News

Two prose poems from Passenger Flight with French translations by poets Nancy Lange and Véronique Gagnon are forthcoming in Brèves littéraires, the journal of the Société Litteraire de Laval. 

An Unremitting Eye

My review of Steven Heighton's fifth poetry collection, Patient Frame, is up at The Rover.  A book I highly recommend, by the way.

The fresh phrase here is "Global Weirding".

Canada Culture Anxiety

"There are two warring tendencies" in the government, said [Ian] Morrisson [of Friends of Canadian Broadcasting]. "On the one hand, people high in the administration have said they're going to maintain or increase support for the CBC. On the other hand, you have people in the Conservative (party) making anti-culture statements. I could see it going either way."



He believes Harper will put aside unpopular, neo-conservative moves to close down public broadcasting and end Canadian-content regulations.


"I think he'll see that building the mainstream brand of the Conservative Party is the most important thing. He wants it to become the dominant mainstream party, occupying the center and thus be in power for a long time. So I think it's more likely that the Conservative will not enact anti-culture policies. But it's not a slam-dunk." The other fear is related to the government's reform of the Copyright Act, delayed by the election. Many in the film, TV and music business feel this law will not do enough to protect artists' rights.

Canadian Election

The NDP may have gained unprecedented power within the opposition last night, but that opposition lost much of its power as the Conservatives were able to edge themselves, due to the vagaries of our "first-past-the-post" system, into a comfortable majority.   As this analysis puts it,  they'll be able to ram through pretty well anything they want -- and expect them to ignore the fact that they still represent less than 40% of those who voted, and 24% of the electorate overall.

Some foregone conclusions:  expect no action on environment, wasted money on jets and jails, permanent consolidation of the corporate right as the Cons continue to cut corporate taxes, stock the Supreme Court with their own and kneecap other parties by eliminating their per-vote election subsidy. The CBC and Canada Council are, of course, vulnerable to similar crippling... expect widening holes in our social security net and economic inequalities -- and their related social ills -- to intensify.