solstice dream

yesterday, festival of lights. a wonderful solstice. last night, dreamt of newfoundland and labrador. newfoundland was a series of small, mountainous islands. large, complicated cruisers and barges raced between the islands. labrador was of the mainland, bordered by partially submerged grey rock and vibrant aquamarine water. i had a feta/spinach croissant on a cruiser before arriving in labrador.

po/eme

This poetry meme comes courtesy Jessica Smith's blog. Not all of the questions inspire an answer for me, but here's what did...

The first poem I remember reading was... The Cat in the Hat Comes Back by Dr. Seuss.

I was forced to memorize numerous poems in school and... the first half of this statement is dramatic! I elected to memorize poems for school and outside of school. I've already mentioned "Little Orphant Annie" by James Whitcomb Riley and the Seuss. I also memorized swaths of Shel Silverstein ("Nobody" was a hit with my brother and me). In grade six, I gave my first oral presentation (on wolves). In 7/8, I gave my speech on war. In grade 9, love... though I chose this topic mostly as an excuse to recite poem excerpts. This proved a bit of a contentious point with a teacher, as I recall, since "Annabel Lee" by Edgar Allan Poe wasn't short...

I read poetry because...

A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem...? Oh, they come in a jumble -- "Spring night" by Hagiwara Sakutaro (transl. Hiroaki Sato), "RUSH (A long way from H)" by Caroline Bergvall, "Poem improvised around a first line" by Gwendolyn Macewen, "Sonnet XXXVII" by Ted Berrigan, "Identity A Poem" by Gertrude Stein, "Nuevocations" by Steve Venright, "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll...

I write poetry, but... can you feel the love tonight?

My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature... This statement reminds me of a favourite Jack Spicer quote: "See how weak prose is.... Presently I shall go to a bar and there one or two poets will speak to me and I to them and we will try to destroy each other or attract each other and nothing will happen because we will be speaking in prose."

I find poetry... in Algoma freezers, tucked behind the wild strawberries, chokecherries, and moose.

The last time I heard poetry... was earlier this morning: "Höpöhöpö Böks" recording of Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl, and Austin Publicover's new "a hoosh a ha" work-in-progress.

I think poetry is like... a simile?

Tag; you're it. If you stumble upon this and feel the urge to respond to any part, please do so. If you're blogless, feel free to use the comments here.

variations on "shipbuilding (foundation"

really digging this line, liberated from rob mclennan's "shipbuilding (foundation":

i pictured a lemon, the shape
of an hour

there's something pleasing, impossible though plausible, emphatic in my readings -- picturing a lemon and then, after that, the hour's shape; picturing an hour in the shape of a lemon. as though a lemon could be at all suggestive of an hour, on either front. the collision of the shape of an hour (most readily, the hourglass) with the juicy, rotund fruit. how this unspoken collision dangles in the space after hour, a thought unfinished, a mouth open and contemplative.

how enjoyable to have hours as lemons. pithy. yellow. fresh. how enjoyable to picture a thing as a foundation, a basis: step one.

the past tense gratuitous or startling? having pictured, the viewer becomes stuck again in a similar state of aphasia that hit her when she first pictured an hour as a lemon. she pictured nothing after this or the picture extended into the uncharted spaces of her mind.

the line echos in the space where the thought pauses without punctuation, incomplete.

the title, too, i like, with its un-ended parentheses. curvature. what echos beyond. i'm a sucker for shipbuilding. and yet there's something so matter-of-fact, daily routine about the remainder of the poem, its curiosities stuck in punctuated blips and sanctioned to starts and ends. i wonder what would happen if this poem became several poems. if there was 1) a poem that existed in its entirety as it currently does. if 2) a poem read of just the title and the quoted lines above. if 3) a poem continued on the concept of lemons and hours. if 4) other parts of the poem were exploded out to explore their worlds... what of ", a question of lies"; where could a poem expand around this line? where would a poem of "by..." lines wander? a poem of "i was, i read, i could, i pictured" etc.?

sinätube

finnish treats for the senses: helsinki complaints choir and loituma: levan polkka.

broken telephone: 90s alt-rock edition

you know, i'd like to keep my cheeks dry today ("no rain," blind melon)
i hear as you know, i'd like to keep my jeans dry, jeanine.

you've got your ball. you've got your chain ("crush," dave matthews band)
i hear as you got shit-all. you got short-changed.

(how) do you incorporate typos, mis-hearings, and mis-readings into your work?

albertaviews: Jill Hartman

Alberta views Jill Hartman and other Calgary-based poets in the latest issue of albertaviews. As their table-of-contents tagline previews, "Calgary poets are making a splash -- and plenty of controversy -- on the national scene." I haven't accessed the article in full yet; anyone care to precis if you're read it? Who wrote the article, what/who's discussed, etc...

instructables

instructables: how to get rid of bees, learn to waterski barefoot, make a spinning bow tie, tie your shoelaces a new way, construct throwies, or build a cosahedron-shaped pie.

courage, my love, by reg johanson

so i'm reading reg johanson's first poetry collection, courage, my love. it's one of four books issued by west coast line's new imprint, LINEbooks. the imprint doesn't yet have a website, so if you're curious about how to obtain copies, i recommend e-mailing the editors (michael barnholden, glen lowry) at wcl@sfu.ca.

the book's innocuously designed duotone cover (all black with hints of white and splashes of fire-engine red) features a faux-victorian font scripting author and title on cover, its demeanor coquettish and posh. flip the book over and an off-centre red box illuminates most back copy. what's odd about the OBC is its content: publisher | location :: a poem excerpted, with dedication :: ISBN, no barcode, no-cents price. standard appendages like book description and author bio are distinctly absent. these design choices have particular resonance for me with the book's content, which wrestles with class issues historically and in contemporary BC/AB, political dissidence and ideological diffidence, and the high costs of living. design: innocuous, coquettish, off-kilter with resonance to content. i'm with you.

unusual wrappers tricked me into a non-standard reading for me of the book; i started at the beginning, and read chronologically. i read the title pages, the front matter, acknowledgements, dedication. i read each poem successively, occasionally pausing to retrace my steps and reread lines of particular resonance. i noted moments where i wanted to return, to choose alternative reading paths through poems ("Variations for Jean Carle" intersperses at least four lists/continuations throughout the poem; want to gather them together to read each pass separately). i noted impulses to review the book, to review a poem, to excerpt lines that turn into passages that turn into page after page of excerpt (read the book!). and then, i noted a desire to have a conversation about a book of poetry.

as a result, i won't delve into a full review just yet; i'm still reading and processing courage, my love. but it has relevance and resonance for me as a reader, right now, and i would love to dialogue with other readers about the book. so, get the book, let me know, and let's talk.

"I had to learn to hate
the structure that made me."
- from "Chips"

review: WSfL in ESO

Dana Gagnier has written a review of Wide slumber for the Entomologist's Society of Ontario newsletter.

kenny goldsmith's traffic

the second installment in kenny goldsmith's trilogy (the weather, traffic, sports) is available as full-text online or as downloadable pdf on the excellent eclipse archive. the first entries are engrossing (what drama!) and the ending's happy (yes, i skipped ahead). intriguing how the locations develop as characters. also intriguing to consider the copyright implications of literally taking the words out of someone's mouth and publishing them.

the week through performances

SUSANNA HOOD WORKSHOP: susanna's a focused, grounded facilitator, in addition to being a solid collaborator and fascinating performer/creator. if you have the interest and opportunity, i highly recommend her sound/movement workshops. i recently participated in an intensive weekend-long workshop, which attracted twelve participants with backgrounds in dance, music, education, theatre, and poetry. deeply challenging and gratifying; potentially and especially intriguing to sound-poetry enthusiasts.

RITTER, DENE, VOSS: adam seelig's company one little goat staged thomas bernhard's play, spiralling through delusion, beethoven, incest, wittgenstein, and cream puffs. audience sprinted after actors through the first act, the delivery of non-stop dialogue dazzling in its athleticism. act two layered possible end atop possible end, never resolving. curious to know adam's interest in staging this, and doubly curious to know what's next on the roster for one little goat. curious to see the script from which the company worked.

A FIBBER'S FABLE: for the second installment of their eighth cycle, theatre gargantua shared their new work-in-progress. the play's a smorgasbord of short scenes written by michael spense while meditating on truth and lies. the resulting multidisciplinary performance featured dance/song interludes, monologues, scenes, and even silkwork. conor and i worked on the first installment last spring, so it's neat to see shades of our input in this performance. looking forward to third and final round next fall.

CALCU-LATOR AND THE ORAL PRESENTATION: "YeYeYeYeYeYeYeYeYeah." "What's that?" "A bunch of little yesses." they're back and lose-your-voice-from-laughing-and-shouting funny. perhaps the highlight of their return performance on sunday happened post-show, as we said our good-byes. ennis esmer broke into improv riffs on a possible new COP song called "midnight in polo square." it's jazz, it's fast, and it rapid-fire confesses sexual indiscretions. "Sweedoo!"

artists in ed.: 2/6

victoria park secondary school's the second school participating in my 25-hour poetry toolbox workshops. the school's fantastic librarian set the workshops to reach two groups (divided as juniors and seniors), and i will spend five full days teaching between november 2006 and april 2007. for our first day, we worked with stream-of consciousness, ear-cleaning, personal definitions, and neologisms. i brought in just over 15 books of canadian poetry and 5 anthologies, which students spent time perusing for vocabulary and potential epigraphs. neat conversations arose from poems that intrigued the readers; excited and surprised to see crystallography engaged so immediately and knowledgably. venright's and alland's work popular with both groups.

next workshop: collaboration (multiple writers and writer/computer).

conversations in the book trade

finn harvor's interviewed bev daurio about the mercury press and canada's current publishing climate for his new blog, "conversations in the book trade."

Wide slumber in Globe 100

Wide slumber's listed in the Globe 100, published in yesterday's Books Section. Here's the poetry excerpt.

THE GLOBE AND MAIL: POETRY
The Globe 100: The ninth edition of the top books of the past year

Liar, by Lynn Crosbie, Anansi
Lynn Crosbie recollects her seven years of life with another poet, not in tranquillity, but with excoriating reproof. This depiction of a folie à deux is a book-length poem whose long lines and many words are accommodated by wide
pages and small type. Remarkably little is said about sex, but a lot about everything else that can go wrong in the unmade beds of a romantic partnership. Throughout, Liar's energy is impressively sustained, the cadences assured, the line turns expert, the barbed images exact. -- Fraser Sutherland

Momentary Dark: New Poems, by Margaret Avison, McClelland & Stewart
Margaret Avison's work belongs to the line of great religious poetry from the Hebrew Bible to Rumi to George Herbert. Her poetry is prayer and praise. Though she's fully aware of human evils, and of how fragile are the shelters we build for ourselves, she doesn't wrestle with such perennial primary mysteries as why, for indiscernible purposes, a loving God makes His creatures suffer so abundantly -- and through no fault of their own. But with poetry of this quality, it would be churlish to complain. -- Fraser Sutherland

Strike/Slip, by Don McKay, McClelland & Stewart
This work from Don McKay is an astonishing exploration of a concern that has
increasingly informed his poems and essays: how to live responsibly in relation
to nature. He remains as joyously intoxicated as ever with the natural world,
and committed to the fraught but necessary enterprise of paying homage to its
inhabitants in language. He affirms the interconnectedness of all things in
poems that argue gracefully for a passionate response to the world we inhabit. -- Margo Wheaton

Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists, by a. rawlings, Coach House
"A hoosh a ha." These not-quite-words float in the middle of a blank page. On the next page, "a hoosh a ha" is scattered five times. The last page of the section is nearly black with these onomatopoeic brushes of wings. Wide Slumber then moves through six sections that explore states of sleep in counterpoint with the life cycle of butterflies and moths. That juxtaposition is interesting enough, but rawlings's ability to reproduce the frankly copulative energy pulsing through both worlds is often breathtaking. This is one cool collection, a fresh combination of unashamedly brainy and unabashedly horny. -- Sonnet l'Abbé

Airstream Land Yacht, by Ken Babstock, Anansi
As Auden was to the English 1930s, Ken Babstock is to the Canadian 2000s: the key figure of the under-40s generation, around which other younger poets circle or swoon. Part of what makes Airstream Land Yacht perhaps the most important poetry book yet from any Canadian born in the 1970s or beyond is its verbal glee. Poet-critic Carmine Starnino has demanded that Canadian poetry be written in a style lucid, energetic and enlivened by a sense of tradition. Well finally, someone has. -- Todd Swift

Inventory, by Dionne Brand, McClelland & Stewart
War in the early 21st century streams through flickering yet persistent TV screens in Dionne Brand's book. Inventory pushes into intentional violence, staring at the seeming endlessness of humans' capacity to kill one another. Opening oneself to that capacity can lead to anger and numbness, which Brand explores. It is also a register of possible responses from those living at a geographic remove from the death-lists. The book is damning without being superior, sorrowful without falling into self-pity, joyful without becoming naive. -- Meg Walker

Swithering, by Robin Robertson, Anansi
Robin Robertson is a straight-ahead naturalist, coming simply to the task of capturing his subject, with the force and discipline of a master and the precision of a keen, fearless sensitivity that risks declaring: This has weight. His command of metaphor stuns. His simple language collides against itself in such sparks that the reader must nod, or sigh, at the immediacy of his images. Yet what sets him apart is his ability to capture, in longer pieces, strange, unmeasurable paces and the feel of vast, dark currents of energy, as in weather, or time. -- Sonnet l'Abbé

The Anatomy of Keys, by Steven Price, Brick Books
Steven Price, a young B.C. poet, has imaginatively recounted Houdini's life in a gripping volume that travels through a mind stricken by his parents' deaths to the point where the idea of escape becomes the driving image: the pilgrimage, the grail. It is a psyche that is always a part of a body, and a body always part of its own ending. This dark, compelling book may have you looking over your shoulder for something lurking in a dark corner. There is a poetic adroitness here so knowing that it often hits you only afterward how deliciously chosen each syllable has been. -- Patrick Watson

gone to press digital mercury buffalo poetics children

highlights from the past week:

• i can't stop singing sir mix-a-lot's classic. whatever happened to sir m-a-l? whatever happened to wondering whatever happened to people?
  
• thursday: facilitated instant anthology workshop at MGCI's going to press fair in the morning; katherine details changes from last year's fair. then, mark and i drove to buffalo to read (with james hart III) at just buffalo reading series. greatly enjoyed making friends with matt chambers.
• friday: avatar and cathedral women arrive at mercury.
• saturday: exclamatory preparation for york u digital poetics lecture with katherine. then, test reading series with bill, darren, and jessica.
• sunday: brainstormed pop songs with the word 'baby' for mel's shower. watched monster house with daniel for his 6th birthday.
• tuesday: sent letter to karen hannah's temple u class, responding to their creative reading responses to wide slumber.
• wednesday: co-lectured on digi-po @ york. rundown of projects mentioned / demo'd here. definite highlight to witness katherine's deft teaching skillz (phenomenal, truly) and to encounter so many of her former students (she was a minor celebrity on-campus today, which was so cool to see). finally figured out how to convert VOB file into MPEG4.

looking forward to:

• tomorrow: mercury launches seven new books by lovely souls stephen cain, terry carroll, sharon harris, david lee, carol malyon, jay millar, mark miller, and mobashar qureshi. 7pm @ supermarket (268 augusta ave., backroom). be there or be... there.
• this weekend: sound and movement workshop with susanna hood.
• following wednesday: full-day creative writing workshops at victoria park secondary school.
• next weekend: 1st day off since october 8. i'm becoming ursine; have already sussed out my hibernation den.
  
• sunday, december 3: calcu-lator and the oral presentation perform at supermarket in toronto. that's right. they've been apart for over a year, but now they're back together (one night only) and opening for buck 65. w00t!

reading & interview: buffalo

Mark Truscott and I are reading in Buffalo tonight at Just Buffalo Reading Series. Kevin Thurston, the series' curator, recently interviewed us for Artvoice (Buffalo's alternative weekly). I had a suspicion Mark would answer Kevin's one-question interview with thoughts surrounding community, so I decided to move laterally with my response. Reading Mark's response, though, I empathize with the feeling of writing slower while curating a series. I've had this experience with every series or literary event I've (co-)organized (from CASS Cafe to W.A.Y. readings to Lexiconjury to Scream in High Park and even to the most recent Impromptu). I would enjoy hearing Mark expand on his assertion that he likes "focus and applying pressure to things until they break" and how that relates to his series, Test.

Here's my Artvoice answer:

I approach both my curatorial and creative works with palm flat to avoid bitten fingers. Bearing gifts. Head-on, as their eyes are side-mounted and possess only lateral visual acuity. With a chair and whip. In an orderly, single-file manner. With an idea for a feature-length film that would require further funding for development. Slowly in the standings, over the course of a long season. With the love of a parent. Brandishing a torch and pitchfork. With calipers to assess physical fitness. With disbelief.

On all fours. Hungry for more. On the third Tuesday of every month. When the bell rings. With a hohoho and a hahaha and a couple of tra-la-las. When we’re together. With tongue pressed hard against my teeth. With a shuffle-ball-change. After dark. Before applying pressure to the wound. With side-of-mouth precision. Leaning into the mic. As a form of activism. While gesturing. In the heat of the moment. While shaving the underbelly of a goat. With questions for the audience. While humming the theme song to Hockey Night in Canada. Guilty of jay-walking. Fresh from a morning run. Worried about rent. Occasionally. Frothing at the mouth. Frustrated by the 51-card deck. Blessed with the ability to read minds.

At the five ’n’ dime. When I feel like it. After the dishes are done. Instead of learning the metric system. During calculus exams. With a four-inch inseam. Second-guessing my decision to drink pomegranate juice. Under bizarre circumstances. Wickedly hung over. While wondering whatever happened to Sir Mix-a-lot. Full of pesto. Often. While striking flint against rock. Shimmering in the moonlight. Hot for teacher. Fit to print. While resigning from the House of Representatives. While wondering how the Republicans will justify their statement that “the time is right for new leadership at the Pentagon.” Sleepy from a hard day’s work. Full of vim and vigor. Confident the safety net is securely latched. Fumbling with my keys.

eye's heads up

last week, eye magazine featured wide slumber for lepidopterists @ hatch in its heads up header. this week, it's a tasty double-header with test reading series and one little goat.

Wsfl@HATCH: Complete

What an exhilarating, exhausting seven days! Saturday night featured the culmination of our week-long workshop: a performance for an audience. We'd finished exactly one run-through of our show prior to the audience's arrival, and we found ourselves quite jittery as a result. The performance went smoothly considering the frenetic energy surrounding the show, and we received some excellent feedback later that night. Sunday afternoon, we had a chance to incorporate some feedback into the show. Our major changes included taking more time (more breath) as we performed, exploring character-revealing moments during our subtitle/glossary sequences, and completely changing the initial mic check ("Is this on? Can you hear me?") to a surreal stutter through the book's title ("Wide slumber for lepodiatrists... Wide slumber for ledopter... Wide slumber for lipidopt... Wide slumber for leopardopterists...")

Sunday night, we completed our second and last performance of Wide slumber at Harbourfront Centre. I love working with others in a creative capacity like this. I want to do it again and again. Not to mention the abandon, the sounding, the movement, what challenge what stretch. This has easily been one of the happiest and most rewarding weeks of my life.

Thank you, absolutely, to everyone who gave time and resources generously to this project. Thank you to everyone who attended! Thank you to all who've offered verbal and written feedback on our experiment. If you have (more) thoughts, I'd/we'd love to hear them; post 'em here or e-mail theatre@commutiny.net.

As for everyone's favourite question -- "what's next?" -- I have no idea. Grant app due tomorrow. MGCI's Going to Press on Thursday. Reading in Buffalo Thursday night. Test Reading Series on the weekend. Mercury Press launches and tour next week. What's next for personal creative projects? Find rest.

What are you working on right now?

Wide slumber @ HATCH: Day four

TWO SHOWS ONLY: Wide slumber for lepidopterists @ Harbourfront Centre's Studio Theatre, 235 Queen's Quay, November 11-12 @ 8pm (doors 7:30pm, no latecomers).

On Monday, I started a week-long residency at Toronto's Harbourfront Centre, working with Theatre Commutiny to attempt to translate my book from page to stage. We've had an intense and amazing whirlwind creation period, covering a lot of ground in very little time. As of today, day four of our workshop, we have close to 25 minutes of serviceable performance. By Saturday, we'll add 30 more.

Day one was a huge scoop of ice cream, reading through the portions of Wide slumber we wanted to try this week. Before lunch, we had a show and tell with the excellent Geoff Bouckley; my god, we've been so spoiled to have Geoff in the room all week, building his light design as we work and acting as a second pair of eyes on the project.

By afternoon, we were on our feet, attempting the prologue and figure one. Amanda Brugel and Mika Collins have bubbled over with enthusiasm, light, warmth, throwing themselves full-body into our experiment. Conor Green's direction hasn't missed a step, leaving lots of roof for goofy humour to seep into our exploration time, but also guiding us gently and swiftly towards our as-yet unknown destination. Absolutely blessed to have his sensitive and honed eyes and ears and brain working on this show.

Day two, we started off reviewing our previous day's work and developing what we'd need for the afternoon. And *what* an afternoon. Susanna Hood joined us for an intense and eye-opening three-hour movement workshop. Amanda, Mika, and I were full of exclamation points and raspberry fizz working with Susanna. She joins us again tomorrow for a final workshop; oh yes!

Day two ended in a fiery hour-long sound experiment. Richard Windeyer, who will run the sound board from the audience, building our soundscape with his fabulous toys, morphed our voices on-the-spot as we spent ten non-stop minutes riffing on the syllables of "Welcome to the Centre for Sleep and Dream Studies."

After rehearsal ended, I joined Conor, Geoff, and Richard for a production meeting to figure out the shape of the show and its application to light/sound design. Got home at an exhausting 10pm, skipped dinner, worked as co-producer until midnight, and forced myself to stay up for half of The Daily Show/Colbert Report to get my daily dose of news. They combined their shows for the special Midterm Midtacular to report on the US Midterm Elections, so I didn't want to miss it.

Day three, as you might guess, started groggy, exhausted, and stressed. My body was feeling pretty worn down, dehydrated, underslept, underfed, and achy from all the physical work. Day three, as a result, had a sleepwalking feel to it. We started the day similarly to day one, returning to a need for further creation of movement, intention, text delivery as the design team hung and focused lights onstage. Relegated to the Brigantine Room, we had a productive creation period working through figure two, cut short by a staff yoga class filtering into the space. As the first two staff came through the door, I was in the midst of laying on top of Mika, where we then moved simultaneously to a seated embrace. (Body on body.) One staff member says, "Is this... is this yoga?... 'Cause I've never done yoga," laughing nervously. No no, it's dance, no worries; you won't have to do this!

Wednesday afternoon featured in-depth exploration of figure five, which has proven awesomely challenging to manoeuvre. Again, I think we have something serviceable; now I must memorize a list of lepidoptera.

Today's day four, and I'm a little stiff in the muscles but feeling much more glee than I did yesterday. I woke up an hour earlier just so I could attend to co-producer stuff, finish the programme, and write this blog post. And now, to shower and get me to the studio. Really, really excited for today: Richard's with us again, and I can feel a sense of chrysalistalization with the piece. !! !! !!!!!!!!

Nice preview mention of the show in NOW today, alongside the big news for Crow's Theatre. Congrats to Chris Abraham! Also, make sure you check out Insomnia, which Conor has told me repeatedly was the best play he'd ever seen live.

Wsfl@HATCH: 36 hours til workshop

upon receipt of "pulvert,taxonomy"

push button. food pellet released.
push button. food pellet released.
push button. electric shock. food pellet released.

...and the gobble-uns'll git ya ef ya don't watch out!

c'est l'hallowe'en! (clap clap clap) c'est l'hallowe'en! (clap clap)

from six to nine years old, i was obsessed with a hallowe'en poem. i had it memorized, and would recite it to my little brother or myself or anyone else who might listen. when i moved from indiana to ontario, i lost the book and slowly forgot the poem as i drifted into my teen years. this morning, i woke up determined to remember, at the very least, the poem's refrain, hoping that it might lead me to the entire poem.

work, brain...!

and as i puzzled over breakfast, and washed my face, and dressed, a rhythm for the refrain drifted to me... "and the [blah blah blah blah blah blah] if you don't watch out." could this be from the poem? i struggled to remember more. i sat down at my browser, and started to type what i could remember, and suddenly the word 'goblins' came. yes!

my long-lost favourite kids' poem: "little orphant annie" by hoosier poet james whitcomb riley. and, imagine, the u of t poetry site has the full text of the poem online!

An' one time a little girl 'ud allus laugh an' grin,

An' make fun of ever' one, an' all her blood-an'-kin;

An' wunst, when they was "company," an' ole folks wuz there,

She mocked 'em an' shocked 'em, an' said she didn't care!

well, happy hallowe'en!

9 days to HATCH workshop

excitement's mounting around my house for our upcoming week-long residency at harbourfront centre, where we'll workshop wide slumber and then present our experiments on nov. 11 & 12 (8pm). much activity in the interim:

• yesterday, i had a charmed visit to leaside high school, where conor attended. high-energy writer's craft class featured writing exercises, readings, and Q&A. greatly looking forward to a return visit next spring.
• today, we launched mark miller's a certain respect for tradition and david lee's the battle of the five spot (both mercury) at art of jazz (distillery district). kiki misumi (cellist), reg schwager (guitarist), and david virelles (pianist) stole my heart during an impromptu jam.
• monday, i'm at marc garneau collegiate institute, writer's craft. i always get a rush visiting kathy jonathan's classes, so this'll be fun!
• fall books season at mercury = go go go. lovely, good going but going nonetheless.
• saturday, potential contact improv workshop.
• sunday, hamilton for gritLIT festival. also, dad arrives for brief visit from the sault.

though most of my last two weeks has been overwhelmed by HATCH prep, i have noticed three newish canadian publishers sashay through my e-mail: chaudiere books (ottawa, publishing monty reid and others), snare books (montreal, showcasing jason christie, angela carr, zoe whittall, and more), west coast line books (vancouver, featuring roger farr, reg johanson, natalie simpson). books, books, books. what do you think of the emergence of new poetry publishers?

HATCH: poster

review: WSfL in Black Ink

aaron tucker reviews wide slumber for lepidopterists in the new montreal literary blog black ink.

weekly update

this week's been hectic, administrative, lovely, challenging, and collaborative.

• spent some time creating a poster and flyers for our HATCH project.
  
• conor confirmed new commutiny collaborators mika collins (performer) and susanna hood (movement designer). tremendously exciting!
• saw elizabeth treadwell trio @ gladstone, featuring the loveliest audience i've ever seen... as in, i am considering attending another treadwell show (excellent entertainment) just to encounter the audience again. have you ever had this experience?
  
• attended the chb fall launch where conversation was the order of the evening.
• books are off to the printers @ mercury and i'm knee-deep in promo.
• received an amazing envelope from karen hannah's temple u creative writing workshop, including their written responses to wide slumber. i'm in the process of formulating a reply.
  
• read at the box last night, which featured an eclectic mix of artists including myfanwy ashmore, allen kaeja, benoît casas, velcrow ripper, and john southworth. got to visit with high-school friend nate and new friend eliza; saw alixandra, mark, maggie, maria, and john ever so briefly.
• tonight: always a flurry of activity. i'm at the north york public library for a young voices event, though my ears will be straining towards ryerson where the enchanting oana avasilichioaei is reading; please let me know how the event is if you attend.
  

Statements on desire

Harbourfront Centre asked me to write an artistic statement on my relationship to 'desire' for their 2007 ideas-based programming. my response incorporates text from dictionary.com and wikipedia.org.

Statements on desire

“the language we use / is the language we desire” – Jill Hartman

Desire wants something very strongly. Desire wants to have sexual relations. Desire wishes, craves, longs, aspires, fancies, yearns, hankers, hungers, enthuses, yens, itches, joneses, lusts.

Desire is a potato of a pink-skinned variety with yellow, waxy flesh.

Desire is from Middle English, Old French, Latin.

Desire is a concept in Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, tanha in Buddhist philosophy, a thought that leads to an action on which microeconomic theory is based.

Desire fixates on the sensual materials of language, the sonic production of phonemes of morphemes, strung together in words in sentences in senses or the visual suggestion of a letter and the movement indicators of syllables, stresses, and punctuation.

Desire is a ship, wrestler, telenovela, documentary, comic-book character. Desire is words in and out of orifices, luscious, tangled in the saliva and wax of bodies.

Desire is a Bob Dylan album, a Pharoahe Monch album, a song by U2 by Talk Talk by Geri Halliwell by Do As Infinity by 2 Unlimited by Airway Lanes by Ozzy Osbourne. Desire is a Polish R&B band.

Desire is passion is eagerness is enthusiasm determination sensuality passion, passion.

Desire is the shapes and sounds of letters and the body’s physical response to text. Desire’s eyes move across the page. Desire mouths words.

Desire mouths, oh yes.

Wide slumber @ HATCH

TWO SHOWS ONLY! TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE!

TORONTO, October 19, 2006 – Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH: emerging performance projects series kicks off for 2006/07 with Theatre Commutiny’s page-to-stage translation of a.rawlings’ book of poetry, Wide slumber for lepidopterists.

What happens when a person, obsessed with a subject, dreams at night; does the subject affect how she thinks, how she dreams, how her body processes information? If a poet writes poems during sleep, how might a lepidopterist work while she sleeps? What effect does intimate examination of insects have on long-term information processing and subconscious behaviour? Wide slumber for lepidopterists explores these questions through a dynamic combination of sound, movement, and visual art.

“[A] full-body experience… fabulous.” – T.L. Cowan, terminus1525.ca

“Affected by her background in dance and theatre, rawlings’ text has a kinetic aspect, an awareness of the body and the breath, which is unusual in such linguistically innovative writing. She brings a vocabulary of dance and the body to her consideration of how to approach text as an active, moving site, asking, ‘How can sound translate into text, text into movement, movement into text? How can a page act as a stage for words?’” — derek beaulieu, Calgary FFWD

TICKETS
Tickets ($15) for HATCH are now available through the Harbourfront Centre Box Office. To order by phone: 416-973-4000.

SHOWS
Saturday, November 11, 8pm
Sunday, November 12, 8pm
Harbourfront Centre, Studio Theatre
235 Queen’s Quay West, Toronto

WIDE SLUMBER FOR LEPIDOPTERISTS
Written by a.rawlings
Directed by Conor Green
Conceptual design by Matt Ceolin
Lighting design by Geoff Bouckley
Sound design and original music by Richard Windeyer
Performed by Amanda Brugel and a.rawlings

belladonna* chapbook out!

my belladonna* chapbook, W I D E R (B-side: rarities and remixes from Wide slumber), is now available; you may recall my post about this chapbook last month. send me a note if you'd like a copy, or contact belladonna* directly.

travelogue: philadelphia

catching the chinatown bus from NYC to philly was quite the memory. as my cab pulled up to the buses, a woman rushed forward and opened my door, shouting at me. i assumed she needed my cab and hurried to exit, only to discover she was actually asking me my travel destination by saying, "D.C.! D.C?" repeatedly. as soon as i said philly, she turned heel.

i found the philly bus, and one of its few waiting passengers offered me a milk crate while we waited for its departure. rebekka ladewig, a german cultural theorist in the states for a conference, turned out to be a stunning bus companion, and i enjoyed an animated conversation with her about geography, sports, and arts. how's this for an odd moment of synchronicity? when i found out the title of rebekka's paper, "psychogeography and the instant city: the performative production of space in the 1960s," it reminded me that a week earlier i'd written the title "psychograph E Colic, for spinach" in my notebook. at the time i had no clear reason why psychogeography'd suddenly occurred to me. it IS a gorgeous word, but at the time the word passed into my brain, i couldn't suss out why it'd found me. foreshadowing? like my meeting with john mac master en route to NYC, meeting rebekka felt fated.

i arrived at janet neigh's with just an hour to spare before the inaugural emergency reading series at upenn, featuring sarah dowling and jena osman. karen hannah met us and we scurried to the reading. for a new series, it was well-attended, with grad students spilling out of the seams of kelly writers' house. sarah read her disturbing manuscript keepness with grace, her performance punctuated by unspoken words caught in glottal stops. a power-point slide show of US army instructional graphics and taliban war images, all taken from the US government's website, accompanied jena's essay on interruptions (which included scripted audience interruptions that distracted from the impact of her essay).

the readings were followed by a Q&A, kicked off by pre-planned questions both jena and sarah had a chance to consider ahead of time. when the audience was invited to ask questions, i immediately inquired about the pseudo-hierarchical implications of the term 'mentor' in the moderator's introduction, which seemed to underscore the raison d'etre of the series (to feature an emerging artist and her mentor counterpart, to show their works in tandem). jena and sarah both voiced their discomfort with the term, sarah including a list of google searches she unearthed relating to 'mentor' (including the giggle-inducing 'womentorship'). post-reading, i met event co-organizer julia bloch, nick montfort, and a few other lovely philadelphians.

friday morning found me in karen hannah's temple u creative writing workshop, to read from wide slumber which she's teaching this week. this reading marks the earliest in the morning i've hooshed and ha'd. excellent group of students, shiny questions ranging from the languages present in the book to use of movement during performance. after class, karen and i had an invigorating chat about pedagogy and how to talk about our writing projects after. i was heartened to hear her own reading adventures have lead her to steve venright, who's similarly interested in spirals.

friday afternoon, i was mostly delirious from lack of sleep and too much soy protein, but delirium was mediated by my adventure with sarah, where we tracked down amazing light-up squish frogs and racing wind-up lepidoptera in a toy store. i had a fifteen-minute catnap before janet returned home. and then it was off to dinner!

friday evening, i read with jess arndt and sina queyras at Moles Not Molar. sweet turn-out, which a chance to chum with brian kim stefans and nick montfort. where NYC was frenetic, philly was much more familiar, familial. it felt like home.

saturday, i actually returned home. fascinating conversation with a swathmore college student en route to toronto, conversing about ecological economy and experimental poetry. upon his request, i recommended he check out poetry by jason christie and sina queyras, and he told me i'd made his day. saturday, i learned that poetry can make an economist's day.

and rest.

travelogue: NYC

frenetic energy in NYC. had an amazing (short!) plane ride last tuesday morning, the highlight an engrossing chat with fellow passenger and opera tenor john mac master. illuminating conversation about opera and poetry, arts funding, national/international support of artists. it's my first time meeting a librettist; can't wait to see him perform.

from the air, i saw central park, la guardia airport, all of manhattan and brooklyn, the statue of liberty. on land, shocking temperature difference from toronto (75F on october 10, wow). found myself immediately overheated in vest and sweater, though not before i was stopped by two photographers in harlem asking to take my picture for little gray house, which they said would run a spread on new yorkers in fall attire. random.

i took the subway downtown (everyone i encountered was helpful in guiding me), and wandered looking for free wifi connectivity. had a long stroll down broadway before swooping to bowery, where i met margaret christakos. we enjoyed dinner at a charming restaurant (my treat: four oversized ricotta-filled ravioli with fresh sage and butter), and then headed to dixon place for belladonna* reading series.

margaret and i comprised the third all-canadian line-up (the others featuring nathalie stephens/rachel zolf and erin moure/lisa robertson, how stunning!). it was a thrill to meet organizer rachel levitsky, and especially kate greenstreet who embodied positivity. she passed me a copy of her brand new book case sensitive. also a thrill to meet brenda coultas, whose book a handmade museum is set in the bowery area of manhattan. met austin publicover, too, who's in the process of editing/remixing readings by carla harryman and brenda iijima.

wednesday, i considered visiting museums and galleries, but chose instead to continue my wandering tour of NYC. on a future visit, i'll likely delve into more structured events like gallery visits, but for my first true intro to NYC, i'm glad i chose to meander. since my visit, i've thought frequently of how NYC is its own organism; you can hear it breathing, hear it talking to itself in the beeps, wind, ambient noise. it's amazing for me to consider a city as an organic form. structure. being. are the people parasites on/in its body? my analogy's only half-grown here. anyone recommend reading/thinking along these lines?

wednesday afternoon, i found myself at mcnally robinson on prince street, a canadian bookstore nestled into the rush and grind of the big american city. on my way to sign books, i ran into aaron peck, who turned in a grand moment of synchronicity holding a copy of wide slumber to greet me. aaron's the one friend i hoped to call while in town, so it was fated we ran into each other. i had tea with aaron, his sister tasha, and the lovely doretta lau. we then wandered through the streets of NOLI (aka North of Little Italy, according to my knowledgeable fellows) to a charming lunch-place called bread. doretta and i were passionately discussing larissa lai's work and walked right past elijah wood without noticing him (aaron and tasha told us later and we laughed mightily). ('we laughed mightily' is a silly phrase, hey?) we then trailed tasha on a power-shopping excursion, and i abandoned the party once her ballet flats were safely purchased.

wednesday night, i read with jon paul fiorentino, margaret christakos, and sina queyras at Poets House. i was thrilled to meet kim rosenfield finally, and to see robert fitterman and stephanie strickland again.

thursday morning, a silly breakfast of carrot juice and french fries (actually quite gross, but my appetite was bizarre during this trip) and then the chinatown bus to philadelphia...

NYC & Philly

On my way to New York City tomorrow, Philadelphia Thursday... If you're up for a reading, join me at an event!

• Tuesday, October 10, 2006, 7pm: belladonna* Reading Series (with Margaret Christakos and a.rawlings). Dixon Place, 258 Bowery, 2nd Floor, NYC
• Wednesday, October 11, 2006, 7pm: Coach House 40th Anniversary (with Jon Paul Fiorentino, Margaret Christakos, Sina Queyras, and a.rawlings). Poets House, 72 Spring Street, 2nd Floor, NYC
• Friday, October 13, 2006, 7:30pm: The MOLES NOT MOLARS Reading Series (with Jess Arndt and Sina Queyras), Nexus Gallery, 137 N 2nd Street (between Arch and Race), Philadelphia
  

in the mail

I've been stockpiling mail the last six months, so my desk now sports a teetering stack of recently received books. When I have more time, I'll add asterisks and exclamation points to lengthier reviews of these; in the interim, a list of goodies:

• Audun Lindholm, publisher of Gasspedal, mailed me six chapbooks: Soldatmarkedet by Monica Aasprong, Z by Pål Norheim, The Democracy Destination: Iraq by Das Beckværk, Sirkusformer by Kestr Aschnitz, Blomster by Peter Waterhouse, and Langz by Annelie Axén. He also included a recent issue of the Norwegian literary criticism magazine Vagant.
  
• A Handmade Museum by Brenda Coultas (Coffee House Press, 2003).
  
• Crepuscule on Mission Street by Aaron Peck, a Nomados Press chapbook.
• Remainland by Aase Berg, translated by Johannes Göransson (Action Books, 2005).
  
• Organic Furniture Cellar by Jessica Smith (Outside Voices, 2006).
  
• a selection of Puddle Leaflets from Max Middle.
• a box of blueberry soup from Tobias in Sweden.
• a hefty envelope from derek beaulieu, including several chapbooks from No Press in Calgary and a few Nyhil Press publications by Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl.
• a postcard and announcement about A Beepliographic Cyclopoedia from jwcurry, whose bpNichol Cerebration I was sorely disappointed to miss this past weekend.
• Serie A edited by Paal Bjelke Andersen and Jørn H. Sværen (H Press, 2005).

Much to say about all of these! Check out the publisher links, and I'll expand soon.

NUIT BLANCHED

toronto's first-ever nuit blanche has come and gone. as conversations evolved during the night, the term 'nuit blanche' took on holiday connotations, and i felt that 10-year-old-hallowe'en-lovin' self giddy-up. happy nuit blanche! nuit blanche greetings to you!

my nuit blanche started mid-day on saturday, as jason christie and i wandered the city. we dropped off lamps at margaret christakos' for her night bulb installation at university of toronto, and were greeted with four horsemen sound recordings echoing through the halls. we then wandered to active surplus for LED-light headsets and MEC for mosquito netting. i returned home wet with rain and eager to commence rehearsing.

conor, jason, and i planned our 1/2 hour of slumber-share before dinner, napped, and then hurriedly rehearsed. we arrived at night bulb around midnight, a little sleepy though pleasantly surprised to see so many people out for nuit blanche. maggie helwig, dressed as a naughty nurse, assisted sherwin tjia with his Poetry ER. margaret's "orphans fan the flames" performance rang through the SCS building. 12:30, sonnet l'abbe lectured on ghazals and tzara, her oneiric sound singing through the building's interior.

1:10am, conor and jason started our performance. a little tech humour off the top, followed by guided breathing and visualization. i cocooned my way (osbcured by a green umbrella and mosquito netting creation) in front of the glass building, weaving through ramp and wheat, and eventually met conor and the onlookers. we slipped through insomnia, NREM, and parasomnia texts with aural and kinetic activity. half an hour later, we cleaned up our bottles of tattooed or stolen bodies and wandered outside for the bpNichol Lane poetry rumble @ 2am.

michael holmes took on bill kennedy as they approached each other from opposite ends of the lane, amplifying their poetry through megaphones. katherine commented on site-specific aural installations (this one got a thumbs-up), and one of my favourite moments happened when an apartment-building resident shouted from his window for the rumblers to go home (the aggressive request worked with holmes' wrestling poem). souvankham thammavongsa mediated holmes and kennedy with her wispy, centred texts. appreciative audience. conor, jason, katherine, and i wandered some more...

...and found ourselves at the fog sculpture. oh, i wish i wasn't rushed so quickly through the thick, disorienting wet! this was hella cool, though muddy as all get-out and teeming with audience. conor marvelled at the fog/water/electrical wire hook-up, wondering how safe it could be (and noting that IATSE wouldn't let theatre companies get away with such combos in shows). i hope the artist returns next year, so she may build another fog sculpture. so awesome.

as we wandered to hart house, katherine regaled us with her queen west claustrophobia, as she'd had a chance to catch some of the earlier activities. when we reached hart house, we knew what she meant; what a zoo! neat to see so many people out, but at 3am and exhausted it proved too much stimulation and, like lightweights, we wandered home.

my total time @ nuit blanche: 3 hours + 6 hours of prep. an honour to be included. tons of blog posts about other events, which makes me feel a little less sad to've not stayed longer. check out blog posts from squiddity and zoilus.

NUIT BLANCHE NUIT BLANCHE NUIT BLANCHE

i haven't spent a great deal of time in front of my own computer this week as i've had a torrent of activity around me.

• tagaq and kinnie starr played lula lounge monday night. tagaq was such a powerhouse of inspiration, deeply connected to a palpable sensuality in sound and movement. zoilus has a spunky review of the event. i attended with jason and conor, met up with sandra and meighan. we're so in love with tagaq.
• did i mention jason? yes, i did. jason christie's in town for a week! tremendous. he's stayed with us a few days, and it's been so lovely to see him. he's performing slumber with conor and me tonight; we're spending the day gathering pop-o-matic lights and mosquito netting.
• i finished the two-week northview heights teaching gig on wednesday. an emotional good-bye! i have two instant anthologies as a memento, and the most beautiful card with comments from many students. i know i'll see many of them in the future, so that is heartening.
• books veering towards printers at mercury! so busy! new intern! woo!!
• read at live poets series (ryerson) with sandra alland on thursday evening. i'm so glad i've met sandra and that i have the chance to hear her read her work so frequently. i have a visceral reaction whenever i hear her poem, "at the party."
• after having susanna hood's work recommended to me by three separate, wonderful people, i finally caught her new piece "loveloathing" at dancemakers. YES! resounding and shivery yes. if you're into sound poetry, you need to see susanna's work.
  
• the discovery of david khang, aural ecstacies of tagaq, and animorphic bodily collisions of susanna hood = a week of seriously wonderful a.raw research.
• TONIGHT: nuit blanche!! will this grand tdot experiment work? will folks attend? i'm in zone a, u of t's school for continuing studies, 1am, as part of NIGHT BULB. do come!

self

"On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion."

Waking Life

david khang's "mediamorphosis"

larissa lai posted about a fascinating art project by david khang called "mediamorphosis." i'm sensing a kindred connection between his project/performance and wide slumber. i located an artist statement online. compare david khang's statement --

“How do we experience the sound of butterfly wings flapping when it is mediated? How does this sound transform into a visual language? Or into music? Does the transformation of a butterfly from one state to the next parallel our communication process? In this performance, live monarch butterflies become prosthetic aids to ‘perform’ language that is perhaps at once sound, image, and the medium itself.”

with a recent statements of mine regarding wide slumber --

"What happens when a person, obsessed with a subject, dreams at night; does the subject matter affect how she thinks, how she dreams, how her body processes information? If a poet writes poems during sleep, how might a lepidopterist work while she sleeps? What effect does intimate examination of insects have on long-term information processing and subconscious behaviour? Wide slumber for lepidopterists explores these questions through a dynamic combination of sound, movement, and visual art." and "How can sound translate into text, text into movement, movement into text? How can a page act as a stage for words?"

i am so excited to be introduced to his work! ::: buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzz ::: there's a lot of documentation about his other projects (all of which are hella intriguing! google him!), but i haven't been able to locate contact info. if you know david, or know of a good way for me to send him a letter, i'd be grateful for tips...

belladonna*

earlier this week, i put together twelve pages of poetry for belladonna* books, an awesome chapbook series complementing writers' participation in the belladonna* reading series (i'm reading there with margaret christakos on october 10). check out belladonna*'s list of publications; exciting discoveries.

for my belladonna*, i compiled w i d e r, a series of b-sides, remixes, and rarities from wide slumber. these texts aren't (fully) in the coach house version of the poem; some were excised shortly before the book's printing, while others disappeared years earlier. i had great fun browsing through the twenty or so drafts of the manuscript, rediscovering these moments in wide slumber's development.

i reworked the b-sides for coherence, and corralled them into six short segments:

• O A FIELD GUIDE (for matt ceolin)
  
• C~ MIL (for alixandra bamford)
  
• ~ CHRYSALISTALIZATION : HYPERHYPNOTRANSLATION (for lori nancy kalamanski)
  
• ~} REMnants (for conor green)
  
• {#} SOMNOPTERA (for ciara adams)
  
• >{}< DON’T SAY THE YOU THE YOU THE YOU SAY THE WE (for alexis milligan)
  

can't wait to see the belladonna* book! can't wait to see what margaret's submitted (fingers crossed for material she read at "her poetics")!

imperative

wandering through my archives, i found "IMPERATIVE," a brief text i'd written for the 2004 OCAD student handbook. the epigraph is from a pac-mondrian t-shirt. i forgot i'd written this! so, in honour of neil hennessy's brief visit, here's the text.

IMPERATIVE

“Let’s play art!!!” - Prize Budget for Boys

Act. Animate. Apply. Aspire. Assert. Attend. Bind. Blow. Blur. Break. Breathe. Build. Burn. Carouse. Carve. Cast. Challenge. Chisel. Choose. Climax. Critique. Code. Collaborate. Collage. Collate. Collect. Comment. Compose. Conclude. Conduct. Conspire. Continue. Convey. Convince. Cook. Copy. Create. Cull. Cut. Dance. Define. Delete. Demonstrate. Derive. Describe. Design. Destruct. Develop. Diffuse. Direct. Discover. Display. Dissect. Distort. Do. Draft. Draw. Dress. Dye. Edit. Elicit. Emboss. Engrave. Erase. Etch. Evoke. Examine. Execute. Exhibit. Experience. Experiment. Explore. Express. Extrude. Fill. Film. Filter. Find. Focus. Form. Frame. Gather. Give. Glue. Hang. Hew. Illuminate. Innovate. Insert. Install. Interact. Interpret. Introduce. Invite. Iron. Jump. Knit. Layer. Learn. Light. Listen. Make. Manage. Map. Measure. Melt. Mimic. Mix. Model. Mold. Move. Nail. Narrate. Note. Operate. Opine. Organize. Paint. Parody. Participate. Perform. Persevere. Perspire. Pinch. Pixelate. Photocopy. Photograph. Play. Plié. Point. Portray. Poster. Pound. Practice. Print. Produce. Promote. Proofread. Protest. Provoke. Publish. Qualify. Read. Rehearse. Remove. Render. Repeat. Respond. Restore. Rewind. Risk. Rock. Roll. Sand. Screen. Sculpt. Shake. Shape. Sharpen. Shoot. Select. Sew. Share. Shuffle. Sing. Sketch. Spatter. Speak. Spin. Spray. Stipple. Stitch. Strike. Strum. Study. Suggest. Tap. Teach. Tear. Tell. Think. Trace. Translate. Trim. Typeset. Utter. View. Watch. Water. Weave. Whittle. Work. Workshop. Write.

events: WOTS, ryerson, nuit blanche

WORD ON THE STREET
Sunday, September 24, 11am-6pm
Queen's Park, Toronto

• 11:30am: I'm participating in the young adult tent's teen-publishing panel.
• 1:30pm: I'll read from Wide slumber for lepidopterists in the Great Books Marquee.
• 5pm: I'm sitting on the "Ask an Author" panel with Ray Robertson and Ken Alexander.
  

RYERSON POETRY SERIES
Thursday, September 28, 7:30pm
Oakham House, 63 Gould St., Room 34B, Toronto

• I'll read Wide slumber. The fantastic Sandra Alland (Proof of a tongue, McGilligan Books) will read from her forthcoming collection, Blissful Times.

NUIT BLANCHE
Sunday, October 1, 1-2am
University of Toronto, School of Continuing Education, 158 St. George St., Toronto

• Join Theatre Commutiny for a late-night meditation on all things lepidopteral and somnambulant.
• Of this event, organizer Margaret Christakos writes, "Ah hoosh a ha. Flock to SCS for a once-in-a-blue-moon group sound poetry performance by a.rawlings based on her new book Wide slumber for lepidopterists, a gorgeous and innovative text rawlings composed over many years in answer to the question, 'What happens when you breed the vocabularies and ideas of two disparate subjects – lepidoptery and sleep/dream studies? What does the spawn of incompatible bedfellows resemble?” From that perverse breeding, Wide slumber for lepidopterists flutters to us with arresting and truly enchanting images of the self and voice attaining cocoon-busting presence.'"
  

do we have plans for us

another long, exciting day with northview students and then a visit to coach house books to make two corrections to wide slumber before it undergoes a second printing. on my walk home, i popped into soundscapes and treated myself to concert tickets for tagaq and kinnie starr (sept. 25, lula lounge), and matmos (oct. 8, new music gallery).

this weekend's jam-packed with activity. neil hennessy's in town from NYC. jason christie's launching his charming must-read i robot (poems to snuggle to!) at test reading series (sept. 23, mercer union). and then there's the all-day literary marathon also known as word on the street. i'm participating in the young adult tent's teen-publishing panel (11:30am), reading 20 minutes from wide slumber in the great books marquee (1:30pm), and sitting on the "ask an author" panel with ray robertson and ken alexander (5pm).

i need to plan a nap.

artists in ed.: 1/6

...automatic writing, ear-cleaning, erasure, substantive editing, find/replace, neologism creation, translation, performance, cut-up, instant anthology...

the reason for blog silence: my first "artists in education" project is underway. i'm 15 hours into a 25-hour creative writing workshop for grades 11 and 12 at northview heights secondary school. there are 60 students, and we've had a rigorous, text-filled adventure so far. fascinating people; i feel fortunate to spend two weeks with them.

last friday, i carried twenty books to school with me. the students spent friday reading through the books, locating vocab and phrases they found intriguing. everyday, the books accompany me to class. we read aloud our favourite moments and discuss them. a few students have borrowed books overnight. some have written poems using vocabulary they've discovered in the poetry (all smiles with one line from yesterday: "he broke up with her because she had bruxism").

titles include fun w/ pataphysics, proof of a tongue, lemon hound, hello serotonin, fractal economies, straunge wonder, truth: a book of fictions, organic furniture cellar, hey! crumbling balcony, and blert. next gig, i'll switch up some of the titles to see what intrigues everyone.

yesterday, i created an on-the-fly exercise to respond to in-class discussion that ended with some amazing results. in honour of steve venright's overlapping compound-word neologisms, each grade 11 student spent time creating one new word and its definition. some of my faves: "carrotten," "noodleaf," "falsense," and "paperaper." we also had "numbringler" pop up, which is turning out to be a pretty useful word describing the lock mechanism of a filing cabinet.

i just spelled students 'stridents.' i need rest badly.

interview: kicking wind

kate greenstreet's interviewed me for kicking wind, where she has spoken with nearly 35 authors about their experiences publishing their first books. the interviews are a great resource, as kate's taken great care to display book covers and typeset an excerpt from each poet's book. for my interview, she also scanned a few pages from wide slumber to provide a glimpse of how matt's artwork plays with the pages.

kate's own first book, case sensitive, is hot off the press; congrats!!

believe

"I can't believe THAT!" said Alice.

"Can't you?" said the Queen in a pitying tone. "Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes."

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said. "One CAN'T believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

i groove bench/

thank you to alixandra, origami instructor extraordinaire, for a recent social outing complete with literary chatter and chapbooks! i picked up a few excellent items from her new micropress, which i recommend checking out. her short, mini-books have a 'zine aesthetic with spatially aware text. highlights from the swag:

• the inaugural chapbook for conchologists' press, an origami-inspired book features "she'll," a poem alixandra wrote at a workshop i faciliated this summer. it's a spare text, its strength in lines. can't wait to read the longer poem into which this text has migrated.
• three chapbooks by recombinantdna press. "this time last" has grace and pause. would play well with poems in small arguments by souvankham thammavongsa and at the edge of the frog pond by nelson ball. also resonates with "birds for janet, the heron" by michael ondaatje.
• second chapbook: "incessant." this poem has a split personality, feels like two poems with legs, arms, mouths intertwined. if two conjoined sister poems, i suspect both poems would survive surgery. where "this time last" coheres in its sections and flow, "incessant" holds possibility for expansion.
• third chapbook: "no cure for love." this dark spelunk into the history of science and leeches is tidy in its creepiness. there's a part of me that either wants to know more about leech history, or wants a series of "history--science--creature" vignettes. and both.
  
• an art-run of one: magnetic mounting board with moth she created after a recent visit to the royal ontario museum. she designed a new breed of moth -- desomne hiulco, open-winged day moth -- formed out of fuzzy pipecleaners and thick, painted handmade paper. it's a fine addition to my fridge, where two robust, magnetic butterflies (sent to me by my dad, who got them by supporting the canadian hearing society's "good vibrations" campaign) keep it company.
• all of these tasty treats greeted me in a bright yellow bag from the phillipines with the curious pseudo-sentence emblazoned on its paper: "i groove bench/"
  

sites and sales

• a rainy labour day weekend in toronto, spent indoors redesigning my website. not 100% complete; next rainy weekend, i'll finish it.
• emily schultz, queen of good anonymous fun, has started an online art project called "pledge me." go on, then; pledge her.
• sandra alland has a new website, named after her promising work-in-progress blissful times. she's always a pleasure to see/hear perform; i'll read with her at ryerson reading series later this month.
• this thursday, coach house books has an open house from 5-10pm. they also have a back-to-school sale this week.
  

coming and going

mark and lisa swoop into the neighbourhood (welcome!). jordan's europe-bound (be safe; postcard often!). carolynn and grant visit from nelson (xoxox!). katie's off to fredericton (happy learning!).

"people come and go so quickly around here!" - dorothy in wizard of oz

review: WSfL in Broken Pencil

fellow northern ontarian vincent ponka reviews wide slumber for broken pencil.

word

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean; neither more nor less."

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

prose

"See how weak prose is.... Presently I shall go to a bar and there one or two poets will speak to me and I to them and we will try to destroy each other or attract each other and nothing will happen because we will be speaking in prose."

Jack Spicer

readungsroman

does your solar system have eight planets and three dwarf planets?

this week's literary events have eluded me for reasons of family, distance, and assorted busy-ness. if you attended, participated in, or organized any of the following events, i'd adore a recap of what was hot in talk and text: helsinki poetics conference, calgary blow-out, and test reading series.

astronomers argue over the definition of 'planet.'

if you're in toronto tonight and care to brave the neon and concrete of dundas square, come to scream in the square. gregory betts has organized the hell out of this event, which he fondly subtitles "soundubnuos." the event will feature lillian allen, gary barwin, and paul dutton. ciara adams, conor green, and i will read from wide slumber.

i play björk's explosive "pluto" for astronomy and dundas square.
excuse me / but i just have to /explode
explode this body / off me
i'll wake-up tomorrow / brand new
a little bit tired / but brand new

laments

FEMALE VOICE: "The truth is people are pushed around by two men who move all the bodies on earth into patterns that please them."

MALE VOICE: "I love my mind when it is fucking the cracks of events."

MALE VOICE: "What I give to all the people who do not want to live with me is arithmetic."

FEMALE VOICE: "Everyday, I do nothing important because I am scared blank and lazy. But then the men come. I put my mouth on them. I spit and write with the wet."

MALE VOICE: "I was not born live. This body grew but I did not feel cells split."

Jenny Holzer

cunning

"Even a potato in a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him which serves him in excellent stead."

Cellarius, The Book of the Machines

what is a planet?

3,000 astronomers meet to define 'planet.'

tool

"If there's no soul in the music, it's because no one put it there; it's not the tool's fault."

Björk

dancer

"Dance is an art in space and time. The object of the dancer is to obliterate that."

Merce Cunningham

this weekend: rural reading

if you're in the kingston area this weekend, pop by the red school house poetry primer. many poets will read from friday to sunday, including kevin connolly, oana avasilichioaei, and rm vaughan. i'm leading a workshop for teens on saturday afternoon, and reading saturday night with jeffrey canton and stan dragland.

nature as language

agathena dyck's nature as language, a collaboration with honeybees.
encaustic manitoban gives new meaning to the term 'wax museum.'

language

"Language is an old-growth forest of the mind."

Wade Davis

"Never underestimate a butterfly."

short-tailed blue, small blue, silver-studded blue, mazarine blue, damon blue, chalkhill blue, adonis blue, common blue, yellow shell, yellow underwing, yellow-tail

listen

"You must learn to listen before you learn to sing. And you have first to listen to your own breath and then to the self it embodies."

Sheila Dhar quoting Pandit Pran Nath, published in a Namarupa essay by Marcus Boon

love

"Love goes away when your mind goes away and then you're someone else."

Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School

books

"I don't even hate books anymore."

Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

voice

"Is it not first through the voice that one becomes animal?"

Deleuze & Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus

part I: exercising wernicke's area

ben marcus' essay in harper's magazine (oct 2005 issue), "why experimental fiction threatens to destroy publishing, jonathan franzen, and life as we know it," kicks off with an intriguing introduction that outlines the role wernicke's area has in reading comprehension. marcus employs stand-out prose passages that beg to be read aloud (gotta love prose that leaps ecstatically off tongue, teeth, and lips), and that only occasionally veer peripherally into a light rhetorical antagonism (a tone akin to that sometimes found in 'tino's "hostility suite").

the introductory ten paragraphs of this essay excited me. i initially felt the urge to invite marcus out for a beverage to chat about his work. i'd play devil's advocate; i'd relate anecdotes to corroborate his points; i'd ask questions. instead, i read aloud sections to jordan scott, as they're hugely relevant to our recent conversations around audience, publishing climate, and accessibility in writing. after reading them aloud, my brain sprouted tangents, tangents that circled back to recent toronto conversations around what we mean by words such as art, literature, poetry, performance, entertainment. and then i started this blog post. and now i'm editing this blog post. and i'm left with these fascinating marcus quotes embedded in my tangential thoughts. there is much to say about marcus' essay and the many points he raises. feel free to post in my comments box; i'm about to get all digressive...

before marcus hones in on the titular material of his essay (or, as i said to jordan, before marcus digresses from the bits i find electric), he articulates something that's been a popular topic between westward writers and me. this seems particularly timely, as jordan's brought up the ever-fascinating issue of a writer's awareness of, definition of, and potential relationship to his audience during the writing process (and prior to the reading process). note: i replaced "fiction" with "poetry" in the following passage...

"A writer laboring intensely to produce art from words would almost certainly hope for an active Wernicke's area, rather than an atrophied one, on the part of his reader. As a writer of sometimes abstract, so-called experimental [poetry] that can take a more active attention to read, I would say that my ideal reader's Wernicke's area is staffed by an army of jumpsuited code-breakers,working a barn-size space that is strung about the rafters with a mathematically intricate lattice of rope and steel, and maybe gusseted by a synthetic coil that is stronger and more sensitive than either, like guitar strings made from an unraveled spinal cord, each strand tuned to different tensions. The conduits of language that flow past it in liquid-cooled bone-hollows could trigger unique vibrations that resonate into an original symphony when my ideal reader scanned a new sentence. This would be a scheme so elaborate that every portion of language would be treated as unique, and its infinite parts would be sent through such an exhaustive decoding process that not even a carcass of a word would remain. My ideal reader would cough upa thimble of fine gray powder at the end of the reading session, and she could use this mineral-rich substance to compost her garden."

would we hope for a reader? if we did, would we hope for a reader with an active wernicke's area? at one point before/during/after the writing/publishing do we consider our possible readers? how might we approach our own texts differently (during writing, editing, or when finished) if we assume a certain reader? how do i interpret my text through my mom's eyes? how might i edit my text to have a stronger impact for jill hartman if she reads it? would i refine my poem before sharing it with BafterC? how would i consider my text through the eyes of my high-school best friend turned revenue canada agent, a toronto high-school student whose first language is cantonese, drew barrymore (i watched ever after last night; she's on my brain), my employer, the judges of supernova: rockstar, a honeybee? how many editorial passes have i made on my work by considering different readers (before and after their responses)?

back to marcus' essay... i initially question marcus' likening the reading process to a puzzle, but i realize my back rose only because i've heard arguments against some non-traditional poetries refer to them as pointless brain-teasers. marcus' prose invigorates, and i follow my thoughts to self-reflexion. i love investigating a poem's logic, and that sense of investigating could quite easily be likened to decoding. back on track...

"If reading is a skill, with levels of ability, and not simply something we can or cannot do, then it's a skill that can be improved by more and more varied reading. The more various the styles we ingest, the better equipped we are to engage and be moved by those writers who are looking deeply into the possibility of syntax as a way to structure sense and feeling, packing experience into language, leveraging grammar as a medium for the making of art."

a skill developed by varied reading, but for my learning style it's also developed by active discussion with peers about these readings. i recall the first time i read karen mac cormack's at issue; i had pleasure in some of her syntax, but was unable to fish the deeper logic of why these words met each other on the page the way they did. a few conversations later, my wernicke's area was sweaty and buff.

"Whether or not this intense kind of reading makes us freaks is another matter, but the muscle grows and strengthens every time we use it, leaving us hungrier to encounter sentences we’ve never seen before. And there are certain books that do require us to be readers, that ask us to have spent some time with sentences of all sorted and presume an intense desire for new language that might render notions of "effort" in reading meaningless. But now, in the literary world, writers are being warned off this ambitious approach, and everywhere are signs that if you happen to be interested in the possibilities of language, if you appreciate the artistic achievements of others but still dream for yourself, however foolishly, that new arrangements are possible, new styles, new concoctions of language that might set off a series of delicious mental explosions-- if you believe any of this, and worse, if you try to practice it, you are an elitist. You hate your audience, you hate the literary industry, you probably even hate yourself. You stand not with the people but in a quiet dark hole, shouting to no one.

"I am writing this essay from such a hole, I suppose, and it's my view that the reverse is true. The elitists are not supposedly demanding writers such as myself but rather those who caution the culture away from literary development, who insist that the narrative achievements of the past be ossified, lacquered, and rehearsed by younger generations. In this climate artistic achievement is a legacy, and writers are encouraged to behave like cover bands, embellishing the oldies, maybe, while ensuring that buried in the song is an old familiar melody to make us smile with recognition, so that we might read more from memory than by active attention."

this was the part that reminded me of "hostility suite" and that resonated with so many conversations i've had over the last two years with colleagues. i'm still much of a listener in this kind of conversation, still at that point where i'm eager to soak in a variety of opinions, pre-stance or having a stance but not yet displaying it lest i be asked to then display my funny walk that accompanies said stance. (digression: i do this with writing, too. i may be writing, but i won't admit it to someone else unless i'm feeling an urge to share or a confidence at the level where the writing sits.) but this is a hot topic in some literary circles i sample.

i could continue to digress and tangent and branch away; i feel like i've just scratched the surface of so many intriguing topics. i'm much more eager to learn what you think about any of this, all of this? where did your thoughts lead you (or where did you lead your thoughts -- WHO HAS THE LEASH?!) as you read this marathon of a summer blog post?

further reading re: marcus' essay... harper's has an excerpt from later on in the essay online. slate published an essay review by jess row. publisher's weekly provides a preview for the essay, hinting at the later passages (which i didn't discuss at all here).