An excerpt from a poem of mine, "Toddle," is a finalist for September's Goodreads Newsletter Contest. (If this sounds familiar, I was also shortlisted for the poem "Blown" in August...)
The newsletter goes out to approximately 3 million people...and each edition features a poem.
The poems are shortlisted by judges Wendy Babiak, Andrew Haley and Ruth Bavetta but members of the ¡POETRY! group select the winner.
So if you're a Goodreads member, join the ¡POETRY! group and vote for me!
If you don't know what Goodreads is, then, well, ahem, here's a poem of mine that was shortlisted for something, randomly, on the internet.
Yay! Fun!
* * *
Toddle
Storm-light’s grey clarity & you
bluster. Syllables batter against the rear-view, cling
to the meat of my earlobes
still half-a-city from home.
Rainclouds unroll over rush-hour, their ticking
stale from storage. Mouth open, I blare My Bonny
shoulder-checking headlights
& grit twisters at the curb.
In evening’s rush-light & traffic’s flare
your face goes china, goes bone
before you drop off, leaving a body to bob
over swells of asphalt & tar
a body for me to bundle inside.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Out-of-Town-Authors: Frances Greenslade
Skip supper, read Shelter
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
There are two things you should know about Pentiction, B.C.-based writer Frances Greenslade. One, she prefers to be called Francie. Two, her latest book caused a furor at this spring’s London Book Fair.
It should go without saying that most writers dream of the words "bidding" and "war" coming in close proximity...
When all was said and done, Greenslade had deals to publish her novel Shelter in Canada, Australia and the U.K. Next year, it’ll be released in the U.S. and there’s both Dutch and German translations in the works.
Greenslade had previously published two award-winning memoirs, one based on travels in Ireland and the other focused on her experience of pregnancy and mothering.
She will be reading from Shelter in McNally Robinson’s atrium this Thursday at 7 p.m.
1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?
I’m an amateur singer, so I think of reading aloud like singing, except less terrifying. I love the rhythm that comes through in a live reading. It reminds me why I shouldn’t use words like threateningly in my writing.
2) What do you want people to know about Shelter?
It’s about two sisters whose mother leaves them to billet with a family friend in a small B.C. town, and doesn’t return. I hope it’s the kind of novel people will bring to the cottage and read right through the dinner hour, as the sun goes down, and they get a glass of wine instead of supper. Shelter looks at the expectations we have of our mothers, our first shelter, and the shock that comes when we realize they are more than just our mothers, but women with lives that don’t always include us.
3) Will this be your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I lived in Winnipeg for many years, from age 11 to 24. For a while, I lived in a friend’s firehall off Corydon. In the tower, I could look out over the treetops of the city and watch the thunderstorms roll in. Now that I live in the semi-desert of the Okanagan, I think of Winnipeg as lush and humid, prairie jungle.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I’m on a Daphne du Maurier-a-thon. I just finished Jamaica Inn and I’m now reading Rebecca. I’m at work on a second novel called Sing a Worried Song. It’s set in India and in rural Manitoba.
5) Your last two books have focused at least to some extent on mothering and tragedy. Why are the two linked for you? Or is this a coincidence? (Is there such thing as a coincidence?)
Definitely not a coincidence. I think my fascination (or obsession) with the complexities of mothers and mothering comes from two things. My own mother died when I was 24 and I had only just begun to know her as an adult. And my experience of becoming a mother was tumultuous. I hemorrhaged, came very close to dying, and had a long recovery. So I’ve thought a lot about the separation of children from their mothers. It’s almost unbearably sad and yet it’s a necessary part of maturing.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by: Ariel Gordon
There are two things you should know about Pentiction, B.C.-based writer Frances Greenslade. One, she prefers to be called Francie. Two, her latest book caused a furor at this spring’s London Book Fair.
It should go without saying that most writers dream of the words "bidding" and "war" coming in close proximity...
When all was said and done, Greenslade had deals to publish her novel Shelter in Canada, Australia and the U.K. Next year, it’ll be released in the U.S. and there’s both Dutch and German translations in the works.
Greenslade had previously published two award-winning memoirs, one based on travels in Ireland and the other focused on her experience of pregnancy and mothering.
She will be reading from Shelter in McNally Robinson’s atrium this Thursday at 7 p.m.
1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?
I’m an amateur singer, so I think of reading aloud like singing, except less terrifying. I love the rhythm that comes through in a live reading. It reminds me why I shouldn’t use words like threateningly in my writing.
2) What do you want people to know about Shelter?
It’s about two sisters whose mother leaves them to billet with a family friend in a small B.C. town, and doesn’t return. I hope it’s the kind of novel people will bring to the cottage and read right through the dinner hour, as the sun goes down, and they get a glass of wine instead of supper. Shelter looks at the expectations we have of our mothers, our first shelter, and the shock that comes when we realize they are more than just our mothers, but women with lives that don’t always include us.
3) Will this be your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I lived in Winnipeg for many years, from age 11 to 24. For a while, I lived in a friend’s firehall off Corydon. In the tower, I could look out over the treetops of the city and watch the thunderstorms roll in. Now that I live in the semi-desert of the Okanagan, I think of Winnipeg as lush and humid, prairie jungle.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I’m on a Daphne du Maurier-a-thon. I just finished Jamaica Inn and I’m now reading Rebecca. I’m at work on a second novel called Sing a Worried Song. It’s set in India and in rural Manitoba.
5) Your last two books have focused at least to some extent on mothering and tragedy. Why are the two linked for you? Or is this a coincidence? (Is there such thing as a coincidence?)
Definitely not a coincidence. I think my fascination (or obsession) with the complexities of mothers and mothering comes from two things. My own mother died when I was 24 and I had only just begun to know her as an adult. And my experience of becoming a mother was tumultuous. I hemorrhaged, came very close to dying, and had a long recovery. So I’ve thought a lot about the separation of children from their mothers. It’s almost unbearably sad and yet it’s a necessary part of maturing.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Giving up
After two years co-poetry columning with Jennifer Still, this is my last review. We decided to give it up for Lent.
Neither of us is Catholic but it was a definitely a voluntary sacrifice writing the column.
So many months it felt like torture condensing my thoughts on a book and the years of thinking and feeling behind it down to 150 words. And then doing it again three times.
But at the same time, I was so grateful to be forced to read. And I felt so goddamn current: short-lists would come out and I'd have read/reviewed at least half.
It'll be a sacrifice to not be writing the column. I was SO proud to be writing the column, given the example of Alison Calder and Maurice Mierau. And it was good for me to have poetry stuffed up my nose month after month.
I'll miss it but I'm glad it/we're done. And Jonathan Ball, who will be taking over as of September, will do a bang-up job.
And if he doesn't, it's none of my concern! HA!
My thanks to Books Editor Morley Walker and to Jennifer Still, who will be touring that new book of hers this fall to points east.
Neither of us is Catholic but it was a definitely a voluntary sacrifice writing the column.
So many months it felt like torture condensing my thoughts on a book and the years of thinking and feeling behind it down to 150 words. And then doing it again three times.
But at the same time, I was so grateful to be forced to read. And I felt so goddamn current: short-lists would come out and I'd have read/reviewed at least half.
It'll be a sacrifice to not be writing the column. I was SO proud to be writing the column, given the example of Alison Calder and Maurice Mierau. And it was good for me to have poetry stuffed up my nose month after month.
I'll miss it but I'm glad it/we're done. And Jonathan Ball, who will be taking over as of September, will do a bang-up job.
And if he doesn't, it's none of my concern! HA!
My thanks to Books Editor Morley Walker and to Jennifer Still, who will be touring that new book of hers this fall to points east.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Mooney's second collection offers depth, strange intimacy
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon
Jacob McArthur Mooney's second collection, Folk (McClelland & Stewart, 104 pages, $19), is a kind of archeology and anthropology of his childhood home and his current home - that is, Nova Scotia and Toronto.
But Mooney's poems are much more about placelessness as they are about place.
The first section, for instance, unpacks the 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 in St. Margaret's Bay from the point of view of locals, which absolutely includes the kid in "Deterministic Error Chain," "who saw the sign at the saltwater pool that read / No Diving and thought, I should really draw a picture / of an airplane, there."
Folk's second section circles Malton, Ont., whose chief employer is Lester B. Pearson International Airport. And grounding the poems in this neutral location, in an anonymous point of departure instead of a known destination - a known outcome - lends the book depth and a strange intimacy.
* * *
Open Air Bindery (Biblioasis, 72 pages, $19) is also the second collection for David Hickey of London, Ont.
Hickey hails from the Maritimes originally, so here, too, we get prodigal poems, but Open Air Bindery is as informed by the poet's insomnia and his (perhaps concurrent) backyard astronomy as it is by any notion of homecoming.
Set on ferries and in hotel rooms and suburban neighbourhoods with their "collected sidewalk(s)" and "selected raccoon(s)," these poems are wry and tired and human.
Hickey might proclaim himself "lost in the staging / of the twentieth-first century. // And never sure / if it's my turn to sing" ("Short Lives"), but in this book he croons out into never-ending night, ignoring the demands of the day to come.
* * *
To date, more than 3.3 million people have watched Halifax poet Tanya Davis perform her poem "How to Be Alone" in a short film by Andrea Dorfman on YouTube.
The poem ends abruptly, appropriately, with the following lines: "You could be, in an instant, surrounded, if you need it. / If your heart is bleeding make the best of it // There is heat in freezing, be a testament."
Davis is also a singer-songwriter, so it is no surprise that she put out three albums of music before publishing her first book, At First, Lonely (Acorn Press, 72 pages, $18).
The genre-bending Davis is at her best when writing long prose-like meditations like "Lapsed Catholic" (on guilt), "Made in Canada" (on hitchhiking across the country) and This "Tear Is a Word" (on crying in public).
At First, Lonely is a brave little book, full of thoughtful consolations.
* * *
Gabe Foreman hails from Thunder Bay but lives in Montreal, where he manages the soup kitchen at a mission when not writing poetry.
But in his debut - A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People (Coach House Books, 96 pages, $18) - Foreman is less interested in documenting the disparities between urban and rural or rich and poor and opts instead for surreal soap opera.
Featuring a cast of characters that includes Shy Rhonda, the Oracle, the Colonel and Your Dad, Foreman contemplates "types" as varied as bargain hunters and organ donors, innocent bystanders and empty-nesters.
Think loopy libretto. No, think social network-as-poetry, with its attendant bad puns and empty threats, as in "Armchair Psychologists": "I'm the sort / of extrovert / who makes his own furniture / and forces people to sit in it."
Experimental poets are expected to write their way out of elaborate constraints, through fanciful conceits, and have whimsy to burn.
In Foreman's case, being faithful to the conceit - the encyclopedia format - apparently means including illustrations. They range from pie charts to Venn diagrams to doodles, but their effect is inconsistent and therefore distracting, especially as the poems are so very assured.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Reviewed by: Ariel Gordon
Jacob McArthur Mooney's second collection, Folk (McClelland & Stewart, 104 pages, $19), is a kind of archeology and anthropology of his childhood home and his current home - that is, Nova Scotia and Toronto.
But Mooney's poems are much more about placelessness as they are about place.
The first section, for instance, unpacks the 1998 crash of Swissair Flight 111 in St. Margaret's Bay from the point of view of locals, which absolutely includes the kid in "Deterministic Error Chain," "who saw the sign at the saltwater pool that read / No Diving and thought, I should really draw a picture / of an airplane, there."
Folk's second section circles Malton, Ont., whose chief employer is Lester B. Pearson International Airport. And grounding the poems in this neutral location, in an anonymous point of departure instead of a known destination - a known outcome - lends the book depth and a strange intimacy.
* * *
Open Air Bindery (Biblioasis, 72 pages, $19) is also the second collection for David Hickey of London, Ont.
Hickey hails from the Maritimes originally, so here, too, we get prodigal poems, but Open Air Bindery is as informed by the poet's insomnia and his (perhaps concurrent) backyard astronomy as it is by any notion of homecoming.
Set on ferries and in hotel rooms and suburban neighbourhoods with their "collected sidewalk(s)" and "selected raccoon(s)," these poems are wry and tired and human.
Hickey might proclaim himself "lost in the staging / of the twentieth-first century. // And never sure / if it's my turn to sing" ("Short Lives"), but in this book he croons out into never-ending night, ignoring the demands of the day to come.
* * *
To date, more than 3.3 million people have watched Halifax poet Tanya Davis perform her poem "How to Be Alone" in a short film by Andrea Dorfman on YouTube.
The poem ends abruptly, appropriately, with the following lines: "You could be, in an instant, surrounded, if you need it. / If your heart is bleeding make the best of it // There is heat in freezing, be a testament."
Davis is also a singer-songwriter, so it is no surprise that she put out three albums of music before publishing her first book, At First, Lonely (Acorn Press, 72 pages, $18).
The genre-bending Davis is at her best when writing long prose-like meditations like "Lapsed Catholic" (on guilt), "Made in Canada" (on hitchhiking across the country) and This "Tear Is a Word" (on crying in public).
At First, Lonely is a brave little book, full of thoughtful consolations.
* * *
Gabe Foreman hails from Thunder Bay but lives in Montreal, where he manages the soup kitchen at a mission when not writing poetry.
But in his debut - A Complete Encyclopedia of Different Types of People (Coach House Books, 96 pages, $18) - Foreman is less interested in documenting the disparities between urban and rural or rich and poor and opts instead for surreal soap opera.
Featuring a cast of characters that includes Shy Rhonda, the Oracle, the Colonel and Your Dad, Foreman contemplates "types" as varied as bargain hunters and organ donors, innocent bystanders and empty-nesters.
Think loopy libretto. No, think social network-as-poetry, with its attendant bad puns and empty threats, as in "Armchair Psychologists": "I'm the sort / of extrovert / who makes his own furniture / and forces people to sit in it."
Experimental poets are expected to write their way out of elaborate constraints, through fanciful conceits, and have whimsy to burn.
In Foreman's case, being faithful to the conceit - the encyclopedia format - apparently means including illustrations. They range from pie charts to Venn diagrams to doodles, but their effect is inconsistent and therefore distracting, especially as the poems are so very assured.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Writing by the Fire
Writing by the Fire:
A Workshop with Ariel Gordon
When: Sunday, November 13, 1-3:30 pm
Location: FortWhyte Alive (1961 McCreary Road)
Cost: $45. FortWhyte Members $40. Register at (204) 989-8355 .
By November, the geese have gone, the trees have lost their leaves and FortWhyte’s year-round residents are about to go into hibernation. Join award-winning writer Ariel Gordon in an afternoon writing workshop that will see participants tucked into the Siobhan Richardson Field Station with a warm fire and all the tea you can drink. We’ll workshop your fiction, poetry, or non-fiction and try our hands at a few exercises designed to have you writing, thinking and feeling summer all winter long.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. In spring 2010, Palimpsest Press published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump. She is the 2010 recipient of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and the 2011 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie. How to Prepare for Flooding (JackPine Press, 2011), a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, will be launched this fall. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
* * *
I do so love FortWhyte. Walking there, eating there, and now teaching there semi-regularly...
A Workshop with Ariel Gordon
When: Sunday, November 13, 1-3:30 pm
Location: FortWhyte Alive (1961 McCreary Road)
Cost: $45. FortWhyte Members $40. Register at (204) 989-8355 .
By November, the geese have gone, the trees have lost their leaves and FortWhyte’s year-round residents are about to go into hibernation. Join award-winning writer Ariel Gordon in an afternoon writing workshop that will see participants tucked into the Siobhan Richardson Field Station with a warm fire and all the tea you can drink. We’ll workshop your fiction, poetry, or non-fiction and try our hands at a few exercises designed to have you writing, thinking and feeling summer all winter long.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. In spring 2010, Palimpsest Press published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump. She is the 2010 recipient of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and the 2011 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie. How to Prepare for Flooding (JackPine Press, 2011), a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, will be launched this fall. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
* * *
I do so love FortWhyte. Walking there, eating there, and now teaching there semi-regularly...
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Artistic Licence: Emerging/Enfant
So I got my Artistic Licence last week.
Issued as a part of a "performative installation" called the Artistic Licence Bureau by Glen Johnson, the PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts was transformed.
A wall bisected the gallery space, with an opening to dispense and take in forms and a second opening to take the applicants' photos. Add to that chairs, clipboards, a rack of pamphlets, a bell signalling that the 'clerk' was needed and the effect was complete.
BING! (I rang the bell, of course...and tried to keep from giggling.)
My favourite part of the exhibit, besides the card, manual on how to apply for an Artistic Licence, and the half-dozen pamphlets on a variety of art-y subjects was how panicked it seemed to make "innocent" bystanders.
People would come in to Artspace's lobby, peer into the installation from the doorway of the gallery, and look dumbfounded.
The 'clerk' would cheerily invite them in. At which point, they'd take a nervous step back. A few entered the installation and browsed the pamphlets. ("Was this a joke?" I could almost hear them thinking, as I finished filling out my application.)
I will add my Artistic License to my 2004 ID card from the Banff Centre that listed me as an Artist and featured a similarly bad photo. (But oh, how I needed to have someone call me an artist...)
I will also mentally add it to the Winnipeg Sun designation by Tom Broadbeck, years ago, that I was "con artist" (it was an article protesting WAC and its distribution of funds; I'd recently got a grant and so they listed me by name...).
Yay! Fun!
* * *
From Platform's website:
"In a parody of the bureaucratization of the art world, and the seemingly endless ways artistic practices have become systemized, Glenn Johnson has created an office where artistic licences are dispensed.
Visitors to the Artistic Licence Bureau [ALB] will be able to experience all the fun that comes with a trip to a government office: waiting in line, filling in forms and having an unflattering photograph taken.
The ALB also offers a veritable potpourri (pronounced potpourri) of information pamphlets intended to demystify the various artistic practices one might endeavour to pursue: "It's Nothing Really, a Guide to Making Conceptual Art"; "ME, ME, ME, Turn Your Self-Obsession Into a Career as a Performance Artist"; and "How Long is This Thing? A Guide to Video Art" etc. Visitors to the ALB will be able to apply for (and possibly receive) a provisional Artistic Licence in order to finally have proof that they are not dilettantes but actual artists.
Since graduating from the University of Winnipeg with a BA in classics in 1993, Glen Johnson has produced a large body of writing that has been distributed in the form of brochures, novellas, and insertions within various catalogues and books. His performances, invariably involving text, and that take the form of storytelling segments or lectures accompanied by projected images, have been performed at The National Gallery of Canada (2008), the University of Winnipeg's Gallery 1C03 (2007), Winnipeg Art Gallery (2006), Mount Saint Vincent University (2005), PLATFORM, Winnipeg (2005), aceartinc (2009, 2005, 2003), and The Annex (2004). Among other strategies, Johnson incorporates humour in almost every (guess which ones!) artwork he produces.
Issued as a part of a "performative installation" called the Artistic Licence Bureau by Glen Johnson, the PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts was transformed.
A wall bisected the gallery space, with an opening to dispense and take in forms and a second opening to take the applicants' photos. Add to that chairs, clipboards, a rack of pamphlets, a bell signalling that the 'clerk' was needed and the effect was complete.
BING! (I rang the bell, of course...and tried to keep from giggling.)
My favourite part of the exhibit, besides the card, manual on how to apply for an Artistic Licence, and the half-dozen pamphlets on a variety of art-y subjects was how panicked it seemed to make "innocent" bystanders.
People would come in to Artspace's lobby, peer into the installation from the doorway of the gallery, and look dumbfounded.
The 'clerk' would cheerily invite them in. At which point, they'd take a nervous step back. A few entered the installation and browsed the pamphlets. ("Was this a joke?" I could almost hear them thinking, as I finished filling out my application.)
I will add my Artistic License to my 2004 ID card from the Banff Centre that listed me as an Artist and featured a similarly bad photo. (But oh, how I needed to have someone call me an artist...)
I will also mentally add it to the Winnipeg Sun designation by Tom Broadbeck, years ago, that I was "con artist" (it was an article protesting WAC and its distribution of funds; I'd recently got a grant and so they listed me by name...).
Yay! Fun!
* * *
From Platform's website:
"In a parody of the bureaucratization of the art world, and the seemingly endless ways artistic practices have become systemized, Glenn Johnson has created an office where artistic licences are dispensed.
Visitors to the Artistic Licence Bureau [ALB] will be able to experience all the fun that comes with a trip to a government office: waiting in line, filling in forms and having an unflattering photograph taken.
The ALB also offers a veritable potpourri (pronounced potpourri) of information pamphlets intended to demystify the various artistic practices one might endeavour to pursue: "It's Nothing Really, a Guide to Making Conceptual Art"; "ME, ME, ME, Turn Your Self-Obsession Into a Career as a Performance Artist"; and "How Long is This Thing? A Guide to Video Art" etc. Visitors to the ALB will be able to apply for (and possibly receive) a provisional Artistic Licence in order to finally have proof that they are not dilettantes but actual artists.
Since graduating from the University of Winnipeg with a BA in classics in 1993, Glen Johnson has produced a large body of writing that has been distributed in the form of brochures, novellas, and insertions within various catalogues and books. His performances, invariably involving text, and that take the form of storytelling segments or lectures accompanied by projected images, have been performed at The National Gallery of Canada (2008), the University of Winnipeg's Gallery 1C03 (2007), Winnipeg Art Gallery (2006), Mount Saint Vincent University (2005), PLATFORM, Winnipeg (2005), aceartinc (2009, 2005, 2003), and The Annex (2004). Among other strategies, Johnson incorporates humour in almost every (guess which ones!) artwork he produces.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Artist mothers
Oh, this workshop series will be so fun, even just the time spent with the delightfully non-linear Amy Karlinsky. And it will be so lovely to talk mothering and art and writing and pregnancy and children and process...
* * *
Readings and Creative Writing for Artist Mothers
with Amy Karlinsky and Ariel Gordon at MAWA
Dates: Monday, September 12, 6-9 pm; Sunday, October 23, 1-3 pm; Monday, November 21, 6-9 pm; and one date in January TBD
Registration deadline: Friday, September 9, 2011, at 4 pm
$30 for MAWA members. Email your intention to attend to programs@mawa.ca and put “Mothers” in the subject heading. If you are not already a member, please also submit a MAWA membership form and payment. MAWA membership costs $15 for underwaged persons and $30 for others.
* * *
Amy Karlinsky and Ariel Gordon will lead a four-session reading and writing workshop for artist mothers.
The sessions will focus on texts by artist mothers that encompass poetry, fiction and non-fiction, as well as “mothering” images from art history and contemporary art. Participants will identify themes, patterns and issues; share their own writings and imagery; and develop ideas. This is an opportunity for artist mothers to discuss and theorize experiences, to examine the objective/subjective, social/cultural/economic position of the artist-mother in art and literature, and to create out of the experience of being an artist-mother. It is a forum for play and collaboration, and may be an opportunity to expand the use of text in your visual arts practice.
* * *
Amy Karlinsky is a writer and curator with experience in galleries and museums in New York State, Manitoba, Ontario, British Columbia and Nunavut. She has taught sessionally for the departments of film, women’s studies and native studies, and at the school of art at the U of M; has facilitated workshops for Aqua Books, Manitoba Association of Art Educators, Early Childhood Education Council, and Limmud; and has mentored for MAWA. Her art criticism has appeared in Border Crossings, Canadian Art, the Winnipeg Free Press, etc., and her writing has been short listed for the Manitoba Book Awards. She has taught mothers, babies and children at Villa Rosa and Osborne House and she currently teaches art at TEC VOC High School in Winnipeg.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. In spring 2010, Palimpsest Press published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump, which focuses on pregnancy and mothering. She is the 2010 recipient of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and the 2011 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie. How to Prepare for Flooding (JackPine Press, 2011), a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, will be launched this fall. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
* * *
Readings and Creative Writing for Artist Mothers
with Amy Karlinsky and Ariel Gordon at MAWA
Dates: Monday, September 12, 6-9 pm; Sunday, October 23, 1-3 pm; Monday, November 21, 6-9 pm; and one date in January TBD
Registration deadline: Friday, September 9, 2011, at 4 pm
$30 for MAWA members. Email your intention to attend to programs@mawa.ca and put “Mothers” in the subject heading. If you are not already a member, please also submit a MAWA membership form and payment. MAWA membership costs $15 for underwaged persons and $30 for others.
* * *
Amy Karlinsky and Ariel Gordon will lead a four-session reading and writing workshop for artist mothers.
The sessions will focus on texts by artist mothers that encompass poetry, fiction and non-fiction, as well as “mothering” images from art history and contemporary art. Participants will identify themes, patterns and issues; share their own writings and imagery; and develop ideas. This is an opportunity for artist mothers to discuss and theorize experiences, to examine the objective/subjective, social/cultural/economic position of the artist-mother in art and literature, and to create out of the experience of being an artist-mother. It is a forum for play and collaboration, and may be an opportunity to expand the use of text in your visual arts practice.
* * *
Amy Karlinsky is a writer and curator with experience in galleries and museums in New York State, Manitoba, Ontario, British Columbia and Nunavut. She has taught sessionally for the departments of film, women’s studies and native studies, and at the school of art at the U of M; has facilitated workshops for Aqua Books, Manitoba Association of Art Educators, Early Childhood Education Council, and Limmud; and has mentored for MAWA. Her art criticism has appeared in Border Crossings, Canadian Art, the Winnipeg Free Press, etc., and her writing has been short listed for the Manitoba Book Awards. She has taught mothers, babies and children at Villa Rosa and Osborne House and she currently teaches art at TEC VOC High School in Winnipeg.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. In spring 2010, Palimpsest Press published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump, which focuses on pregnancy and mothering. She is the 2010 recipient of the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and the 2011 Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie. How to Prepare for Flooding (JackPine Press, 2011), a collaboration with designer Julia Michaud, will be launched this fall. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
NOT a mushroom
* * *
In case anyone was wondering, this has been a WRETCHED year for mushrooms.
When a rainstorm is followed by a few hot days, M and I know there will be lots of mushrooms. But ALL we've had through July and most of August is HOT with very little rain...
So front lawns and boulevards are brownish and crunchy and tomato plants look stunted.
But entering the forest this morning, I was sort of hoping against hope that there might be a few mushrooms here and there. But even the forest's ditches were dry and walking the boardwalk was like attempting stilts.
So in addition to Aa falling down THREE TIMES on the uneven path and then bursting into tears, there were NO mushrooms.
We found ONE log covered with what M and I refer to as 'potato chips' - i.e. dried-up old mushrooms layered one on top of each other - and I half-heartedly took a few pictures, but really there was nothing.
It was nice to stretch our goddamn legs. And a perfect opportunity to continue our walking-in-the-woods-is-good brainwashing programme. (Poor Aa!)
* * *
I think this might even be purple loosestrife - the invasive bane of Winnipeg riverbanks - but I'm not sure.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Gimme some sugar...
...or else I'll re-decorate the blog with sugary image.
(There's nothing a quiet afternoon and a sugary cup of tea can't fix.)
(There's nothing a quiet afternoon and a sugary cup of tea can't fix.)
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Image/text/image
* * *
If I were in a punny frame of mind, I'd say that it's been a banner few months for me, working life-wise.
But I'm NOT feeling particularly punny, so I'll just say that it's been an interesting exercize creating these banners for the University of Manitoba Press' website.
For many of the banners, I'm able to use the archival photos used in the books themselves. But some don't have photo sections and/or don't lend themselves to a particular visual concept.
Though I am not and will never be a designer, making images out of text (or around text) is an interesting reversal of my normal writing process, which is images to text, the world to the word.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Reprint: Turning the last page
Turning the last page
Customers mourn demise of Aqua Books
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by Ariel Gordon
Sad news for bookish people this week.
On Thursday, Kelly Hughes announced the bookstore and restaurant he and his wife own at 274 Garry St. would be closing, saying, "the financial burden has become too much."
Aqua Books housed more than 40,000 used books and hosted up to 400 events a year, everything from book launches to fringe plays to jazz shows to something called a "puppet slam." In addition to having a nut-free menu, EAT! bistro had vegetarian, vegan and celiac-friendly options and chef Candace Hughes did all her own baking.
Left to mourn is avid reader Louise Jones, who discovered Aqua when it was on Princess Street.
"I stumbled on Aqua Books by accident and was quite delighted with what I saw -- I love old buildings, old books, old furniture," says Jones. "I went back again and again and always found something of interest and the prices didn't hurt, either. When he finally unveiled the new store, I liked what I saw there, too.
"I like that there are chairs to sit on if I want to relax for awhile and read the latest treasure that I found in the stacks. The food in EAT! bistro is good, the coffee is delicious, and the atmosphere is peaceful and cheerful (love the decor!). What am I going to do for cupcakes now? I've been to the other bookstores, used and new, and there's nothing like Aqua - Kelly put his whole personality into it and it shows."
Heather Leask Armstrong, a librarian at Carman Collegiate, is another longtime customer.
"As a librarian, I was aware of Aqua Books before Kelly and Candace made the move to their current location and frequently used Kelly's expertise to source low-cost, high-quality and often difficult-to-find books," notes Armstrong. "But as a freelance writer and a closet poet and fiction writer, Aqua Books was way more than a bookstore to me. Aqua Books also became the place where I got to meet my favourite authors and discover new authors... I wrote the first draft of a teen novel under the inspiring tutelage of Aqua's first writer in residence, Anita Daher. It was at Aqua that I read a poem in front of a roomful of strangers for the very first time.
"It was at Aqua that I felt comfortable hanging out with strangers and new friends, whether at Kelly Hughes Live, eating at EAT! bistro or taking part in a writing workshop. To tell you the truth, Aqua and the creative energy that exists there even got me through a pretty dark time in my life."
Also grieving is Allison Norris, who has celiac disease.
"I received phone calls from friends and several co-workers at the office alerted me as soon as they found out Aqua Books and EAT! bistro were closing," says Norris. "Everyone who knows that I can't have gluten also knows how much I value what EAT! bistro has done for people with celiac disease. At EAT! bistro I don't feel isolated by my plate and no one at the table feels it necessary to apologize for eating their food; I can once again take for granted the experience of sharing an entree or dessert with family or friends and dining out becomes a enjoyable social activity rather than a challenge to Frankenstein menu items and an exercise in my trust of a kitchen's understanding of my disease."
But losing a favourite restaurant isn't Norris' only concern.
"I've gotten to know both Kelly and Candace and the rest of the staff and that makes the closure difficult on a personal level, but as a downtown resident, I'm concerned that such a unique business will close its doors. It is a tremendous loss to the downtown and arts community."
Customers aren't the only ones who are feeling the loss of Aqua Books and EAT! bistro.
Mel Marginet is an actress and the co-founder/artistic head of theatre company Theatre by the River, which mounted a production of Judith Thompson's play Habitat there in May 2010.
"I was devastated when I read that the store was closing," says Marginet. "There is no other venue for artists like Aqua Books. From theatre, music, comedy, poetry... so many artists have found a place to perform. It's a space that creates a great environment for artistic events: a central location, a place where the audience can eat and have a drink and a quirky, fun space.
"Kelly is an arts ambassador and will work with you and your budget to make the space work. Kelly and Candace have set the bar high with Aqua Books and EAT! bistro, and I don't know how anyone could ever fill their shoes."
No one is sure when Aqua Books and EAT! bistro will close their doors. They've pledged to honour their commitments until the end of September. But after that, no one knows.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer and former employee of Aqua Books.
Customers mourn demise of Aqua Books
Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION
by Ariel Gordon
Sad news for bookish people this week.
On Thursday, Kelly Hughes announced the bookstore and restaurant he and his wife own at 274 Garry St. would be closing, saying, "the financial burden has become too much."
Aqua Books housed more than 40,000 used books and hosted up to 400 events a year, everything from book launches to fringe plays to jazz shows to something called a "puppet slam." In addition to having a nut-free menu, EAT! bistro had vegetarian, vegan and celiac-friendly options and chef Candace Hughes did all her own baking.
Left to mourn is avid reader Louise Jones, who discovered Aqua when it was on Princess Street.
"I stumbled on Aqua Books by accident and was quite delighted with what I saw -- I love old buildings, old books, old furniture," says Jones. "I went back again and again and always found something of interest and the prices didn't hurt, either. When he finally unveiled the new store, I liked what I saw there, too.
"I like that there are chairs to sit on if I want to relax for awhile and read the latest treasure that I found in the stacks. The food in EAT! bistro is good, the coffee is delicious, and the atmosphere is peaceful and cheerful (love the decor!). What am I going to do for cupcakes now? I've been to the other bookstores, used and new, and there's nothing like Aqua - Kelly put his whole personality into it and it shows."
Heather Leask Armstrong, a librarian at Carman Collegiate, is another longtime customer.
"As a librarian, I was aware of Aqua Books before Kelly and Candace made the move to their current location and frequently used Kelly's expertise to source low-cost, high-quality and often difficult-to-find books," notes Armstrong. "But as a freelance writer and a closet poet and fiction writer, Aqua Books was way more than a bookstore to me. Aqua Books also became the place where I got to meet my favourite authors and discover new authors... I wrote the first draft of a teen novel under the inspiring tutelage of Aqua's first writer in residence, Anita Daher. It was at Aqua that I read a poem in front of a roomful of strangers for the very first time.
"It was at Aqua that I felt comfortable hanging out with strangers and new friends, whether at Kelly Hughes Live, eating at EAT! bistro or taking part in a writing workshop. To tell you the truth, Aqua and the creative energy that exists there even got me through a pretty dark time in my life."
Also grieving is Allison Norris, who has celiac disease.
"I received phone calls from friends and several co-workers at the office alerted me as soon as they found out Aqua Books and EAT! bistro were closing," says Norris. "Everyone who knows that I can't have gluten also knows how much I value what EAT! bistro has done for people with celiac disease. At EAT! bistro I don't feel isolated by my plate and no one at the table feels it necessary to apologize for eating their food; I can once again take for granted the experience of sharing an entree or dessert with family or friends and dining out becomes a enjoyable social activity rather than a challenge to Frankenstein menu items and an exercise in my trust of a kitchen's understanding of my disease."
But losing a favourite restaurant isn't Norris' only concern.
"I've gotten to know both Kelly and Candace and the rest of the staff and that makes the closure difficult on a personal level, but as a downtown resident, I'm concerned that such a unique business will close its doors. It is a tremendous loss to the downtown and arts community."
Customers aren't the only ones who are feeling the loss of Aqua Books and EAT! bistro.
Mel Marginet is an actress and the co-founder/artistic head of theatre company Theatre by the River, which mounted a production of Judith Thompson's play Habitat there in May 2010.
"I was devastated when I read that the store was closing," says Marginet. "There is no other venue for artists like Aqua Books. From theatre, music, comedy, poetry... so many artists have found a place to perform. It's a space that creates a great environment for artistic events: a central location, a place where the audience can eat and have a drink and a quirky, fun space.
"Kelly is an arts ambassador and will work with you and your budget to make the space work. Kelly and Candace have set the bar high with Aqua Books and EAT! bistro, and I don't know how anyone could ever fill their shoes."
No one is sure when Aqua Books and EAT! bistro will close their doors. They've pledged to honour their commitments until the end of September. But after that, no one knows.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer and former employee of Aqua Books.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Reprint: "Spoken Word Needs YOU!"
About Spoken Word: "Spoken Word Needs YOU!"
August issue of Mosaic Newspaper
by Terry Burns
No, this isn’t Words Aloud Spoken Word and Storytelling Festival’s version of a recruiting poster, but now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk poetry...and I mean literally.
Because that is what spoken word is all about, poetry and stories coming to you not just by the printed page, but via the bodies and voices of their creators, onstage and in person, immediate, visceral, and fresh. Before the printed word became ubiquitous, this is the way it had always been, a dynamic, embodied relationship between bard and listener.
To give you an idea of this dynamism and embodiment, we need to get a little audience participation going, and this is where the talking comes in. Several of the remarkable spoken word artists who will be joining Words Aloud in November have provided us with some choice pieces of work as festival “spoilers”, and that makes a great opportunity to begin to get some idea of the vitality of spoken word. As we take a look at the pieces, you need to do only one thing: read them aloud. Roll the words around on your tongue, listen for the rhymes, feel the rhythms and syllabic stresses like tides surging and ebbing, experience the way your lips and tongue navigate their way around consonant repetitions. Read the work to others, by all means, or read them when you are alone, with only your dog sitting at your feet thinking you’re talking to her.
* * *
Humour is a key ingredient in Ariel Gordon’s poetry, especially in her first book of poems, Hump (Palimpsest Press), which details her unsentimental experiences with pregnancy. This poem is called “Seven Months: ultrasound introductions”.
I am the fork-scarred sink, the water table
you are the warming goldfish
your father is the big eye anxious on your domestic bulge
the wet magnification of dorsal flicker
ventral thrum.
I am the dip & dunk tank, the basin overflowing
but they should have known better –
you might circle my drain
fin & bony ripple on every grainy pass
but I’m the only one likely to go belly up.
Again, it is in the saying it aloud that certain things about this poem become apparent. The insistent first beat of many of sentences and the repetition of the words “I” and “you(r)” lend the poem a solemn incantatory quality. And yet, this gravity is belied by the playful use of water/plumbing/fish imagery which works so well in the context of bodily pregnancy fluids. The solemnity and the wit then merge seamlessly in the last line, where the first strongly stressed beat is again the word “I”, and the rest of the sentence is a humorous reference to the birthing position, with a touch of menace thrown in by other connotations of the term “belly up”.
This short little piece, in its content and its structure, gives us a glimpse of the simultaneous seriousness and silliness inherent in pregnancy and birth. We see again that reading a poem aloud reveals not just semantic meaning, but can also offer a sensory counterpoint to the content which deepens our understanding of the work.
* * *
This article was written in advance of my appearance at the WordsAloud Festival this coming November, where I'll be reading with dub poet Lillian Allen and Iraqi journalist/writer-in-exile Ayub Nuri.
I know it's my traditional response but this time I REALLY mean it: Yay! Fun!
August issue of Mosaic Newspaper
by Terry Burns
No, this isn’t Words Aloud Spoken Word and Storytelling Festival’s version of a recruiting poster, but now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk poetry...and I mean literally.
Because that is what spoken word is all about, poetry and stories coming to you not just by the printed page, but via the bodies and voices of their creators, onstage and in person, immediate, visceral, and fresh. Before the printed word became ubiquitous, this is the way it had always been, a dynamic, embodied relationship between bard and listener.
To give you an idea of this dynamism and embodiment, we need to get a little audience participation going, and this is where the talking comes in. Several of the remarkable spoken word artists who will be joining Words Aloud in November have provided us with some choice pieces of work as festival “spoilers”, and that makes a great opportunity to begin to get some idea of the vitality of spoken word. As we take a look at the pieces, you need to do only one thing: read them aloud. Roll the words around on your tongue, listen for the rhymes, feel the rhythms and syllabic stresses like tides surging and ebbing, experience the way your lips and tongue navigate their way around consonant repetitions. Read the work to others, by all means, or read them when you are alone, with only your dog sitting at your feet thinking you’re talking to her.
* * *
Humour is a key ingredient in Ariel Gordon’s poetry, especially in her first book of poems, Hump (Palimpsest Press), which details her unsentimental experiences with pregnancy. This poem is called “Seven Months: ultrasound introductions”.
I am the fork-scarred sink, the water table
you are the warming goldfish
your father is the big eye anxious on your domestic bulge
the wet magnification of dorsal flicker
ventral thrum.
I am the dip & dunk tank, the basin overflowing
but they should have known better –
you might circle my drain
fin & bony ripple on every grainy pass
but I’m the only one likely to go belly up.
Again, it is in the saying it aloud that certain things about this poem become apparent. The insistent first beat of many of sentences and the repetition of the words “I” and “you(r)” lend the poem a solemn incantatory quality. And yet, this gravity is belied by the playful use of water/plumbing/fish imagery which works so well in the context of bodily pregnancy fluids. The solemnity and the wit then merge seamlessly in the last line, where the first strongly stressed beat is again the word “I”, and the rest of the sentence is a humorous reference to the birthing position, with a touch of menace thrown in by other connotations of the term “belly up”.
This short little piece, in its content and its structure, gives us a glimpse of the simultaneous seriousness and silliness inherent in pregnancy and birth. We see again that reading a poem aloud reveals not just semantic meaning, but can also offer a sensory counterpoint to the content which deepens our understanding of the work.
* * *
This article was written in advance of my appearance at the WordsAloud Festival this coming November, where I'll be reading with dub poet Lillian Allen and Iraqi journalist/writer-in-exile Ayub Nuri.
I know it's my traditional response but this time I REALLY mean it: Yay! Fun!
Monday, August 01, 2011
(Long) longlisted!
So Hump was longlisted today in the poetry category of the The ReLit Awards, whose slogan is "Ideas, Not Money."
There are 69 other poets on the longlist, so it's a LONG longlist, but being nommed for the ReLit was one of the small dreams I had before publishing a book...so I'm sort of blissed out.
Did I mention the prize is a ring? And that I enter the only OTHER lit prize that awards a ring (Prairie Fire's Bliss Carman Prize every GODDAMN year?)
The shortlist - typically seven books per category - comes out at the end of August.
There are 69 other poets on the longlist, so it's a LONG longlist, but being nommed for the ReLit was one of the small dreams I had before publishing a book...so I'm sort of blissed out.Did I mention the prize is a ring? And that I enter the only OTHER lit prize that awards a ring (Prairie Fire's Bliss Carman Prize every GODDAMN year?)
The shortlist - typically seven books per category - comes out at the end of August.
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