the BIG clip

So I've got a November deadline for getting my next manuscript to my publisher.

I've been mentally rifling through the poems for months now, since that ever-so-productive farmhouse retreat but it seemed like it might be time to make the manuscript manifest.

So I found not one but two BIG clips, manuscript-sized clips, and spent a morning printing out poems and collecting the notes-on-poems from a year's worth of writing group meetings and then another evening making piles, making groupings.

I've still got heaps of edits to do and individual poems will probably drop out or be added to the whole, but it already feels like a whole.

I don't have a title yet. I don't have a cover image. But I've got a stack of fresh poems. Of dirty dark earnest things...and they seem to know each other already.

Thanks to the aforementioned Plastered Hams for the notes and the company. Thanks to the lit mags and chapbook presses who have - or will be, like Kalamalka Press' upcoming How to Make a Collage - publishing chunks from the manuscript.

One surprise was that a long poem that I published as a chapbook in 2009 with Edmonton's Rubicon Press called Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999, won't be included in this ms.

It doesn't fit and, also, it has picked up baggage since I began thinking about THE NEXT BOOK.

Basically, I've been scheming up a ms. of long poems, one devoted to each of my grandparents. What they did and who they left behind. Which means two WWII poems, one for my grandfather-the-spy and one for the grandfather who guarded a POW camp in Ontario. Which means a poem set in Ireland and the Antarctic, amidst whaling ships.

So Guidelines, which is about my orphaned Dutch grandmother and her father and grandfather, the governor general of the Dutch East Indies, as well as my own travels in Malaysia and Indonesia a hundred years later, has become the seed poem for that ms.

But that's the pie-in-the sky and I'm more than happy to stay in the here-and-now with this manuscript...

Reprint: Paperchase

I was kind of tickled yesterday to open the Sunday Books section of the Winnipeg Free Press and find the following in Michael Van Rooy's Paperchase column:

"The Manitoba John Howard Society is raffling off signed titles by local authors at its annual general meeting.

The money raised will be used to support the organization's programs serving men in remand and prison.

Only 300 tickets will be sold at $2 each.

Among the many authors donating are Struan Sinclair, Ariel Gordon and Joan Thomas."

That Michael Van Rooy is a peach. Or, which is more appealing to yours truly, a rock-hard nectarine.

The following snippet, which came from the Manitoba Writers' Guild e-update, contained a bit more info about the draw itself (even if it wasn't as...satisfying...to my ego):

"MANITOBA AUTHORS: Donate a copy of your book to a great cause! The John Howard Society seeks donations of signed books to comprise a library to be raffled off in support of their programs, including their literacy program. The literacy program serves individuals on remand, as well as at provincial institutions, by helping them improve basic reading, writing, and math skills through workbooks designed to also educate on topics such as parenting, gangs, alcohol and drug dependency, anger, and listening. The raffle will be drawn on September 23rd at the John Howard Society's AGM."

I donated one of my last copies of Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999, so if you haven't gotten one yet, you'll have to wait for Rubicon to re-print sometime this fall (more on a possible Edmonton launch later...O), buy one of two left at Aqua Books, or buy a raffle ticket.

So, to sum: fun to be in such an August assembly of authors! And also that I should really look into getting a raffle ticket or three...

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.

Top Ten

From the Aqua Books tumblelog on the weekend, as composed by bookstore owner Kelly Hughes:

Top Ten Weird People in the store this weekend

#10 The guy who ran in here in a panic begging to know where he could buy pot

#9 The guy I saw in the men’s room using the toilet, then washing his hands, then using the urinal. (I left, so no word on a second hand-washing.)

#8 The woman who asked if this was a library (we get this almost daily)

#7 The two Fringe Festival volunteers who kept panhandling their team leader. (Fringe volunteers get fed, so it has some appeal for urban-camper-y types.)

#6 The guy who took one of Ariel Gordon’s ($7) poetry chapbooks yesterday because he thought it was some kind of a freebie thing, and then brought it back today to show me which of the poems he liked best.

#5 The Fringe Festival volunteer who kept asking Andrea if she knew that one of our bookshelves was on wheels. How ingenious! It must be very handy. Do you move it around a lot? etc., etc.

(More after the turn...)


#4 The drunk who wanted Chicken McNuggets

#3 The bearded giant who eats in the restaurant every week or two, just so he can stare at the servers was in today. He wanted me to tell him if anyone still made tin ceiling tiles. (He was obviously staring at the ceiling as well today.)

#2 Jerry

#1 And best of all, the guy who came in looking for our “spirituality” section. It’s a broad category, I said. What are you looking for? The Dark Arts, he mumbled hoarsely. I showed him where we keep goofy shit, which is above our SciFi section. He then proceeded to pull a whole shelf of Andre Norton down on his head. I guess that would make him a Novice Dark Artist.

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: Guidelines

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.