ramdom ranblings

Filling Station is new again!

2009-04-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

Hi, it's been ages. What's been going on? Well, I'm now Managing Editor of Filling Station. This is going to be a huge job because I keep finding extra work to be done - re-examining our use of different vendors, our use of materials, our web presence, our survival tactics with regards to funding, and then there's all the fun proofreading and editing and grant writing and event planning.

Fortunately, we now have a stellar team of excited, talented literary folk on our Collective these days. We're always looking for more Collective members to help choose the content that appears in the magazine and share ideas for improvement. So if you're in Calgary, drop a line to meditor.fs@gmail.com If you're not in Calgary, you might as well move here to be part of it. Let's start a Greenwich Village for writing. You be Joan Baez, I'll be Joni Mitchell, we'll have some kind of awesome cat fight (Joni would totally win) and get in bed with really hot folk musicians.

We're also looking for a new webmaster & web designer, so please let me know if you might be into that as well. Again, we're hoping for Calgary-based help.

http://www.fillingstation.ca/ is officially kaput for the time being, so please check our Blow-Out Fest Blog at http://calgaryblowout.blogspot.com/ for info.

Next submissions deadline: May 1!

* * *

What else am I up to? Playing upright bass for my friend Dylan's band, Sadlier-Brown & The Sound. We're a six-piece roots rock band, we have some rough demos and a pic up at www.sonicbids.com/sadlierbrownandthesound Also playing electric bass for ryan fitzpatrick's new project, The Ogden Owls. ryan's amazing, and so are James & Jocelyn, who are also Filling Station editors.. it's practically the Filling Station band until ryan moves on as Flywheel Coordinator in June. By the way, I'm no longer with Lonely Hunters or Pine Tarts, but they're still my pals. No longer on the Single Onion board either. Writing about music for Beatroute occasionally when I know there's a really great band that needs coverage. Interviewed Neko Case via email, but was really bummed that she didn't reply in time for the deadline.. Still, Middle Cyclone is an amazing album. Write for music weeklies if you want to hear amazing music faster. Wandering around with an alt-country tornado in my ears for a couple weeks was a highlight of my winter.

Thinking about starting my own band, but I'm pretty busy with Filling Station, my full-time job at the ballet, and Dylan's band. Still, I'm sitting on about two albums worth of indie pop rock and 1 of alt country / roots rock type material, and my butt's really getting sore, all those pointy music notes, all those paper cuts.. so I've got to get off it or really get on it. Hmm.

Just got a copy of the new Kara Keith, it's amazing! Everyone look it up on CDBaby, it's called Kara Keith & Your Dignity, and the album is called Visions Fugitives. Kara was a bright belle of the Calgary music community and has moved to Montreal where she's been working with a producer who did one of the Arcade Fire's albums among other things.

filling Station is fine

2007-07-17T09:25:00.001-07:00

Hi folks,

Have been getting some inquiries about the health of filling Station. Thank you to those concerned, but no need to worry, the website is being maintained at the moment by our lovely webmaster and will be back up soon. The magazine is thriving, we had a great year last year and this year is shaping up to be a good one too. We're a veritable anomoly of Canadian literature publishing success. So yes, please, send us your submissions! We're always looking for good stuff. I in particular am invested in finding reviews, articles, interviews, and such. If you've never tried writing journalistic pieces, why not? Send send send.

If you are curious about work submitted and have not received a reply, please email editor@fillingstation.ca so that we will have your contact info to let you know. We do receive a large number of submissions relative to the small amount of space we have to publish in, so if you do experience rejection, please continue to submit - yes, selection is about quality, but seeing it from this angle, I know that it's also about odds, space, how submissions fit with other submissions, volume, etc.

Thanks for caring about filling Station! Please keep reading it, sending things to it, and do get your brains in gear and send me some journalistic stuff will you? You can definitely take creative license about it, nevermind what old T.S. Eliot says in that regard.. go ahead, interview dead people, review books that came out 100 years ago, write an article about a reading series you went to in the future when we wore our brains suspended in liquid-filled diving helmets because global warming has made our skulls too hot for everyday use. My sense of humour wants to make mad mad love to your extra cheesy brand metaphors.

Laurie

Married, Not Dead

2007-06-26T13:13:00.000-07:00

(lifted wholesale from my Myspace).

Married, Not Dead. Current mood: thankful

May 26th was my wedding day. It's fucking awesome to actually be happy, to be able to both say it and feel it genuinely - a year and a half ago I was miserable. I was living in a mouse- and wasp- infested basement apartment in Citadel that the landlord wouldn't do anything about, living with the deadbeat addict boyfriend I'd moved here from Cold Lake with, and working at a seniors community. Life had been pretty shitty up until then too. My parents moved from Ottawa when I was 19 and I'd stayed behind because I was tired of moving, having been a military brat. I dropped out of the English Literature program at Carleton University, broke and depressed, to busk the Byward Market and write unpublishable poetry about people who were gone from my life, meanwhile smoking and drinking as much as I could afford to, working shit waitressing jobs, and dating a sleezy dealer or a French con artist. I never would have thought I'd reconnect with this shy talented boy I'd once known, now a shy and talented and handsome man, get engaged, and be married - a mere year and a half after finally getting rid of mooching, jobless asshole Blake and escaping scam realtor Bertram Okeke's big yellow slum mansion. Gareth Williams, you've saved me. Finding myself able to love you after going through all that shit, I've also saved myself. More proof we make a good team.

It may be difficult to imagine, but being married doesn't mean I'm dead, or dormant, or that I'm going to stop playing music. In fact, I really can't, since I'm playing bass and singing backup vocs in my husband Gareth's band. Not to mention the birdheat EP I'm working on. I think it sounds like Reverie Sound Review influenced by an all-night LSD party with Emily Haines and Julie Doiron. What the hell does that mean? We'll see. I think it'll be a lot of fun. Anyway, that aside, the band Gareth and I have together along with our friends Ben Rayner and Tynan Groves is called lonely hunters. Our wee Myspace page is www.myspace.com/garethsband and shows off new tracks from our upcoming album.

For our stag/stagette, we asked Grandfather Fire and the Holy Morning, along with Fox Opera and Jagatha Christies, to play at Soda. Thanks to their talents and smiling faces, it was a great time. Markus Overland got on top of a speaker and began to radiate multicoloured riffs of psychedelia from his beard. Jzero pulled crepe paper streamers of notes from his keyboard and they got all over. Once they got on you, your pores turned into tiny stars, so you were practically made out of music after that. No kidding. Grandfather Fire has a CD coming out, and I got a copy of it that night. They went to a remote cabin, romantics that they are, and laid down some beautiful tracks! Then they handmade cardboard cases and art for it, which look a bit slicker than Lucid 44's handiwork but have retained all the soul. Beauty. Jagatha Christies are also working on a new EP in a certain musician's garage, and along with Fox Opera, all three bands are playing Sled Island. Gareth and I have passes and intend to enjoy the festival as much as possible, trying not to be bummed that our band wasn't asked to play. The festival is a great idea with tons of terrific bands playing, and we just couldn't resist Cat Power.

A few days later, our wedding reception saw our friends Jagatha Christies play for us again, along with best men Tyler Shipley and Matt McLennan from bands Consumer Goods and Mr. Pine (which I'll tell you about in a minute), Mr. Pine's Kevin Scott, and groomsman Ryan McVeigh. My cousins Sean and Nikki played a set, our friend Mat from Boats! made a chorus of himself out of pedals and wizardry, and to top it off, we headlined our own wedding. What a night! My mom's pretty traditional and wouldn't let me get away with the garden wedding idea, but at least we had our rock reception. Even Granny got into it. How 80 years worth of suffering the world and a husband that's left that world before you can still equal party animal, I don't know. The tiny woman is a marvel of the human spirit. It was wonderful to see her so geared up, smiling, dancing, staying up way past her bed time until one, and even leaping through the air for the bride's bouquet. She transformed into this little blue and gold bird and absolutely soared. Gareth's dad, visiting from Wales, got it on camera. You can see the moment when the feathers sprout, it's mindblowing.

Looking ahead, we're releasing our debut album July 7 at Marquee Room. A Vancouver band called Said the Whale will be supporting us. We're excited because tonight we're meeting with our friend Sandy, the industrious local graphic designer responsible for http://www.slamart.net/ and who's a Jagatha Christie too, to see the final coloured version of our album art. Then we're sending it off for manufacturing, sponsored in part by other members of our recently-formed record collective, Grumpy Cloud.

The label is awesome and can only get more awesome still, in part because of the lonesome distance that separates members. Everyone started out in Winnipeg, playing in bands together like The Poets and Cone Five and The Horribly Awfuls. Technically my first band was in Winnipeg too, actually, called Breaking Syntax, but that's another story. Now the collective members are based in Winnipeg, Calgary, Toronto, Ottawa, and soon Vancouver, in bands The Haste, lonely hunters, The Consumer Goods, and Mr. Pine respectively, which are all active and putting out debut or sophomore albums. I've heard the argument that every successful label is based somewhere in particular, but I can see this arrangement working even better. Each Grumpy Cloud member will know their city first-hand, and be able to hand-deliver Grumpy Cloud records to all the right independent record stores and media folks, as well as sell Grumpy titles at their shows. Also, while on tour, we'll all have a place to stay almost anywhere, either through labelmates or friends of friends.

Recently we had some news from Ryan McVeigh, our friend and the excellent audio engineer who has been recording these musicians from the beginning - first at Mid-Ocean School, where he teaches, and now from his home studio. He's moving to Vancouver, and taking his talent with him. Now we'll be even more scattered, so recording our next album might have to coincide with Vancouver tourdates next year. It's exciting - I've never been to Vancouver. I was born in Comox and haven't been back to B.C. since. So I look forward to visiting Ryan in his new digs next year and checking it out. We're playing a show with a Vancouver band called Said the Whale for our album release at Marquee Room on July 7, so maybe we'll be able to do some shows with them on their own turf to when the time comes. Consumer Goods' drummer who also plays with The Details played with them before and said their nice folks. We'll probably be playing a show with them soon too, will keep you posted.

In addition to booking and playing lonely hunters shows and working on my EP, I'll be continuing to get involved with the Calgary Housing Action Initiative when I can, plus planning & playing the Holy Beep! Benefit at Broken City on July 20th, putting together Calgary MultiArts, programming Broken Reels at Broken City, volunteering with Side Stage backline at Folk Fest, coordinating musicians for the Single Onion poetry series, and doing General Editor duties at filling Station Magazine, meanwhile working my regular dayjob at a not-for-profit association. Some friends think I'm silly to make myself so busy, but as a couple of others I know that are as busy as I am (both of who happen to be named Mark) would probably agree, I can tell you that it's a good feeling when you've got everything under control and you feel as though you're not wasting too much time being idle in your short life. You go to bed tired, and if you haven't abused your body overmuch, it feels good - you know you're going to have the best sleep.

Anyway, much to look forward to! New life, new album, another one in the works (Gareth's prolific like that), and new songs of my own surfacing unrestricted by the aforementioned, previous penchant towards romantic suffering, purposeful or subconscious. Fuck the ephemeral, goddamn the meaningless. Now I can get down to finding which words might matter after I'm dead, if any words ever do. But also fuck over-seriousness. Then, all of this having been fucked, find and pull from those wrecked bedsheets something in between meaning and decadent frowning - while avoiding outright insanity if possible. It's a dirty job but I'm ready for it, I'm strong, my breasts are perky, I'm smiling with too many teeth, I'm not quite foaming at the mouth.

Canada Council 50th Anniversary Arts Challenge

2007-04-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

Canada Council 50th Anniversary Arts Challenge

"Can you do 50 arts activities in a year? You may think you’re not an arts person, but have you ever thought about how art figures into your day?

Here is your opportunity to tell Canadians about your 50 arts adventures in 2007-- be they serious, extraordinary, official, ridiculous or sublime."

www.artschallenge.ca

(Thanks to Amanda Earl for passing this on to me).

filling Station has a new General Editor..

2007-04-26T15:29:00.000-07:00

Hey! Cool! Thanks fS.

If anyone has articles or reviews suitable for filling Station, the national literary magazine based in Calgary, please don't hesitate to send them to editor@fillingstation.ca or directly to myself if you have my email.

filling Station is always looking for poetry, prose, short fiction, novel excerpts, visual art, and even independent films (short or feature) to publish or review. Please visit www.fillingstation.ca for submissions info. We don't have a set mandate, but we tend to favour the innovative, interesting, experimental, or otherwise exciting.

You can find the mag all over, in both independent bookstores and spots like McNally Robinson and Chapters. If you can't find it, they can also be ordered from the site. It's the best damn little mag in Canada, I promise. (Matrix is pretty cool sometimes too though).

Peter F. Yacht Club Sails to Calgary now available

2007-04-26T11:59:00.000-07:00

Not to mention this now-newer Yacht, as email-listed by rob mclennan:


The Peter F Yacht Club #7
Edited & compiled & typeset & paid for by rob mclennan
April 2007 (spring writers festival special)


John Barton
George Bowering
Stephen Brockwell
Amanda Earl
Jesse Ferguson
Laurie Fuhr
Phil Hall
Nicholas Lea
Clare Latremouille
Marcus McCann
rob mclennan
Max Middle
Wanda O'Connor
Roland Prevost
Sandra Ridley
Wes Smiderle

The Peter F. Yacht Club, issue #7; irregular (very) writers group publication. Edited & compiled & typeset & paid for by rob mclennan. Previous issues still available (possibly) at $5 each. Issue #1, August 2003, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #2, April 2004, edited by Anita Dolman (out of print); Issue #3, September 2004, edited by Peter Norman and Melanie Little; Issue #4, September 2005, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #5, April 2006, edited by Max Middle; Issue #6 (mis-numbered Calgary special), February 2007, edited by Laurie Fuhr.

For availability of previous issues, write rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7, or email

az421@ncf.ca



or show up to this spring's ottawa international writers festival!

(above/ground press subscribers (eventually) rec' a complimentary
copy...)

for further info, check out
http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2007/04/peter-f-yacht-club-7-edited.html

Comment on arcpoetry.ca - Arc's Forgotten and Neglected Issue

2007-04-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

(As submitted for approval to be posted along with other reader comments on the above site).

Not sure what I'll find in the issue, but hoping to see writing on Diana Brebner as well as Candis Graham (though as an aside for the blog reader, my proposal to write on the latter was not acknowledged). Of our passed poets, it's hard to say who has been forgotten and neglected more than the next poet in a country where even the published, living authors have trouble not being forgotten and neglected. And in a society where news media's ephemeral daily reinvention of What We Should Think Is Important has a definite (but mostly unacknowledged) affect on our judgments, the new might be valued over the old simply for its newness rather than its quality. Guess who could be included or ignored depends whether it’s the lit community memory or the country's memory we're talking about jogging; if just the lit community's, then which genre communities get included, since the lyrical poets might forget and neglect the experimental poets dead or alive, and vice-versa. Should Arc seem to be advertising that they are presenting an overview of forgotten and neglected Canadian poets on the whole, I would hope for (but not expect to find, given Arc’s usual mandate) a fair-as-possible cross-section of authors from various genres if possible. Will be interesting to see this issue.

pantoum of pants

2006-12-20T11:02:00.000-08:00

concrete tree, a wrought-iron bench.
tailored suits for tailored people.
a tensed car / frieze / a crashway.
Autonomous Rex the techno-dino.

tailored suits for tailored people.
such-and-sucks about the sky.
Autonomous Reg the techno-vag.
unstable substances board your horse.

such and sucks about the clouds.
mindless pseudopolitical mumble.
unstable substances bored me hoarse.
try this Cheesequake before it tries you.

mindless pseudoanalytical jumble.
concrete tree, a wrought-iron Bens.
unexpected gift is creepy kindness.
a sensed bear / freeze / a cashway.

Children writing backwards

2006-12-18T15:20:00.000-08:00

My friend Leigha's little daughter Sydnee writes in mirror-image. Thought I'd look into it. Here's something I found online at the URL above:

Five-Year-Old Writes Backwards
Pediatrics Expert Advice from Shari Nethersole, M.D.

Question: My five-year-old granddaughter, when trying her skills at writing, usually starts on the right side of the paper rather that the left. About half of the time she mixes her Bs and Ds and makes her S backwards. She has been in a structured day care and is getting ready for kindergarten this fall. Any need for concern, especially about dyslexia?

Answer: There is no need for concern if your granddaughter is otherwise well. It is completely normal for children to write "backwards" at this age. In addition to letter and number reversals, some children will truly write in mirror image: going from right to left with all the letters reversed. There is nothing wrong with this. The brain does not completely form the concept of left and right until somewhere between ages five and eight. This means that almost all children will have persistent reversals when they first start writing.

meop rof eendyS

t'nod eb eulb
t'nod og srekcarc
s'ti yako fi er'uoy a elttil sdrawkcab

sgniht teg ssel erup sa uoy worg dlo
od ew lla trats sdrawrof, neht og
sdrawkcab nehw er'ew dlot?

Last Christmas was an ugly hat

2006-12-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

Christmas last year was a bit of a bummer. A couple months before, I finally broke up with my ridiculous ex-boyfriend. The apartment I had found for us to rent (on my own, since he was too scared to search for a place in case it was run by a slumlord), turned out to be run by a slumlord named Bertram Okeke. The boyfriend left before the mice did. Both were extremely difficult to get rid of.

My aunt Ellen, a strong lady who I hadn't seen in years, came busting in to rescue me from my depression. I went to live at my cousin Sandra's, a nice place in the armpit of Calgary. 2 hours to work each way, to my job scrubbing suites at the swanky seniors' community, but at least I'd get some reading done if I wasn't too tired. That was it. It was going to be the end of my boyfriend days - each man had been worse than the one before. And this is coming from a girl who smoked various things, drank, wrote terrible lyric poetry on a daily basis AND insisted on reading it to them. Yep, I was no catch, but catchier than the boys I ended up with. If I was a pothead, they had to be dealers. If I drank a couple times a week, they had to be alcoholics prone to DUI. If I wrote bad poetry, they wrote worse and often set it to music. Then there was fraud, theft, gambling, pawning, gambling, pawning some more, paranoia (this last one had me under surveillance, sure I'd cheat on him like his ex did), insane roadrage and the usual cheating. I didn't participate in these, was only implicated their results.

Emotionally screwy, I have never been good at turning off the emotions and staying protectively cynical no matter how badly my love life has gone.

Last Christmas time, in the sensory lonely of one completely unused to being alone, I believed I had made a connection with someone who perpetually impressed and delighted me. In short, I had a crush on him. We went out once and I thought it had gone well. In retrospect, it went horribly: nervous, I insisted on paying, drank too much, chain smoked, and when I got a call from an old guy friend on my cell, I thought it would be fun to let them talk to one another rather than saying sorry, I'm busy. Then he gave me a lift back to the armpit of Calgary and I hugged him awkwardly. A night out like that, how can a guy not call you back? Yep, I should have known better than to hope. I had acted like a total slob.

Meanwhile, the owner of the company I worked for, having made so much money from the exploitation of rich seniors, gave each employee a $100 gift card to spend at a particular mall. By that time I had done most of my Christmas shopping, but I felt like spending the card money on family and friends. Sick as a dog, I was hopped up on Benelyn and echinacea by the time I arrived through the big glass doors. Bought some things for Granny, some accessories for my thrift store Company Christmas Party dress, then thought it would be amusing to buy something from my impressive delightful friend who happened to work there, the one who hadn't called me for the couple weeks since we went out. (Never mind that he'd considered it a 'non-date', for one thing..). Anyway, I couldn't find anything whatsoever in the mall that I thought he would like. I ended up getting him a moronic card and an ugly hat. If you squinted your brain it made a kind of sense. I'm blaming Benelyn and echinacea. To make matters worse, his sister kindly suggested I give her the gift so that she could sneak it under the family Christmas tree. So here I was, this horrible chain-smoking chain-drinking bad poetry girl who lives in the armpit of Calgary and works in an ol' folks home, in a way crashing my friend's family Christmas with my terribly chosen gift. Way to go.

Needless to say he didn't reply to my embarrassed, apologetic phone call either. I've never felt so low in my life. Maybe it was partly because without someone else around being much more ridiculous than I was, I was forced to reckon with my own ridiculousness. That's my Margaret Lawrence analysis. It all still makes me cringe with embarrassment when I think about it.

**

Christmas time is here again and I'm in a significantly different position. This past January, an old friend came to visit from Winnipeg. We spoke about our lives since I had lived in Winnipeg. Suddenly he declared that he wanted to keep all the assholes away from me. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. In February 06, I went to visit him on his birthday and he asked me to marry him. A few days later, with a duffle bag of clothes and his guitar, he got on the bus and came back to Calgary with me. A straight-edge vegetarian with no bad habits to speak of, a strong moral centre, and an admirable artistic output, Gareth has been a clear departure from what my life had been from about 1999 when my parents moved from Ottawa and I'd decided to stay there on my own, and 2005, the culmination of those 6 years of escalating unhappiness. We now have our own place in Sunnyside, and while we're not exactly thriving financially, we both have decent full time jobs and plans for the future. He doesn't care how ridiculous I am - either I've managed to tone it down, or he doesn't mind. I'm laying off the bodily pollutants (except for occasional celebration),and concentrating on what I can accomplish rather than lamenting about what I can't. I'm not as paranoid anymore that all the educated writers think I'm lame. I'm fairly convinced by now that even people I admire are lame in their own way.

But for some reason, it being Christmas and all, I can't help but think of that goddam ugly hat. For an equally unknown reason, the closer it's getting to Christmas, the more I find myself reliving last year's embarrassment, feeling inexplicably sad, and continuing to care about what the person in possession of that ugly hat (if he wasn't smart enough to burn or regift it) thinks of me. In a way he was the last person to see me giving in to every possible lapse of willpower before Gareth found me all crumpled up and picked me up and dusted me off. It's like if I could redeem myself in the eyes of this person, I could be sure I've really evolved. I could relax and be happy and not act like a nervous little bird. But it so happens that the few times I've relapsed back into fungirl mode, you've been around. Not for any related reason, just by chance.

So I've just got to pull myself together and not be such a sensitive twit. But I'd just like to say, you still impress and delight me. Having once thought I could be one to make you feel less alone - and now being one who is herself less alone thanks to another - I hope that you find someone who would pick you up and dust you off if you crumple. Because it really can be better than being alone when you're with the right person. Love isn't so bad after all. Nowhere near as ugly as that goddam hat, and as fun to give as it is to receive.

Biased Calgary Bylaw Passes: Reaction

2006-11-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

Thanks again to everyone at CHAI for their hard work, for taking up an issue that meant a lot to me, and for allowing me, an inexperienced activist, to join you. Thank you also to the wonderful support we had from Calgarians, whether from agencies, NGOs, concerned Calgarians or those most affected by the Bylaw. We will continue to collect the remainder of the petitions we have not received, and we will look into our options.

As a recap, our position was that a great deal of the bylaw targets the homeless. Parts about loitering, loitering and obstructing, putting feet up on a bench, and urinating on public property make it illegal to huddle, panhandle, sleep outside, and obey the body’s natural functions when no public restrooms are provided. The steep fines for these activities are not affordable to anyone living on the street, and they will be put in jail for up to six months instead. We felt that the City must build more shelters and provide more affordable housing before considering passing such a bylaw, since those on the street haven’t been any other choice but to commit those offences that are now, as of yesterday evening, illegal. Considering the fallout of the economic boom has brought a great deal more poverty to Calgary, and with it a crisis for those who can’t find shelters beds or a place they can afford to live, we felt that the timing of this bylaw was indeed in very poor taste. We begged the City to have a conscience and not pass the bylaw.

City Council finally got around to Public Behaviour Bylaw #54M2006 at about 8:00 p.m. at their meeting last night. There were several Land Use applications to consider that took up a great deal of time, and though they had taken supper and other breaks, Council was visibly tired since they had convened at 1:00 p.m. Alderman Joe Ceci, the chief voice at Council against the Bylaw, attempted to put through an item of Urgent Business. This Urgent Business was to have the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as laid out by the Fair Calgary Policy accepted by Council on November 13, be applied to the Bylaw.

Council rejected the Urgent Business in a vote, and then voted to make the Bylaw final. They went from a 7-11 split in favour of the Public Behaviour Bylaw at the second reading, to a 7-7 tie last night. Still, the bylaw went through. Close as it was, I'm sure if the media had faithfully reported all the inclusions of the bylaw sooner instead of repeating over and over again the parts about spitting, fighting, and carrying a knife, we could have been up at arms fast enough to effect an outcome in our favour. From now on, we will certainly be keeping a closer watch over the Council’s minutes on the City of Calgary website and not relying on the media to relay information.
The majority of Calgarians we spoke to realized the bias of the bylaw once they were made fully aware of its contents and applications.

After the Bylaw went through, Alderman Farrow put forth a 'motion arising' that passed easily. It was ‘to ensure that Law Enforcement refer to the Fair Calgary Policy when implementing the Bylaw’. This helps, but unfortunately it is not a real solution, since there is no active enforcement of the Policy by Council over Law Enforcement. Everything is still left up to Officer Discretion. This frightens me: given the biases average citizens have towards the less fortunate, police who have had unhappy dealings with homeless people in the past will certainly have strong prejudices and may see the bylaw as a method of exercising those prejudices or even getting revenge. If the extremely prejudiced officer I spoke to on Sunday night serves as an example of a certain faction of the Calgary Police Service, and he probably does, we have much to worry about. One wonders if the Policy will even find its way, physically, into the hands of individual officers.

It was a long day for Council; again, they were visibly drained and bored. The only reason not to subject the Bylaw to the provisions of the Fair Calgary Policy was Council’s unwillingness to go through the whole process again from the beginning, after so many attempts were made at amendments in the past by those Aldermen who were on side with CHAI. Had that Urgent Business of Ceci’s gone through, the Bylaw would have been tabled, re-written according to Fair Calgary principles, and subject again to 3 readings and attempts at amendments.

It should be noted for those who couldn’t be present that Alderman McIvor stood up 3 times to say sarcastically that he ‘Admired his fellow Alderman’s tenacity’. Then he said that he thought ‘Calgarians don’t care about Fair Calgary policies or Bylaws; they just don’t want to step in someone else’s defecation’. Personally I think that McIvor ought to give Calgarians more credit. I think Calgarians might get the credit they deserve from McIvor once they eventually get him out of Council, or at least let him know that in fact they do care what Councils plans are for average citizens – in particular, they care when they realize that human rights are to be violated right here in Calgary.

Alderman Ceci responded that his colleague gave him too much credit as a conniver; that really, it was not a sneaky move, but instead, he just cared about the repercussions that Bylaw would have.

I’m so upset that the bylaw passed. We did the best we could on such short notice after the 2nd reading in terms of the petition and protest, and tried to emphasize that what we had managed, given the short notice, was only the tip of the iceberg – an indication that once eyes were opened to the ramifications of the bylaw, Calgarians did indeed care – but we could have done much more. Again, if I hadn’t relied on the media to tell me about all of the aspects of the bylaw, the true nature of it and implications of it could have been brought to the attention of more Calgarians while there was still time to stand up at Council and object to it.

Misinformation and corruption won the day yesterday. But beginning today we will watch Council like hawks, so that tomorrow we’ll be much more prepared for the City’s next discriminating move towards denying citizens of low or non-existent income their basic human rights. Instead of funding shelters, they take away their buildings. Instead of building more shelters, they sign away big parcels of land for development as rich gated communities at the very same meeting in which they pass a bylaw that will jail those who have nowhere to go.

As members of the crowd cried at yesterday’s protest, Shame! It is a shame the bylaw passed, it is a shameful move by the City to pass it, much of our news media should be ashamed of themselves for concentrating mainly on innocuous parts of the bylaw and thereby misrepresenting it, I am ashamed that we could not do more to stop it. But I am not ashamed of trying to stop it, and proud as hell of all those who tried too. It is easy to give up hope in a super conservative city that citizens of conscience will ever influence a corrupt Council, but if we do we'll never get anywhere.

Meanwhile, we at CHAI will certainly be doing our homework to find out if there is anything to be done at this stage, now that the bylaw has passed. It could even involve a human rights lawyer. Please stay tuned and join us if you can. See www.housingaction.ca

Statement about Calgary's Public Behaviour Bylaw 54M2006

2006-11-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

Statement

Those who accept the Public Behaviour Bylaw clearly don't understand the ramifications of it. The media has been concentrating on the innocuous aspects that we can all agree on: don't spit, don't fight, don't carry a knife.

The truth is, the parts of the bylaw about loitering and obstructing, putting feet up on a bench or public structure, and urinating or defecating in public are designed to put the homeless in jail. When you look closer, you see that they make it illegal to huddle, panhandle, sleep outside, and use the bathroom when no public washrooms are provided. The fines carried for these items ($300-$10,000) would be impossible for those less fortunate to pay; instead, they would face a jail sentence of up to six months.

In a time of extreme crisis, when there are not enough shelters or affordable housing and not enough being done by the City to provide these necessities, it is reprehensible and without conscience for City Council to decide that the solution to these problems is to create a bylaw that effectively gets rid of the homeless by putting them in jail.

As citizens, we can do much better for the poor in our community than to allow the City to do this to them. We must put a stop to it, and demand that the City move more quickly to provide more shelters andmore affordable housing in this time of crisis. With our petition and our protest on Monday November 20th, we will make our voices heard.

Laurie Fuhr
November 17 2006

David Helwig responds

2006-10-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Response to an email I sent him to an address on the Porcupine's Quill website. Couldn't find the book online by cover description, so I emailed to ask what the white hardcover book with the binoculars on it was that I saw at the Borden Friendship Club. Posted with permission.

To: lauriefuhr@yahoo.ca
Subject: Unread books
Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 22:35:46 -0300

Hi Laurie,

The book is called Catchpenny Poems. I think that physically it's one of the most beautiful Oberon ever published. The poems in it won the CBC poetry award for 1983, and the book was published in that year.

I have only two copies, and one of them is the one my parents had, which I reclaimed after they died. Still like the poems.

Sure I'd love to read in Calgary sometime. I don't think I've ever read in Alberta, though I remember being in Calgary publicizing a novel and finding the city was empty after seven o'clock. Somebody told me they'd just used it for the set of a Superman movie. That was maybe not quite before you were born, but a while back.

Odd to think of those books sitting there in the cold waiting for someone to discover them. But they sure aren't going to let some uppity chick run away with them.

Cheers,

David

From: jgdh@pei.sympatico.ca
To: "Laurie Fuhr"
Subject: Re: Unred boks
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:07:36 -0300

Laurie,

Answers to questions:

Sure, post the letter if you want. Not much to it.

In the Eighties I was published for a while by Viking Penguin. They are a big outfit that can afford to send writers for long distances to do publicity--which was what I was doing in Calgary when I went for a walk down dark and entirely empty streets between skyscrapers. Then I saw a weird light approaching--an empty streetcar. Passed by and vanished into the movies.

New stuff? I have a novel called Saltsea supposed to be out soon from Biblioasis and next fall PQ is doing a novella called Smuggling Donkeys.

I have lots of unpublished poems, but they might be a bit old-fashioned for your magazine.

You didn't ask, but you can find my website at davidhelwig.com.

Stay uppity and ornery.

Cheers,

David

Canadian Literary Archives of the Borden Friendship Club

2006-10-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

On October 7, my cousin Jenny got married in Saskatchewan to a cop with a silly nickname, who supposedly laughs when you say the word Jaguar if you believe the best man speech. Already I know more about Aaron than I do about Jenny, my extremely quiet cousin who is a maternity nurse. Maybe when you hear other people screaming all day (mothers, babies, doctors), you don't feel the need to fill the air with much noise yourself later.

Jenny's reception was held at the Borden Legion. The room where the meals were served was the Borden Friendship Club, which included an organ I couldn't help but dip around with after wine, especially since my Dad was enthusiastic (a sloppy rendition of Neil Young's Like a Hurricane is about the only organ thing I could come up with).

Later, Gareth and I were hanging out after he had become rather silly, and he grew increasingly alarmed about the interest I was taking in the library (a single bookcase) of the Borden Friendship Club. There, spines uncracked, utterly untouched by the passage of time (or people's hands for that matter), were a number of old rare poetry books. I'm not a used book expert like my friend David Collins, but here was a pristine first edition of Milton Acorn's Jackpine Sonnets, and one of a really bizarre early Don McKay book (Brick Books edition) called Lependu, which I'd never come across. They were all stamped 'Courtesy of the Canada Council'. There was a hardcover poetry book by David Helwig with binoculars on the cover, which I can't seem to figure out the name of (I've actually emailed poor David about it, will let you know what he says if he's still at that address) and an early Lorna Crozier. There was a lot more I didn't even get at good look at.

My gears were turning, so I found one of the people involved with the Friendship Club who was volunteering and asked if I could take a couple of the books for a donation to the Club, since it seemed no one ever read them. She agreed, saying she thought the Club would be much more pleased with the donation than with the books. If anyone had concerns, I told her, they could call me at the number on my cheque.

A few days later, the phone rang - a Saskatchewan number that wasn't my grandmother's. Uh oh. "This is Shirley Williams, treasurer of the Borden Friendship Club," she said in a strong, well-aged small town Saskatchewan accent (and there is such an accent, really). "We had a meeting and the fellows would like you to return their books as soon as possible." I apologized and said that the woman I had spoken to had thought it was okay. "The woman you talked with did not have the authority to give you those books," Shirley told me matter of factly. "Well, I really thought you wouldn't mind, considering the books had obviously never been read." "It's the principle of the thing," said Shirley. "We will not be treated like a shopping mall." Ouch! I felt like a horrible shoplifter.

I told Shirley she could keep the donation cheque, and that now that I know they like poetry, I would send some additional books along with those two I had taken for donation.

Whatever extra books I send, I know they'll be preserved for all time on the shelves of the Borden Friendship Club, as secure as the National Archives or moreso, since no one will likely ever touch them again.

If anyone should like to donate books to the Borden Friendship Club, here is their address:

Borden Friendship Club
c/o Shirley Williams
Box 96
Borden, SK S0K 0N0

I think it would be really amusing if they suddenly received an influx of poetry book donations from elsewhere in the country. :)

p.s. Geist has the 'Tirade by Way of Introduction' by Milton Acorn from his Jackpine Sonnets on the site linked above.

Calgary MultiArts Variety Show #2 - March 24 07

2006-10-12T13:14:00.000-07:00

The first one went so well, we have to do it again. Some things you do right you still do twice. :)
Thank you to everyone who was involved the first time.

#2 is Saturday, March 24 2007, 7 p.m. at The Soda.

Confirmed participants are The Russian Artist Factory, The Pine Tarts, Kessler Tidal, Sheri-D Wilson, Juanita Brandt, Naomi Burkhart, Aaron Leaney, Anita Athavale, Moe Clark, Chantal Vitalis, the return of Swallow a Bicycle Productions with another mind-altering theatre experience and more short films.

If you might be interested in performing or volunteering, please don't hesitate to get in touch even this early.

Thanks,

Laurie

Laurie & Gareth's Wedding !

2006-09-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

...will be Saturday, May 26, 2007. Time & place you'll know if you're a guest. It's sweet. Pretty traditional, followed by a brunch picnic in the park, but the *other* reception that evening will be a rock n' roll show open to the public - with Calgary and Winnipeg bands!

Yeah, I know, marriage, eek, everyone does it. Hmm. Well I guess I do to. It's completely amazing and shocking when someone says to you, "I want to spend the rest of my life with you." Enough to change a jaded and cynical mind...

Press Release Update

2006-09-14T12:02:00.000-07:00

Please note additions: Light City Fiction (band), Shone Abet (spoken word poet), Barb Maier (short film) ; and subtractions: Sheri-D Wilson (cancelled with regrets due to prior engagement)

Advance Tickets available for purchase at 2 vendors! See below.

PRESS RELEASE

The Calgary MultiArts Variety Show is an exciting new event featuring short sets by local musicians, poets, filmmakers and actors, followed by 3 local bands!

Bands: Ghostkeeper and Light City Fiction with The Jagatha Christies;

Musicians: Aaron Booth, Danielle French, Spencer Davis (The Incandescence), Phaedrus Gatherman, and the pantymelters (duo feat. Gareth Williams);

Poets: Shone Abet, Carmen Derkson (filling Station), Fred Holliss (Single Onion), Kirk Ramdath (Calgary SLAM Team),, Jocelyn Grosse & James Dangerous (music & poetry), and Colin Martin (NoD Magazine);

Play by Charles Netto’s Swallow a Bicycle Productions;

Short Films by Garth Whelan and Barb Maier.

MC’s: Mark Hopkins and Laurie Fuhr.

Don’t miss this Celebration of Calgary’s Imagination!

Saturday, September 23, The Soda Lounge, 211 – 12 Ave SW. Doors at 6:30 p.m., event at 7:00 p.m. Tickets: $10 at the door, $8 in advance at Megatunes and Pages Books on Kensington. More info: 999-2566 or visit www.myspace.com/calgarymultiarts

For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Laurie Fuhr at 999-2566 or lauriefuhr@yahoo.ca

Calgary MultiArts Variety Show, Sept 23 - The Soda

2006-09-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

the bill so far... still somewhat in progress! have a look - exciting stuff!

PRESS RELEASE

The Calgary MultiArts Variety Show is an exciting new event featuring short 5-10 min sets by local musicians, poets, filmmakers and actors, followed by 3 local bands: Children of the Great Northern Muskeg (featuring Shane Ghostkeeper) with The Jagatha Christies and the pantymelters.

Musicians: Aaron Booth (Spreepark), Naomi Burkhart (jazz), Spencer Davis (The Incandescence), Trevor Tchir (guest – Edmonton) ;

Poets: Sheri-D Wilson (CISWF), Carmen Derkson (filling Station), Kirk Ramdrath (Calgary SLAM Team), Jocelyn Grosse & James Dangerous (music & poetry), Colin Martin (NoD) and K.L. McKay (SPIRE, guest – Edmonton) ;

Play by Charles Netto & Friends ;

Short Films by Garth Whelan and Barb Maier.

Even more talent TBA!

MC’s: Mark Hopkins and Laurie Fuhr.

Don’t miss this celebration of Calgary’s vibrant imagination!
Saturday, September 23, The Soda Lounge, 211 – 12 Ave SW. Doors at 6:30 p.m., event at 7:00 p.m. Tickets: $10 at the door, $8 in advance at Megatunes. More info: 999-2566 or visit www.myspace.com/calgarymultiarts

For more information or to arrange and interview, please contact Laurie Fuhr at 999-2566 or lauriefuhr@yahoo.ca

the pantymelters

2006-08-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

www.myspace.com/thepantymelters

extra-ephemeral ephemera: black slacks blog poem for Christian Bok's 40th

2006-08-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

poem 1-8 for Christian Bok

1 the slack in his lips knows he’s crazy*

2 black all day in the heat for your party

3 black the all slack day in in his the lip
heat knows for he’s your crazy party

4 the black slack all in day in lip the
knows heat he’s for crazy your party

5 black the the black all slack slack all
day in in day in in his lip the the lip
knows heat heat knows he’s for for he’s
crazy his your your crazy party party

6 the black black the slack all all slack in
day day in in in lip his the the knows lip
heat heat he’s knows for for crazy he’s
your your party crazy party

note:
3 is a treatment of 2 and 1, resp.
4 is a treatment of 1 and 2, resp.
5 is a treatment of 3 and 4, resp.
6 is a treatment of 4 and 3, resp.
7 is a treatment of 6 and 5, resp.
8 is a treatment of 5 and 6, resp.

*after dropping off sound gear at Tubby Dog for the party to head to Marda Loop to see an apartment (which was crap by the way), a guy on the bus bench barks, "Have you been TOLD today?" and started rambling unintelligibly through the dis-intelligibility device of his thick moustache.

2 April Reviews: Riley, Begamundre

2006-04-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

Light as Lightness, then Neon
The second pair of books in Frontenac’s eclectic Quartet 2006

Guiding us through countries including India, Canada, Bali, marriage and folklore, Ven Begamudre redefines what we think of as the boundaries of place in The Lightness Which is Our World, Seen From Afar.

Cross-cultural echoes resonate and meld for Begamundre with the ease and contemplative grace of ripples meeting halfway across a pond. Continents experience new Pangaea – France, Switzerland and Mumbai made neighbours by the common thread of Begamundre’s interpretative tour. In 2: Kanton Bern, from the Itineraries section, the poet observes:

“...I become aware
the Swiss keep dogs
the way they keep time – moving,
mechanical, leashed.
I’m baffled by myself.”

Yet, as in Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, one who is more traveler than tourist is also too familiar with the universality of sadness, and cannot go unaffected by it. In 5: In Florence, at the Pension Pitti Palace, Its Final Season, Begamundre observes:

“I don’t want to become a bore:
I feel I care too much.”

Exotic creatures are made mystical by their unlikely abilities to poke furred or feathered heads into seemingly normal human circumstances, flagging our attention towards unusual and transcendent aspects of human relationships. The activities of parakeets, crocodiles, cobras and people are equally fantastic. From 9: Ombaththu, a poem in the opening sequence:

“Is this how she saw him, resenting
her need? He urges the cobra towards him. He thinks, When it leaves to rejoin its kind, I will warn it of the sun.”

In the third section, Tourist Quota, Begamundre takes us off the edges of mapped India to visit the statue of Lord Bahubali in Shravan Belgola. Begamundre juxtapositions Canada:

“On the map of
Saskatchewan linger places that barely exist.”

Begamundre weaves bright threads of experience into the rich tapestry of his verse, dyed berry and rust by the organic colour palate only available to one who has actually been there. A fantastic debut.

* * *

To make an impact, the singer-songwriter of a rock band must use all she’s got. Ali Riley, formerly of Sacred Heart of Elvis injects this principle into poetry’s bluest vein with Tear Down, her second collection from Frontenac House.
Tear Down chooses narrative tactics and assumes conversational tones to connect with her audience on a comfortable, personal level – before gleefully tearing them up how only a good ol’ fashioned rockabilly show usually can.
Personal-made-political insights into gender differences share binding with reminiscences of gritty glory days at The National Hotel:

“all these ghosts will haunt the coming condos
as sure as the bones of ancestors
still taunt the covered wagons”

Razed into four strong sections of poems, “My Sister, Guard Your Veil: 7 Easy Pieces” contains opening poem For Each Man-Eater a Lady Killer, getting down to the grit of beginnings:

“a tough rose
blooms anyway
steeped in Jericho sand

I painted bat wings on my eyes
I crushed He-man spine
I kicked at the sky”

So begin the adventures of Undelicate Woman, an action figure in her own right. Next, Riley re-invents modern female archetypes in prose poetry: Snow White, Courteney Love and Saint Teresa all have it coming. Section two, The Boyfriend Sutras: 108 Performances also shows no mercy:

“don’t talk to me about Revolution
the pine-scented Che that hangs
from your rear-view mirror
can’t camouflage the smell of cold feet”
- from A Honey Mistake

The Dwelling Places includes The National Hotel and other pieces reminiscing little-documented underground history and its unprotected historic sites. House of Chango, Limbo Pad, Symptom Hall, a place called The Murder House as well as dreamscapes join these eclectic real estate listings.
The final, title section examines the tenants of such places and symptoms of the way we live, or lived. From Unspeakable:

“the video years made us brittle
rewound and rewatched
til the mention of what we feel
sounds dead”

Referencing such unlikely bedfellows as Kafka and Patti Smith, Zarathustra and Godspeed You Black Emperor, St. John and The Silver Jews, Ali Riley, reliable trafficker of the sweet unexpected, is a writer who will not be pinned down – nor her art jabbed through with common expectation to hang in the canon’s glass case. These are poems alive and pulsing as desire.

new poem 26/04/06

2006-04-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

verbs of Sam

she plays the Zantax of video games
phones co-worker’s braincancer via cellphone
rides train like Business Class
next to Guy with Bag of Cans for a Briefcase

lobbyist for legroom
leggiest for lob groom
(a nice man who bowls too hard

sits on nestegg of debt like Yoga Ball
votes CP thinks NDP has N.O. party (on her birthday
adds flax
faxes lads
acts lax with Dad, lack-of-tax-wad sad

knows discrepancies provide for crepancies, knows she likes crepes
speaks Gilmour Girls Frenglished with Buffyisms
makes miso sake eso hake with riso

I eat her leftover leftovers,
wear her second-hand me downs,
rent a no room in her condo

we bond over shared dead Grandma and visions of Coleco
over the inability to explain just how the cigarette caught the oxygen tank on fire
or the addictive power of Mousetrap, Smurfs, BC’s Quest for Tires

we bond over but
sit under on cathair upholstered furnishings
on toilet only I’ve ever cleaned
on fabric softened by her pilfered Bounce sheets
on tongues rather than biting

(them, comma, each other)

but yes, we’ll always have Burger Time,
always Donkey Kong,
always Zaxxon

Personal notes: focus versus wide scatter

2006-02-10T09:09:00.000-08:00

- have given notice at the seniors community. While the 2 hour commute gives me tons of time to read and hear the vast numbers of CDs I've been compulsively borrowing from the library, the commutes, plus the job, have worn me right the f*** out. My most long-term employment after Ottawa years of crap jobs and busking, and a whole year in one spot, hey, had to happen sometime. Will miss all of the lovely seniors though, especially the 4 Margarets, 4 Marys, 3 Jeans, and 2 Helens.

- have given up horrible relationships, smoking of any kind, all but ceremonial booze, and all but weekend coffee. Eating healthy for quite awhile now, I've lost my appetite for crap, and doing what you know you ought to seems to bleed over to other parts of your life. Living honestly, I suppose it could be called.

- long lost friend Gareth, a musician in Winnipeg, spontaneously touched down in Calgary a few weeks ago and visited for four intense days of surrealist walks and music. He was 17 and I was 19 when I saw him last; quite the thing to see, both of us now all growed up. Inspired to songs, indie rock/folk/country all, writing new ones in spare moments, and should finally get to record a wee demo in Winnipeg as I'm visiting between jobs. Haven't been back since leaving in 01, will be nice to see those poets again. Gareth is moving here to be my new roommate! Currently living at my cousin Sandra's condo in S.E. Calgary. With three of us there, we'll actually get Internet hooked, so I can catch up on all the blogs and essays you've been writing. (Currently only get on in short bursts at work)

- my next job is with a non-profit organization out of a big leisure centre closer to where I live, and includes a free membership. Hoping to get back into skating, early mornings before work, providing hockey players still don't like to get up that early. Also want to run in charity marathons, my new boss is a runner and can point me in the right direction. Housekeeping has buffed me up considerable.

So, finally after years of struggling: a decent job, a place to live sans crackheads or incorrigible stoners where I can actually relax, a clean bod and no ill-suited suitor. A slight sense of being settled, after umpteen moves about the country. When you're busy trying to survive, it's damn hard to get enough breath for much else. Hard work to do now and amends to make in my neglected writing life - starting immediately.

Peter F.Yacht Club Calgary submissions call

2006-02-10T08:58:00.000-08:00

Peter F. Yacht Club, a small press poetry magazine out of Ottawa (various editors), would like to invite submissions for a Calgary-focused issue. The issue will be edited by myself, Laurie Fuhr, a former member of the writing group the magazine sprang from. Deadline for this submissions call is March 3. Please direct innovative poetry submissions on any topic to:

lauriefuhr@yahoo.ca

or by snail mail if necessary:

Peter F. Yacht Club Sails to Calgary
#15-220 Erin Mount Crescent
Calgary, AB T2B 2B2

Please feel free to circulate this call. Thank you.

Notes from the (Volunteering) Underground: Mutton Busting

2006-01-09T15:42:00.000-08:00

Notes from the (Volunteering) Underground: Mutton Busting Performance Festival, Calgary

A wacky and wonderful time was had by all at the Epcor Centre Saturday, where a new space was christened in the name of Bubonic Tourists-initiate: Motel. A smallish room that somehow gets bigger and bigger the more people you fit into it, it hosted physical theatre troupe RED2BLUE's Faire (1+1) Tu, a trance-inducing smorgasborg of lighted umbrellas, suitcases converted to mirrors and record players, and a love story both in shadow puppetry and person. A mobile of books became a library, a coloured-light disco ball, the night sky; a screen projected an artful film of the credits. This is theatre?

Next came local songwriter/playwright/multitasker extrodinaire, Ethan Cole, playing oddly chosen covers that worked so well in acoustic style it took awhile to recognize even the most popular (or least popular) of his choices: Beach Boys, Depeche Mode and (*gasp*) Milli Vanilli!

Mike Angus was a clear departure, all the way down the Yellowhead in fact as he played songs from his beautiful, nostalgic acoustic CD, The Yellowhead Diaries. This mystery man's CD notes won't tell you how to get your hands on the next album he puts out; one just has to keep one's ear to the ground to hear the train comin' in from Winnipeg.

Later, one of the RED2BLUE narrators lost his black suit for a flame pink cowboy shirt, taking up DJ duties for the Motel launch party while Mutton Busters sipped Warthog and cider and danced like maniac theatre students - this wasn't my usual literary crowd of calm hipsters happening, we're talking people dressed like animals and a naked Bubonic curator, in Equus head, chasing (or being chased by) a naked woman in loincloth and teased-up Blondie. Whoa! This is theatre? And in Calgary, too? Ought to have known these sorts of things were going on somewhere... it all felt oddly natural, dancing like an idiot with a couple of animations artists there in the Motel - was it my high school drama improv days calling me back, or the beer on tap?

Am now very excited about the High Performance Rodeo and it's affiliate festival, Mutton Busting, seeing that the curators of each, Michael Green and Eric Moschopedis respectively, have eclectic and phenomenal taste in performers! Next weekend I'll be taking in The Rheostatics, local bands Summerlad and Woodpigeon, and indie icon Calvin Johnson (when I'm not actually manning the door or doing something otherwise useful, that is :) )

Check out www.bubonictourist.ca and/or www.oyr.org for info before it's too late. Mutton Busting runs from Jan 3-14 and the High Performance Rodeo happens from Jan 3-29. Volunteers are also welcome to apply!

a small gift this day (year 5)

2006-01-09T10:43:00.000-08:00

(A New Year's sendout from Gil McElroy to his lit friends - with permission to blog! L.)

Sure Points & Lubricants
for rob mclennan

Irony, be
a giant. Offer me
no more
of the mill. I'll
overlook the
drawer (so
mellow &
straight) &
the gaudy childhood,
too.

I'll
sing (from right
to left) the wit
of impossible
songs, mimicking the style
of Mancini himself (at
the core), or maybe
Bacharach,
beyond high school. Ah,
those were handsome times,
of sure points
& lubricants.

Much gasps.

To pall,
likely.

- Gil McElroy

Irving Layton 1912 - 2006

2006-01-05T07:31:00.000-08:00

This, forwarded yesterday by rob mclennan to his email list:

I just got an email from Ottawa poet Seymour Mayne that Montreal poetIrving Layton passed away today, two months shy of his 94th birthday. Information on Layton can be found
at:

http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/layton/
http://www.irvinglayton.com/
http://www.ucalgary.ca/UofC/faculties/HUM/ENGL/canada/poet/i_layton.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Layton
http://www.cbc.ca/lifeandtimes/layton.html
http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/vol2/no26/layton.html

rob

Please Help Oni - Here's Why / How!

2006-01-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

from an email I received, forwarded by rob mclennan:

On December 20th Ottawa poet "Oni the Haitian Sensation" was in a serious car accident involving a commercial snow clearing vehicule in the City of Ottawa. Oni and her three young children were hit from behind and the car was damaged beyond repair. The police officer dealing with Oni's case told her that the driver of the snow clearing vehicule was under investigation and will be charged. All occupants suffered from whiplash, Oni suffered a concussion, and continues to suffer from chronic pain.

Oni is an internationally recognized artist who has given much to Ottawa. She tells us that she and her children are in need of help from the community, and can be contacted at (780) 247-9285.

resolve

2006-01-01T13:17:00.000-08:00

this year to colour-coordinate
your Christmas tree ornaments

is the better replace
before a hair-blower fire

this year to subvert the tactics
of charitable organizations

is the grocery in-door slam
trying to out

this year to commit to avoiding
ridiculousness

is the keep teeth shut
and gone into hiding

this year to snowblow
all 3 cm at 8 am

is the overwater houseplants
til black-thumb

is the put together Ikea bookshelf
not inside-out

is the to this year
this to year is the

the this is to year
year the this to is

A Comment on Comments --

2006-01-01T08:51:00.000-08:00

To those who have attempted so far to post comments: sorry! While I want to read comments, I don't necessarily want to post them (just to keep things simple for the casual browser). When moderating, Blogger only gives me the option of posting or rejecting a comment, but not replying to it. If you would like a reply from me please include your email address in your comment. Thank you to those who have commented so far.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! My resolutions: Time to quit smoking all smokeables and go into hibernation for a period of intense reading and profuse writing. (Except when I have to come out to work, eat, pee, forage for berries, and volunteer at Mark Hopkins' Mutton Busting performance art fest here in Calgary). May your 2006 inspire art and awe.

inklings of linkings

2005-12-26T01:11:00.000-08:00

Adding links was tricky as they weren't already part of my default template, and I'm slightly blogtarded... anyway, please check out the sidebar! Neat lit peeps and friends within, long overdue.

It's been suggested one should make odd rules and follow them in an attempt to create experimental poetry. Can you posit a keycode?

2005-12-25T22:57:00.000-08:00

(Or starting line from which - ? )

.
e
le.
. ble.
l. k able. e
ll. 't ck r eable.. ve
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Shittr! Alfred Jarry on Wikipedia

2005-12-25T22:30:00.000-08:00

Have heard online encyclopedia Wikipedia is full of shite; have also read it's found to be as accurate as others, which is also scary when amongst 'others' cited sits Britannica. Is this the real Alfred Jarry? Either way, it's amusing! This, lifted from Wikipedia:

Alfred Jarry (September 8, 1873 – November 1, 1907) was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side, a fact which would have a profound impact on some of his writings.

Best known for his play Ubu Roi (1896), which is often cited as a forerunner to the theatre of the absurd, Jarry wrote in a variety of genres and styles. He wrote plays, novels, poetry, essays and speculative journalism. His texts present some pioneering work in the field of absurdist literature. Sometimes grotesque or misunderstood (i.e. the opening line in his play Ubu Roi, "Merdre!", ably translated into English by Barbara Wright as "Shittr!"), he invented a science called 'pataphysics.

Biography and works

A precociously brilliant student, Jarry enthralled his classmates with a gift for pranks and troublemaking.
At the lycée in Rennes when he was 15, he led of a group of boys who devoted much time and energy to poking fun at their well-meaning, obese and incompetent physics teacher, a man named Hébert. Jarry and classmate Charles Morin wrote a play they called Les Polonais and performed it with marionettes in the home of one of their friends. The main character, Père Heb, was a blunderer with a huge belly; three teeth (one of stone, one of iron, and one of wood); a single, retractable ear; and a mishapen body. In Jarry's later work Ubu Roi, Père Heb would develop into Ubu, one of the most monstrous and astonishing characters in French literature.

At 17, Jarry passed his baccalauréat and moved to Paris to prepare for admission to the École Normale Supérieure. Though he was not admitted, he soon gained attention for his original poems and prose-poems. A collection of his work, Les minutes de sable mémorial, was published in 1893.
That same year, both his parents died, leaving him a small inheritance which he quickly spent.
Jarry had meantime discovered the pleasures of alcohol, which he called "my sacred herb" or, when referring to absinthe, the "green goddess". A story is told that he once painted his face green and rode through town on his bicycle in its honour (and possibly under its influence).

Drafted into the army in 1894, his gift for turning notions upside down defeated attempts to instill military discipline. The sight of the small man in a uniform much too large for his less than 5-foot frame—the army did not issue uniforms small enough—was so disruptively funny that he was excused from parades and marching drills. Eventually the army discharged him for medical reasons. His military experience eventually inspired the novel, Days and Nights.

Jarry returned to Paris and applied himself to drinking, writing, and the company of friends who appreciated his witty, sweet-tempered, and unpredictable conversation.
The spring of 1896 saw the publication, in Paul Fort's review Le Livre d'art, of Jarry's 5-act play Ubu Roi—the rewritten and expanded Les Polonais of his school days. Ubu Roi's savage humor and monstrous absurdity, unlike anything thus far performed in French theater, seemed unlikely to ever actually be performed on stage. However, impetuous theater director Aurélien-Marie Lugné-Poe took the risk, producing the play at his Théâtre de l'Oeuvre.

On opening night (December 11, 1896), with traditionalists and the avant-garde in the audience, King Ubu (played by Firmin Gémier) stepped forward and intoned the opening word, "Merdre!" ("Shittr!"). A quarter of an hour of pandemonium ensued: outraged cries, booing, and whistling by the offended parties, countered by cheers and applause by the more forward-thinking contingent. Such interruptions continued through the evening. At the time, only the dress rehearsal and opening night performance were held, and the play was not revived until 1907.

The play brought fame to the 23-year-old Jarry, and he immersed himself in the fiction he had created. Gémier had modeled his portrayal of Ubu on Jarry's own staccato, nasal vocal delivery, which emphasized each syllable (even the silent ones). From then on, Jarry would always speak in this style. He adopted Ubu's ridiculous and pedantic figures of speech; for example, he referred to himself using the royal we, and called the wind "that which blows" and the bicycle he rode everywhere "that which rolls".

Jarry moved into a flat which the landlord had made by horizontally dividing one flat into two. He could just manage to stand up in the place, but guests had to bend or crouch. Jarry took to carrying a loaded pistol. In response to a neighbor's complaint that his target shooting endangered her children, he replied, "If that should ever happen, ma-da-me, we should ourselves be happy to get new ones with you" (though he was not at all inclined to engage with females in the manner implied).

Living in worsening poverty, neglecting his health, and drinking excessively, Jarry went on to write the novel, The Supermale, which is partly a satire on the Symbolist ideal of self-transcendence.
Unpublished until after his death, his fiction Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, pataphysician (Gestes et opinions du docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien) describes the exploits and teachings of a sort of antiphilosopher who, born at age 63, travels through a hallucinatory Paris in a sieve and subscribes to the tenets of 'pataphysics. 'Pataphysics deals with "the laws which govern exceptions and will explain the universe supplementary to this one". In 'pataphysics, every event in the universe is accepted as an extraordinary event.
Jarry once wrote, expressing some of the bizarre logic of 'pataphysics, "If you let a coin fall and it falls, the next time it is just by an infinite coincidence that it will fall again the same way; hundreds of other coins on other hands will follow this pattern in an infinitely unimaginable fashion".

In his final years, he was a legendary and heroic figure to some of the young writers and artists in Paris. Guillaume Apollinaire, André Salmon, and Max Jacob sought him out in his truncated apartment. After his death, Pablo Picasso, fascinated with Jarry, acquired his pistol and wore it on his nocturnal expeditions in Paris, and later bought many of his manuscripts as well as executing a fine drawing of him.

Jarry lived in his 'pataphysical world until his death in Paris on November 1, 1907 of tuberculosis, aggravated by drug and alcohol use. It is recorded that his last request was for a toothpick. He was interred in the Cimetière de Bagneux, near Paris.

filling Station

2005-12-09T16:09:00.001-08:00

Check out this website to see what's appearing in the latest issue... good stuff!!

http://fillingstation.ca/

Two Short Reviews: Bateman & Wilson

2005-12-09T15:43:00.000-08:00

Dearst whomever,

Here are a couple of reviews as published in Calgary's local street weekly, Fast Forward. While both are intended to be positive on the whole, I've gotten quite a bit of flack from a certain local poetess who felt my review just wasn't glowing enough. (Yes, Sheri-D, not Bateman - sheesh! :) ) Good thing I didn't write what I was originally going to, or she might have sent someone to break my legs! I haven't been condescended to so badly since I was five and rode my bicycle into a lady by accident. Well, sorry to both of you ladies I've either literally or figuratively crashed into. Still, these were written for a certain audience, a mainly young, Fast Forward-reading, mostly non-poet audience, which perhaps ought to be considered. No matter who's reading, though, I stand by the fact that Wilson's poems on the page, for me at least, couldn't stand on their own at all until I heard her read. But after hearing Wilson read, one can at least tell what she's trying to do, whether one likes the results or not. 'Nough said. And, I also assert again that both book and CD are certainly worth checking out if you're into spoken word, thus encouraging people to buy both.

Anyhow, those reviews:

Invisible Foreground by
David Bateman
ISBN 1-897181-78-7
Frontenac House 2005

Poet, playwright, and bona fide Doctor of Creative Writing at the University of Calgary, multi-talented David Bateman recently won over The New Gallery at his excellent one-man-show Lotus Blossom Special. A glorious chameleon on page or stage, he tries on as many styles and forms of poetry in Invisible Foreground as he does costumes in his individualized spoof of Madame Butterfly.
Invisible Foreground is as balanced as a practiced set of gams in highheels. You laugh, you cry, you console yourself with Haagen Das. Different line lengths, stanza sizes, concepts, and a terrific instinct for line rhythm in both performance poems as well as page poems, all pieces complement one another rather than clash. Bateman’s creative works, through self-representation, lovingly address the similar joys and difficulties of an entire generation of closet outcomers who, if they dared so much as rattle hangers, faced even more homophobia years back than today.
Still, Bateman rarely makes specific cases for political action. Instead, he bravely opens himself up, through his art, to hurled flak or flowers, confessional and earnest as hell but with the dark protective edges of one whose very subject matter has prepared him to defend the publication of it.
In Storey and a Half, Bateman shows how to blueprint the ephemeral sense of one’s life between lines of the actual. Try applying today’s insight to memory’s cue images: “I lost my mind in these tyrannous locations / there was a white leatherette rocker / furniture was like countries to me then”.
Then Bateman launches into a humourous take on Elvis / Elvis paraphernalia sightings so we know it won’t all be heavy, but are still assured he might return to weightier subject matter. Order of presentation in a classic book can be as important as order of presentation in a classic album, setting reader’s expectation how Patsy Cline sets listener’s mood. We are thus prepared for Bateman’s poetry to dance between lighthearted observation and depth as different types of lover’s touches for the mind: Calgary airport begins “I like to go to the airport / check into Swiss Chalet…” and goes into one of Bateman’s spirited, magic interpretations of the usual commonplace.
In a poem like Terrain, however, Bateman reaches beneath the ribcage for startling observations on hard experiences. Of going to the funeral of a former lover, he writes, “…the big stone parlour, / like a large suburban home / imperfect, glistening, strange”. In Stark insane voice on some liminal horizon, the poet posits that experiences varying in depth affect one’s capacity of love.
Irony and synecdoche, or symbolism, are Bateman’s light and dark sinewy threads for sewing together narrative voice into a radiant living scarf, fabric as liable to choke you up as to feel you up. A poetry of extreme originality, intense muscle, dropdead honesty, tender titillation and gorgeous eclectic imagery, it will linger on the skin of all your senses til it sinks in for good.

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Re:view: Re: Zoom by Sheri-D Wilson
ISBN 1-897181-77-9
Frontenac House 2005

Saying that Sheri-D Wilson is better with music is like saying her friend and consistent backer, Jann Arden, is better with music. What do you mean, you ask; after all, Jann IS music. Well, same applies to Sheri-D. Listening to her excellent CD of five years previous, Sweet Taste of Lightning, you can’t help but wonder where the disc is for her latest book, Re:Zoom. Wilson virgins reading her verse accompanied by page silence is like finding the liner notes for music you’ve never heard – and, if you’re not familiar with it, not even knowing what genre you’re looking at, since the booklet’s shaped like a travel brochure or some other misleadingly familiar shape. (Such is spoken word poetry in page-poetry book form). Or it’s listening to television, seeing radio, smelling film. Okay, enough, I made my point; Sheri-D on paper alone just doesn’t feel right
Not having heard Sheri-D aloud, she may seem too rhymey without reason in book form. Lightning-sweetness sours, Between Lovers stays in the bedroom, Bull’s Whip and Lamb’s Wool to miss targets of thigh and eyeball, Swerve hits a curb and Girl’s Guide to Giving Head, well, good thing instinct instructs. Why have critics dubbed Sheri-D the high priestess of performance, the Mama of Dada, and Susan Ellis called her the post-hippie pre-Gen-X “action poet with roots in improvisational theatre”, practicing “jazzoetry style and poem-o-logue form”? These all jive like buzzwords when the page doesn’t ring.
Re:rejoice in blue hat bill, a cute tribute to poet bill bissett, carries its own on the page. Re:Connecting the Dots shows Wilson can communicate true honesty and tenderness, sans insulating humour and sexualized pouncing, to treat a personal story about meeting a Spanish boy when she was a girl traveling through Spain. Re:The Crime Fighter and the Lover is the best example of a jazz poem in this collection, paying homage to her schooldaze in Naropa, the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. Still, it’s Bertolucci perfume.
But wait! Pick up a copy of Wilson’s CD, Sweet Taste of Lightning, or get out to one of her live shows. With her voice in your head, undulating supernaturally up and down a fretboard towards spectrum ends like accompanying electric guitar, becoming electric guitar, Re:Zoom sings, rather than reads, in a whole new octave. One can respect more than the occasional interesting metaphor, as per “May spring bring / sundial on rotary phone”, (from Re:call Five Old Biddies On a Fifty) or “Wrought iron shapes / cast their shadow / a filigree dress / across her skin” (from Re:visionist Balcony). Suddenly the phrasing’s casing makes sense as framing, bass and drums that beat ba-dum the song along ka-plong and keep beep beep together.
Speaking of casing, I got a case of that Sheri-D onomatopoeic naming, punnified Dada-Mamafied rhymeword-gaming. Gotta go but let’s not miss the show: Sheri-D Wilson hosts her Spoken Word Festival this season, you know.

Poet Nicole Henares of San Francisco writes:

2005-11-24T15:12:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Greetings
by Nicole Henares
for EB White

From this academic high school of plagiarized essaysand unidentifiable lunch meat, we send forth a cornucopia of greetings to students, vice-principals,to shadows from our old middle schools. Happy Thanksgiving to our secretaries who almost had to strike to get their dependents health insurance, to Walgreens employees without health insurance, to women with frozen faces from too much Botox, to stripsearched airline passengers, and all those who have gone vegan! We greet in particular warmth sunbathers in Northern California enjoying 80 degree weather while wondering what has happened to our first snow. Happy Thanksgiving Global Warming! Happy Thanksgiving to the blue states and other despised minorities on Fox News! Happy Thanksgiving to the cult of Psy-trance djs and women who can’t wear low-rise jeans! Greetings of the season to Muslims who run corner stores and the prisoners of Guatanomo Bay; chronic indigestion and diarrhea to practicers of torture! Greetings to those who can’t check their e-mail and to slam poets who can’t rhyme with pumpkin. Happy Thanksgiving to the ignored, the confused, the obese. Joy to the writers of reality shows recorded live. Greetings to people with lactose intolerance; greetings to growers of garnish, to morticians of mirth, and to customer service agents in India enduring steady streams of complaints for .25 cents an hour. Happy Thanksgiving to the old veterans asleep on our sidewalks! Happy Thanksgiving to people who can’t stay in the same room with a Republican! We greet, too, those economically struggling on SSI in Section 8 Housing this TurkeyDay, the gutter punk duennas of Golden Gate Park in fog and biting rain, and the lonely on Craig’s List personals who get no responses to their ads. Happy Thanksgiving to people who grow organic gardens in the city; Happy Thanksgiving to farmers who allow their fowl free range! Greetings to Nano Ipods plus a download of Adam Sandler’s Thanksgiving Song. Joyous salutations to BMW owners whose road-etiquette isundeserving of their vehicle! Happy Thanksgiving tothe beleaguered, the cranky, the morose; Joy to all metrosexuals and transgenders. We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect of Iraq: Happy Thanksgiving, I wish you peace, freedom, democracy, and no Halliburton! Happy Thanksgiving to couples blithe in therapy! Greetings to people whose airlines lose their luggage, to people who write a letter and pay .37 cents to mail it, to parents who can’t afford $10 for their children to see the latest Harry Potter movie. We greet ministers of Bush’s Christian Coalition who can’t think of a moral about Michael Brown, to David Letterman who can’t pick on Oprah until after she appears on his show. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of planets Easter Bunny and Santa Claus; our global warming won’t bother you! And last, we greet all snowboarders on the incline of artificial slopes in the late afternoon. Happy Thanksgiving, skiers! Puff, snow! Wane to dusk, sky! Blow brown leaves, wind! Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good day!

Mothers and Fathers at the End of Time; Before & After

2005-11-13T12:48:00.000-08:00

Still working at the seniors community. The first residents had mainly bought their suites before the building was even completed; purchasing was their idea, not their children's. Now, those newly arriving are mostly installed by their children. Odd how many are moving in just before Christmas - 'Hey, happy holidays, let's put Pa in the home.' Many of the new residents seem to be on the borderline between requiring independent or assisted living facilities, so there are more concerns about memory, more frequent hallway wanderings in pajamas searching for the movie theatre at 5 a.m. or expecting the bus to the Co-op at 2 a.m. I am working harder than I ever have, and now that I've moved again (5th time since arriving) I'm in the opposite quadrant of the city from where I work. Travel time is condusive to getting reading done, but not great for socializing after events. In southeast Calgary there's a neighbourhood my bus goes through called Forest Lawn. It's got a bad reputation for crime, gang activity, and a proliferation of roving teenage girls wearing poofy tight parkas short enough to show off tight jeans, each hellion wired into a rap-filled MP3 player. Who says transit can't be entertaining?

So anyway, I hate men. Couldn't think of a way to sequitor. No, seriously, I'd like to but I can't. It's just that I've accumulated some big ugly baggage that's suddenly weighing me down to a new level of low. For the first while after Blake and I broke up, I went so far as to narrow my eyes at men on the train if I found myself forced to sit with them. Why would a sensible woman keep attaching herself to men who need help, help getting by or being inspired to write songs or both, when she finds each time that for some reason, each one NEEDS that difficulty in their lives and are, deep down, unwilling to part with it? And useless me, some saviour, without a license or a car or money - all I can offer, my encouragement, faith, and loyalty, has been spent on unappreciative men who eventually begin to treat me like the doormat I become, trying to please them. No matter who he is, that's what happens. It's entirely my fault I haven't had time to write or get my own life in order. 26 years old and still moving every few months, still without the things I need to be really independent. Listen all you big-hearted little poet girls, take heed: do date for love, but hold self-preservation to be just as important.
Finally keeping a job for the long term, even if it doesn't pay well enough, has been a good exercise. (Previously: record store employee, fast food slinger (bagels, pitas, donairs), reception/office temp, waitress, busker, etc.: all the glamour jobs!). Now that I'm free again (read: FREE!!!), I'm going to focus on reading, reviewing, writing, and volunteering with the local scene. filling Station magazine here in Calgary has on its editorial board some of the nicest, most interesting arty folk you're libel to meet in any city and I find myself drawn fully into that fold, if it'll take me. Blake was jealous and suspicious, paranoid even, so I'd rarely gone anywhere social without him since coming to Calgary last December just to avoid fighting about it; that included fS meetings. Yuck, that even some of the equalist firecrackers among us can turn passive as I did. At any rate, I'm off men for now. Nope, zero, zilch, nada. It's a diet where you lose about 185 pounds of useless weight and have tons more energy. As others who diet big say, after, showing their before big-waisted pants: "It's like I lost a whole other person!"

new re:views!

2005-04-17T14:11:00.000-07:00

A few reviews coming out soonish... two in Calgary's filling Station magazine, for Stuart Ross' Surreal Estate anthology and Robert Priest's How to Swallow a Pig. Also some appearing in local street weekly Fast Forward, reviews of Frontenac Press Quartet books: Re:Zoom by Sheri-D Wilson and Invisible Foreground by David Bateman. Uploading these soon!

blogged down by bogs!

2005-03-31T12:13:00.000-08:00

Hmm, another blog? True, there's so much reading to be done at all times - bone up on the classics, keep up with the new releases, poetics, reviews, sites, etc. etc. I admit I don't always have time to read these things, though make time for certain articles on rob mclennan's and Jon Paul Fiorentino's and ryan fitzpatrick's blogs.

So I'm going to keep this very minimal, with reviews I've had published here and there, or am looking to publish, and other imported musings.

First, though, a longish thing: who the heck am I?

Having been a military brat, I've lived all over: born in Comox, moved to Cold Lake, moved to Baden Soellingen, at-the-time-West Germany til I was ten, where I took school and Girl Guide field trips all over the Schwartzwald, into Switzerland, and France; then to the little oil and military berg of Cold Lake in Northern Alberta again for hellish Junior High. Having been in Germany, where everyone's clothes came from Canex or the American PX, I was an instant outcast in Cold Lake, where everyone had to have name brands from the city. Plus, those hot pink New Kids earrings were totally out! But I got heavy into competitive figure skating, and made great friends with the local skating club kids.

Next came Ottawa, where I skated at the Minto Club under Tom Jackson. Ottawa writer Melanie Little's short story collection Confidence rings so many bells, since we apparently shared similar experiences and even some of the same coaches. Soon had to quit skating though when my one sibling, older brother Jeff (he's gettin' hitched this year!) started at the U of Ottawa and it was just too expensive.

What could possibly fill the spiritual and artistic void? I met my best friend, the poet Armour Garland, drummer for the school band. Armour would sit me down in his parent's trippy basement, crank up the Robyn Hitchcock or Syd Barrett and we'd write separate poems, then share. With Armour, I stumbled into the Dusty Owl Reading Series at the now-defunct Cafe Wim on Sussex. There, I shyly choked out one of my first notebook poems while veteran Ottawa poets like Ronnie Brown, Allison Comeau and David Collins sat kindly listening, looking cool, all scarfy and curlyheaded. Who were these people? Poet and Ottawa small press guru rob mclennan was there, my one-day first time chapbook/anthology publisher, and handed me a bunch of fliers for other readings like TREE and submissions calls.

This series of happy accidents let me know there was actually a city scene, and even a national scene, for contemporary Canadian poetry. Who'd a thunk it? Also visited Montreal several times when the $10/way Allo Stop carpooling company was still in service, before a certain monopolic bus company (that inbred bitch) found a loophole and sued them out of existance. (Next they'll sue me for libel). A Montreal, j'ai visite la poete Larissa Andrusyshyn, qui I'd met in the front row of a concert in Toronto. Lari introduced me to the amazing scene there as she knew it and showed me, by her person and by her Montrealaise lit savvy, what energy means.

Ever since, in addition to my writing, I have tried to do what I can to let other artistic-minded folk know about the poetry community, by volunteering for local small press and readings, talking about them on campus radio shows, helping with the Ottawa International Writer's Festival when I'm in town for it, and by putting out my little zine 'blue moon'. A songwriting singer/guitarist, I also get involved with the grassroots advertising of local music, designing and putting up posters.

Since 19, I've lived on my own; my Dad retired last year as Chief at 441 Squadron. (Dad hit military big-cheese type when I was in High School, amusing as nervous boys imagined Tomahawk missiles aimed at their houses if they broke my heart). The travelling I always swore quit when I had the chance became an instinct that continues, and informs my written work; somehow I end up somewhere else, ever displaced and wondering who I am. The constantly changing scenery is both exciting and disorienting. A foreign exchange student I met at Ottawa's El Dorado reading series, studying at the U of Quebec at Hull from his school in Marseille, wooed then exported me to various locales of France and Turkey for several months in 2000 (his mom was Turkish, his father French, and he'd grown up in both places). Oddly enough, though poetry isn't worth much to most people here who are much more acquainted with pop culture, it was some kind of license to be Quentin's girl overseas. It was okay that he had a Canadian girlfriend since I was, as he kept telling friends, "Lau-rie (rolled r) is _poete_." He'd ask me to read for his parents and friends, which was okay but a little embarrassing as he knew English much better than they and I knew how boring it must be for them. In Turkey, he didn't ask me to read; it was enough, apparently, to be a young white girl with auburn hair. Eventually I thought to myself, "Couldn't they just like me for me?", but of course with a language barrier, how could they? Thus the loneliness of a traveller, even with a local for company, though Quentin was equally interested in showing me off like some kind of weird prize or justification for having gone to Canada, and watching all the games of the French and Turkish teams in the World Cup of Soccer (schitzophrenia sets in when the two teams in you play each other!). He insisted we skip all the 'lame tourist destinations' like the Eiffel Tower and the Blue Mosque I'd been dying to see, although we did see a number of places I couldn't identify and he couldn't explain: eg., "Here, zees place vit za big fings, you know, ...?".

Quentin's little cousin from Istanbul thought I was great, and sat me in front of a newspaper, where she began teaching me to pronounce Turkish words. The Turkish family we visited near Pammukale, on our hot car road trip south, didn't think I was so great. Turkish women, I discovered, are mostly allowed to wear Western clothing if they want to; but they aren't allowed on the Internet to see what Western women were up to, and are taught from childhood that the best dream they could possibly have to fulfill is to serve a man as best they can. Sitting around the pool, waiting for the barbecue lambchops to cook, the men offered me first a cigarette, and then a beer. They laughed uproariously when I lit a smoke; laughed even more when I accepted the beer, then took it from me and gave me a .05. When I continued to drink it, their amusement turned to disgust, and Quentin made a longer-than-usual face. Later he told me, as we bathed clothed in an ambiant cloud of mosquito spraytruck fumes (who needs the hammam?), that he wished I could be more like the Turkish women: quiet and manserving. Oh, sure; hang on a minute while I completely efface myself. That was pretty much the end of us.

From Turkey we went back to France, and at the travel agent I was only able to get a plane ticket to Toronto, not Ottawa. Having just enough money to either get to Ottawa and be completely broke, or get to Winnipeg where my parents lived and get back on my feet, I opted to move to Winnipeg for a year. An excellent poetry scene there, and music scene too. Memorable occasions for me there included having my work edited by George Amabile when he was writer-in-residence at the Winnipeg Public Library; attending the launch of his Signature Editions Selected, called Tasting the Dark, at the Press Club, where I played pool with Catherine Hunter and her friend, cheesed off J. Gordon Shillingford (sorry J!), and tried to explain to a late-arriving CBC reporter just in for a beer what was going on, and what the worth of poetry; visiting poet Colin Smith at the Junto Library, and with him, running into his old friend George Bowering at the Mondragon Cafe prior to his Artspace reading at the Writer's Festival, who gave me a chocolate coin; reading at McNally Robinson, the prairie bookstore, with rob mclennan on one of his tours through Winnipeg, and going for beers with he and Cooley at the Mayflower; and attending events at Bread and Circuses and Borealis Books, where I finally met and/or got to hear great writerly people like Tom Schmidt and Andris Taskins, John Dowling and Di Brandt, Lynette D'Anna and Sean Virgo, Clive Holden and Terrance Cox.

Back to Ottawa I went, drawn back to that fold that was first of any to enfold me. Quentin was long gone back to Fenneville, his family's farmhouse near Paris, after he'd visited Winnipeg and my parents wouldn't let us sleep in the same bed. "Canadiens barbares!" Barbaric throwbacks from stuck-up England! He also loved to throw things and break them when he didn't get his way, and my parents' Sardenian ceramics and Bossen heads were too tempting. Then there was that Turkey rift, where even the romanticism of blue olive hills and Ephesean ruins couldn't save us. The sense of disaster from all those floods and fires and ransackings Ephesus received got under our skin through the dust in our sandals, set our libraries ablaze, wrecked our Heraclitis. Stepping into the same stream again, the Ottawa River I guess, but never the same stream twice as the aphorism goes, I got another year's worth of English Lit studies in at Carleton University. Battling the same old problems with being too broke to feed myself, pay rent, and get to school, I was forced to rent a room at a ramshackle place in Mechanicsville where my roommates turned out to be ultra paranoid Slayer-metalhead crackheads ("Freebase isn't crack! We just use a spoon"), linemen for the phone company, whose basement garden almost got us all thrown in jail when the police threatened to come search for my friend Gareth, a moody musician I met in Winnipeg who'd run away from home. Spent a few Ottawa summers working at various bagel and wrap joints downtown and busking in the Byward Market, where I wrote songs and befriended street people, artists, and terrific local musicians. The relationship with one such musician became my second stalker experience; the relationship with another, a debauched degenerative low-budget drug and alc fest such as you'd read in a short story by Ottawa writer Michael Bryson or a poem by Anders Carson.

Terrible living and boyfriend conditions, along with my mother's cancer surgery, brought me back to Cold Lake, where I worked at a couple of restaurants and cafes, wrote a manuscript of poems exploring the quirkiness of a North Alberta smalltown, researched local Cree legends and started a Writer's Group.

In Cold Lake, I met my boyfriend Blake at a guitar jam, over at Richard the Drummer's place. Blake and I have tons in common: guitar, songswriting, and poetry. He was also staying at his folks' place to recouperate from a botched Cold Lake escape attempt. Together, we moved to Calgary this past December. There's tons going on here. Dammit, I need to know everything fast, get caught up, consume literature as though I'm at school, and see about attending the U of Calgary, where great writerly people like Christian Bok and Pamela Banting teach. For now, I'm working at a mountainview seniors' residence, where I gaze up at the Rockies and tell myself if I just scrub a bajillion more floors and serve a thousand more coffees I can get there next, maybe check out Banff School for the Arts, or visit Victoria, catch a reading by Tim Lilburn and Jan Zwicky... Currently reviewing poetry books for Fast Forward (the local street paper), working on poetry and songs, hitting the open stages and local readings like filling Station's flywheel and Single Onion, exploring the surprisingly wondrous and amazing indie college rock scene, and trying to save up enough money to get surrealcanada.com and its affiliate, bloom oon Canadian Surrealist Journal, out into the atmosphere - as well as get back to my home base, Ottawa, and my writing group - not the Cold Lake one I started that fizzled as soon as I left, but Ottawa's Peter F. Yacht Club, before they further disown me. Hello to Melanie, Peter, Stephen, Max, rob, James, Anita, Vivian, Bruce, who still inspire me greatly from so far. Ottawa's still my Home Base as I travel hither and thither, and yon, even, getting a feel for the country and gathering inspiration from excellent poets all over the land.

bloom oon cooming s'oon!