2 April Reviews: Riley, Begamundre

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

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

- 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

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

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)

(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

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!

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

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 --

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

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?

(Or starting line from which - ? )

.
e
le.
. ble.
l. k able. e
ll. 't ck r eable.. ve
! all y n u. n't ack ur zeable g. t. ave
H! mall ay an ou. an't rack our izeable gg I. at. ave
HO! small gay man you. can't crack your sizeable egg I. A hat. have

II.
.tah a evaH .gge elbaezis ruoy kcarc t'nac I .nam yag llams uoy !HO
tah vaH gge lbaezis uoy carc 'nac nam ag lams oy HO
ah aH ge baezis oy arc 'ac am g ams y O
h H e aezis y rc 'c m ms
ezis c s
zis
is
s

Shittr! Alfred Jarry on Wikipedia

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

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

http://fillingstation.ca/

Two Short Reviews: Bateman & Wilson

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.

-----------
-----------

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:

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

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!

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!

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!