silence: a courtyard

My collaborative poem written with Daniela Elza, "silence: a courtyard," is now up at qarrtsiluni. The post includes the text of the poem, some notes on the collaboration from Daniela and myself, and an audio recording of the two of us reading it.

I haven't had an audio recording published since back in my undergrad when iamb, SFU's student creative writing journal, was still up and running - so that's pretty neat. You can read/listen to it here:


silence: a courtyard


The poem is part of qarrtsiluni's "Mutating the Signature" issue of collaborative poems which I mentioned here a while ago. I've long been a fan of qarrtsiluni, which is certainly one of the best web-based literary magazines I've come across, so I'm very glad to be included. Thanks, qarrtsiluni!

CoS cloud

Wordle is neat. Here is my chapbook Child of Saturday in word cloud form:



It doesn't tell you much about the chapbook, except which words I use in refrains and other repetitive bits. Still, it looks coooooool.

faceOGOV

One Ghana, One Voice is now on Facebook. Our trusty North American promotions man Prince Mensah has got us facing and booking like nobody's business. So take a gander and join up here.

open letter to james moore update

Zach Wells comments on the nonsense: "James Moore's Little Blue Choo-choo"

He also stirs up a bit of his own: "Open Letter to James Moore"

Daniela Elza comments on the nonsense: "doomed under 5000"

My original post can be read here.

broken pencil review

Broken Pencil has reviewed my old chapbook, splattered earth! The review took so long to arrive that the contact info I provided them with the submission is three years outdated (email and mailing addresses that I stopped using in Spring 2006).

Oh well, I'm still very grateful to them for covering it. You can read the review here and learn more about splattered earth and my new chapbook, Child of Saturday, here.

Thanks, Broken Pencil!

An Open Letter to James Moore, Minister of Cultural Heritage and Official Languages

[New updates here and here]
[Read my follow-up query letter here]
[Read the government's rejection letter here]
[Quill and Quire blogs on the submissions here]


Well, I've finally gotten together a submission to James Moore, motivated by the proposed funding changes at Canadian Heritage that will kill off most literary magazines in Canada (if you don't know what I'm talking about, there's more info here, here, and here):

(click on the letter to expand it)

I had a false start in sending it off, choosing to deliver it in person to his constituency office in Port Moody instead of mailing it to Ottawa. The personal touch always helps with editors - or so I thought...

Alas! Theirs is not the literary wing of his operations. A good lesson for future submitters! My first submission was rejected thusly:

(click on the letter to expand it)

I've rebounded from this initial setback, as all determined artists must, and have resubmitted my poem to Mr. Moore's office in Ottawa. Hopefully there they will better appreciate the value of poetry in "Householder" mailouts - we all must open our minds to new possibilities if we are to survive the troubled times ahead! I will, of course, post here any response I receive.

If others wish to send similar submissions, please direct them to:

James Moore, MP
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON
K1A 0A6

And please, send a scan or photo of your submission to me at roblucastaylor(at)gmail.com, so that I can post it here.

Lastly, here is the full text of my letter, in case the scans don't do it for you:

Mr. Moore,

I have written the following poem and am submitting it to you in hopes that you might publish it in your constituency newsletter or on www.jamesmoore.org. This request is part of my wider search to locate alternate publishing venues for my work, as I am preparing for every literary magazine in Canada to soon be shut down. The magazines will be closing, as you may know, due to some new government policy to cease funding magazines with circulation under 5,000. What will they come up with next, eh?

Anyway, Mr. Moore, here is the poem:

An Open Letter to James Moore, Minister of Cultural Heritage and Official Languages

You’re a few bricks short, a ten-second minute,
You’ve got a nice house, but there’s nobody in it.
You’re as thick as molasses, as sharp as a ball,
Your car’s cylinders just won’t fire at all.
You’ve got bats in your belfry, air in your head,
Your infinite monkeys are infinite dead.
I bring you this message as a citizen, friend:
James, your little blue choo-choo has wound ’round the bend.

Thank you in advance for your consideration. Obviously, if the government policy were to be reversed, I would immediately withdraw my request for publication.

Yours,

Rob Taylor

i imagine a nun or two

After sitting in my "to read" pile for a few months, I finally got to the first series of chapbooks from the Alfred Gustav Press, a micropress run out of North Vancouver by David Zieroth.

The series featured three chapbooks, one each by gillian harding-russell, Richard Therrien, and David Zieroth. All three are beautifully constructed (obviously with a great deal of care), and featured strong work. David's own chapbook, Dust in the Brocade, stood out as the strongest. Dust in the Brocade (whose title is taken from a line in the opening poem, "The Nuns' Chair") features 13 sonnets (why not 14?), ending with the charming "After All These Years":

After All These Years

by David Zieroth

…still writing, they ask, gentle, mild types
curious but anticipating my capitulation
to the other side—theirs—where I will never-
ever-again take up a thought and turn it
this way or that into something other
than it was before, not necessarily
better but at best something better than
originally thought—oh, yes, still writing
I reply, surprised, as if they’ve asked
still breathing? blood continues circulating?
fecund ideas and senses wheeling? is that
how a glimpse is gained, gripped (how many
slip away?), how the unimagined grows
when you dream of it dreaming in you?

Series Two is already in the works, and looks like it might be even stronger than its predecessor, featuring chapbooks by Matt Rader, Susan McCaslin and Christopher Levenson. It's only $10 for all three, and the chapbooks are available to subscribers only, so sign up before the deadline (April 1st). Info on how to subscribe can be found here.

two readings

The Writing Studio Reading Series
Thursday, March 12th, 2009 (7:30 - 9:30 PM)
Rhizome Café
317 East Broadway
FREE!


Elizabeth Bachinsky Reading
Tuesday, March 17th (3:00 PM)
Buchanan E Building – Room 472, UBC
1866 Main Mall, Vancouver
FREE!

The weirder the name, the tougher the enforcer...

I can't wait for these two to tangle... will the announcer be able to keep from cracking up? Oh, the suspense!

the pumpkin is dead, part 2

This blog used to be a hideous orange colour. I finally updated it to the current template after it won the big race back in 2007.

Shortly after that, for god knows what reason, I decided to take all my orange-template energy and use it at OGOV, coming up with this on our one year anniversary (March 1st, 2008):


Not long after finishing the thing, I determined that this orange template was just as hideous as my last one. But I was patient, waiting out its year until our second anniversary (today!) would give me an excuse to switch things up. Now, it turns out, many were very attached to the orange beast. I tell them "Oh well, wait a year."

Check out the new look for OGOV here.