The Art of Walking participant reading

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Last night we had The Art of Walking participant reading. I felt opened up after and then I put beer in the hole...

Advanced heckling

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So I asked the audience at Speaking Crow to pretend to be an angry mob. Because I thought it would make my friends laugh. It turns out that I was laughing too hard myself to take a good pic. Oh well...

I read Poetry Barter Project poems and had people join me on stage where appropriate: Julie Kentner read the lists in "Fire Baggage," one of three poems I wound up writing for her, and host poet Steve Locke read the interstitial bits in "For a sheaf of grape leaves."

It was a fun evening....

West meets...west.

So I forgot to mention that the fall tour I'm embarking on has two phases.

A three day Brandon/Saskatoon/Regina leg with Winnipeg poets Jonathan Ball and John Toone and then a four day Toronto/Ottawa leg with Regina poet Tracy Hamon.

I'm looking forward to hazing the Jon/Johns on our trip. I haven't told them that I've found accommodation (with poets!) in Saskatoon and Regina for myself but not for them. Yet.

Heh.

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Poetry Explosion!

(1) Poetry Writing Workshop
with John Toone, Jonathan Ball & Ariel Gordon

Three young Winnipeg poets share their secrets for writing and publishing...

FREE CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP
that will make your head spin and get your poetry mojo working!

Poetry Video Lab
114 Clark Hall, Brandon University
Saturday, October 2, 2010 1:30 – 4:30 pm

Please pre-register at the BU Faculty of Arts office: 727-9790 mahoney@brandonu.ca


(2) Poetry Reading
by John Toone, Jonathan Ball & Ariel Gordon

104 Clark Hall
Saturday, October 2, 2010 7:30 pm

Free Admission!! Free Refreshments!! Everyone Welcome!!

Co-sponsored by THE HAWKWEED LITERARY FORUM as part of SEE, dir. by Di Brandt, Brandon University Canada Research chair in Literature and Creative Writing, together with Dale Lakevold, BU Creative Writing program coordinator, and the Brandon Folk Music and Art Society, dir. by Shandra McNeill, as part of WORD@FOLKFEST Winter Workshop Series, with generous support from the League of Canadian Poets.

West Meets East

Hey all,

If our SK/AB tour in the spring wasn't enough, Regina's Tracy Hamon and I will be traveling to Ottawa & Toronto in early October...and reading with a brace of poets in each town.

I know I've got barely one and a half readers of this blog in Ottawa and Toronto put together but I thought I'd make note of it here...

Many thanks to Ibi Kaslik for her help in arranging the Toronto reading; ditto Sandra Ridley for e-whispering Pearl Pirie's name in my ear.

Thanks too to the League of Canadian Poets, Palimpsest Press and Coteau Books, who have enabled our swanning about the country, books in hand.

Do come! It'll be great fun!

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West Meets East I
Featuring Ariel Gordon, Tracy Hamon, Christine McNair & Pearl Pirie

When: October 5, 7:30 pm
Where: Collected Works Bookstore (1242 Wellington St. W., Ottawa)
Cost: Free!

Christine McNair's work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, ditchpoetry.com, CV2, the Bywords Quarterly Journal, Descant and a few other places. Her poems were featured in Dalhousie Blues, a collaborative project with Sean Moreland, Jamie Bradley and Caleb JW Brasset (ex-hubris press, 2009). Her work was also included in the Dinosaur Porn (Ferno House, 2010) and Rogue Stimulus (Mansfield Press, 2010) anthologies. She is one of the hosts of CKCU's Literary Landscapes program and works as a book doctor in Ottawa.

Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie’s been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010), her first trade poetry collection, follows years of a small voice gaining in strength, and in volume, through so much subtle activity and quiet disconnect that by the time she was noticed, she was already everywhere, and already a confident voice. Her chapbooks include over my dead corpus (AngelHouse, 2010) and boathouse (above/ground, 2008). She blogs at pesbo, Humanyms, and a few other places. Poems have appeared thru dandelion, ditch, PRECIPICe, Dusie, 17 Seconds, 1cent, and Ottawater.

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West Meets East II
Featuring Ariel Gordon, Tracy Hamon, Melanie Janisse & Damian Rogers

When: October 7, 7:30 pm
Where: Holy Oak Cafe (1241 Bloor St. W., Toronto)
Cost: Free!

Damian Rogers was born and raised in suburban Detroit. She has published poems in various North American magazines, including Brick, The Walrus, Matrix, Maisonneuve, and MoonLit. Her first collection, Paper Radio, came out with ECW Press in October 2009 and was nominated for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Rogers lives in Toronto.

Melanie Janisse is a native of Windsor, Ontario. She holds degrees Communications from Concordia University and Visual Arts from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Now a resident of Toronto, Melanie keeps active as a visual artist, poet, designer and shop owner. Orioles in the Oranges (Guernica Editions, 2009) is her first collection of poetry.

How to Entertain a Baby While Traveling in Hot Climates

Hey all,

Here's a clip the everloving M shot at Thursday's reading with Clarise Foster & John Barton...specifically, the second of three poems I read.

Though I pulled it back a draft or two from being a pure example of the form, this is my first sonnet, written on deadline for Catherine Hunter's poetry course last year.

I introduced it as my first and probably my last sonnet, given that the writing of it tied me in knots and made me crazy.




The reading was fun, though I have to say I enjoyed rehearsing the poems beforehand than performing them, this time round...for whatever reason, I felt flustered all afternoon and so never felt really settled beforehand.

Which is to say that I flubbed a few lines and didn't necessarily sell every line. Which, on a good night, I can (mostly kind of) do.

The best part of the evening, honestly, was hearing Aa's ringing shout behind the door "My Mummy is here! My Mummy is here!" when I arrived at M's mum's place.

All of that said, I'd like to convey my thanks to Prairie Fire for organizing the events, both at McNally's Thursday and at Aqua on Friday.

Thanks, too, for asking me to read! Which is a separate undertaking, as far as I'm concerned...

A reading with John Barton

Hey!

While writing an item about Home Place 2 (featuring 15 of Winnipeg's non-fiction writers) for Paperchase, I wandered over to Prairie Fire's website.

Lo and behold, they'd posted videos from the April 2007 launch of the first Home Place, at which I read (having contributed my poem Wallow to the issue)!

(I didn't even know they were shooting video, nevermind posting it, but I'm glad, as Aa's existence and need for continual care has kept my resident photographer from attending events...the EPHEMERA! Oh, the EPHEMERA!)

So here it is for your viewing pleasure...



(The only thing you have to know to understand the ha-ha that I indulge in after stepping up to the mic is that editor Andris Taskans has just introduced me as 'Young Ariel,' which was my nickname when I worked there as a student years and YEARS ago...)

Videos of the thirty (yes, 3-0) other performances that night are viewable here.

full house

There were people standing in the aisles for the Lansdowne reading on Thursday. Some of those people just preferred to stand but others, who came later, genuinely had nowhere to sit.

And this was after we'd excavated everything resembling a chair from the back room and even marshaled the stools scattered charmingly throughout the store.


(l-r) prof/poet Karen Clavelle, prof/poet/mystery writer Catherine Hunter, editor Andris Taskans.

Reverse alphabetical it was, not that it made any difference to me, because smack dab in the middle is smack dab in the middle, no matter where you start off.

Deborah Schnitzer brought a cushion and a dose of antihistamines, knowing she would be among cat people but also perched on a hard hard seat. No slight on Kelly's hospitality, but one of the things I'm looking forward to in the new venue is never having to set out his collection of assorted chairs.

Not that the 100 or so chairs we'll need for Aqua's performance space will likely all be the same, but there'll probably be more than two or three of the same design.


Editor/poet/LCP President Maurice Mierau.

Maurice Mierau brought his disdain for In Flanders Fields in the form of a poem modeled on the Remembrance Day stalwart as well as the first poem from Barbara Nickel's Domain, which, switching hats for a second (Maurice is the poetry reviewer for the Winnipeg Free Press), he highly recommended.

Chandra chastised Kelly for leaking personal information from the podium, which gave Kelly ample material to work with for the rest of the evening. I think it was a bit they worked out in advance, employer to employee, but who am I to say...

Fittingly, Lori Cayer and Sharon Caseberg, who co-chaired the committee, read last. They deserve many kudos for organizing the various events that raised half of the funds needed to award a poetry prize at the Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards.

I look forward to seeing both on the podium in the future, not giving away the prize, but accepting it. Which could come sooner rather than later, as Lori is finishing her second collection and Sharon working on her first, baby and busy freelancing career permitting.


Prof/poet Karen Clavelle.

With my five minutes of podium time, I read a new/old poem from my manuscript, Storm, spare room. The core of the poem was written a year or more ago but it just wasn't...finished...until I re-worked it this past fall.

I didn't rehearse the poem as much as I would have liked, but given the week I was having, I'm lucky to have made it to the reading at all...

[Kelly was kind enough to let me know that my neck didn't go red (a reading constant with me...if I'm wearing an open-necked shirt, interesting Rorschach-like patterns appear on my upper chest) until near the end.]

It wasn't apparently a good night for book sales, but my feeling is that too many people is as bad as too few, when it comes to such. With too few, the equation is obvious - fewer people buy fewer books. But with too many, the problem lies in the fact that people feel too squished to browse properly. Which is the only way to second-hand book shop, really.


PF President/WIWF General Manager Perry Grosshans and PF Editor Andris Taskans.

In other news, we're off to Utah on Monday for two weeks of in-law mediated hiking. I plan on walking my legs off.

I've got a review of Anne Simpson's Falling and an article on Thuong Vuong-Riddick's The Evergreen Country: A Memoir of Vietnam due before I return, which will give me an excuse to hole up in cafes with M's laptop when not hiking.

Nine poets! One Kelly!

Aqua Books and the members of the Manitoba Poetry Endowment Fund would like to invite you to a reading to celebrate Aqua Books coming on as title sponsor of The Lansdowne Prize for Poetry.

The evening will feature poets (and Manitoba Poetry Endowment Fund members): Sharon Caseburg, Lori Cayer, Karen Clavelle, Clarise Foster, Ariel Gordon, Bev Greenberg, Chandra Mayor, Maurice Mierau, and Deborah Schnitzer.

This event will also be the inaugural reading in the Aqua Books Lansdowne Poetry Series, which in the future will feature the finalists for the (TA-DAH!) Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry/Le Prix Poésie de Lansdowne.

January 24th, 7:30 pm
Aqua Books
89 Princess St. (Between McDermot & Bannatyne)

Please join us!

between interruptions reading

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Thanks to M, for attending the reading and holding my tea and minding my bag...and shooting this video on our point-and-shoot.

Thanks too to D, who babysat so that M could attend.

reading between interruptions

Tonight was the Winnipeg launch of Between Interruptions: Thirty Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood, a collection of essays from Key Porter Books.

As I mentioned here, local contributor Chandra Mayor asked me and Sharon Caseburg to 'open for her.'



I arrived at the Millenium Library at 7:10 to a locked and dark room, which made my stomach clench, but no more than the fact that I hadn't yet rehearsed my material.

(I know, I know, but it's been that kind of week and that kind of month and that kind of season...)

Once the door was opened and M was installed next to Marj, I stalked the stacks, specifically the English as a Second Language audio books section.

I kept on having to switch aisles, chased away by a loud woman muttering "You understand that? Really?" (I think she was referencing Cyrillic text) while looking for a specific tape for her companion, who kept on giving me "Sorry about this..." looks.



So, after having read the poems in my best sotto voce and reassured myself that I had some fluency with the texts, I returned to the Carol Shields Auditorium.

This was my first facebooked event but a wet grey day trumps a push button confirmation every time.

It was also the first time that I didn't spam friends and family with an event notice....so I wasn't sure how many fond and/or unfamiliar faces I'd be looking out over tonight, my 5-7 minutes of material on the podium in front of me.



But it was a good audience. A wonderful audience. And I told bad bad jokes. And smiled when the 17-month-old in the audience cooed in response to something in the room, maybe even me and my poems....

And Sharon read her pregnancy and mothering poems, which elicited those small moans of pleasure you hope for as a poet. And Chandra read an excerpt of her essay about the time her daughter got a potty training seat stuck on her head. People cocked their heads and laughed.

A good evening.

between interruptions

Chandra Mayor was kind enough to ask me to read with for the Winnipeg launch of Between Interruptions, an anthology of essays on mothering that Chandra contributed an essay to.

Given that the pregnancy-and-mothering section of my nearly-compiled manuscript is fifty pages long, I shouldn't have any trouble contributing five to seven minutes of poetry, neck blushing, and bad jokes (i.e. my usual reading routine).

In fact, the converse is true. I'll have a hell of a time picking only a few poems to read...this one?

Or this one?

Or even this one?

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Please join Chandra Mayor, with guest readers Ariel Gordon and Sharon Caseburg, for the Winnipeg launch of this collection of essays from Key Porter Books.

Between Interruptions: Thirty Women Tell the Truth About Motherhood is the first Canadian book of its kind, and gathers together essays from women across the country. Join the conversation as women tell mothering truths—funny, provocative, and honest.

Chandra will read from her essay in the book, and Sharon and Ariel will share their own words as poet-mothers.

Millennium Library
Carol Shields Auditorium
Thursday, October 18, 7:30 pm

Free Your Mind pics!

Last week, amidst meetings and appointments, I had the distinct pleasure of reading to a full room.



It was a lovely mix of people too - I ushered pods of fond friends (and, as you'll see, their babies) to adjacent seats, leaving just before they started cackling and peppering me with insults...and even found my mother-in-law a spot on the couch, within ogling distance of said baby.



Writerly types, used to the hullaballoo of readings, confidently strode towards the sturdiest of the folding chairs and got a good gossip on.

Kelly of Aqua Books, who will soon be moving kit and caboodle to a new, expanded venue, was avuncular (even jolly!) while introducing me and also the main draw, George Murray.



I've been busy compiling (and piling and unpiling) a manuscript of poetry of late and so am feeling sentimental about certain poems - and completely indulged myself by choosing three that have yet to find a home and trying them out on my invisible living room audience.

They loved it...and the audience at Aqua, the next day, seemed to like them okay too.



But then, I'd made half the room promise to lie to me if I bombed, so who knows how I did, really...

And then I spent the whole of George's reading cradling my friend's three-month-old son because there's something wonderful about the empty arms of a new mother.

He grunted and pecked me with his little chin, not precisely in rhythm to George's poetry but almost.



So here's to George Murray, for giving me a reason to assemble such an august assembly...and for asking me to join him.

Here's to Kelly, for keeping Aqua open late for the reading and for being such a supporter of literature, reading by reading by reading.

And here's to all of you who came, or meant to come, or even emailed to say that you wished you could have come.

And though I probably end too many posts this way: Fun!

(I recorded audio of one of the poems I performed that night but haven't yet found a free way to upload it...anyone have any suggestions?)

FYM: Bookninja

The Aqua Books Author Series presents: Poet and Bookninja George Murray

Please join Aqua Books for an evening of poetry featuring Winnipegger Ariel Gordon and visiting poet and Bookninja George Murray.

Location: Aqua Books, 89 Princess St.
Date: September 19, 2007.
Time: 7:30 pm.

Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. September 23-30th, Gordon will be the blogger-in-chief of HOT AIR, the official blog of THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Windsor REview, and Prairie Fire. She is also regular contributor to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section.

George Murray's latest book is The Rush To Here (Nightwood Editions, 2007). His three previous books of poetry include The Hunter (McClelland & Stewart, 2003) and The Cottage Builder’s Letter (M&S, 2001). His poems, fiction and criticism have appeared in many publications in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, and Europe. Murray is the editor and publisher of the popular literary website Bookninja.com and a contributing editor for several literary magazines, including Canadian Notes and Queries and The Drunken Boat. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.