Blurb/blubber

So poet/publisher kevin mcpherson eckhoff has blurbed me again.

Last time, it was in service of Kalamalka Press' How to Make a Collage chapbook, which won their John Lent Poetry Prose Contest. Kevin is Kalamalka's Editor-in-Chief, an English prof at Okanagan College, and a cheeky/intelligent/kind poet/person.

As much as I love winning things, the best part of the whole experience was getting to know Kevin and Jake Kennedy and Jason Dewinetz and Laisha Rosnau and John Lent a bit better.

So when it was time to wrangle blurbers for the new collection, I knew I wanted Kevin. Because he's a hard-working peer and someone whose poetry is very different from mine. And so I really appreciate his support of my work. And I like that he was excited to be asked.

So here's the blurb, which should be in Palimpsest's section of the LCP spring 2014 catalogue:

"Ariel Gordon’s Stowaways is a scrapbook of tender snapshots and snappy comebacks, of fairytale hopes and roadkill truths. This collage of poetry carbonates my alive blood with the oh! of words and the ha! of hearts. A wet, necessary, beautiful, gluey mess of memory, putrefaction, and dreams!" - kevin mcpherson eckhoff
 
I find writing blurbs even more torturous than writing short short reviews. My problem is that I mistrust superlatives. I want the blurbs to tell people about the work instead of just saying "it's magnificent genius!" over and over.

There are one or two more blurbs coming, but I don't want to pluck my proverbial chickens before they've reached the feather-plucking-station. At the poetry abattoir.

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In other news, the title of the collection has officially changed from the working-title How to Pack Without Overpacking to the final-final Stowaways.

It took forever to settle on a final-final. I asked every goddamn writer I knew to help me. And then Palimpsest poet/publisher Dawn Kresan suggested Stowaways, which is the title of one of the poems.

I like it thematically and also because even though it's a one-word title, it's very firmly a two-syllable word. It's a gorgeous goddamn word, too, with all those Ws. It almost falls apart when you say it more than once or twice.

The only other thing I'm working on, Stowaways-wise, is trying to get a few excerpts published in lit mags. YOU HEAR ME, EDITORS OF LITERARY MAGAZINES?!

Ahem.

Reprint: Mythologies of Loss trailer

"Room invites you to celebrate women's strength, vulnerability, and wit this International Women's Day, as we launch our latest issue, 36.1, Mythologies of Loss, on March 8th.

Watch our 36.1 Trailer featuring Christa Couture, Sigal Samuel, Joy Kogawa, Sue Goyette and more!"



* * *

After a session that involved my partner and I bickering about the backdrop for the video and my feverish daughter sighing dramatically in the background, I wound up contributing a thirty second chunk of my, "How to Tell if Someone is Dead."

(The poem will be in How to Pack Without Overpacking, my 2014 collection with Palimpsest. Which I'm trying to get out the door right now. Without much luck.)

Thanks to Rachel for her calm devotion to this issue...

Back cover

So here's the back cover the spring 2013 issue of Vancouver-based lit mag Room Magazine, which includes a poem of mine.

This special issue, entitled Mythologies of Loss, was edited by former/forever Winnipeg poet Rachel Thompson.

Here's how she described the texts she was looking for in the call for submissions:

"If loss is anything, it is lonely. But perhaps the intimacy of the page shared by writer and reader can make it less so.

When establishing the theme for this issue, I figured there must be other writers out there who are re-tasting through retrospection personal tragedies, re-framing things, exploring the insides of the experience.

I thought these writers could come together and share the logic of their thinking (their 'mythologies'), lighting the way for others who have, or who inevitably will, lose someone or something dear to them (that's life)."

My poem is a mixed-up memorial to writers Robert Kroetsch and Michael Van Roy, both of whom died suddenly in 2011.

Yay! (Sad) Fun!

next big thing-y

What is the working title of your book?
How to Pack Without Overpacking, though that really does feel like a working title. I'm looking forward to elaborating the final title...
 
Where did the idea for the book come from?
This manuscript is more-or-less conceited. More by virtue of being mostly how-to poems, less by not being the manuscript I was supposed to publish next. I wrote these poems as palate cleansers when not working on my 'main' manuscript, which eventually stopped cooperating. Eventually, I realized that I had a manuscript's worth of palate cleansers and that, reading them together, they were all very closely linked, thematically speaking.

I started writing how-to poems - that is, poems that give step by step instructions on how to do something - while I was finishing my debut, Hump. That book was primarily pregnancy and mothering poems and I think the how-to poem appealed because it's incredibly open-ended and yet suggests a particular structure. A beginning-middle-end.

Also, I think I was mocking the "Mommy voice" that I found myself using with my daughter...

As I kept working on the manuscript, of course, I allowed myself to use whatever form the individual poem seemed to require.

Which is to say that sometimes the title is just a hanger for the poem and that sometimes it's the rickety spine...

What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Hugh Jackman and Tilda Swinton. For obvious reasons.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
 Hmm. I don't have one yet, but I DO have this description of the chapbook of poems I published in 2011 with Saskatoon's JackPine Press:

"How to Prepare for Flooding is a collection of poems modeled on the how-to manuals and survival guides that rattle around your toolbox and clog up your glove compartment. Chock-a-block with illustrations and useful tips, these poems will prepare readers for a raft of natural and personal disasters such as "How to Survive a Plane Crash" and "How to Sew a Button." But more than that, How to Prepare for Flooding asks, over and over, what's the difference between wild and tame? Natural and unnatural? Also, is this REALLY where we find ourselves?"

(The poems from this chapbook will likely find themselves in How to Pack Without Overpacking, as will the poems in my upcoming Kalamalka Press chapbook, How to Make a Collage.)

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I've just signed a contract to publish How to Pack Without Overpacking with Palimpsest Press in spring 2014. They published my first book, Hump, back in 2010.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Some of these poems date back to 2007 but the great majority were written over the past year...

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Poems that work with humour. Poems that incorporate myth and fable in contemporary settings. Poems with faintly apocalyptic inklings: there are poems here about plane crashes, being lost in the woods, and surviving floods as well as how you'd go about ailments like boils and leprosy.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The idea of being a working writer. The idea that I'd always be working on a piece of writing, that I'd always be pushing at the edges of what I was capable of.

Beyond that, I was interested in what was a worthy subject for a poem. Can you write a poem about anything? What would that poem look like?

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
That I'm hoping to convince my publisher to use artworks by Darryl Joel Berger for the cover and maybe also the interiors. Mostly because he's hatefully talented but also because some of the poems came out of an image/text collaboration with him.

* * *

Rules of the Next Big Thing

• Use this format for your post
• Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)
• Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them. 

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

1. What is the working title of your book?
2. Where did the idea for the book come from?
3. What genre does your book fall under?
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

* * *

I'm not usually super interested in blog memes, which are just tricked-up chain letters, but when I was tagged by Pearl Pirie / pesbo, I decided I'd stop being such a poop.

And use the opportunity to tag in my turn people whose work I was interested in hearing about.

Which is to say, people I don't know exceptionally well but whose work I find interesting...which includes Saleema Nawaz / Metaphysical Conceit, David Jon Fuller / As You Were, Darryl Joel Berger / red-handed.

signed/sealed/delivered.

So I signed the contract for my second book of poetry this week.

Palimpsest Press will be publishing How to Pack Without Overpacking in spring 2014.

I'm greatly looking forward to working with poet/publisher Dawn Kresan again, to adding my book to what's becoming a really great list. (Go Palimpsest go!)

Now, How to Pack Without Overpacking is the title we used on the contract, but it feels very much like a working title and not THE title.

I'm usually pretty good with titles. They usually arrive just as the piece of writing is in its last stages.

Given that the manuscript isn't yet in it's final stages - I'll likely begin working with an editor in mid to late 2013 - maybe it's a good thing to not have a title yet.

Maybe. 

I had the title for Hump pretty early on. And it WAS the right title. (Dawn told me that the LPG sales reps giggled when they heard the name...) But I spent a fair bit of time preparing to defend it, first from poet/editor Jeanette Lynes and later from poet/publisher Dawn Kresan. But neither of them said anything. Not a peep! (When I finally asked, Jeanette said, "I figured you knew what you were doing...")

As you've probably guessed, this collection will have HEAPS of how to poems, including those in the 2011 JackPine chapbook, How to Prepare for Flooding. But there are also large chunks of poems that aren't quite so bossy. So IMPERATIVE.

Shaping the manuscript has been great fun so far.  (The kind of great fun that turns your brain into a scratchy am radio station. Which is to say: messages everywhere! snatches of lyrics you remember fondly! much static!)

In the meantime, I'm working on edits to my Kalamalka chapbook, which should be out this spring...and then there's that whole Xmas thing.

Yay! Fun!