oh... and strawberry pocky

A list of my favourite things would include a number of expected items: Krest Bitter Lemon, Mini Golf, Spongebob Squarepants, Capture the Flag... oh the list goes on. But near the top of the list would be the poetry of Al Purdy and the city of Vancouver.

Ok, a strange introduction to this post, I admit... but I say all that only to emphasize how overjoyed I am to have poems of mine forthcoming in both "Purdy Country", an anthology to raise funds to save Purdy's A-frame in Ameliasburgh, and "Verse Map of Vancouver" (maybe not its final name?), an anthology of poems set in Vancouver (which is being prepared by current Vancouver poet laureate George McWhirter).

The Purdy poem, called "How little we need to learn, to know", didn't start as a Purdy-related poem, but I realised early on that I was stealing almost every element of the poem from various Purdy poems. Instead of trying to cut it all out, I went with it, and it worked out fairly well.

The Vancouver poem is on Nat Bailey Stadium, and called "One Down at the Nat". It's 50% about baseball and 50% about Pablo Neruda and 100% about the many sunny days I boiled away on the uncovered bleachers on the first-base line at Nat Bailey.

Both are due out midway through 2009 - I'll be sure to post updates on their progress here. Thanks, anthologists!


p.s. One recent publication is already online - though I should hardly get credit. I wrote one half of one couplet out of 88...1/176th the credit! Bet you can't guess which line is mine... Take a look here. Oh, and Daniela Elza has a new poem up on the same site right now, another collaboration - read it here.