Steve Schroeder tells us how to poetry blog. Hilarious!

What if the wit ran out...

Last Friday I was back at Paragraphe for another launch -- of Katia Grubisic's first poetry collection, What if the red ran out, and Naomi K. Lewis's first novel, Cricket in a Fist, both published by Goose Lane Editions. Grubisic's poetry is concentrated, steel-trap intelligent, lively and cold; I picked up a copy and will eventually, I think, read it from cover to cover. Lewis's novel simply didn't draw me in -- I felt put off by some clunky phrasing and couldn't get interested in the antics of her hastily summarized cast of characters. Consider that, though, a lazy review. I was really there to hear Katia, whose writing I head read in CV2 and admired, and who I had first met in Edmonton, although we live, like, one street away from each other in Mile End.

Interesting it was to go to the same venue two nights in a row. The previous evening, I arrived ten minutes early and had to stand because the place was already packed; this evening I took care to arrive twenty minutes early and found I was the only person there. The books though were set up, and pretty much an identical spread to the previous evening: finger-sized pizza slices, dip, cut veggies, crackers, cheese, two bottles of wine. I book browsed, bought my copy of Katia's book. A few minutes later, my friend Elise Moser arrived, we kissed hello, surprised but not exactly surprised to find each other there; we took two of the six plush chairs round the reading platform. Only four or five others had arrived before the authors appeared just before 7, the advertised starting time. Mike test and adjustments followed, then the authors introduced themselves and Naomi started reading; I soon tuned out. By the time she finished, though, another 15 or so had arrived, including a few people I knew (always a few people I know at these events.) Katia read; I read along from my copy, which I enjoyed ...

Tracing our steps from the railyard, you'd think we were kids
looking for a place to fuck, or graffiti artists intent
on the highest overlooks

Folding chairs had to be found (they hadn't been set up), and eventually some were. The authors asked if there were any questions. After a moment's silence, someone remarked upon the frequency of olfactory images in Katia's verse, many of dampness, mould, decay; and what, pray tell, would she imagine was the smell of oblivion? That was a hard one for Katia to answer at the drop of a hat. After hesitating, she gave a decorous, if general, answer, thanking the listener for noticing motifs she hadn't really noticed herself in her writing; if I had been in her shoes (an impossible fit) and a quick-witted mood, I might have replied, the smell of one hand clapping, or better still, the smell of your face before it was born. But I was not especially quick-witted that evening; when she asked if anyone had further questions, the room again fell dead silent -- and I thought, what are those cool questions in Here Comes Everybody? But in that instant, couldn't think of a single one.

P.S. Here's a deadly (in the positive sense of the word) poem from the collection and that reading that I found online: Love Song for the End of the World.

Maxianne Berger: Dismantled Secrets

(click through to see large)

The picture above taken at last Thursday's launch of Maxianne Berger's new book, Dismantled Secrets. There's Maxianne signing a book for Elizabeth Robert (right), poet, translator and host of the Montreal reading series Noches de Poesia. Also in the picture are, above from left to right, my friend Jean-Pierre Pelletier, a poet and translator into French; yours truly; and Jonathan Kaplansky, another literary translator of my acquaintance who has translated, among others, Helene Dorion into English. The reading at Montreal's Paragraphe bookstore was about as packed as that tight little corner of the bookstore could be: in all about 45 people attended, with plenty standing between the narrow rows of shelves; I'd say at least 20 or 30 books were sold.

Maxianne's poems are at turns poignant and playful, and her readings always well-paced and engaging; she deserves her loyal following. She does a lot of work in forms -- haiku, tanka, palindrome, abcdarian, to name a few -- but even the most sombre of her free-verse poems sparkle with a particularly winning word-sense and word-play. Enough, though, for blurb-talk: to illustrate what I mean, here is, as she put it, the title poem whose title is not the book title. It's reproduced here with her permission and that of her publisher.


ADVICE TO ONE BURSTING WITH A SECRET THAT MUSTN'T BE TOLD

Arrange a bowl of ripe peaches on your kitchen table.
Tell your secret to each one. Your secret is safe
for the silent peach is virtuous, both heart and tongue.

Take a walk in the woods, far from your home.
Find a tree with a knothole too small for a bird
and whisper your secret, then fill it with mud.

Tell the grass grown wild on your front lawn.
Take out your mower and mow each blade down
before the wind gets wind of the words and blows.

Take a hot shower. That jasmine-scented soap? Let it
be your confidant. Lather your skin with the words
then rinse, and watch them sputter down the drain.

Tell the rain. Tell the rain that falls on the city streets.
The raindrops might well tell the sidewalks but
the gist will get lost in the splatter and splash.

Tell one who is mad - your deranged cousin - whose
sharp gestures punctuate discordant verbal fugues.
The mad one will tell all, but none will believe a word.

Tell a poet, for a poet dismantles secrets, hides the pieces
in schemes and tropes. What you want no one to hear,
the poet will surely reveal, but none will believe a word.


from Dismantled Secrets by Maxianne Berger, Wolsak and Wynn, 2008

Hot damn! I just got a poem accepted by Umbrella.

POETRY PLEASE (BBC)

A note from a friend a few weeks ago about BBC's Poetry Please, an exceptional online resource. A little context here might serve: I was having trouble downloading podcasts. Excuse the weird lineation that comes of copying and pasting from an e-mail.

Brian,

Some sites will provide their own player so you can hear their
programs online without having anything installed on your end..

One such site which works well, and the work is of caliber is BBC's
program POETRY PLEASE.

It provides it's own player that you can use on-line to hear past
programs from the previous week...so check this out and enjoy.

The readings are fabulous and some of the poems terrific classics too.

Enjoy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/poetryplease_potwpiano.shtml

Try it, try it, try it...it's actually a request line where people
from England request certain poetry to be read. What a simple and
effective idea...a bit better that dial a poem sponsored by the
National broadcaster that is funded by government coffers.

Try this out, it's surprisingly simple and effective radio....some of
the poems are read by the poets themselves like Ted Hughes, Philip
Larkin and that's where the fun is too.

Raphael

PS I just listened to this one and some of the poems are fabulous and
one of the them by a guy born in 1871....who knew he'd web broadcast
on BBC?? So, posterity be damned.

Speak to you tomorrow.

Well, I never took advantage of it ... too busy! (Or distracted.) But another option for a random poetry fix.

... finally got it back, although I had to take it in again today to iron out another glitch. For me at least, PC these days means Problem Computer ... & I find myself looking across at the realms of Mac, and wondering if I'm being drawn by an illusion of greener fields.

My computer's on the fritz. I'll be getting it back in a couple of days. Until then...

CV2 took one of my poems today. It will be in the so-called Jilted Issue, due to come out within a couple of months. There you'll learn something about me that you can't tell by looking!

Words on the Move

Just came back from Words on the Move. It was a fascinating event, where at least 8 translations of each poem were read out. The translations differed quite widely -- but I tell you, there were phrases from each one I would steal, quite viable interpretations that would never have crossed my mind. Makes one think that some sort of composite translation would be the best approach. I've added highlights to my translation in the post below.

Most, I imagine, would think that it would be tedious to hear 8 versions of the same poem -- but really, quite the opposite is true. As a translator-participant, it helps one to improve one's prowess, and to think outside the box of one's own perceptions.

LEAGUE OF CANADIAN POETS

(W)RITES OF SPRING

POETRY READING/FUNDRAISER

Café Volver

5604 Ave. du Parc, Mtl.

Thurs. April 3

7:00 pm – 9:30 pm

$5 suggested donation

Featured Readers: Maxianne Berger,

Kelly Norah Drukker, Brian Campbell, Erin Mouré

Stephen Morrissey, Carolyn Zonailo,

Angela Leuck, Oana Avasilichioaei

General public open mike

May your poetree burgeon into bloom!

Info: 514-272-4419

A highly enjoyable event this was: some 20-odd people attended, and the poetry of featured readers and even open mikes was decent to excellent... Readers who I most enjoyed: Maxianne, whose poem ABC's of Desire I adore (it'll be in her next collection, which will be launched in a couple of weeks);Kelly Norah who read a very evocative a poem about a wild boar (I also very much liked a poem she did on the passing of a friend);Stephen who read an interesting sequence of poems about coats; Angela, whose presentation of haikus is always informative and engaging -- she read some haikus she had just written that day at Botanical Gardens, and some of them were very good; and myself (who I really enjoyed, ha ha). Erin and Oana read pieces for two voices in English, Romanian, Galician and Portugese that were pleasant to hear, but required mental calisthenics quite beyond the the rather distracted capacity of my attention, and Carolyn's poems also I couldn't get into for a bunch of extraneous reasons having to do with being a host, although I liked some lines (her being the product of her parent's eros -- heart beating love love love -- quite liked that).

Must admit, being the host of an event like this means one is so preoccupied with keeping things moving according to schedule and thinking about what one is going to do & say, that one simply cannot always be properly present to what is being read -- the main purpose of the event to begin with. Occupational hazard of hosts, particularly of poetry events.

Anyway, thanks to all participants and contributors and to that attentive audience. About $90 was raised for the League, all told.

[Places for Writers]

Useful, especially for Canadian writers.

Cruelest month?

To celebrate National Poetry Month, the League of Canadian Poets has opened a blog called "Poetry Without Borders". League of Canadian Poets members are invited to submit poems for its Poem-a-Day feature on a first come, first served basis.

I am not sure why it's called "Poetry Without Borders", since all the poetry comes from within the borders of Canada (or at least, is by Canadians), and what's more, within the borders of a national poetry organization. I suppose they're referring to international access via internet. But what with Doctors Without Borders and Words Without Borders, the name suggests something much more along those lines...

Compared to the poem-a-day email subscription feature of Poets.org, this is still fledgling affair. This is not really reaching out to the broader public in the way that Poets.org does. But it's a nice start. I like the informality of the submission process.

Some try to write a poem a day for the entire month. It's a fabulous idea -- for others. With all the editing I've been doing of late, and have yet to do in the coming weeks, I'm not in that kind of mode.

In the MiPOesias blog, editor Didi Menendez writes in a post entitled "ME ME ME ME ME":

May I suggest that during National Poetry Month that instead of just thinking about your own poetry that you also consider writing a review (at least one a week = 4 reviews) of someone else's poetry (book, individual poem, magazine, journal, broadside, etc.).

Great idea, too. I may just take her up on it.

What I've decided to do, though, is send things off every day -- very ME ME ME -- but something I've lagged on far too often over the years.

A prose poem of mine was just taken by MiPOesias. It will appear in its upcoming Oldest Profession issue -- although the poem concerns not "women of the night" per se, but Vogue models. (Not to say that so-called women of the night won't see themselves in it, as well...) That issue comes out this summer.

Always liked the quaint Spanish expression -- "mariposas de la noche", "butterflies of the night".