The Jane Day Reader: char

Quotable

“Gordon’s poetry reads like something by William Carlos Williams: abrupt, colourful, and intensely visual.” – J.A. Weingarten, Matrix Magazine.

“Not so much sweetness and light, Gordon channels Adrienne Rich's dichotomy of love and frustration with her realism.” – Zanna Joyce, Winnipeg Free Press.

“Hump is gentle and sly, but also as sharp as baby teeth and poison mushrooms. And it’s called Hump.” – Quentin Mills-Fenn, Uptown Magazine.

“Ariel Gordon is superbly, supremely, a poet of the body. She finds words for the physicality of the forest, of the garden, of pregnancy. Hump speaks the erotics of being alive and being in love with being alive.” – Robert Kroetsch.

"The focus of Hump is the rich experience of motherhood and marriage on the one hand, and of city life in the integrated context of the natural world, which is everywhere engaging, fierce, beautiful, and unstoppable. This is capable, exuberant writing, at once passionate and meticulous. Hump is a worthy first book indeed." – Michael Harris, Kenneth Meadwell, and Serge Patrice Thibodeau, jurors for the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry / Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie.

"Brimming with finely crafted poems that thrum with life and love, Hump is indeed a very promising debut." – Fiona Timwei Lam, Contemporary Verse 2.

"If you don't know Ariel's work, I can recommend her book Hump, which I keep on my bedside table, along with all my stuff on LOST EXPLORERS and CASTAWAYS and HELLISH SIEGES, as things to pick up and simply open and starting reading anywhere, which is the pretty much the best review a book can get." – Darryl Joel Berger.

Origin Story

Why is my name Ariel Gordon and this blog entitled The Jane Day Reader, you ask?

Well, my middle names are Jane and Day, after my grandmothers, Ade Augusta Rooseboom (who was called Day Laban after she married my grandfather and moved to Canada) and Anna Vida Mary Barrett-Hamilton (who became Jane Gordon after her immigration and later marriage).

When I was fourteen, I seriously contemplated using "Jane Day Gordon" or "J.D. Gordon" as my pen name. And then realized that there was no point in having an alternate identity in no-degrees-of-separation Winnipeg.

As a grown-up compromise, I started using 'janeday' as the username for my email and then for the name of this blog, which I started reluctantly and never expected to enjoy...

(I also gave my daughter another version of my grandmothers' names...)

Ariel's interviews on-line

Poetic Edits: Ariel Gordon
KevinSpenst.com
September 2011

The Next Chapter
CBC Radio One
February 2011

In Conversation: Ariel Gordon
All Things Said & Done
December 2010

Ariel Gordon on Hump
Book Club Buddy
August 2010

How to Interview a Poet
The Writers' Collective of Manitoba
May 2010

8-Ball: Ariel Gordon
Jonathan Ball dot com
January 2010

12 or 20 Questions: Ariel Gordon
rob mclennan's blog
August 2009

Blogging and the Creative Process: A Short Interview with Ariel Gordon
Capacious Hold-All
June 2009

The Motherhood & Writing Project: Ariel Gordon
All Things Said & Done
March 2009

The Jane Day Reader

Monday, April 30, 2012

char

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