Spring Updates

In which I pretend it's spring and update you...

It’s actually sunny outside. I mean, it’s still 12 degrees, but it’s sunny. Traditionally, we here on the Avalon Peninsula get a few good days of sun in May, right before the icebergs arrive and turn June into a mess of radiation fog and sorrow. Great for the tourists, bad for the vitamin D.

The good news is, this year I decided to distract myself by offering an in-person workshop here, and have been pleasantly surprised by the reception. Almost sold out. It’s going to be a poetry workshop based on the idea that if you concentrate on what makes poetry different from other writing, you write better poems. I’m pleased to see there are quite a few novelists and prose writers in there, as well as poets of all levels. Should be fun. If you’re in St. John’s for June 1 and June 8, please join us! Only a couple spots left. (If you and a larger group want to take it together, email me and I’ll set another date.)

After reading this post by my colleague Kerry Clare, I went digging for an old article I wrote for Maisonneuve back in 2003. This was the time before social media and the ubiquitous “share” button, but we had our ways of doing the same. Gather round and let me spin you a tale of the old days. We called it “forwarding”, children. Yes, yes… It was like sharing, but you had to choose who you sent it to. I know! Anyway, I was interviewing a comic artist from New York (where I was living) who had written a wildly popular series called Get Your War On. Each strip was a viral post before there were really many posts to go viral. I wonder in the article if the act of “forwarding” (sharing, retweeting, restacking, etc.) was a sort of hegemonic tool for consequence-less protest. Like the share button today, I suspected the idea of forwarding something subversive on to others of like mind helped dull the impulse to protest and rebel in more effective ways. Anyway, I thought it interesting that this was on my mind then and how it applies somewhat to now.

Sad to see the death of my friend, the stellar Irish poet Paul Durcan. I hadn’t had much contact with him the last few years, but I know his health and faculties had declined. I still wrote sometimes, in case someone was reading to him, but who knows. He was a lovely man who I met in Dublin back in 2009 through our mutual friend Dennis Bock. I was giving a reading at Roddy Doyle’s literary charity Fighting Words and Paul showed up. You could really feel the hum of the people there around him being present. Here’s a pic of us right after I read:

After the reading, the three of us went for a meal and he said he particularly liked the aphorisms I had been working on, and when it came time for my first book of them, he blurbed it, along with poet Christian Bok and aphorist and poet James Richardson. I was honoured. Before that, I’d heard Paul give one of the best readings I’ve ever attended, at Harbourfront in Toronto. He walked out on stage silently, steadied his glasses at the podium, and just began to read. Not a word of preamble or introduction. Just pure, rollicking poetry. The whole place was silent. It was magical.

I’ve been reading and listening to novels again lately, with the listening relegated mostly to books I’ve read before and couldn’t justify bumping other reading for. This allows me to cram them in when I’d normally be doing something else, like walking or driving. I’ve listened to quite a few great novels, including NK Jemison’s Broken Earth series and Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. What was interesting about hearing these back to back is to get a sense of how much Jemison’s highly original ideas owe to Pullman for a leaping off point. The idea of living matter, consciousness, institutional genocide, etc. Of course, Jemison goes in new unexpected directions, especially with allegories of racial oppression, while Pullman concentrates on religious oppression, but there’s a striking similarity there, despite each being a very unique and flavourful take on the SFF genre. In actual reading, I have Jacob McArthur Mooney’s The Northern and Maria Reva’s Endling on my desk right now. Also have new collections by Alina Stefanescu (My Heresies) as well about half a dozen manuscripts from new and emerging poets I’m freelance editing (including a second book by Griffin Prize winner Maggie Burton).

Writing-wise, I submitted a book of poems and have finally let a friend read my novel. The thing is just a stone around my neck now. If she says it blows, into the bin it goes. That said, I’ve been writing some decent short stories and hope to share news about that soon. Some other good news is coming in the Fall, including publications and travel to Europe for a lecture and readings, etc. Have had to turn down any and all American offers, of course. I’ll keep you updated as things appear.

Be good, resist, live. G