Links

• The Last Poet To Win The Nobel Prize
• Found: Dorothy Parker poem reveals pain of rejection
• Do You Believe in Magic? {congratulations!}
• I was about to say that I don’t understand how people can get upset at a lowly little poetry magazine that runs at a loss for the love of the game — but I guess I do understand
• Writers share the rituals of writing — or not —

Author Interview/Passenger Flight review at Concordia Link

Brian Campbell explores modern techniques of torture and technology in Passenger Flight. GRAPHIC JONAS PIETSCH

PASSENGER FRIGHT
Brian Campbell publishes post-9/11 prose poems
by Christopher Olson

We’ve come a long way since Leonard Cohen wrote those famous lyrics, “She feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China.”

“Now everything comes from China,” said Brian Campbell, whose book of prose poems, Passenger Flight, invokes global warming, globalization, 9/11 and state-sanctioned torture.

“The Angel,” originally published in the 1980s, views torture from the point of view of the torturer and resonates a tad differently post-Abu Ghraib. When Campbell wrote about torture, he was referring to German SS physician and lead human experimentalist Josef Mengele.

Most of the book, however, was written starting in 2006... read on.

That's me reading from and giving a talk about Passenger Flight at the U. of Winnipeg last week. If the picture's a little blurry, it's because it was taken without a flash. It was a really enjoyable event -- made me wonder if I had missed a vocation (i.e. being a prof). I read about 7 poems, talked about how they came to being -- and the audience, about 45 (mostly) creative writing students, were attentive and asked good questions.

As for the reading at Aqua Books, well, it could have been better for a bunch of reasons, most of which I won't go into here. The limited attendance (8 -- typical for a bookstore poetry reading featuring a relatively unknown out-of-towner) was made to feel skimpier by the huge mausoleum-like upstairs room (I mean, it has a stage and about a hundred seats in rows) the organizers chose to hold it in. The bookstore is funky and attractive, and to their credit, they hold a lot of events, but relative unknowns be forewarned: if you're coming in from out of town, request that the reading take place in some intimate nook among the books, as is pictured on their website.

ADDENDUM:

This blog has been receiving a lot of visits lately via a post by the owner of Aqua Books. Granted, this was not my best reading. Combining music and poetry in the way I did (it had been suggested by a couple of audience members) was not a great idea; I did read too long. Some people told me they enjoyed it nevertheless. There was a multitude of factors behind this reading going the way it did. However, it does not warrant the kind of personal attack this individual has leveled against me. I’ve delivered excellent readings before, and indeed, have since. If anything positive has happened besides this having been a learning experience, it's the fact that he's brought people to my site. I invite all those readers to look around, read recent reviews of Passenger Flight as well as of my music, and enjoy the discussion, quotes, and links to other fine articles about literature and the poetic life.

Free Rice

I am thankful to be having 2 Thanksgiving dinners this weekend. The World Food Program is running out of food. Go to the Free Rice site and by playing a word game, donate a dinner to someone who might die without it! I just donated 1,400 grains of rice. http://www.freerice.com/index.php

(NB. Thanks to Elise Moser (facebook post) for this -- most of the wording is hers, but applies to me as well.)

Links

-- Herta Mueller wins the Nobel Prize for Literature (Manchester Guardian)
-- Mueller's win: is the Nobel committee Eurocentric?
Other articles:
“The first function of a literary magazine is to introduce the work of new or little-known writers of talent.”
— At first glance it seems the relationship is largely one way – that modern cinema is less enamoured with poetry than with poets’ life stories. —
— One burning question I remember having at the time was: Why doesn’t poetry rhyme anymore? —
-- Sina Queyras on reading styles --
— Killer poet pleads for release —

... the tour continues...

Click thru to see large...

Passenger Flight lands in Winnipeg

WINNIPEG LAUNCH OF PASSENGER FLIGHT
Featuring Brian Campbell + Lori Cayer
Aqua Books
Friday, October 2, 2009, 7:00pm - 9:00pm
274 Garry Street (between Graham and Portage)
Winnipeg, MB


Please join us in welcoming Montreal poet and singer-songwriter Brian Campbell, who published his latest book with Winnipeg's Signature Editions. Brian will be joined by Winnipeg's Lori Cayer.