Reprint: Matrix

From the Summer 2010, Issue 86 issue of Montreal-based lit mag Matrix:



I'm quite sure the fact that this was called The Drinking Issue has nothing to do with the judgments on offer in the review...heh.

Buffalo Runs Press spring launch!

My e-reading from Rutting Season is getting around. First of all, it made an appearance at an event in Toronto in October.

Now, apparently, it might be aired at this Montreal event...

...though I hear it's demanding strong hot tea with heaps of sugar and cream in a locally-sourced pottery mug before it'll go on.

Anyways, if you're in Montreal, you can have a listen to my goatish performance.

And an actual look-see at Linda and Michael while they read their poems...which is, admittedly, preferable to my only-audible trills and mutterings.

Anyways...fun!

Reprint: The Montreal Review of Books

A review of Buffalo Runs Press' Rutting Season anthology, from the newly e-updated Montreal Review of Books:

"Rutting Season is essentially three chapbooks filled out with a conversation by the poets. The shop talk must have seemed a fine idea, but it seems too mutually congratulatory.

This is not one of those anthologies that justifies itself with a new approach to writing, a common programme. The poets are talented, especially Ariel Gordon, whose work is an image-driven sequence about the profound intimacy between a mother and a nursing child.

Michael Lithgow's work is more leisurely and meditative. He has the lyric poet's eye for revealing details and a good sense of when to modulate away from grand statements, but at the same time is interested in narrative and character. His poems are reflective and don't offer easy gratification. No fast food there."

(More of the review after the turn...)

"Linda Besner writes about recognizable human experiences; a trip to the eye doctor or the butcher, but she defamiliarizes the language by writing words backward, or occasionally rhyming consecutive words ('om comb').

She doesn't go as far as Erin Mouré or Steven McCaffery in undermining discourse, but she creates momentary nodes of unexpected meaning when the mind pauses over phrases like 'sag oven' or 'such a long emit.'

When we are told that a character wrote 'YAG' on his forehead with eyeliner, we perceive the strangeness and arbitrary quality of the term 'gay.' The next step might be a more radical (as in 'root') dismantling of language. On the other hand, there are advantages in stopping where she does: language retains some of its normal functions even as it is being mildly subverted.

Gordon, Besner, and Lithgow are poets to watch."

In the category of should-go-without-saying, but...fun!

Reprint: Indyish.com

Hey all, I just got sent the link to this review of Rutting Season, the mini-anthology of poetry + conversation by Montreal's Buffalo Runs Press:

"Rutting Season contains work by three poets, Ariel Gordon, Linda Besner, and Michael Lithgow, and finishes with a conversation between the poets about the poems at hand, and the act and purpose of poetry generally.

The poems chime up against each other anyway, by virtue of proximity, so the conversation seems a logical conclusion and moves the poets from the land of hovery, lovely, heartbreaky, wordsmiths to people you can curl around tea with, and wonder about everything, and pull out your hair comfortably in companionship, all not knowing but hoping and anyway, working hard.

Here are some of my favorite moments in a book that is heartily worth the $10 purchase:

From Ariel Gordon, a poem that makes everything flip and flicker into it’s otherself and closes all the gaps with a spluttering sound of infinity..."

This is the "first official review" of this book, according to Correy Baldwin, publisher and editor extraordinaire.

Fun!

(For the rest of the review, click here.)

Reprint: Putting Heads Together

From the Vehicule Press blog, as pointed out by the ever-vigilant Brenda Schmidt:

Thursday, 6 August 2009

"Last week, I visited the Word and picked up, among other things, a copy of Rutting Season, a "mini-anthology" by Montreal micro-publisher Buffalo Runs Press. The concept is super-simple: a generous selection of poems by three young poets - in this case, Ariel Gordon, Michael Lithgow and Linda Besner - bookended by some shop talk as the poets discuss each other's work. I'll admit to some bias as we're publishing Linda Besner's first book in 2011, but the other poets (new to me) were definitely worth my time."

Posted by Carmine Starnino at 10:34

TWAB

For those of you who (sadly, sadly...) missed the June 4 launch of Guidelines & Rutting Season at Aqua Books, Bookstore owner Kelly Hughes included the following snippet in his amusingly scornful e-newsletter, This Week @ Aqua Books:

Audio: Podcasts are now up for Méira Cook's June Speaking Crow stint, plus the Ariel Gordon/Sharon Caseburg launch.

They're #3 and #1 here: http://aquabooks.ca/audio.php, respectively.

A bag for my goat-ish books

A while back, Edmonton poet Shawna Lemay asked me to contribute to her Capacious Project, which was a clever and sensitive response to women's spaces and women's concerns.

But she said it better than I can:

"There has been a fascination with artist’s and writer’s workspaces – one can find pools of photos on flickr and books of photographs as well. But I’m interested in what we carry. How we carry. To paraphrase Anna Johnson, the purse has been seen as an honest time capsule, an archive, a little house, a portable boudoir. What do you take away with you in your hold-all? Is it flimsy, sturdy, practical, frivolous? What secrets does it contain?

This is the first in a series, in which I ask writers to creatively engage with these questions. Responses may take the form of a list (made up or real, mischievous or serious), a snapshot, a poem, a story, an impression, a rant, a rhapsody, a drawing."

I started and stopped my response, stopped and started, but never quite finished. It just didn't feel right.

But today, feeling pleasantly quiet and unoccupied the day after my One Night in June launch, I thought I'd riff on the Capacious Project and show you my only-somewhat-artfully-arranged 'launch bag'...


In my reading over on Shawna Lemay's Capacious Hold-all blog, I realized that some writers have a 'book bag' in which they carry the reading copy of a book during the life of a book, by which I mean the variety of events the book takes them to.

The idea appealed. I'm not especially motivated by shoes or purses but have a collection of mostly second-hand bags, including p/leather briefcases, day bags, and computer/messenger bags.

Which are mostly bags to hold notebooks and novels and my wallet and even a last minute apple as I leave the house. Bags for living and working and being in the world.

So I started looking for just the right bag in which to enclose my goat-ish chappies and found it on another Lemay-based blog: Keiskamma Canada.

This site functions as the Canadian portal for Keiskamma, which is

A not-for-profit organization dedicated to the holistic care of the communites that live in the area alongside the Keiskamma River in the Eastern Cape. The Keiskamma Trust combines health, art, music and education initiatives in an integrated fight against poverty and HIV/AIDS.

Shawna's been auctioning pillow covers and tote bags by participants in the project in Africa and I was fortunate enough to win the auction for this bag.

Like the Rutting Season book, whose spine you can see peeking out of the bag, the bag is smaller than I'd expected but lovely. And like the Guidelines book, which features Tim Schouten's hooves on the outside and waterbuffaloes inside, it is a brilliant beautiful orange.

At first, the bag only held the books and was slung over the back of my chair. But as the night progressed, other things were added to it.

Like M's late model Mac computer, which sat on the edge of the stage, hooked up to the digital projector and to the sound system, so I could both display 100 of Tim Schouten's horses from his In The Absence of Horses series during my reading and then later play an audio clip of Linda Besner reading a few of her poems from Rutting Season.

Also, the CD with Tim's images on it. He dropped into Aqua earlier in the day, so we could ensure that all the necessary connections worked, because tech is always temperamental. And we had a lovely chat and he invited me to next weekend's rural tour of artists' studios, which will also include his Petersfield studio...

Like the box of assorted Morden's chocolates from writer Anita Daher, who came into Aqua on the way to the barn, where she's tending to a seriously ill horse, just to bring me a confectionary launch-present and hugs. I'm not always a huggy person, but I'll accept a hug from Anita anytime...

Like Sharon Caseburg's gorgeous chapbook from Jackpine Press. I generally consider chapbooks to be fetish objects, but you should know that Sharon's sleepwalking is well worth fete-ing/fetish-izing. It feels ancient and precious...and I'm glad to have been one of five people who got to buy one last night.

Sharon also brought several intestine-loops of tawny raw silk to the launch, to give people an idea of what her sister Debbie Caseburg Tyson's process was while creating the felted silk covers.

My eyes gleamed at the sight of the silk. I coveted those tumbling curves more than I have ever coveted anything and so Sharon, being Sharon, gave it to me. There was enough of it that I could give 'locks' to other writers present and still have a good length to drape around my neck.

And yes, in case you were wondering, it's the softest goddamn thing I've ever touched...

And that's about it, except for the thanks.

To those who attended and to those who wrote to say they couldn't make it, life being not-especially-artfully-arranged at the best of times...

To Jenna Butler at Rubicon Press, who told me this morning that the first print run of Guidelines is already sold out...

To Correy Baldwin at Buffalo Runs Press and Linda Besner and even her uncle Neil Besner, a Winnipeg lit community stalwart and U of Wpg VP International who did his best to sneak out on last night's convocation for our event...

Many many thanks.

Yay! Fun!

cover story: Rutting Season

One night in June

An evening of poetry with Sharon Caseburg & Ariel Gordon
Where: Aqua Books, 274 Garry Street
When: Thursday, June 4, 7:00 pm


Please join Sharon & Ariel and their guests Tim Schouten and Neil Besner as they launch chapbooks from presses in Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Montreal.

In addition to the readings, the event will feature visual art by Tim Schouten [whose artwork "Untitled #117 (In the Absence of Horses)" is the cover of Guidelines] and Debbie Caseburg Tyson.

There will ALSO be one of EAT! Bistro's splendid cakes and refreshments!

* * *

The Books

Ariel Gordon’s Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 (Rubicon Press), explores what it means to ground oneself in landscape and family. These prose poems vividly chronicle the journey undertaken by two sisters to reconcile with their family’s past, and, over the course of their travels, with each other. A truly beautiful collection by a talented writer, this chapbook strikes a delicate balance between understanding the past and moving forward with strength into the future.

sleepwalking - poetry by Sharon Caseburg, jacket design and handwork by Debbie Caseburg Tyson - is a long elegy, elegant and other-worldly, wrapped in silk. With care and caution, sleepwalking considers what’s left when one is left behind. Published by JackPine Press.

Rutting Season, published by Montreal’s Buffalo Runs Press, is an engaging and accessible mini-anthology that features the poetry of three fresh voices in Canadian poetry and places these poets into a critical conversation with each other. Ariel Gordon, Michael Lithgow, and Linda Besner put their heads together in this unique collection.

* * *

Poet Biographies

Sharon Caseburg is a Winnipeg-based writer, editor and book designer who splits her time between producing other people’s books and writing her own. Her poetry and critical writing have appeared in numerous Canadian publications.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in fine lit mags such as Carousel, QWERTY, and PRISM International and even circulated on buses in Manitoba and Alberta. After a handmade limited-edition chapbook with Kingsville’s Palimpsest Press sold out in fall 2008, Ariel's first full collection of poetry, Hump, is slated for publication with Palimpsest in spring 2010.

* * *

Artist Biographies

Debbie Caseburg Tyson is an Edmonton-based fibre artist and instructor who indulges her passion for colour and texture in both contemporary quilt art and embroidery disciplines. Her work resides nationally in both private and public collections.

Tim Schouten is a Winnipeg-based artist who maintains a studio on his ranch near Petersfield, Manitoba where he lives with his wife, dogs and five horses. He has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the U.S. and his work can be found in private, corporate and public collections.

chapbookery

I'm writing a review of a novel about an ongoing drought in the deep south while living in the soon-to-be-flooded north and I can't decide if I should get in the car and drive over to the BDI bridge, which overlooks the already-swamped neighbourhood of my childhood.

It's a writing day, see, and while I feel I should write a flooding poem, I'm not quite there. It's just as easy to stay in my high-and-dry downtown home and write my review and attempt to memorize the punch-in-the-gut parenting poem by Louise Gluck for my creative writing class.

We'll see. In the meantime, here are a couple of updates on my continuing forays into chapbookery:

Buffalo Runs, a small press out of Montreal, will publish an anthology in April that features my poem Substitutions.

Rutting Season is an engaging and accessible book that features the poetry of three fresh voices in Canadian poetry and places these poets into a critical conversation with each other. Ariel Gordon, Michael Lithgow, and Linda Besner put their heads together in this unique collection

Nothing wrong with a book with antlers on it. (ALL my books should have antlers on them!) Also, it was lovely to chat up Linda and Michael about various and sundry matters poetical.

In other news, Rubicon Press has just released the first books of the spring 2009 season. Mine is still in the works for this spring, but I thought I'd share the latest news...

Newly released chapbooks from the press include:

Dipika Mukherjee's The Palimpsest of Exile - a beautiful, highly evocative collection examining what it means to belong to many places and the ways in which we find home.
Raw umber cover, floral print Japanese paper flyleaf.

David Zieroth's Berlin Album - a highly-charged travelogue about a man searching for history.
Light tea cover, Japanese silk paper flyleaf.

Broadsides by Yi-Mei Tsiang (On Surrendering) and Mark Jackley (What the Home Inspector Won't Find).

Fabulous upcoming spring collections from Danielle Schaub (Israel) and Ariel Gordon (Winnipeg), plus two new Rubicon Press broadsides by Joanne Ellison and Allan Brown.

Fall 2009 releases include books by John B. Lee (the winner of our 2008 Midwinter Chapbook Competition), Wendy Donawa, Glen Sorestad...and many more.