Some poets

L-R: Carolyn Marie Souaid, Endre Farkas, Lori Cayer, Maurice Mierau, and Eric Folsom at The Pepper Mill, St. John's. As for me, I'm behind the camera.

Houses in St. John's

(click thru to see large)

Bringing Summer to the Rock

Morning fog in St. John's harbour;
above, street sign for Hill O'Chips, taken on a clearer day
(click thru to see large)

Shortly after I arrived at the Battery Hotel in St. John's, I was asked to be interviewed by host Jeff Gilhooly on the CBC St. John's Morning Show. It was to be about League Conference, but there was also a special request: since the weather had been so miserable of late (fog, rain, highs of 10 degrees C.), could I volunteer some poetic lines about bringing summer to St. John's?

Actually, they had originally asked Maurice Mierau, League President, to do the interview, but he wasn't sure he'd be up for it (he would be flying in after midnight and had to chair meetings all day) and recommended me instead.

I gladly accepted the offer, but with some trepidation: what would I dream up over the next few hours about that? The subject seemed rife with trite possibilities. I was reminded of the demands by certain Persian potentates of their court poets to come up with some suitable lines for an occasion, or off with their heads. I went to a reading at Breakwater Books that began our fest with some vague notions flying around in my mind of laying down of sacramental flowers, of everyone having a summer inside them and those flowers within them, something like that.

At the reading, I was exposed to some of The Rock's better poets -- Tom Dawe and Mary Dalton were standouts, expressing par excellence that Newfoundland verbal flair everyone remarks upon who comes here. Coming back, the fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife -- thicker than any I had ever seen: you couldn't see much past 20 feet down the road. I enjoyed the streetnames -- maritime names like Topsail and Water, dumpy Anglo names like Duckworth and Gower, oddities like Quidi Vidi, quaint & Victorian like Temperance, and then, oddest of all, at the crest of a hill overlooking the harbour, Hill O'Chips... back in my hotel room, a look at the map revealed all kinds of fantastic names for the fishing villages (many abandoned) along the rugged coasts. Indeed, the rooms at the Battery were named after them. My own was Indian Tickle, across the hall was Happy Adventure; also there was Shambler's Cove, Nameless Point, Heart's Delight, Nipper's Harbour, Nicky's Nose Cove, Witless Bay...

Fortunately, a student of mine who happens to subscribe to Canadian Geographic had passed to me its most recent issue; in it was an article on Newfoundland expressions. What a rich vernacular! Among them were these two which I ended up using (obscure, it turns out, even to most Newfoundlanders, but there they were):

A noggin to scrape: a difficult task.
All dressed up with scurvy ankles: she's well dressed by not clean.

By 3 in the morning, this is what I came up with. It was fun reading it over the radio 4 hours later. (Needless to say, I had to sleep through most of the following afternoon...)

BRINGING SUMMER TO THE ROCK

The fog’s clammy snout
wets my cheek, brushes my brow
as I gaze down from the crest of Hill O’Chips
into this dour harbour --
bringing summer here is a noggin to scrape,
I’m all dressed up with scurvy ankles but I’ll try:
hyacinths, bramble rose
even that fistful of dandelions
I gave my first grade teacher
two score years ago or more as a bouquet
I lay, in this place that gives tongue
to the outcrops,
Happy Adventure, Indian Tickle, Witless Bay --
whimsical wordsprouts that
bloom for us all
their own feverish summer.

back from the rock...

Me in jaw-droppingly beautiful Newfoundland. At Cape Spear, just outside St. John's, to be exact. (Click thru to see large.) The League of Poets' Conference/Fest was perhaps the best one ever -- good seminars, great side trips, excellent night life, and, for me -- some CREATIVITY! More later...

George Carlin RIP

Thanks to Pris for this one. He'll be missed. (He'd probably have something caustic & witty to say about that bromide.)

Today I'm flying off to St. John's, Newfoundland to participate in the LCP Poetry Festival and Conference. That'll take place on Friday to Sunday; I'm staying on for a couple of extra days to hang out in St. John's.

NEWS FROM QUEBEC

Here's my annual report on the Quebec (read Montreal) Anglo poetry scene for the League of Poets newsletter -- perhaps my last. Who knows? (Provincial reps, unless no willing replacement can be found, generally stay on for two years only.)

If you are interested in any of the authors below, highlighting and dragging their names into your Google search bar will yield results. (I think my time is better spent than by making a zillion hyperlinks.)

NEWS FROM QUEBEC 2007-8

I’d like to begin by saying that my two-year stint as Quebec/Nunavut’s representative on the League of Canadian Poets’ National Council has been productive, informative, and enjoyable. Notable initiatives include the resurrection of the annual (W)rites of Spring Readings and Fundraisers, and the change of the name of the AGM to Festival and Conference, which I believe was my brainchild, although other council members acted as able midwives to that proposal. Barring the unforeseen, Angela Leuck will be taking the helm. A poet who specializes in Eastern poetry forms, she has edited three anthologies of haiku and published her own haiku collection as well. She has many talents to bring to the position. Already she is on the board of Directors of the Quebec Writer’s Federation, and is very interested in forging stronger ties between the League and other organizations, as well as carrying our reading/fundraising initiatives further.

Quebec -- particularly Montreal -- continued this year to live up to its reputation as an excellent haven for poetry mavens. The Anglo literary scene has always been well endowed with talent, with lively publishing and reading scenes.

BOOK LAUNCHES/PRIZES

Peter Richardson's third book, Sympathy for the Couriers (Vehicule Press), was launched last December. This past winter, he read in Victoria at the Pacific Festival of the Book. He will be reading at the Artbar Series in Toronto on September 16th.

Maxianne Berger’s second collection, Dismantled Secrets (Wolsak and Wynn), was launched at Paragraphe in April. (She'll be on tour with it in early June in and around Toronto.)

So was Katia Grubisic’s first collection, What if red ran out (Goose Lane Editions). Her tour included Waterloo, Toronto, and Montreal.

Endre Farkas’ selected, Quotidian Fever: Selected Poems 1974-2007, was published by the Muses’ Company and launched at Casa Del Popolo.

Joshua Auerbach launched his first full book of poetry, Radius Of Light (DC Books) at the Blue Metropolis festival in May, 2008.

The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian and Irish Verse was launched in March. It includes poetry selections by Stephanie Bolster, Don Coles, Mary Dalton, and John Steffler, among others.

Ian Ferrier teamed up with an all-female choir and Montreal's top avant garde jazz musicians in a spoken word/music album entitled What Is This Place, released in late 2007. It was cited as the best of 2007 by Montreal’s Hour Magazine.

Fortner Anderson won the first Voice Electric Award 2007, a $2000 prize awarded by two Montreal organizations, Wired on Words Productions and Les Filles électriques, for achievement in spoken word literature.

Four notable non-members also launched books in Montreal. David Solway won the Quebec Writer’s Federation 2007 A.M. Klein Award for Reaching for Clear (Vehicule Press, 2007), an award sponsored by member Jennifer Boire and her husband Jacques Nolin, by the way; he also launched The Properties of Things: from the Poems of Bartholomew the Englishman. In May 2007, Robyn Sarah launched her essay collection Little Eurekas: A Decade’s Thoughts on Poetry. This year, Mark Abley launched The Prodigal Tongue: Dispatches from the Future of English, a non-fiction book that investigates everything from hip-hop language to Asian English, Spanglish and text-messaging. Last November, former member Nina Bruck launched her first chapbook, Still Light at Five O’Clock (Sky of Ink Press) at the age of 84. (The book, by the way, was edited by myself and Raphael Bendahan.) She was interviewed in CBC TV and CBC Radio’s The Sunday Edition, and the book, having sold out its initial print run of 100, has been reissued in a second edition.

FESTIVALS/READINGS

At the Blue Metropolis (April 30-May 4), one of Canada’s largest international literary festivals, Carolyn Marie Souaid hosted several events. The program included a reading by ten Montreal poets, including League members Carolyn Marie Souaid, Joshua Auerbach, Bryan Sentes, and Helen Zisimatos.

At the Yellow Door Poetry and Prose monthly reading series, hosted by Ilona Martonfi, numerous LCP poets were featured over the year. Quebec members included Kelly Norah Drukker, Jennifer Boire, Catherine Kidd, Maxianne Berger, Peter Richardson, Stephen Morrissey. The Visual Arts Centre reading series, also hosted by Ilona, gave the stage to, among others, Catherine Kidd, Fortner Anderson, Kaie Kellough, Katia Grubisic, Ian Ferrier, Catherine Kidd, Peter Richardson, Steven Morrissey, Jennifer Boire, Sharon Nelson, Anne Cimon, Carolyn Zonailo and yours truly (Brian Campbell).

The Atwater Poetry Project reading series, organized by Oana Avisilichioaei, featured a number of league members and other notables, including Robin Blaser, John Barton, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Carmine Starnino, Stephanie Bolster and Natalee Caple.

The multilingual Noches de Poesia, Poetry Plus, and the Words and Music series (which focuses primarily on spoken word) also featured many of the above-named poets and others.

In March, the Writers Out Loud series presented Endre Farkas. He was also interviewed and read on CBC. He and Carolyn Marie Souaid also coproduced the 4th annual Circus of Words/Cirque des mots, another sold-out cabaret evening celebrating the “theature of poetry.” This year’s event featured Nicole Brossard, among others.

A little farther from Montreal, Carolyn Marie Souaid was resource author for “Quebec Roots”, a Blue Metropolis educational project that took her to Kiluutaq School in Nunavik (Northern Quebec) – not to be confused with Nunavut – in March to create a photo-essay of their community. Their piece appeared alongside that of 5 other Quebec schools in a book which was launched at the last Blue Metropolis literary festival.

Catherine Kidd did a spoken word performance tour of South Africa in Spring 2007, and Fortner Anderson performed last summer at the Berlin Poetry Festival and at the 13th International Poetry Festival in Genoa, Italy. Ian Ferrier performed at the 2008 Calgary International Spoken Word festival.

At Words on the Move, an event put on by the Literary Translator’s Association of Canada, translator members and the public at large try their hand at translating a poem into the language of their choice. This year’s challenge was to translate extracts of Catherine Kidd’s Flying Lizard or Patrick Coppen’s Carnets Secrets. The 20-odd participants included Maxianne Berger and myself.

On April 3, I organized the LCP (W)rites of Spring Poetry Reading/fundraiser at Café Volver. Featured readers were Maxianne Berger, Kelly Norah Drukker, Erin Mouré, Stephen Morrissey, Carolyn Zonailo, Angela Leuck, Oana Avasilichioaei, and yours truly. About 25 people attended, and altogether we raised $90 for the league.

REVIEW PUBLICATION

Some writers sent me news about their review publications. This can only be a very partial list.

Endre Farkas and Oana Avasilichioaei were featured in Jacket, an Australian online magazine (special Canadian edition ed. by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift.) Yours truly had poems published over the last year in CV2, Umbrella, Carte Blanche, MiPoesias, Geez, Saranac Review and The Antigonish Review. Kelly Norah Drukker’s set of long poems Still Lives was published in the June 2007 issue of enRoute Magazine as part of the 2006 CBC literary awards second prize for poetry; three poems of hers also appeared in Room.

Nina Bruck on CBC Sunday Edition

Today Nina Bruck was interviewed on the Sunday Edition for 9 minutes about our Sky of Ink chapbook, "Still Light at Five O'Clock". Although the introductory hook was how an 85-year-old had put out her first book, amazingly, it was a very literary broadcast: she got to read four of her poems in their entirety on national radio. Fantastic!

The effect was my site meter lit up with some 30-odd Nina Bruck google inquiries, and we got orders for six books! (NB, as of Wed. June 18, that's 10 books.)

A typical letter:

Heard Nina Bruck on Sunday Edition. Wonderful! Now how do I buy a copy? Tried to respond on blog but got frustrated with the process.

thanks


****

My own question is, did my recent comments on their website have an effect on CBC poetry broadcasting policy? Perhaps... but I'd be surprised. At our urging Nina turned the focus from being some sort of icon of old age creativity (she'd already had that on her TV interview), to the work itself, insisting on the kind of broadcast that came out.

If you want to read more about her book, here's the link for that. A click on the label below will also yield more excerpts of her writing. If anyone wishes to order copies, visit my website and inquire or write me at beedeecee@videotron.ca

Some interesting discussion of the "metonymic two step"

Steven Michael Berzensky (AKA Mick Burrs)

Steven Michael Berzensky (also known as Mick Burrs) I've written about before. Maybe he's the most under-rated poet in Canada. Perhaps this has to do with his (chiefly) free-verse conversational style, nearly indistinguishable -- on the surface at least -- from that of so many practitioners. One week two summers ago I read through his sixth full-length collection, The Names Leave the Stones, poems new and selected, and found it thoroughly engaging. (Funny it should take me so long to write about it...actually this post is from my drafts archives. Life & my swiss cheese memory just intervened.) Running a broad gamut from the personal, political, spiritual and everyday, I find that through it all -- even when dealing with painful, hard subjects -- Berzensky maintains a shining clarity and directness one associates with innocence. Behind that apparent simplicity though, a particularly sophisticated mastery is at work.

To give a taste of what I mean, here's a brief political poem:

STALIN'S HANDS

could raise
vodka glasses
to the ceiling

could move
   bishops
         and pawns
across squares

could crush
     skulls

and then

    caress
a daughter's curls

NB, "bishops/and pawns" should sprawl a little more across the page, to suggest more far-reaching chess moves. "Skulls", too, should be out there a bit, first letter aligned with the last letter of the previous line -- again, to suggest a more far-reaching relationship. Unfortunately, the html just won't cooperate!

Last night I participated in the Noches de Poesia Mega POW WOW -- 40 poets, one or two poems each, in English, French, Spanish, and in one case, Polish. Elizabeth Robert, the organizer, deserves all credit for making things happen on the Montreal poetry scene. But such a marathon can be well, a marathon for those who sit through it from beginning to end. Most didn't, and enjoyed what they had to enjoy (or sat through what they could sit through) until they "had to go". For me, the one I enjoyed most was Jose Aquelin, a real poet sans doute, although many of the nuances of what he read were lost (my French, such as it is).

As for my act, well... because I taught that night, I was placed late, the second last act, and agreed to provide one last brief spell of musical relief from poet after poet. Of course, in these circumstances, there's no time for sound check, no chance to warm into your best playing. As it turns out, Elizabeth plugged my guitar into the same amp the voice was plugged into (well, I also take responsibility for letting that technical gaffe happen)... and no, it was not especially thrilling to sing into a reverbless mic with -- and I was wondering why -- practically no juice coming out of the guitar at all. If I didn't get much of a rise from the audience, I don't blame 'em. Many of them were on their last legs anyway. Next time, in that kind of situation, I'll just read poetry.

Robin Blaser

A nice interview with Robin Blaser here on the CBC. I like what he says about language being a great tradition that greets you with every encounter: all you have to do as a poet -- and reader -- is answer the invitation. (Something like that -- I'm transcribing from my almost illegible scrawl.)

He won the Griffin the other day (for a book by a Canadian poet) for his collected, "The Holy Forest". John Ashbery won the international award. (Nothing succeeds like success, as they say.)

True to form, I've made a comment with links to actual poems & readings that they posted today. As I've said, they should have such links at the foot of the article itself: might even increase traffic through their site. Eventually I'll write CBC management about that.

Marie Chouinard

Last night with my partner I saw Marie Chouinard's new production, Orpheus and Eurydice, here at Place des Arts. Owing to harsh reviews like this one of its first shows in Rome and Hong Kong, Chouinard pared it down from an hour and 20 minutes in two acts to one act of 65 minutes -- and emerged with a masterpiece. A daring, at times hilarious, orgiastic romp ... Drawing on a much bolder, clearer inspiration than her previous "bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS" , she really incarnated the primal fierceness to be found in Greek myth. As discussed before, nudity is an integral part of her aesthetic. At one point, a practically nude female dancer danced into the audience, leaping over seats, howling and dancing in people's laps; dancers on the stage pointed at the men sitting in the front rows, shouting, "Vous! Ne regardez pas! Don't look back!" -- a mocking recreation of the travails of Orpheus if there ever was one.

The show is on world tour, and is not to be missed if it comes near you. The teaser above only gives a taste, and doesn't really capture its hurricane-like energy.

Funny, we never intended to go to this show. We were frankly not moved by the last one. Last February I got tickets on a friend's recommendation to the Spanish La Compania Nacional de la Danza, but it happened to fall on the same day as Montreal's worst blizzard in recent years, making it next to impossible to get to. As compensation, the producer offered free tickets (to those like moi who called up to plead) to a couple of other shows, and this was the only one I could go to. As it turns out, they gave us the best seats in the house. What a treat!

One hell of an amazing post about getting out of hell...

"Salt"

My poem "Salt" appears in Umbrella's Summer 2008 extra, "The Torrid Zone". Another steamy theme; as for the poem, that's up to you to determine!