by Ariel Gordon

Assiniboine Forest is my favourite place in Winnipeg, even though there's a man who likes to walk its paths wearing hiking boots and socks. And nothing else.

Assiniboine Forest is my favourite place, even though the first and so far only time I ran into him was with my mother.

Assiniboine Forest is my favourite place, even if it is stalked by dogs whose preferred form of greeting is jumping on people.

Even though you can never tell, in the moment before they jump on you -- muddy paws ranging up your thighs, the owners shouting "Sorry, s/he's friendly!" in the background -- if the dogs ARE friendly or lunging for your face.

Assiniboine Forest is my favourite place, even though my partner and I are often stopped there by people unwilling to get lost and unprepared for Charleswood's mud.

And could we PLEASE show them the way out? Like NOW?

It's my favourite place because the soil and mulch and water on the forest's paths are what create optimal conditions for mushrooms.

All kinds of lurid, beautiful, subtle, ugly mushrooms I'd never seen before I started to go on long walks in the forest.

That now find me frequently crouching in the understorey, wearing hiking boots or rubber boots or even hip waders, squinting at the LCD screen of my camera.

I'm not a very good photographer. But I AM determined.

And because I've persevered over a decade of walking in the forest whenever and however I could manage it, I have a lot of photographs of the mushrooms, moss and lichen that grow in a never-before-developed stretch of aspen parkland.

I've been half-crazed by a happy corona of buzzing insects.

I've misjudged my footing and gone knee-deep in ice-water puddles.

I've even eagerly - and unknowingly - sat myself down in patches of poison ivy, all in the pursuit of things almost too small to be seen (or at least to be seen well) by the human eye.

Beyond the impulse to document the rise-and-fall-in-a-day fungi, I also appreciate how the forest teaches me, year in and year out, how every year is different.

How varying amounts of warm and cold, wet and dry, make for an abundance of one plant and a scarcity of another.

I won't say the forest has taught me to see, because I think I brought that to the forest, but I think the forest and its fungi have filtered and sharpened that ability.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her first book of poetry, Hump (Palimpsest Press, 2010), was recently nominated for two Manitoba Book Awards: the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book and the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Prix Lansdowne de poésie.

Oracular poets

Clockwise from top: poet Charles Leblanc with FemRev collective member Sarah, performance artist Shawna Dempsey with poet Bernadette Wagner, SD with poet Jenn Still, my spread as revealed by CL.

* * *

We had two separate tarot card stations at this past week's LCP fundraiser.

I missed getting my cards read when the Winnipeg Tarot Co was up and officially running and so it was beyond nifty to have Charles read...my next manuscript's fortune.

I didn't mean to do it, but when Charles asked me to think on a question, all I could think on was my Edisonia, how the next year, the rhythms of work-for-money and writing-work, might go.

And so, I'd like to express my thanks to Charles and Shawna for the (tarot) readings!

(Thanks to EVERYONE who attended, who volunteered, who donated items for the raffle...special thanks to Bernadette Wagner and Jenn Still, who made special efforts to be there and share their work with us.)

I'm wallpaper!!!

Photo courtesy McNally Robinson Booksellers FB group. Posted March 23, 2011.

* * *

So Tuesday I'm walking through McNally's when store manager David Lawrence takes my arm. He then slowly pivots me around and says, "Look."

I look where he's pointing and see that above the cash desk they've erected a rogue's gallery of writers and musicians and artists of all stripes. There must be thirty or forty black and white images interspersed with a graphic that says McNally Robinson, 30th anniversary.

"They've all appeared at the store," he says.

I start a mental inventory. Susie Moloney there. Lawrence Hill. Kerry Ryan there. Oh, I'm so glad they used THAT photo of Michael Van Rooy. Patrick Friesen. Joan Thomas. Melissa Steele. Sheldon Oberman. Lisa Moore. Adrienne Clarkson. Holly Cole. Anita Daher. Andris Taskans...

"And there you are."

And I AM there. With Guy Gavriel Kay above me and Peter C. Newman to my right.

I spend the next ten minutes gaping at the display, moving so that I can take it in from all angles. Next I whip out my phone and take several terrible pictures.

Apparently, I strolled thru on the very first day it was in place.

And I'm so bloody grateful.

* * *

Here's what McNally reps say about the wallpaper on their website:

"In celebration of our upcoming 30th anniversary, we have created a banner above cash to represent some of the local, national and international authors and musicians who have made McNally Robinson the most eventful bookstore in Canada. Thank you to all the authors and musicians who have made McNally Robinson what it is today."

Show & tell, part the second

Elf ears RULE!

Show & tell

* * *

The novel I wrote between 13-19, the 1994 issue of Zygote that contained my first published story, my laminated 'life list' from grade twelve English class, my S. Korea scrapbook and Hump.

Being all of the show & tell items I brought to Anita Daher's ACI 16-19 yr. old Mentorship: Writing Fiction Workshop tonight...

Here's an excerpt from the life list: "To wear a potato sack to grad - no frilly chiffon dresses for me; To maybe get married/have children; To not kill the above; To be a writer/journalist; To get Raven published in the 1990s."

(I'd originally written 1991 but you can see where I hedged my bets when re-copying...)

The life list also includes a picture I drew of myself with elf ears.

Ahem.

I think it was particularly brave of me to let my various juvenilia circulate around the room, especially given all the laughing.

(Thanks to Anita an ACI for having me!)

The Overnight Tour: Virden, MB

So Melissa Steele was my mentor via the MWG Emerging Writer Mentor program in 2002, when I was working on a novel.

And we would meet at Sal's on Stafford to go over chapters. And the weeks when we weren't meeting, I'd furtively drop new chapters in her mailbox.

She's since published another book and, this past year, was selected as the Winnipeg Public Library's Writer-in-Residence.

But she's always been interested in what I was writing...and what I was thinking and feeling about that writing.

Since taking up her post, Melissa has been doing some travel to rural communities in Manitoba.

One of those trips, which included both an evening reading and a daytime workshop, was to Virden, MB.

Melissa invited me to accompany her, and, so, after wrangling childcare from my sister, I did.

I've driven as far as Regina, SK (i.e. 600 km each way) by myself three or four times over the last year. And really enjoyed the trip, the time alone, the opportunity to wail along to my favourite music.

This trip was only 300 km and I didn't even turn on the radio the whole time. But it was still lovely...

We left early enough on Friday to a) take into account the frozen highway between Winnipeg and Virden and b) to be able to stop for Indian buffet in Brandon.

And we even had time to dress for a nice dinner at T's restaurant in Virden before the reading.

The reading was small but fun. And beyond the fact that I got to hear some of Melissa's new work, including a brace of postcard stories, it was an honour to read with her.

Afterwards, Virden's mayor showed up. He's a colleague of Melissa's sister, Winnipeg city councilor Jenny Gerbasi, and so was there to offer us an after-hours tour of the Virden opera house.

The opera house was built in 1911. And is a wonder, especially considering it's adjacent to the courthouse/council chambers and the steel-plated holding cell.

The next day, Melissa led a fiction workshop. And I piped up every so often. And it was good.

And I even sold a few books!

Shortlist READINGS

Lansdowne Prize for Poetry Nominees Reading
Featuring Ball, Gordon & Cayer

When: Thursday, March 31, 7 pm
Location: Aqua Books (274 Garry Street, between Graham and Portage)
Cost: FREE!

Jonathan Ball, Ariel Gordon and Lori Cayer have been shortlisted for this year's Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Prix Lansdowne de poésie.

Bookstore owner Kelly Hughes will hand out the prize at the Manitoba Book Awards on April 17, but in the meantime, Aqua Books is continuing its tradition of hosting nominee readings.

Award-winning writer Chandra Mayor will host.

*
Jonathan Ball is the author of the poetry books Ex Machina (BookThug, 2009) and Clockfire (Coach House, 2010). He holds a Ph.D. in English with a focus in Creative Writing from the University of Calgary. His film Spoony B appeared on The Comedy Network, and his writing has appeared in The Believer and Harper’s. He is the former editor of dandelion and the former short films programmer for the Gimli Film Festival.

Ariel Gordon is a writer whose first book of poetry, Hump, was published in spring 2010. How to Prepare for Flooding, a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, is forthcoming from JackPine Press in 2011. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.

Lori Cayer’s second volume of poetry, Attenuations of Force, was released by Frontenac House in 2010 as a finalist in the Dektet Series. Her first poetry collection, Stealing Mercury (The Muses’ Company, 2004), won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book in Manitoba in 2004, and in 2005 Lori won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. She serves as co-editor of English poetry for CV2 and is co-founder of the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Prix Lansdowne de poésie, part of the Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards. Lori works by day as an editorial assistant for a scientific research journal.

* * *

Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book nominees reading
Featuring Cadieux, McClarty, Gordon & Russell

When: Thursday, April 14, 7 pm
Location: Aqua Books (274 Garry Street, between Graham and Portage)
Cost: FREE!

Keith Cadieux, Theodore Fontaine, Sheila McClarty, Ariel Gordon and Craig Russell have been shortlisted for this year's Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book.

Bookstore owner Kelly Hughes will host.

*
Keith Cadieux lives and writes in Winnipeg, where he grew up. His first published work was the novella Gaze which was released by Quattro Books in 2010. He holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Manitoba where he also received the Robert Kroetsch Creative MA Thesis Prize. Keith teaches English at the University of Winnipeg and will be working on a new collection of short stories while serving as Aqua Books’ Writer in Residence from May to August, 2011.

Ariel Gordon is a writer whose first book of poetry, Hump, was published in spring 2010. How to Prepare for Flooding, a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, is forthcoming from JackPine Press in 2011. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.

Oakbank, Manitoba author Sheila McClarty's stories have appeared in various magazines, including Grain, The Antigonish Review and The Fiddlehead. She won first prize at the Sheldon Currie Fiction contest. High Speed Crow (Oberon Press, 2010), a book of short stories, is her first book.

Craig Russell grew up on what may be the flattest half-section of land on the planet, six miles north of Carman. Now a lawyer in Brandon, along with wife Janet, Craig has spent the past twenty-two years restoring a 1906 Victorian home, The Johnson House. Ten years ago, Craig began to study acting in his spare time. He believes that live theatre is a great training ground for a writer’s ear because it teaches you to recognize effective dialogue. Black Bottle Man, a YA fable released by Great Plains Publishing, is his first novel.

Shortlist! SHORTlist!

MANITOBA BOOK AWARDS SHORTLISTS ANNOUNCED

The Manitoba Writers’ Guild and the Association of Manitoba Book Publishers are pleased to announce the Manitoba Book Awards shortlists.

The awards will be presented at the Manitoba Book Awards gala, on Sunday April 17th at the Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain and hosted by Catherine Hunter. Cocktails are at 7:00 p.m., with the ceremony beginning at 8:00 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

The shortlists and recipients are selected by a variety of juries, comprised of writers, publishers and other book industry personnel from across Canada.

And the nominees are...

Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Prix Lansdowne de poésie
Attenuations of Force by Lori Cayer, published by Frontenac House
Clockfire by Jonathan Ball, published by Coach House Books
Hump by Ariel Gordon, published by Palimpsest Press

Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book
Black Bottle Man by Craig Russell, published by Great Plains Teen Fiction
Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools by Theodore Fontaine, published by Heritage House Publishing
Gaze by Keith Cadieux, published by Quattro Books
High Speed Crow by Sheila McClarty, published by Oberon Press
Hump by Ariel Gordon, published by Palimpsest Press

* * *

For the rest of the awards - there are twelve in total - see the MWG site.

very very early...

So when the CBC Weekend Morning Show producers track you down and invite you to an very very early in-studio interview, you don't say no.

Even if they feel they have to warn you, TWICE, that this is "a family show..."



NOTE TO SELF: Don't try to read a poem you've never performed when you've got an incipient migraine AND have lost an EXTRA hour of sleep because of bloody daylight savings time and it's early to begin with.

But all of that said, it was lovely being able to murmur in the ear of those people still-lightly-dozing and those already-awake-for-hours.



And I have the CBC and Agatha Moir, whose voice was infinitely comforting oh so early in the morning, to thank for it.

Yay! Fun!

And yes, I did go back to bed after the show.

p.s. Audioboo only allows you to upload files to a max of five minutes. Real life is longer than five minutes, so I've uploaded part one and part two for your listening pleasure....

Poet/oracle

THIS JUST IN: Poet and part-time oracle Charles Leblanc will be joining the roster of artists for the March 23 League of Canadian Poets fundraiser.

(7 pm: Aqua Books, 274 Garry Street. Pay what you can...)

Here's Charles' poet bio:

Charles Leblanc is a St. Boniface translator, writer, editor, actor and poet. He is a founding member of the Collectif post-neo-rieliste, and helps to create the Foyer des écrivains, the francophone programming for THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival.

He won the Prix littéraire Rue-Deschambault at the 2005 Manitoba Book Awards for L’appétit du compteur.

And here's his DEEPLY EXCELLENT oracle bio:

Wondrous Winnipeg oracle Charles Leblanc was born in Montreal and currently resides in St. Boniface. Like most prophetic seers, his career history has been varied, and includes work as a researcher in economics, barman, waiter, professional actor, arts events organizer, industrial worker, translator and lecturer at St. Boniface College. His writings are primarily in poetry, with strange forays into collaborative prose works and journalism. Mr. Leblanc will provide readings in both official languages.

L'extraordinaire oracle Charles Leblanc est né à Montréal et vit présentement à Saint-Boniface. Comme la plupart des voyants prophétiques, il a eu plusieurs carrières comme chercheur en sciences économiques, barman et serveur, acteur professionnel, organisateur d'événement artistiques, travailleur industriel, traducteur et chargé de cours au Collège universitaire de Saint-Boniface. Ses écrits portent principalement sur la poésie, avec d'étranges incursions dans des ouvrages coopératifs en prose et dans le journalisme. M. Leblanc offrira ses services dans les deux langues officielles du pays.

I mean, who wouldn't want their fortune told by a poet?

Yay! Fun!

radical poetry

Hey all,

As Manitoba rep of the League of Canadian Poets, it's my responsibility to organize a once-a-year fundraiser.

Lori Cayer, organizer extraordinaire and former MB rep, had done a series of events that looked effortless and were even fun.

Knowing that they were NOT effortless, I'm attempting something that approaches her events.

Thanks to all the readers! Thanks to the organizations and individuals who are donating items for the raffle! And thanks, too, to Aqua, for allowing me the room.

* * *

A Radical LCP Fundraiser
Featuring Bernadette Wagner with Chandra Mayor & Shawna Dempsey

When: Wednesday, March 23 at 7 pm
Where: Aqua Books (274 Garry Street)
Cost: Pay what you can

This year's fundraiser for the League of Canadian Poets will feature poetry, performance art and protest songs.

In addition to radical poetry goodness, there'll also be a one-night-only revival of the Winnipeg Tarot Company (have your fortune told by a poet!) and that LCP fundraiser stand-by, a raffle chock-full of bookish prizes.

Prizes donated by: Aqua Books, Turnstone Press, CV2 magazine, Winnipeg Public Library, Manitoba Writers' Guild, Alchemical Press, Brick Books, Prairie Fire magazine, Writers' Collective of Manitoba, Friends of the WPL.

* * *

Regina writer Bernadette Wagner infuses her poetry and nonfiction with a love of land, a commitment to grassroots activism and the spirit of the prairies. When she's not writing, she's politicking. She's been known to speak out against government policies, fight to keep inner city libraries open and build feminist organizations. Her work has appeared in journals, anthologies, and magazines and on radio, television and film, in schools, on stages, in the streets and on the web. This hot place (Thistledown Press, 2010), a collection of poetry, explores the personal as political and the political as personal and received a Saskatchewan Book Award nomination.

Chandra Mayor's writing has appeared in several anthologies, including Interruptions: 30 Women Tell the Truth about Motherhood, Breathing Fire 2: Canada's New Poets, and Post-Prairie. Her first book, August Witch: poems, was short-listed for four Manitoba book awards and won the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book. She received the 2004 John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Writer, and the following year her novel, Cherry, won the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. The title story from her most recent book, All the Pretty Girls, won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction and was shortlisted for a 2008 CBC Literary Award. She lives in Winnipeg.

In a collaboration that has spanned well over a decade, Winnipeg multi-disciplinary artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan have created a body of internationally acclaimed work that addresses feminist, lesbian, and social concerns with biting wit.

library SUPER conference

The Literary Press Group table at the Ontario Library Super Conference, February 2011. (Credit: LPG)

* * *

I know this mostly just demonstrates what a supergeek I am, but: MY. BOOK. IS. ON. THE. TABLE. Whee!

(And look! Nico Roger's book. And Kerry Ryan's book - on a stand, even!)

Poems & thrills

Jennifer Still / Holly Luhning launch, Wednesday, March 2 @ McNally Robinson Booksellers, Winnipeg, MB.

* * *

So Jenn & Holly were brilliant. And I was just this side of dreadful as facilitator but it was such an honour a) to be asked to facilitate by the kind people at McNally's and b) to get to talk to Jenn about her book in public.

We became friends just as her second book was accepted for publication by Brick and so it's really felt as though I've been a part of the whole process. I mean, the part where I do no work except drink down Jenn's tea. But still!

I'll make sure, the next time, that I can make terrible jokes when facilitating. Because, really, that's all I've got.

Thanks to M, as ever, for the pic.