i never said "tits"!!!

I'm not crazy about so much of a campaign being focused on such a small amount of money, symbolic as the funding cut may be (especially when similar cuts to essential social programs like women's shelters drew far less attention), but this is pretty damn funny.

the Arby's of common purpose

A great little commentary from Scott Feschuk in the new issue of Macleans. Read it here.

two beers diverged in a yellow wood, and i - i took the one with the light, crisp, refreshing taste

Kudos to the folks at Hacksaw (who published this poem of mine) for getting some press, and positive press at that (a two-"masterpiece" salute, even). I do wonder, though, about the author's assertion that there is looming corporate interest in local hand-made arts zines. Maybe my family will be proud of me one day, after all...

You can read the review here.

Frosty!!!

new website for HAP

Sean Wilkinson, the new web guru over at High Altitude Poetry has completely redesigned the club's website, and gawd it looks beautiful! He's even gone and gussied up the site with a few of my old, high-quality open mic ads.

As one of the former webmasters of the site, I can safely say that it's never looked better. Check it out!

Extra Rocksalt Launch

The anthology of BC poets I talked about in a recent post has added another Lower Mainland launch to its schedule:

Fri. Nov. 21st, 32 Books in North Van

It looks like I'm going to be reading at this and the Vancouver reading at the VPL (November 7th, 7-9:30 PM). Wootz!

rob taylor owns a hovercraft and can shoot lazers out of his eyes

I just got my contributor's copy of the latest issue of the Nashwaak Review, which includes a couple of my poems: "it kills them too" and "story". Thanks, Nashwaak Review!

The new issue also features some solid poems by Barry Dempster, Jesse Ferguson, and Changming Yuan, among others - so head on over to Fredericton (or your nearest bookstore) and check it out.

My poems were accepted more than 9 months ago, from a submission I sent while still living in Ghana (almost 1.5 years ago, now) so my bio in the back is pretty entertaining - stating that I live in a different city than I currently do and that I have poems coming out in the Spring 2007 issue of a now-defunct magazine.

From now on I'm going to attempt to guess what my life will be like two years in the future whenever I write a personal bio.

tricked out with some edifying thoughts and feelings

Brian Bartlett: Denise Levertov says on the back of your book of essays, Body Music, that your poems matter to her "because, more consistently than those of anyone else whose work I know, they manifest a full awareness of the poem as a form of musical score." What do you think Levertov meant by that?

Dennis Lee: ... Ok, I think Denise was talking about rhythm... We experience rhythm directly with our bodies, but now you're tying to convey it by means of words on a flat piece of paper... I think Denise recognized this preoccupation with how a poem enacts, in its rhythmic moves, a whole way of our being in the world. In fact if you're lucky, it enacts a way the world goes about being itself. Or at least tries too.

BB: But how does poetry "enact," rather than just reflect, those ways of "being in the world"? Or the ways the world has of "going about being itself"?

DL: For me, it means you don't just give a description of objects and events, tricked out with some edifying thoughts and feelings. It's a whole different gig. I sense the world as a polyrhythmic process - a dance of simultaneous energies. And the poem has to mime that process - not by describing it, but by reenacting its simultaneous sprawl and twiddle and ache. Right in the way it moves, its rhythmic trek. So when Denise spoke of the poem as a musical score, I think she was pointing to this dimension of scribbling. How the way you orchestrate words on the page manifests your deepest cosmological hunches - your sense of the vocabulary of coherence that obtains in the world.

- from Where the Words Come From: Canadian Poets in Conversation, Ed. Tim Bowling, 2002.

god i love political conventions

The first 3.5 minutes of Bill Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention. Imagine a near-constant shriek of applause in the background:

Clinton: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen. Stop. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. You all sit down, we've got to get on with the show here, c'mon! Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, I am honoured to be here tonight. Sit down. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am honoured to be here tonight. Please stop. Thank you. Please stop. Sit down. Sit down. Thank you. Please sit. Please sit. You know, I..uh...I love this, and I thank you, but we have important work to do here tonight.

That was 40 "Thank yous", if you're keeping track at home. You can read the transcript of the speech here (it doesn't do justice to the opening, tho) and really, after an introduction like that, how could you resist?

UPDATE: Try as he might, Obama only got in 30 pre-speech "thank yous" tonight. He's got a lot of learning to do...

Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry

I just got the final list of contributors for the Rocksalt Anthology of BC Poetry I mentioned early - quite heady company:

Maleea Acker, Joanne Arnott, John Barton, bill bissett, Yvonne Blomer, Allison Blythe, Leanne Boschman, Marilyn Bowering, Kate Braid, Brenda Brooks, Howard Brown, Trevor Carolan, Ken Cathers, Karen Chester, Judith Copithorne, Susan Cormier, Jen Currin, Daniela Elza, Mona Fertig, George Fetherling, Marya Fiamengo, Cathy Ford, David Fraser, Patrick Friesen, Colin Fulton, Carla Funk, Maxine Gadd, Pam Galloway, Lorraine Gane, Rhonda Ganz, Heidi Garnett, Gary Geddes, Kuldip Gill, Garry Gottfriedson, Kim Goldberg, Susan Andrews Grace, Shirley Graham, Catherine Greenwood, Heather Haley, Genine Hanns, Diana Hayes, Iain Higgins, Alan Hill, Robert Hilles, Karen Hofmann, Sean Horlor, Jody Jankola, elena e. johnson, Sean Johnston, Eve Joseph, Donna Kane, Michael Kenyon, Tim Lander, Scott Lawrance, Christopher Levenson, Peter Levitt, Rhona McAdam, Susan McCaslin, George McWhirter, Jean Mallinson, Vera Manuel, Daphne Marlatt, Robin Mathews, Roy Miki, Peter Morin, Jane Munro, Susan Musgrave, Bobbie Ogletree, P.K. Page, John Pass, Christopher Patton, Shauna Paull, George Payerle, Sheila Peters, Meredith Quartermain, Henry Rappaport, Kyeren Regehr, D.C. Reid, Murray Reiss, Al Rempel, Harold Rhenisch, Ajmer Rode, Linda Rogers, Rachel Rose, Joe Rosenblatt, Rhoda Rosenfeld, Laisha Rosnau, Greg Simison, Pete Smith, Ron Smith, David Swanson, Rob Taylor, Russell Thornton, Peter Trower, Ed Varney, Ann Graham Walker, Danielle Walker, Anna Wärje, Betsy Warland, M.C. Warrior, Tom Wayman, Zachariah Wells, George Whipple, Rita Wong, Derk Wynand, Onjana Yawnghwe, Patricia Young, David Zieroth.

The book is going to be launched all over the place, including two launches in Vancouver:

October 23rd, 7 PM, Agro Cafe, Granville Island (as part of the Vancouver Writer's Fest)

November 7th, 7-9:30 PM, VPL Central

I'm planning on attending both, if anyone is interested in tagging along - it should be fun.

30,000 hits at OGOV

A year ago, I tracked a race between three of my blogs to 10,000 hits.

Well, a year later its hardly a race anymore, with One Ghana, One Voice 12,000 hits ahead of this blog, and 17,000 hits ahead of Saturdays in the Park.

The case could be made, and made well, that this disparity is simply a result of my comparative disregard for the latter blogs, but instead I've chosen to conclude that it's a sign of the growing popularity of Ghanaian poetry on the interweb, which makes me very pleased.

This week we are featuring another new poet for whom OGOV is his first publication. He's a 21 year old who is already running a poetry reading series in Accra - a feature of a healthy poetry scene that was almost non-existent in the city when I was living there less than two years ago. Check it out!