Sunday, June 28, 2009

back

The trip to Van was wonderful -- we were blessed with fine weather every day -- LCP Conf/Fest was highly enjoyable too, and made a number of interesting poetic contacts and discoveries. Nevertheless, the meeting with my uncle was the highlight. Still spry and lucid at nearly a hundred -- he'll be reaching his centenary in a couple of months -- he's a walking oral history. Filled me in on all kinds of details of our family past, plus vivid recollections of what it was like to be a Nova Scotia coal miner back in the '20s, and even the Halifax Explosion, as experienced 60 km away on a farm near East Mines, NS.

On my last day, though, I felt a sore throat coming on, and on the plane back the congestion started -- which lead, it seems, to a classic case of barotrauma -- otherwise known as airplane ear -- when the plane made an unusually fast descent. A week later, my ears are still blocked. The cold became a nasty one; I'm still not over it. Still, with end of school stuff and other matters, I was surprised to find today that I had scarcely looked at this blog in over two weeks. Ah well, things happen. Will post eventually.

2 comments:

Stephen Morrissey said...

Hi Brian,

Welcome home! I was wondering if you were offline due to computer problems.

Maybe you have more comments re. the AGM in Vancouver? I'd like to hear how it went.

Have you seen www.poetry-quebec.com, a terrific new online poetry and poetics journal? I recommend it.

Stephen

Brian Campbell said...

Hi Stephen,

I'm slow to respond. Will post, I hope, about a workshop on the anthology wherein I took extensive notes (if I can decipher them). The journal looks interesting indeed, although Dudeck's work -- what I've read of it -- has never really rocked my world.