3/31/2010

on poemes

My idea was that in any human creation there's going to be a participation of the dream mind as well as the logical, daylight waking mind. And there's probably also going to be some kind of participation of the body. They're all going to be enacted in some way. And the more vigorously and simultaneously they're enacted, the closer the approach to the condition of poetry.

Everybody's got a few magical things in their lives. They can talk about them as if they were rational and logical, but in fact their heart is poetry. What's the poem of your life? Well, one of them is your marriage, quite often. One of them is your favorite hobby, or hobbies. And a few other things. Your political affiliation and dreams in that direction. There usually won't be too many. There'll be a few small ones, and a couple big ones. That's the standard equipment of a human soul. I call them poemes. It's a word derived from the same sort of language as "morpheme" and "grapheme" and "phoneme" and so on.

- Les Murray, summarazing his lecture "A Defense of Poetry" in an interview with Image. Read the whole thing here. Thanks to Zach Wells for pointing this out.

3/30/2010

otherwise you end up with uber-unfortunate flab

Jacob McArthur Mooney: Do you see the book-length project, or the long poem, as becoming your preferred structure? And if so, why? Is it easier to arrange your thoughts? Is it a more reliable long-term source of inspiration than the “occasional” poem?

Michael Lista: ... Not every gesture is a manifesto. I wrote Bloom the way I did because it needed to be written like that. If a poet is writing a certain way because it’s “easier” then she’s probably doing her poems–and her readers–a disservice. Poems, long or short, fail because of the shortcomings of the people who write them, not because of the ontology of the form in which they are written. In tennis, you lose a point because you hit the ball too low, not because the net is too high or the ball’s too heavy.

I’m not interested in sloganeering; I’m not here to turn people off “individual poems” and onto “long poems.” Not at all. I write both, as the poems require themselves to be written... As I’ve said before, the long poem done right can provide a poet with opportunities for meaning that cloistered poems can’t. It populates the absences. The trick is to be scrupulous about the rules of mutual cohesion; otherwise you end up with the uber-unfortunate flab that gives some long poems a bad name.

- Jacob McArthur Mooney and Michael Lista in conversation on the latter's new book, Bloom, over at The Torontoist's Book Page. Read the whole thing here.

oh man, here comes april

UBC Bookstore Special Event
Thursday, April 1st, 7 PM
UBC Bookstore at Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver (by the ice rink)
Featuring: Randall Maggs and Elizabeth Bachinsky
Free!


Play Chthonics
Wednesday, April 7th, 7:30 PM
Graham House at Green College
6201 Cecil Green Park Road, Vancouver
Featuring: Adam Dickinson and Jeff Derksen
Free!


Robson Reading Series
Thursday, April 8th, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore/Library at Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver
Featuring: George Sipos and Pamela Mordecai
Free!


Angela Long and Susan Musgrave Reading
Wednesday, April 14th, 7:30 - 9:00 PM
Alma VanDusen & Peter Kaye Rooms, Lower Level
Central Library
350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Surprise! Angela Long and Susan Musgrave
Free!


SubTerrain Issue #54/55: Vancouver’s Literary Landscape
Thursday, April 15th, 7:00 PM
Café Montmarte
4362 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: George Bowering, Trevor Carolan, Cynthia Flood, Catherine Owen, Peter Trower, and George Stanley
Free!


OCW Issue #16 Launch
Thursday, April 15th, 8:00 PM
The Venue Formerly Known as The Cobalt
917 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: music by The Stolen Organ Family Band, Mississippi Live and The Autumn Portrait
$10 (includes an issue of the magazine)


Launch of Solar Poems by Homero Aridjis
Thursday, April 15th, 7:00 PM
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver
Featuring: The books translator, George McWhirter
Free!


Locution Reading Series
Thursday, April 15th, 7:00 PM
Pulpfiction Books
2422 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Michelle Wright and Margret Bollerup
Free!


The Writer's Studio Reading Series
Friday, April 16th, 7:00 - 9:30 PM
Take 5 Café
429 Granville Street (at Hastings), Vancouver
Featuring: Renee Saklikar, Jennifer Getsinger, and more!
Free!


Geist #76 Launch / 20th B-Day
Saturday, April 17th, 5:30 – 8:00 PM
Listel Hotel
1300 Robson St., Vancouver
Featuring: Brad Cran, Jill Mandrake and more!
$5 donation to the Geist Writers and Artists Fund


Spoken Ink Reading Series
Tuesday, April 20th, 8:00 PM
La Fontana Caffe
101 - 3701 East Hastings, Burnaby
Featuring: David Zieroth and myself
Free!
Poster!


Word Whips: Alley Ways: The Hidden Places Uncovered
Tuesday, April 20th, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery
950 W.41st Avenue, Vancouver
Featuring: Daniela Elza, Christi Kramer, RC Weslowski, Sue Cormier, Don Simpson, Leef Evans and Alex Winstanley
Free!


Dining on Ambrosia: An Evening of Poetry, Performance and Participation Celebrating Earth Goddesses
Wednesday, April 21st, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level
Central Library
350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Susan McCaslin and Penn Kemp
Free!


NaPoMo/Nightwood Reading
Thursday, April 22nd, 7:00 PM
UBC Library/Bookstore at Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Gillian Jerome, Laisha Rosnau and Gregory Scofield
Free!


The On Edge Reading Series
Tuesday, April 27th, 7:00 PM
Emily Carr University of Art and Design
1399 Johnston St., Room NB 245, Vancouver
Featuring: Sina Queyras
Free!


Brick Books Spring Launch
Tuesday, April 27th, 7:30 - 9:00 PM
Peter Kaye Room, Lower Level
Central Library
350 West Georgia Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Eve Joseph and John Donlan
Free!


Talon Books Spring 2010 Poetry Tour
Wednesday, April 28, 8:00pm
Heritage Hall
3102 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: derek beaulieu, Ken Belford, George Bowering, Weyman Chan, Stephen Collis, Frank Davey, Garry Thomas Morse, and Ken Norris
Free!

3/25/2010

alfred gustav series 4

The best deal in Canadian poetry, the Alfred Gustav Press Chapbook Series, is back for round four: three sharp-looking chapbooks for ten bucks, mailed to your doorstep. I'm a little late in posting this, so please note that if you want to get on board, you need to send your order in ASAP - the deadline for subscriptions is April 1st. From the press release:

The Alfred Gustav Press

Introducing Series Four:

Jeremy Harman, The Narrow Room
Nancy Holmes, Okanagan Galilee
Leonard Neufeldt, How to Beat the Heat in Bodrum


A trio of new chapbooks of invigorating, original, previously unpublished poetry in a creatively designed handmade artefact signed by the poet, available only by subscription.

Subscriptions are available for $10 in total for the three issues described below. The subscription deadline is April 1, 2010. Please send cash or your cheque payable to David Zieroth at:
The Alfred Gustav Press
519 2nd Street East
North Vancouver, BC
V7L 1E1

Please remember your mailing address (and include your email address if you wish updated information).

For more information: dzieroth(at)telus.net


The Narrow Room is a set of poems connected to Ireland. They include memories, personal sadnesses and joys. They speak to how experience is shaped not only by personal memory but also by those of others now gone, who have never really left, since they are still heard, and felt, as present.

by Jeremy Harman


Okanagan Galilee is a selection from a series of poems about the Okanagan valley of British Columbia. For the poet, the Okanagan is both geography and place of consciousness, one of the most endangered ecosystems in Canada and the site of rampant development, yet a place of incredible beauty and spiritual power. In these poems, the author is trying to understand the place she shares with other beings, and why we are so complicit in the destruction of our homes.

by Nancy Holmes


How to Beat the Heat in Bodrum presents three poems from a lengthy new series on Turkey. Like the series as a whole, the words of these excursionary poems take us into moments of geographic and cultural engagement characterized by wonder, otherness and at-homeness, these moments deepened through the lens of reverie.

by Leonard Neufeldt

3/23/2010

a blast shadow from history

What’s to say about the sonnet. I am attracted to its no-holds challenge to composition. It says, “Here’s a squarish block of text on a white field in which something or, more likely, nothing will occur. Are you up to it?” It gets strange here as, obviously, there is no real “block of text” anywhere present before one writes a sonnet–except perhaps there is; a blast shadow from history, a kind of dimly perceived ‘dark matter’-sonnet that can serve as a vessel or threat or foil. Not wanting this to shade into an ugly species of existential athleticism, there’s a game or risk or pressure inherent in knowing the end is on its way. Which is to say constraint does appeal to me, as does history; and perhaps more so the volta. You walk into the stagnant murk and that leech just seems to find the soft flesh between line 8 and 9, give or take.

- Ken Babstock, from an interview with Sina Queyras over at the Harriet blog. He also has some great comments on the music v. meaning wrastling match, but a boy can only quote so much. Read the whole thing here.

[Update: Lemon Hound has posted the other quote I mentioned here. But honestly, just read the whole thing already...]

everbody get happy!

Why? Because Toronto says so! Submit away, younglings, and do it quick:

The Torontoist’s Book Page and Vox Populism Present: THE OPTIMISMS PROJECT: A National Poetry Month Thing

-we’d like to cobble together 30 or so poets, all under the age of 30, and give them some space (100-150 words) to express, in whatever way they choose, what makes them feel optimistic about the future of poetry in Canada. The word Optimism is pluralized in the project title for a reason; we hope to have diverse, surprising, and even contradictory hopes expressed in the same space. Submissions could be prose, poetry, general, specific, practical, fantastical, whatever. Again: diversity, and surprise, are our hopes. We’re “optimistic” that we’ll get some of both.

-each day in April we will feature the optimism of a separate poet, published on The Torontoist’s Book Page with a photo, a short (25 word max) bio, and any internet linkups they may desire.

-in terms of eligibility, it’s wide open (published, unpublished, “novice”, etc), and will run under something approximating a first-come, first-serve basis. If we have to double up, we may. I’m thinking a birth year of 1980, or later. But we’re flexible. University Teachers: I’m relying on you for leads. High School Teachers: You too. Young, established (or establishing poets): Submit yourselves. Everyone else: I have a hunch you might know someone who’d be a great fit.

-If you could please forward this Call for Submissions as widely as possible, I’d be grateful. April approacheth quickly. Submissions should be e-mailed, as soon as humanly possible, to optimismsproject@gmail.com. Though it’s the “Torontoist” book page, we hope to have submissions from all over the country.

3/22/2010

fun with archives

Since I set up this blog four years ago I've kept a little rotating list of poems going in the sidebar, under the header "five things that aren't mine (and i'm jealous)". It was (and is) a small way for me to promote poems that caught my attention as I stumbled about the internet. Whenever I'd find something new, it would bump off the oldest thing on the list.

As with many elements on this blog, it functioned as an external harddrive for my brain. I recently realized, though, that it was a pretty useless harddrive if I kept deleting the stored information. So I've done my best to remember four years worth of poems (I've probably come up with 1/4 of them) and have assembled an archive, which can be read here. Yay, random poems!

3/20/2010

brad cran, you've got some competition

The title of "badass poet laureate" is going to be more tightly contested than I originally thought (if poets-in-residence count, as I think they should):

Poet Slams VANOC Paralympic transportation system

3/18/2010

on camps, caesuras, the King James Bible and the FLQ

Sina Queyras: People assume that Langpo, a camp you are often associated with, knows or cares nothing for line breaks... How much attention do you pay to line breaks?

Lisa Robertson: Sorry, but I don’t see L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E as a camp. So I can’t be associated with it. Mine is a different nationality, a different generation, a different politics. I feel more conditioned by the FLQ than by the language poets. I read many of their works and sometimes drink with some of them, but for me, as for those poets themselves I think, poetry is not bound by movements, periodicities and canons. Poetry is a continuity fueled by political passion. The Songs of the King James Bible, the songs of Cheika Rimitti, Donne, Veronica Forrest-Thomson, Denise Riley, Moure, show us the breach as being the active but submerged tradition of a subversion. The caesura, its turn, as Agamben reminds us, is what distinguishes poetry from prose, not the customs of distribution of words on the page. In the time of the caesura a thinking gathers, dissolves, moves.

- Lisa Robertson crams a lot of interesting stuff in there, in discussion with Sina Queyras over at the Harriet blog. Read the whole interview here.

starninothon 2010

Carmine Starnino is in town for four readings in three days. All the details are over at the UBC Grapevine. The most relevant to non-academic, non-White-Rockian types:
Locution Reading Series
Wednesday, March 24th, 7:00 PM
Pulp Fiction Books
2422 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Carmine Starnino
Free!

I've also added this reading to the big list for March.

3/16/2010

shane neilson likes some good poems

One of my favourite poems from Zach Wells' Track & Trace, "There is Something Intractable in Me", is up at Arc Poetry's How Poems Work site, with comments by Shane Neilson. Check it out here.

Oh, and Shane chimes in on one of my favourites from A.F. Moritz's The Sentinel, "What Way", as well. That's here.

mutant!!!

"Mutating the Signature" was an "issue" of the online journal qarrtsiluni that ran just over a year ago, and featured only collaborative writing (including Daniela Elza's and my poem, "silence: a courtyard"). The "issue" has recently been turned into a real, stack-o-dead-trees print issue, which is available for sale. Yay!

I quite enjoyed reading the contributions as they gradually came out online (you can read the online version here), and I think the print version will make for a great read (the authors' notes on the writing process are often as interesting as the works themselves). More details, a sample of a few pages, and ordering information is all here.

3/12/2010

the words only fragment something whole

We spend so much time arguing around and about words. So many battles today are fought on the level of words (political, academic, ideological, religious). Yet, the words only fragment something whole (a thought/feeling) that is trying to come through. So I fragment the words. Meaning is in the words, but also not in them. Are we in control of the words or are they in control of us?

- Daniela Elza, in an interview which accompanies her poem "old dust made new" over at One Ghana, One Voice. Read the whole interview here.

3/09/2010

in the middle of the banging and the slaughtering

On the one hand poetry has always depended on there being a well-ordered society with a division of labor, ready to finance its festive bards, and on the other... in the interests of proper and concentrated recording, it has always had a tendency to stay off to the side somewhere. The latter has led to the insoluble paradox that it flourished in splendid isolation, cannily insisting on neutrality and right of refusal, while at the same time being always at the heart of things, in the middle of the banging and the slaughtering, there where the destruction of the temple was discussed, or the construction of the Trojan horse. Rather than chip in with advice, it has played the part of the observer, who would finally convert his collected silence into the one and only commentary that survived the wreckage, some unforgettable line of song, some key scene of an epic or heartbreaking elegy.

- Durs Grünbein, in his essay "Why Live Without Writing" in the February 2010 issue of Poetry, as translated by Michael Hofmann.

3/07/2010

why we wish to do that no one knows

As to the younger generation, those who regularly tire of us older writers. Listen, I was once a young man, ambitious, intemperate, arrogant, and, yes, terribly impatient. I wished the older generation to get out of the way and make room for me. There were times when I judged my elders and found them wanting, the endless repetitions of their poetic preoccupations exhausting and of no significant value. And I sometimes judged my peers, those who lived in my country, the Canadians. I wanted the world to see me, not just Vancouver or Toronto, Salmon Arm or Saskatoon. We must remember that the avant-garde soon enough becomes the old guard. We endlessly invent replicas of ourselves and call it new. The real question is why do we poets do what we do and why do we spend our lives doing it? I have always believed that we poets wish to make something beautiful, but why we wish to do that no one knows.

- Patrick Lane, in an interview with David Kosub on his blog, "Speaking of Poems".

3/06/2010

the way a poem defied common sense

rob mclennan: How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

Jeff Latosik: I found the smallness of poetry compelling. When I would read a great poem, I would think that this little thing had no business being as big, as expansive, as it was. I liked the way a poem defied common sense. Most of what I encountered in other areas of my life seemed to argue the opposite: more is better, keep acquiring, building, advancing. There's this kind of slate-cleaning appeal to poetry. Only use what's necessary.


- Jeff Latosik, in his 12 or 20 Questions which, combined with this poem, has convinced me to pick up Latosik's first book when it hits the shelves next month.

3/05/2010

red fez #26


The latest issue of Red Fez is out. You can read it here. My pick of the litter is "the mistress & the bully" by Jason Floyd Williams. Enjoy!

3/04/2010

three new readings

Posted here and added to the list below. Is March taking a run at the title of "Poetry Month"? April, be warned!

Play Chthonics
Wednesday, March 17th, 7:30 PM
Graham House at Green College
6201 Cecil Green Park Road, UBC
Featuring: Stephen Collis, Rachel Zolf and Tenney Nathanson
Free!


Robson Reading Series
Thursday, March 25th, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore at Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver (by the ice rink)
Featuring: Lisa Robertson and Nairne Holtz
Free!


Launch of Thrust, a UBC Creative Writing MFA Journal
Friday, March 26th, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore at Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver (by the ice rink)
Featuring: Kevin Spenst, Andrea Bennett, Emily Davidson and more!
Free!

3/03/2010

some march readings for you

Twisted Poets Literary Salon
Thursday, March 4th, 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Cambie Bakery and Cafe
312 Cambie Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Daniela Elza and Christi Kramer
Free!


One Cool Word Writing Contest Wrap Party
Tuesday, March 9th, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
The Railway Club
579 Dunsmuir St, Vancouver
Featuring: Rob Madden, Colin Stewart, Kevin Spenst, and more (including me if I wasn't out of town...)!
Free!


The Writer's Studio Reading Series
Friday, March 12th, 7:00 - 9:30 PM
Take 5 Café
429 Granville Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Elena E. Johnson, Tanyss Knowles, Juliane Okot Bitek, and more!
Free!


Arts in Harmony Fundraiser
Monday, March 15th, 6:00 PM - 12:00 AM
The Cottage Bistro
4468 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Daniela Elza, Marni Norwich, Svelte Ms. Spelt and more (including music and dance)!
$20 (fundraiser for Pandora's Collective and Vancouver Artist's Collective - includes dinner)


Spoken Ink Reading Series
Tuesday, March 16th, 8:00 PM (Open Mic Sign-up at 7:30)
James Street Café
3819 Canada Way, Burnaby
Featuring: Heidi Greco
Free!


Play Chthonics
Wednesday, March 17th, 7:30 PM
Graham House at Green College
6201 Cecil Green Park Road, UBC
Featuring: Stephen Collis, Rachel Zolf and Tenney Nathanson
Free!


Spring's New Work: New Poetry
Sunday, March 21st, 2:00 - 4:00 PM
The Café for Contemporary Art
140 East Esplanade, North Vancouver
Featuring: David Zieroth, Russell Thornton, Allan Briesmaster, and Richard Lemm
Free!


Locution Reading Series
Wednesday, March 24th, 7:00 PM
Pulp Fiction Books
2422 Main Street, Vancouver
Featuring: Carmine Starnino
Free!


Robson Reading Series
Thursday, March 25th, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore at Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver (by the ice rink)
Featuring: Lisa Robertson and Nairne Holtz
Free!


Launch of Thrust, a UBC Creative Writing MFA Journal
Friday, March 26th, 7:00 PM
UBC Bookstore at Robson Square
800 Robson Street, Vancouver (by the ice rink)
Featuring: Kevin Spenst, Andrea Bennett, Emily Davidson and more!
Free!

Also, quite a bit early, but I'm reading with David Zieroth at the April Spoken Ink in Burnaby:
Tuesday, April 20th, 8 PM
La Fontana Caffe
101 - 3701 East Hastings, Burnaby
Featuring: David Zieroth and myself
Free!
Poster!