Author, author!

Book Review of Turning Left to the Ladies by Kate Braid

2010-02-13T13:23:00.000-08:00

by Andrea McKenzie Raine

Kate Braid's most recent book of poetry, Turning Left to the Ladies, published by Palimpset Press, is a personal account of being a woman working in the male-dominated construction industry. The poet weathered the daily battery of sexism and prejudice from her co-workers, and built protective walls to hold on to her position. She endured a series of initiations upon entering her profession, and her thorough knowledge of the work, tools and terminology earned her the credentials to write about being on the job, in her own right.
The poems move through the speaker's self-doubt, vulnerability, determination and, finally, acceptance. The poem, "How She Knows", demonstrates the speaker's dogged strength in a weaker position as she creates a wall between herself and her co-workers in the face of inevitable defeat. In the poem, "Spy", Braid attempts to blend in, to shed the female body and name and become a fellow worker; to learn more than the trade. The serious subject matter of the book also resonates through touches of humour and cheek, in the speaker's defiant attempts to transform from woman to construction worker, and to embrace her inner female again. This is evident in the poem, "The Female Form" in the line: Carpenteress--yes. I work hard at it, this look/ of the great outdoors, doing the work of men.
Strangely, the details of construction work in the poems mirror the construction of poetry in its rhythm of procedure, form, logic and demand for precision. The rhythm and cadence echo a swinging arm. Braid also taps into alliteration and personification, and explores an intimacy with building tools and the art of construction. Who knew there was a wealth of poems in the construction trade?
Braid has a sincere love and respect for the work, despite the need to disguise her gender. She re-emerges in her true skin at the end of her shift, as described in the poems "Day's End" and "Post-modern Breasts in the Bath". Slowly, steadily, she abandons her disguise and the poems move into a celebration of woman, amidst the paradox desire to disappear as woman. The poems ease into a place of acceptance and a stronger comfort with handling the tools, the men and herself. The hidden female voice emerges, still wary but with presence.

Book Review of Huge Blue by Patrick Pilarski

2010-02-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

by Andrea McKenzie Raine

Patrick Pilarski's small poems, or meditations, in his first collection Huge Blue leave monumental footfalls in recording the various terrains of western Canada. In the tradition of Japanese poetry--haiku, haibun, tanka and senryu--the crisp and condensed images embody a larger experience and draw the reader into a heightened intimate moment. Pilarski uses these forms to capture his relationship with the natural world. The poems are placed like small stepping stones across the varying landscapes, and mark the resting points where the poet reflects on the journey's highlights with his travel companion. In Pilarski's use of the tanka prose and haibun form, there is a sprinkling of humour or surprise in the normalcy of everyday actions or reactions to the unfolding of the speaker's surroundings. For instance, in the poem "Last Load", the speaker comments on the adjustments to a new environment after a long journey and how his partner suddenly remembers 'the box of handmade pottery above the stove'. There is a sense of restlessness in an otherwise state of exhaustion; something random and contrast.
The poems also reflect on the seasons, and how the weather and natural landscapes are parallel to how the poet moves through his emotions in these changing landscapes. Nature is also personified, as witnessed in the lines: two mountains/ cross-legged in the valley/ watching the storm/ one pulls the screen, changes/ into its best white gown. Pilarski focuses on the seemingly small, yet miraculous happenings in the natural world. The use of the Japanese poetic form is appropriate to record these snapshots of time and place, and to share these personal experiences on a global plane. Huge Blue is published by leaf press. For more information, visit www.leafpress.ca.

Poetry to prose, and back again

2009-06-08T19:59:00.000-07:00

Through unfavourable circumstances, I am now able to concentrate on my writing at home. Unfortunately, I was not able to cope in my day job due to unnecessary stress imposed upon me. I am feeling more motivated now to wrap up one or two writing projects that are near completion, before our little one arrives at the end of the summer.

My two main projects are completing my novel manuscript and finding a home for my 2nd poetry manuscript. I have taken an interest in screenwriting -- especially with my draft novel in mind. Recently I enrolled in a two-day screenwriting workshop, and am feeling inspired to explore this new genre. It seems I am moving away from poetry for the moment, although the poems are always there. There are so many different worlds of writing. Every world of writing also seems daunting and foreign until you learn the rules and the mold. It is a brave case of jumping in to see how deep the waters run.

Writing thoughts

2009-03-04T13:08:00.001-08:00

I have been away - busy, in fact, working on another kind of poem that takes nine months to write. In the way of writing, I have been out of the literary loop for a few months, and am slowly emerging back out of my sleep-induced, sickly days. Still, I am continuing to write meditative couplets, creating a small book of poetry dedicated to my unborn. I have also been thankfully receiving my annual copyright entitlement cheques from Access Copyright and the Public Lending Rights Commission, which has been nice recognition for my work and validation as a poet, albeit widely unknown.

My Friday nights of reading poetry have gone to the wayside for the time being, as my work week seems to suck me dry by day five. I will get back into my old footing... just takes a little fire being lit under my butt.

I am struggling with the google books situation, wondering how to approach the fact that nearly my entire book is available for free online, and a measly one-time compensation of $60US from Google to keep it that way. What to do?

I am still working on my novel, Turnstiles, which becomes more and more like a beast that demands feeding. I am thinking of adding the background to another secondary character, but their back story is the length of a novella on its own. I'm still in the thinking, sketching, note-taking stage: I try to remind myself that the words are there, and that this isn't writer's block. It is an irrational fear... like walking into a disgustingly dirty kitchen and knowing it has to be cleaned -- and you are the only one who can clean it.

So, if any of you thought I was dead, I am not... although some days I am a little brain-fried and immobile. I am here, I am writing, and I will come back.

Happy New Writing Year!

2009-01-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

Like a sleepy bear, I am emerging from my winter hibernation cave once again. I have not blogged for nearly two months and, although it may be a relatively short time, it feels like an eternity. Some of you may have noticed that I have disappeared for a longer stretch - this was because on the advice of a wise friend I chose to limit my viewing access from potential couplet thieves (see morning couplets). With that said, if any of you wish to be removed from my blog list, please let me know.

As with the start of every year, I am full of writing ideas and hoping for the stamina to see them all through. My first goal is to finish my novel manuscript (on draft #3, and counting) and ship it off to a literary agent by summer 2009. This is going to be a year of creation. I have a novel to complete, a novella to work on, poems to polish and send out (I received another rejection letter recently, but the rejection had a surprisingly encouraging tone), and short stories to ponder.

In my wildest of dreams, I am continuously scheming a way to either have a day job that I passionately love (publishing leaps to mind), or set myself up so that I can become a full-time writer at home (years in the making)! In the meantime, I aim to connect and reconnect with writing friends and groups. I know I can't do it all, and life/work balance is always a challenge, but this is my endeavour.

In the midst of the Christmas craziness and, well, work and home life in general, I have neglected my writing lately. I've been stealing away poetic couplets on post-it notes at work and journal when I have the time and energy, but I have to admit that the rest of the time I've been a slave to the great winter past-time: television (or the idiot box, if you prefer). However, I have been reading steadily, with a stack of books awaiting me. I also managed to pull off a few book reviews in the fall that can be viewed in The Pacific Rim Review of Books. The current issue isn't posted online, yet, but you can visit the site at: http://www.prrb.ca/.

In the end of November 2008, I attended my annual poetry retreat at Glenairely with Patrick Lane and a group of both familiar and new writers. We spent a glorious 4-day session wringing poems out of us that we weren't sure would come. They leaped forward with pure magic, along with our new found connections and stories. The space itself lends a certain kind of magic, one that is hard to imitate once we all find ourselves back at home in our own quiet writing spaces.

I intend to make good use of my writing space this year, for as long as I can; to embrace it unabashed and with full force. I am surrounded by shelves filled with imaginative words in this room from the living and dead. If these books can't talk to me, or if I can't find inspiration here... well, that would be the unthinkable.

Beyond Measure - A Book Review

2008-11-09T19:16:00.001-08:00

by Andrea McKenzie Raine

Pauline Holdstock's novel, Beyond Measure, takes place in Italy in the 1500s, and spirals around the main characters Paolo, Orazio, his daughter and assistant Sofonisba, Ceccio the land lord, Matteo Tassi, Alessandro and Caterina, the slave girl. Each character has a desire to be appreciated, if not seen.

Paolo, an artist, treats human subjects like objects; he searches for the inanimate flesh to make it come alive once again in his art. He cannot see beyond his own flesh and, therefore, has a compulsive need to capture the beauty of the human form in his paintings. He is calculating, methodical and manipulative in the way he obtains these objects. Paolo attempts to move past the emotional element of his subjects to get to the purpose of his art, as illustrated in the following passage:

"...The skin of a hanged man is as the skin of any other. It is its own miracle, a paragon of suppleness and strength and exquisite sensitivity and, when hairless and smooth as in youth and in the female form, a thing of beauty beyond compare."

When Caterina, the slave girl, is presented to Paolo, he becomes obsessed with the living quality of her female form and her strange markings. Caterina is an unwitting gift or pawn, passed around between the characters for the benefit of monetary, artistic and personal status. Paolo insists on painting her in the nude, as he says "a muse clothed is against Nature. The muse must be naked. She is naked truth. The naked flame of inspiration."

The novel examines the existing classes, and relationships between master and slave. The need each character has to interact with the other characters, in their varying positions, is modeled on hierarchy, obedience, responsibility and human value. Paolo reserves the right to manipulate human beings to dissect and exploit them, for the sake of art. Still, for his livelihood and art, he must answer to his landlord, Ceccio.

The circling relationships between the characters are interconnected and dependent, with different agendas revolving around their individual needs for the slave girl, Caterina. She will win them esteem, power, love, or artistic pursuit. Art and people are for bartering, and a means of ownership. Nothing is sacred in terms of art or human life, as each are subject to revisions.

Art is the central theme, and the characters are tied to it either physically or intrinsically. Holdstock's writing is thorough and painstakingly descriptive. She leaves out no detail of the work involved. For instance:

"Carefully he sticks pins into the anima and, in a process of trial and error, positions it securely in the mould, closing the two halves round it. The protruding pins keep it away from the inner walls; it hangs inside, clear of the shell of the mould, trapped and at the same time free, the way, Maestro Paolo once remarked, the rough unfinished soul hangs inside the body, a disparate element, longing for fire. So the artist's work, said Maestro Paolo, was the mirror of God's creation, Man."

The language used is clinical and instructive, and yet poetic and transcendent. Beyond Measure is, essentially, a commentary on art: how one's work is viewed by outsiders, other artists and critics, and the lengths that artists will go to come close to divinity. As well, the sacrifices people will make to achieve their desires.

Morning Couplets

2008-11-02T09:49:00.000-08:00

Create the day, and erase; release the mind’s fallacies,
events holding you, that aren’t otherwise real.

A chair in the corner, a book moved on the bookcase,
evidence of someone paying attention to the outside.

This house holds in the heat, the writing room
cold enough for work.

The dark mornings disorient, stumbling to work down dark roads;
the owl doesn’t know it is daylight – hoots nocturnally in the tree.

I wake up to duty, to feed the cats; I stay awake,
get ready to tread off in my good clothes and stay inside all day.

The left hand has never met the right one,
and doesn’t know it is doing anything.

I question how I spend eight hours of my day –
growing or drowning, learning or head-splitting?

The extroverted world makes me go inwards;
everyone plugged into each other – no space for a silent thought.

A blank wall, blank screen, black night; a bright mind,
a chance for something to happen.Days dying.

They all go with no ticket,
no test, no shiny diploma - they pass through.

The Blackbird’s Song by Pauline Holdstock

2008-11-01T12:43:00.000-07:00

by Andrea McKenzie Raine

The Blackbird’s Song is a story about the challenges of faith. The reader is introduced to a group of three Christian missionaries who are chosen and sent to China to ‘spread the word’ by holy instruction.

The story is told through the eyes of one of the missionaries, Emily, who watches as her companions, one being her husband, William, struggle along with her in China’s harsh and unpredictable environment. The group also has the obstacle of not starting off strong and united, as a woman, Martha, exhibits extremist behaviour in the group and rails against the intent of the group for adaptation and survival in the strange country. Their struggles deepen as horrible mishaps befall them, and Emily begins to lose her sense of faith. A division begins to take place within the group, as conflicting ideals either real or perceived are brought to the surface, which in turn bring about internal conflicts and suppression of true feelings.

The language is poetic. For instance, “Tsechow was spread below them like a wasp’s nest broken open in the sun.” Holdstock also uses strong, descriptive images to evoke the emotions in the characters and the impact of their new environment. As well, the frequent use of short, fragment sentences echoes the abruptness and urgency of changing scenery, quick action, and sharp, violent thoughts.

The undercurrents carry the tense vibe of changing ideas, while there are increasing overtones of religious strife. Emily is steadily drifting from the group, into herself and questioning her faith and reasons for being there, while Martha is drifting away further into the dangers of the country and her own madness. Emily becomes disillusioned with the idea of God, and feels abandoned. There are also children included in the journey, those of Emily and her husband, who are suffering alongside the adults through the elements and trials of the failing mission.

There is a division of purpose in the group that emerges, displayed in the notions of Christian beliefs, religious extremism, and paganism threatening their united ability to infiltrate the society and assist the Chinese people. Still, there is a silence in the group, as the members don’t wish to communicate these changing dynamics. The mission is falling apart, as the each of the members begin to succumb, in their own way, to the unrelenting landscape and people. New demons arise to test the foreigners, and the group begins to collapse within itself as a result of mind-trickery, obsession, fear and suspicion.

The foreigners face an upward battle, and a constant threat of death, in a land that doesn't want them. Eventually, their stead-fast and narrow views about fortune, faith and god become inverted in the culture they were once trying to save.

Morning Couplets

2008-11-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

Words wrestle in me like pregnant thoughts,
their small serifs poke through tissue, paper thin and full of intent.

Skin letting go from muscle; the flesh rises along with me,
a memory of some past self, now buried under life.

It is possible to carve the day into slices,
watch the clock, don’t watch the clock, and watch the clock again.

A thin layer of frost holds in the day,
we should all be sleeping still.

I am not awake for his humour, a side wit;
as my brain still adjusts from dark to light, blur to focus.

Why does the self turn, like a revolving snakehead?
Strike at others, fangs ready to bite into itself.

Chataranga; body made of softwood, this pose
a strengthening of the will to bend, and not break.

Fur flying at 4am, and squawking like a seagull
inside the house, begging for something we can’t give.

A pursuit of being happy; the completeness
and the work that comes with luck.

The art of slowing; to dip into the future,
taking in each minute, the length of a breath and holding.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-30T07:15:00.000-07:00

One poet thinking,
holding a universal thought.

One degree of separation exists between bird and beggar.
The bird finds a new lookout.

I berate my heavy eyelids after a night of TV.
I could have earned my red eyes working at words.

Sharing poems, extending words to teach;strangers, connecting, creating community.
I am behind in my organization, the folders on my desk need names and homes.

A work day lost; my morning head is irritated
by this rude awakening of wellness.

My daily scribbling lost, on a yellow notepad,
in a meeting; instructing me on how to reflect on things.

My lighter hair streaks, fading and brittle, reveal the darker source;
these features that don’t matter – not now, not yet.

After a swollen-eyed night
with his ankle on mine, a paperweight.

Waiting for this life to begin, I linger in dreams for
someone to happen, and a golden band around my finger.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-29T07:21:00.000-07:00

I make sure we kiss before sleep, waking, and going to work;
his arms, a solid vice around me, say the new day is okay.

The quiet way she enters, long solid legs touch lightly on grass
with her feminine stance, delicately tasting the leaves.

Sun hitting leaves, and the sporadic rain
glistens on the outer walls of a gray house.

A bird high in the tree, small
and invisible, sings its life.

The clear sharp night makes us
pull our sleeves over our hands, stand closer.

Fallen leaves wait in the yard to be gathered;
their tired, frail bodies brightly finished.

The gray, near-fall morning creeps in, and the only warmth
that brings me out of bed – your lips on my lips – a soft parting with sleep.

I can’t visit the dead; dig into the ground
to shake hands after they have shaken off the earth.

I look for a clean spot on my Kleenex,
summer dribbling from my nose.

A family of deer at dawn,
mama leading her kids to the low branches.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

We stand at our kitchen window, waking up to a deer strolling
into our backyard; a new neighbour.

Mornings and evenings drift away – the time we call ours;
the days we pack tight, to get through them like mud.

I think of my weight in the morning,
how I am better, smaller and unburdened.

The day adds pounds of decision and thought,
I struggle with my balance.

Our fridge moans and the backroom door sticks,
while we move ourselves into the cupboards and vents.

A mountain of boxes, and the military-like strategy of where to fit
what might not fit, but will, as we chip away at the walls.

A fog settles on the house, the street, the trees lose their contrast;
I shuffle inside the halls, put air back in and stretch out of night.

My first morning commute, the art of time management;
I suck back tea and jump headlong into wakefulness.

The difficulty of having a teacher, who feels too familiar
and thoughts slip in and out so easily; there is no room to second guess.

We stop the car, after a cartoon ride – my foot covets the clutch,
after gearing up and down, too slow, too quick to take a turn.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-27T10:42:00.000-07:00

The quiet push to be writing, submitting, creating; the pull of work
and an urgency of time to be clean, ready and fed.

We join our finances, make a solid foundation;
a pool to pull together our lives, and our pursuits.

Drive in our car, buy our groceries,
expect my parents for dinner – share our union.

Yesterday, I stayed in my crusty shell, looked desperately for a beach, somewhere
to retreat and be in the salt; I don’t know why the urge seems so easy.

This morning we touch lips lightly, and I hear you stir my tea, as always,
an offering; a quiet word, mouthing “I love you” as you go out the door.

Shifting gears in a parking lot, I swerve around the invisible cars; gear down,
with the radio on low. After hours, lights on, I learn to be calm.

My voice swells like a small ball in my throat, expands into sound,
commits me to brave tasks – makes me be heard; I begin speaking in poems.

On the street, they wake up to the same day as yesterday, and glide through it sleepwalking, swerving, jabbing and bullshitting.

I walk past the unemployed, lined up, hopeful for a little more,
or the ones hovering nearby, downtown philosophers, guarding their shopping carts.

Our cat tries to get to the ghost in the bathroom, scratching
the door. He wants someone to be awake, and to follow him nowhere.

The Art of Reading Poems

2008-10-26T12:11:00.000-07:00

As writers, we read poetry for pleasure and to better understand the craft; however, the work of reading a poem often requires great diligence. I've joined another poetry group that is more focused on analyzing the techniques and building of poems. Monthly, we gather in a small group to critique how a poem works. We are given an assignment ahead of time, to look at varying aspects of how poems are built i.e. rhythm or beat, imagery, metaphor, structure, themes, etc. Essentially, we review the poems that members bring to discuss/debate what the poet is attempting to do with the poem, and whether or not it is working. This group was organized by David Kosub, through the participation of members from the Planet Earth Poetry reading series. The blog for our group can be found at: http://www.speakingofpoems.blogspot.com/.

I attended my first meeting last week, and found the experience highly engaging. Initially, we brought these poems as curious readers, looking to the group for help in gaining a clearer insight into these poems, and asking the questions: What am I missing? What point is the poet trying to make? Where is the poem going? Why is this poem not accessible? We observed the rhythm of these poems, and quickly slid into the leaps of metaphor, first debating over whether the poet's intent was to be literal or substituting for a larger theme, such as the interpretation of Ted Hughes' poem, Poor Birds.

In the boggy copse. Blue

Dusk presses into their skulls

Electrodes of stars. All night

Clinging to sodden twigs, with twiggy claws,

They dream the featherless, ravenous

Machinery of Heaven. At dawn, fevered,

They flee to the field. All day

They try to get some proper sleep without

Losing sight of the grass. Panics

Fling them from hill to hill. They search everywhere

For the safety that sleeps

Everywhere in the closed faces

Of stones.

We wrestled with this poem. At first, we read the poem literally, seeing the birds as doing their bird-like activities. Then one member brilliantly pointed out: I see soldiers. The meaning of the poem instantly turned, as we began to pull out War images of front-line soldiers, and the emotions and actions associated with battle. This revelation occurred in many of the poems we were critiquing, and as a group we became elevated in our discoveries as somewhat novice readers.

Unlike my participation in our Waywords poetry group, we are not working on our own poems, but doing collective work to understand the poetry that is existing in the world by either esteemed or not-so-familiar poets.

I admit, I don't usually have enough time to commit to reading poems, although my book shelves are stacked with poetry simply waiting to be read, understood and appreciated. This group lends the opportunity to return to these poems and dissect them. After all, if a writer doesn't understand what other writers are doing, how can they model or improve their own work? Or have an intelligent discussion about literature and what they are attempting to do on their own? With my wine glass in hand, a gas fire blazing nearby, and notebook on my lap, I relished in the company of writers and the nostalgic atmosphere of being part of a 'study group' of sorts.

The group discussion was open and respected, as we all brought our different views and interpretations to the table, and bounced them around the living room. Often we will bring our pre-determined views and life experiences to a poem and, although it useful, it is not always easy to then carve away our own biases and see the true message of the poem, or accept the poet in their intent. Still, once the reader 'gets it', it is easier to develop a clearer opinion about the poet's intent and be able to understand why or why not we favour a poem. I look forward to our next meeting of poetic minds.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-26T12:08:00.000-07:00

Every morning, we water the cats – let the flower petals burn,
until evening, dry and reaching; overflowing with summer.

The short hours of night often eclipse the daytime,
and leave us like vampires forced out of the dark.

A lifetime of doing and the hours to allow for such learning;
we put down the foundation blocks, make order and try to fit in the time.

I wake up to stories in the world, a light going on;
there is movement, and a promise.

I try to find sleep in the corner of my brain,
my fingers tick like the clock on the wall, counting the day.

The campfire smoke lingers in my hair, a weekend of being out of doors,
and I watch him closely while he stares at the fire, traveling.

We arrive home with salt and dirt in our hair; wash off our breathing shells,
and hold onto the presence of curious children, being reckless.

I think of how every morning you will be here, and I close my eyes
smiling, stroking the cat, and watching you move through the room.

All I can say, right now, is baby, and you rub my stomach and say yes,
and I say soon, and you say wait, and I say now.

An old flame sits in our living room, makes small references
to a time gone; we three laugh together, easily, at such changes.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-23T07:04:00.000-07:00

Traffic-jam arteries and toothpick eye sockets;
heavy fingers type, carve tunnels, pound out the day.

Today, I leave my pillow at the same time I started my first day,
when she may have pulled me to her breast or watched me float away in white arms.

Light leaves us and we are left in a cave; we’d rather see
the false shadows on the wall than this reality.

A gun shot no one hears; the birds and deer won’t tell us
his last words spoken in love into the night.

The shell of a day waits to be filled,
an empty pie crust, cooling.

We fall back to last week, when the world was round and unaltered;
now the world is triangular, balancing on a fragile point.

We walk about in this Labyrinth, look into the trick mirrors
and find nothing, nothing that will convince us that we are real.

The alarm goes off, and is shut down; we try to push the numbers back
for sleep, and for the sake of our brief mortality.

My bones want to stretch long, greet the day unfolded
with arms raised high like an arch, a lightning rod.

A wet spot on the counter, another drop in the pond; I slide
out of bed and bend my knees to walk.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-22T18:12:00.000-07:00

Owning of space, owning our schedules and property, owners of
our family rights, our time to go forth.

A morning run to shake off these emotional holds
like leaves, separating, only to return next season.

Our cats paw at the flower boxes, run circles
in a confined space; a mock freedom, a trial run.

This temporary space, a countdown to the next phase;
more ground and duty, our sanctuary.

For a year the slow hand ticks, then spins around
the clock, a measurement of our lives and the time we fill.

A ship sunk and I had not thought of icy waters before,
only bodies lost, and large print on front page headlines.

Amazing Grace drifts over the trees, takes me over the sea;
a transport – and gray air hangs around the dull heat.

I learn to shift gears in the evenings; park,
travel in slow, deliberate circles, and release the clutch.

I am not in the middle of traffic; I am
the girl in the wading pool learning to float.

Rain pelts the ground, a summer drink;
my bloodstream idles, meanders through these moving limbs.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

We put down our pens and head for airplanes; we disband
for another year in solitary corners of the country.

A puncture in my large toe drains out the nutrients;
My foot sags in puddles dragged behind me.

I take the weather everywhere
a small notebook in my pocket.

We head up island on new wheels
christened by suicide insects and quiet stones in the road.

We strip down our house to make it less ours;
the thought of leaving and others invading this space.

Agreements made, subject to time and money,
we wake each day to find out if we won.

A house at the end of a street waits for us
to enter, first in our dreams and then with solid, waking steps.

Our cats go outside without restraints,
a balancing act of trust and independence.

One falls off the balcony, clawing at the air all the way down
perhaps he wonders, how did this happen? How did I get here?

A series of days spent, filling large bins
with our belongings to keep and to purge.

The Work of Being Read

2008-10-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

Over the past week, I have been working at choosing poems for my next flurry of submissions to various Canadian literary anthologies. I haven’t sent out my work in months, so it is about time to get back in the saddle. I am going to try and keep my ‘balls in the air’ by keeping my poems in circulation, rather than put all of my eggs in one basket, sending select poems to one literary magazine, and waiting for a yay or nay letter in four to six months. I have also been passing out my draft manuscript of Turnstiles to friends and family, and patiently awaiting feedback and reviews. I’ve already been given a few valuable suggestions and much encouragement. Last week Patrick held an intimate reading for the launch of his debut novel, Red Dog, Red Dog at the Alix Goolden Hall in Victoria. He said something at the reading that stuck with me: writing about what you know does not mean writing about everything that has happened to you personally. Writing about what you know means having a wealth of information gathered from all the shows you’ve watched, people you’ve met, books you’ve read, news stories, foreign places you’ve been to or heard about, and conversations you’ve had with other people and picking up pieces of their lives.

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the 5th Annual Victoria Butler Book Prize Awards gala in the Union Club Building. I was cheering on two friends of mine, who are becoming celebrated authors in their own right: JoAnn Dionne (Little Emperors: A Year with the Future of China) and Arleen Pare (Paper Trail). I have reviewed both of these excellent books on my blog. JoAnn’s book is a memoir about her experience teaching English to elementary school children in China, and Arleen’s book is a mixture of poetry, fiction and memoir about her years working in government beauracracy. Arleen Pare won the Victoria Butler Book prize for adult literature. There was also an award presented for the category of Children’s literature, created by Bolen Books. It was an exciting night for all of the short-listed authors, presenters and guests!

Morning Couplets

2008-10-16T07:18:00.000-07:00

We want to move. Move into larger living, move into money,
into the world. We want steps that lead up to our front door.

After an explosion of tee-lite wax in the bathroom,
she bites at her fur, pink and sticky.

He rolls out of bed and onto the highway,
a 40-minute ride out of three hours sleep, to work.

Morning light changes the slant of shadow
on the hardwood floor, near the sleep-dented couch.

We run in concentric circles, only bumping into each other
at night, when time stops, when our hands and thoughts begin to merge again.

Stiff tendons and swelled joints, a few pints in my belly,
after running in circles overnight.

We all fall asleep at breakfast, and watch our friend nurse another beer,
head bobbing, one for the road; the antidote.

We move toward each other under the sheets, push off the comforter, and huddle against
the hot noise complaints and cramped living.

I concentrate on slow movements – reach my hands up and swan dive into a forward-fold
my head heavy, hanging; the backs of my legs tingling, taller.

As day crawls over the city I am leaving, I wait on a curb for the sun to hit me,
dodge rain drops, and fizzle with the heat of going back.

Announcements

2008-10-16T07:14:00.000-07:00

Last night, the winners of the 5th Annual Victoria Butler Book Prize were announced: Arleen Pare (Adult Literature) and Chris Tougis (Children's Literature). Check out the website at: http://www.victoriabutlerbookprize.ca/vbbp.html

Morning Couplets

2008-10-15T17:48:00.000-07:00

A split in the brain, sharp pain in my hair follicle;
she lies on a steel plate, in a drawer, gone from everyone.

In the silence, there is a death; and after death
there is a pause that gives way to memory and heartbreak.

My parents’ house filled with souls, living and gone;
I can’t say any are dead, some of them I bring home.

We layer the floor with area rugs, overlap themes,
patterns and colours with rubber underlay, a sound barrier.

I’ve seen the house I want for us, in my mind,
the corridors are wide and each room holds a life and purpose.

Guitar strings pluck at my brain, her voice
still uncoils, rises up from inside my ribs.

A small woman on a stage can make a noise that resounds
around the earth, a tidal wave builds, with us in the arena.

A rumble in the dark, my face stuffed into a pillow,
to deafen the sound, and his hand soothes a beast I did not invite.

A heart-shaped token of something sweet, to chase away
bad dreams. My loose eye sockets and sad shoulders.

We walk through houses, perhaps ours, survey
the dimensions and wall colour; envision ourselves.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-12T11:00:00.000-07:00

I move through the day like thick sludge, my feet
drag weight, my voice low, sparse, selective.

I pull myself up and out, look towards work and next year,
a favourite TV show, and think of her not being able.

Saying goodbye with her absent hand under mine,
thin skin rolling off her body, she begins to shed this life.

Our short hallway, a race track, our cats slalom
around corners with expertise, their legs no longer fishtailing behind.

A noise complaint at 7 am; we know our cats
don’t have room to stretch their claws, or the capacity to tell time.

A popping microphone and glowing stage; a heavy silence
breath held in and my words fill their ears.

Into the ring with another poet, this elbowing for space
in the local magazine, on the stage, in the mail, on the list.

The cars line the street, bumper to bumper, snails
turning into jaguars, watching for red circles.

He says he doesn’t want to go, go there, go anywhere
clutching his travel mug, glazed eyes seeing the tires in front.

The world wakes up without her;
my limbs are heavy and overworked.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-11T10:27:00.000-07:00

He stumbles into his clothes, his head full of sleep,
toothpaste kisses – his contracted nose, trying to keep the sickness in.

A dream of an old lover’s car – the colour, style, speed;
the teenaged debt and driving without a licence.

The way the sun hit the campsite, small planes overhead;
only a few rabbits now – the buildings, smaller.

Cats break our ribs as they race, chasing tails;
the day started, and the quiet corner in the bedroom is gone.

Calendar squares fill up with ink reminders,
a week missing, a long breath exhaled on an empty block.

My muscles decompress from the memory of a yoga mat;
that strange, disobedient body becomes mine, again.

One cat stashes invaluable treasures in the bottom of our bed,
while the other distracts us with hungry head-butts and spurts.

I listen to the colourful lives of others, now gone;
these eccentrics – drinking, marrying, running at the wall.

On my walk to work, I encounter some of the same
faces that show a vague recognition of me, meeting at crosswalks.

Wake with a dry mouth, no sound, no twist in your neck;
my grandma – her eyes practicing sleep, her ears wide open.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

We move like molasses – only noon and the day waits;
we emerge into spring, a slow trot down to the water.

Turn your back on the weather and it will shift,
light rain teases, on and off like a switch – no plan, no warning.

Patches of sunlight or is it false, a stage light or candle beam?
This bluff of rain and spring – the reason, April tip-toeing in.

The idea of work, going out of the house, clogs my arteries;
I fall ahead to 30 years, when I can finish my book.

The time it takes to write a letter and explain
to someone what you can’t give them, unless they are dying for it.

Living inside an astronaut’s helmet, or a deep sea
diver in this comforter – the juice near my bed, oxygen.

He can’t recall his broken sleep, early morning risings;
our Houdini cats wait to be found inside the bathroom.

My head is clear enough to process work; a red line
across his head, in the back, is evidence of a small animal’s distress.

First barefoot day, gathering sand in toes,
rock heat on my soles; write green poems growing.

Wanting to send my stunt double out,
the minutes tick while I look for the right voice to broadcast.

Favourite poem of the month

2008-10-07T17:59:00.000-07:00

PAPER MATCHES

By Paulette Jiles

My aunts washed dishes while the uncles
squirted each other on the lawn with
garden hoses. Why are we in here,
I said, and they are out there?
That's the way it is,
said Aunt Hetty, the shriveled-up one.
I have the rages that small animals have,
being small, being animal.
Written on me was a message,
"At Your Service,"
like a book of paper matches.
One by one we were taken out
and struck.
We come bearing supper,
our heads on fire.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-07T17:53:00.000-07:00

A flurry to sign up before deadline; two days, ten words,
another toss into the contestant hat for some slight recognition.

His ear punctured by morning purrs, head butts
and extended claws; her oblivion in being. Happy.

On Mondays, I have to get rid of the weekend,
and accept that I’ve done all I could do in two sun-filled days.

He traces a raised line of cat claws with kisses
and ointment to draw out the sting, gone down by morning.

Everything I can’t think of from yesterday;
what I can’t say is caught and tangled in a dream catcher.

I mourn the death of pre-children, a sigh of not quite relief;
my boy cat lies outside the bathroom door, waits with me.

I don’t believe this is spring, not yet; still a breeze,
as I walk to work under discarded petals and gray sky.

My cat attacks my toes, under the covers,
an unidentified alien thing moving. What he must believe.

Boiled water in a mug says it is morning, part of
his ritual and mine, when there is time.

I make wet eggs, old eggs, my earnest attempt
at breakfast, he glues on a smile and reheats the pan.

A Circle of Poets

2008-10-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

On the weekend, I had the opportunity to attend an afternoon poetry workshop with an esteemed American poet, Jim Bertolino, at Wendy Morton’s cozy abode in Sooke, B.C. I haven’t attended a concentrated writing workshop in ages, and found it enlightening to once again be in the circle of poets eager to learn, grow and express through exercises and techniques. It was a way to bring me back further into the world of poetry, after drifting for awhile – to think again in terms of the musicality, space, image and rhythm of words. I often feel that I am at home in these circles, brought into an exclusive group with a secret language, flexing our wings.

A Work in Progress

2008-10-07T10:38:00.000-07:00

I am directing my energies towards completing a novella in the first person that is gaining momentum. I am writing about fictional conversations with my grandpa, who passed away nearly ten years ago, using myself also as a loosely fictional character. I am trying to keep his voice real, the way I can still hear him, but it is not easy. Both conversations take place in the mind of the granddaughter who has chosen to retreat to her grandpa’s remote cabin in Golden, B.C. for a summer. I think I can get away with creative licence in not always having the authenticity of his voice, as the voices overlap in thought.

This novella is becoming an important project for me, as it is an opportunity to reconnect with my grandparents and rekindle their personal histories and stories about growing up in early Victoria. When I was younger, I didn’t pay close attention to the wealth of their stories. As well, I lost my grandpa too soon and there were many unfinished conversations, or ones that we never had the chance to start. This is also a chance to ask the questions that he probably wouldn’t have answered, mostly about the time he served in WWII and how that period in his youth affected the rest of his life.

I find myself approaching this project like someone with a long stick poking a sleeping bear – there is so much depth and I want to create a story or environment that unfolds like a journey and does him justice. I don’t want to travel too far down into fabrication, and at the same time I need to be careful of what truths I reveal. I also have many topics to research – as this journey is also physical and geographical. There is travel time involved on roads that I haven’t travelled alone before. I will need to learn about the adventure of driving through the B.C. interior and into the Rockies. I drove across the province once before, as a passenger, to Elkford, B.C. On the way back home, we drove through Golden and slept in the truck on the side of the road. The most I saw of Golden was the sunrise and a gas station. There is no doubt that I have my work cut out for me, and I don’t have the luxury of taking a road trip any time soon.

I also want to incorporate my grandma’s knowledge and love of the wildflowers in B.C. – she was an artist and enjoyed painting our native flowers.

The motivation for this novella was sparked by a contest through Mother Tongue Publishing to write a novel or novella set in British Columbia.

My other news is that last night I received several bound draft copies of my novel, Turnstiles, which were printed for me by a friend. I am so excited to finally have bound copies to pass around to family and friends for review and critique. This will be the final step in making any necessary changes before sending pages with a query letter to a publishing agency.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-06T06:55:00.000-07:00

The cats look out like coast guards on this soggy day;
they watch the birds bathe and squirrels run out of the trees.

Spring clean the litter away, sunlight
picking up every speck of winter’s gray evidence.

Monday again and the rain has stopped, I want him
to photograph the cherry blossoms, in such a way, to inspire.

This renovated space falls apart, old pipe
and broken balcony; the impermanence of things.

Thoughts on an open site – an invitation to write,
to writers, more text to read; another angle of the word.

A red flare rockets, a piece of an old ship
carries ghosts and artifacts, time and uncertainty.

Paint a picture of a past event; the colour is never the same and when is it okay
to blend the colours into something imagined, based on story, and share it?

Possibilities lift from our pillows, and manifest into
real time, a real day – the future not so far.

A phone call can mean everything; tell you who you are
where you’re going next, the weight of those thin lines that connect.

The alarm clock fails to tell him it is morning;
a sudden burst of shower and swearing, cats scatter.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

Wind crashes against window, the hoop and holler
of late night jamboree, and god dousing the flames.

He envelopes me in half sleep, waking, wriggled toes
and skin, here, present and far from dreaming.

A character gently disturbed, tug on his arm,
make him stretch out of mind fibers onto a white page.

Disconnected from the world with a slow Internet,
we rub our eyes, wanting Saturday and unable to accept today.

Sun filters through, Sunday still under a thin blanket;
we wait for the cable guy to hook us up, feed us through chewed wires.

Our alarm slept in and he calmly kisses me, fresh from dreaming;
an hour late, and still he hangs back to kiss the cats, look at me.

Uncoiled from sleep, from winter rains, time springs forward –
a rush to work, pump out night and get ready.

A first bird calling, sings to morning light, a tinkling of glasses;
the way we slowly rub one finger along the rim, arouse our eardrums.

Calculating weeks, looking down the growing beanstalk,
and we passed cloud number nine months ago.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-02T07:09:00.000-07:00

When he’s showered, and dressing in the red-lit room, I am lucid
and try to make my legs move. The neon numbers on the clock are abrupt.

Quiet. Soft scuffing of cat paws, pacing and digging;
the assembly of day, drawing this picture before stepping in.

I bring in music, a small device I will take anywhere;
replace the rhythm in my head and songs I made.

My memory betrays me – his fingernail split and I can’t
remember how; those coarse black hairs grow from the top of my head.

Pulsing the snooze bar and rolling on a wide ocean
of mattress, and pillows like flotation devices.

Finding sleep behind wet, stubborn eyelids;
you lying there, a disturbance in me and nothing to do with you.

His coat on and my eyes adjust, wanting this morning
and no desire for more sleep, the writer awakens.

Early morning complaints from the woman downstairs;
thin walls and a thick head, our need to start the day clean.

Two wrong numbers on Saturday morning, one cat vanished;
the other cat, like Velcro, bristles against my hand.

Sunday with no sun, a day of rest;
a day of rest before resting ends, and the moon, a warden.

Morning Couplets

2008-10-01T19:26:00.000-07:00

Rain and sun together, candles sparking the corners;
intermittent stages of winter slide into spring.

He sleeps off the work, the night, and the sickness;
his body, a dark mound, a fifth grader stayed home.

My brain pounds against pavement; I am already
laced up in shoes, ready to race through puddles.

I pick at my mouth for words, to unclog some dam –
and only coffee drips from my lips; my dry well cracks.

A female clown and daisy-down, upside down frown;
I knew you’d eventually come around.

Claw marks in the table from some desperate escape,
after a new discovery gone wrong by the cat.

A fault in Gibraltar causes the earth to shift, a jolt,
possibly a move closer to home – a broken voyage.

There are no hard barriers – your sleep before I close
my book, your rising before I move a muscle, and the in-between.

When I think to stumble off my pillow, out from a warm night,
I am greeted by day-sleepers, curled up, who don’t talk to me otherwise.

The cats hunt loose thread, and anything that moves;
I chase after an early morning thought.

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew

2008-10-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

The notion of bundling myself under blankets with my books is becoming more and more appealing. I need to start organizing my time better to really accomplish everything I want to do. During the week, I spend nearly ten hours a day away from my house. I know... I can hear your tiny violins, and I also know that I don't have as long or frustrating a commute as many people do, but I still find it difficult to cram into the morning whatever I need to do before work. I mean the time for me. I've given up on my morning yoga, and I am lucky if I can churn out a few morning couplets. I usually leave the house with wet hair and a packed shoulder bag (containing a novel, writer's magazine or notebook for lunchtime). I also faithfully cart around a few copies of my poetry book, A Mother's String, just in case. It is always the way -- as soon as I don't have a copy with me, I meet someone who is interested in buying my book. This rarely happens when I do have my book with me. I wouldn't call this Murphy's Law, but it is definitely annoying.

On the writing front, I may be biting off a little more than I can chew. At least it seems that way at the moment. My husband cooks dinner (I am the luckiest woman in the world!) most nights to allow me the time to write. More thinking and structured planning happens than actual writing, but I do get down some thoughts and decent passages. My poems are usually written at my Waywords group, or unexpected moments. I am currently chipping away at a novella, and I am patiently awaiting the first draft of my novel to be printed in book form for review. I have also committed to writing several book reviews for the Pacific Rim Review of Books (PRRB), and I recently submitted an application for a Canada Council grant to assist in research for my second novel. All of these words, places, characters and story lines are swimming around in my head. I try to ignore the quiet, nagging guilt of trying to write rather than cook for my husband. Yet, I make sure our house is relatively clean and organized. I can't help but think: "I hope this means my work will be published someday".

Room to Write

by Andrea McKenzie Raine

You smell like ashes, your hair is all tangled and you are wearing a dirty old paper bag. Come back when you look like a real princess.
- The Paper Bag Princess

The rest of the house sneers –
who is she to leave hairs in the bathtub,
to leave the unpacked boxes,
to stay absorbed in her books?

Your words smell like ashes, your stanzas are all tangled –
come back when you are a real poet

I look at all my smelly words.

I told someone about my new writing room,
and she said, “Oh, how wonderful
to have a room where you can shut the door.”
But I never do.
I think of how I might be
shutting something out, or in –

I look at all my messy stanzas.

In my room, I bristle a little,
at any intrusion. I fly around
until I am dizzy.

My elbows poke at the four corners of this paper-bag fortress
with its unguarded border; how easily I could flee.
Instead, the room reins me in and marks this territory.

Enough! I puff out my chest, let fly my fiery words
and slay the critic, the cynic, and all the dirty rascals.

Morning Couplets

2008-09-26T07:07:00.000-07:00

Our kittens look innocent after their rampant hours in the dark;
I didn’t dream of them, he didn’t dream at all.

The teasing rain outside, someone playing a drum;
I’m not sure whether to believe the weather.

I pull my sleepy bones into dog-facing down, lunge
into blood flow caffeine flushing, stretch, an offering.

A rare sunlight, rising at noon, small journal entries –
I want to somehow keep the sun in this room.

The warm tea and half-burnt scones don’t entice him
from sleep, a hesitant body, a last day of rest.

Christmas continues to hide in corners, another holiday
of hearts peeks around this week’s bend.

My wits scattered like seeds tossed to chickens;
the day already a puzzle with borrowed pieces, some missing.

On this hearts’ day, we brush lips gently
and later I will bake a cake, deep chocolate, cut to the shape of our love.

As though sleep was something we had not been given, we lie prone
under the sheets, suck air in and out, our inside legs touching, in a three-legged race.

No lights on yet – my mind under a comforter;
I keep the cats off dangerous surfaces where they only hurt things.

Morning Couplets

2008-09-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

This morning dance we invent of up and shower, and up,
and you make me a sandwich and I kiss you to work.

Tucked into this room of furniture, galloping
cats, a computer, and yesterday’s news piled high to ceiling.

We clear away the walkways and dream of three bedrooms,
a space to pursue and unattached walls to inhabit.

The shower echoes the Monday rain, alert;
a deep drone to signify a yawn, as water stretches and pounds.

A small flashlight in the closet, and the cats jump
around you; I watch, in fetal position, not ready for today’s clothes.

And, again, the earth makes its weary rotation
around a new moon, another month to howl at.

A home for my books, that other place I escape to;
the wet sky outside, my warm robe, the reluctant push to go out.

There is the writing that takes place before the actual
writing. The daily work I go to and the stillness of ending night.

An old man in the above suite moves furniture, drags
chair legs and bangs on walls all night; he tries to find
a living space – goes nowhere.

A careful eye on the clock, tick-tock, the sleepy seconds
rushed to write and create a day before I am chained to a different desk.

Morning Couplets

2008-09-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

After the gift giving, paper unwrapped and turkey stuffed,
we lie mesmerized in our new luxuries and reflect on twelve months of plenty.

The year creeps away; remnants of Christmas live in drawers and messages on the phone, a card in the mail, snowflakes held like canopied balloons on New Year’s Eve.

A new year of chance, we spend the first day betting
on low and high cards; we wait for the dealer with hopeful hands.

The computer screen flickers a greeting; the cat watches
from the far armchair, startled by my early morning.

A couple of pills popped mask the sharp pang of Monday;
the weekend residue dissipates into beer and late nights.

Icy roads, the sliding of classical movements;
a high flute, soft snow – or is the air moving frozen air?

This morning, filled with intention, slips through cracks
of sunlight; how my floor is joined, I exist in-between.

A new connection, another woman’s words on the screen;
I invited this – the past woven with present, and welcomed it.

We rise together in a working life, staggered showers
and the first to put on the kettle; a happy shift.

Piano music occupies spacious thoughts; notes remembered
better than words; a jumble of sound that creates order.

The Empress Letters by Linda Rogers – A Book Review

2008-09-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

by Andrea McKenzie Raine

Linda Rogers’ novel, The Empress Letters, is a tale abstractly woven into the historical setting of Victoria, BC during the early 20th century. The story is told through current, intimate letters written by the mother and narrator, Poppy, to her daughter who is lost in China. The word ‘lost’ holds multiple meanings, and sets a tone or an understanding for what is occurring in the narrator’s mind. There are many lost or buried pieces. With the assistance of her travelling companion, Tony, Poppy is on a quest to reclaim her daughter as well as her own truths. The unfiltered letters reveal a strange and hard truth about the unfolding events of the mother’s life. They are also an attempt to explain a family history and rekindle a strained relationship, which has not been reconciled.

The narrator’s experiences of growing into adolescence are somewhat shielded in a proverbial snow-globe of luxury, which is inevitably shattered by the larger, grittier world as she witnesses the human reality of the Chinese slaves “Coolies”, the emergence of World War I, the facades of social hierarchy, and her own confusing desires of coming into womanhood. Her perspective is quickly moved from the smaller scope of her privileged existence to a larger, more philosophical, political and sexually-charged coming of age. Sexual boundaries are crossed, as well as geographical and imaginary ones, which are often skewed by the narrator’s younger, innocent recollections while trying to associate worlds.

Poppy uses art, particularly painting, to define her world through the mentorship of the historical Emily Carr’s free-thinking ideas and committed lifestyle. The historical figures, such as Emily Carr and the Chinese slaves, ‘paint the scenery’ for both social and political events in a turbulent era. For instance, the novel delves into the mysterious underground world of Chinatown during the turn of the century. There is a lesson of place and identity, ritual rhythms, and being safe with your own kind.

There is also constancy in fighting for independence, which resonates through the narrator and her childhood companions. At the same time, they are each in desperate need of support, affection and stability. Poppy revisits her important rites of passage, as she literally journeys across the Pacific Ocean on a cruise ship, The Empress of Asia, to rescue her daughter from the strange, mystical holds of China.

Throughout the letters, there are currents of disruptive change, which are personal, historical or both. The ground shifts underneath like the San Andreas Fault, as Poppy rides the moving earth and adapts to new surroundings in her childhood home, or learns to accept what will not change such as the cruel effects of her distant relationship with her own mother.

Turning Over A New Book Leaf

2008-09-22T18:05:00.000-07:00

The summer has rolled by, and now we are settling into the cooling month of September; embracing a new season with the opportunity for seclusion and reflection. I had a busy summer with a life-changing adventure: marriage. Now that the ceremony is over (but never the honeymoon), I am rediscovering the time and space to return to my various writing projects. My hand has been drawn to prose over this past year, so I am working to bring myself back to the strange, ever-changing landscapes of poetry. I am also playing more with the abstraction of poetry, rather than taking images based on my own ready-made experiences or perceptions -- I am trying to step further away from myself. I want to try on new skin, even if I don't understand where it is coming from or where it is leading me.
I am also going to make a more solid commitment to this blog (I can sense your eyes rolling... if you are still there). As I get deeper into my projects, more questions will arise. They are already forming, as I struggle with the confidence to say "okay, I've come up with this idea, but do I have the stamina and guts to follow through?" The answer always comes back as a triumphant "Yes!", but never in terms of "How". That is the journey.
First, I am making sure I spend time on my own writing each day -- morning: couplets, after work: blog, or tweaking any number of genres. Really, take your pick - poetry, book review articles, novels, and most recently an idea for a novella I've been exploring. I have more than ten projects lined up at this moment. Ambitious, right? Nerve-wracking, definitely. Doable? Yes. Tonight, I've started: I am in my writing room unwinding after my work day of, well, writing... but the excitement of my own writing (as opposed to the structured formulas and set language of government writing) takes the tiredness out. I'm now releasing the words that have been waiting not-so-patiently, and switching over to a place of play...

Morning Couplets

2008-09-22T17:58:00.000-07:00

Trees bow to each other and dance madly; a celebration.
The dog in his yard stands bewildered, watching.

I light candles mid-day, a tribute to the heart
of December. Soon, we will blow out their cinnamon scent and join the wind.

A crisp sunlight, slice of sky, illuminates a year
closing, opens a window; a bird glides by effortlessly.

The cats pamper each other briefly, in an hour
of change and bricks lifted from shoulders sagged; a fresh coat.

As the rain buckets and near night greets us, we hibernate;
in our flannel, with writing utensils, I lasso words and he untangles numbers.

When the kittens forget the seasonal tree, and chase sunlight,
after the winter night storm that made us all twist our necks.

Like bears, we stay in our soft cocoons, rise to dark skies;
we walk, still asleep, burrow lightly into the folds of each other’s arms.

I am pummeled with sounds – the words and voices of unfinished
speeches and stories – of records by those real or not; always real work.

I awoke to more deaths printed and, still, this day chokes me;
this could be a last day I sleep through and glide my hand across.

The kittens circle the perimeter of the tree, invade diameters,and scramble across the hard surface with overturned parcels in their wake.

Morning Couplets

2008-05-12T10:02:00.001-07:00

Housebound kittens watch a flurry of white;
flower boxes frosting under a patch of blue sky.

Packed icicles adorn the roof, two of them;
like twin swords they glisten and melt into the sun’s victory.

The warmth of black kittens contrast the icy white,
beyond my window pane, and the tire tracks of ambition.

There is a stillness in snow, winter gray makes me stay;
reflect on time slowing or moving forward, a reminder, a gift.

Snow melting, and our kittens chase their tails
when everything could be wiped clean as a chalkboard.

He caresses dishes with soap and water, while I coax
the existence of cats from a hardwood surface; these acts of living.

Yesterday’s interview and today’s chipped nail polish;
roads clear and winter moves in with the sun behind it.

I rise first and devour words for breakfast;
my hands are utensils, the cold outside – an instrument.

A meal prepared, a table christened, and friends brought
to warm cups of conversation; a growing circle.

The overcast sky holds in warmth, our hands held
under blankets; we dream of each other under a thick, white blanket.

A week in May

2008-05-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

I have fallen off the radar, again. I let the entire month of April, National Poetry month, go by without a single blog entry. However, I did not let the month slip by completely unnoticed. I squeaked in a lunchtime poetry reading at work on April 30, with the help of a poet colleague of mine, Charles. We shared the microphone and had a decent turnout. We also recorded our reading and Charles is working at creating an MP3 file. Once this happens, I will post our reading on my blog and facebook profile.

Otherwise, my attention to poetry has been slipping. I haven't been attending the Planet Earth Poetry series at the Black Stilt Cafe as regularly as in the past -- I am so drained by the end of the week, and I want to spend my time resting at home, and letting my ideas gestate. It reassured me to know that the likes of P.K. Page admitted to not writing a single poem for years, and she managed to come back into the spotlight. Life does have a way of shifting in waves. Right now, my focus is on my upcoming wedding. I do manage to write the odd poem, and I am working at finishing my draft of Turnstiles. It is all work, and exploration. I am also frustrated that I am not being accepted for publication of the poems I do spend time with and send out into the world, heart full of hope. I've entered random poems and contests for publication, and only received pleasant rejection letters. I believe it is all timing, and perhaps my time hasn't arrived yet. I won't give up.

I find that my day job, writing for the government, is sucking me dry. I once had a poetry prof warn me that if I choose a career in writing, the last thing I will want to do is come home at night and write. I am grateful for my work flex days, my writing days. I wish I could work from home every day as a writer.

Announcements

2008-03-09T21:59:00.002-07:00

Ekstasis Reading at the Pacific Festival of the Book - March 15, 2008 @ Victoria Arts Connection

Morning Couplets

2008-03-09T21:52:00.000-07:00

The force of re-entry from an orbit retreat; hitting ground
with pen in hand, I plunge back into the world.

Pieces of wood snap together and boast their deep burn,
red and solid; the transformation of space and energy.

Paper covered shelves, homeless in their temporary home;
this place of disorder, schedules lost, and a wormhole for the renovators
of thought and work.

Our cats don’t mind the chaos – jumbled furniture,
piled books and yesterday’s news – more surface space.

Kittens scratching at heads, night time cardboard rustles;
a test of skill in the morning rewarded late afternoon.

My kittens lie away from me, until a phone rings or visitors
take my attention, their ego brains attack, vie for my affection again.

Rain falls heavy in carport pools, our half day ticks
by lounging bare on the couch, as we watch the cats race.

We wake to white blankets – this cold warmth of brightness;
snug inside with words, warm tea, our own singular warmth shared.

Our kittens don’t notice the snow – their world, us, loud toys
across the floor. Maybe they can’t see white or anything past normal conditions.

A white-trimmed tree sways like a cobweb, snowy
breeze pushes through an early winter.

Little Emperors' Book Launch - March 1, 2008

2008-03-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

On March 1, 2008, my close friend, JoAnn Dionne, launched her first book titled, Little Emperors. The book is a memoir of her time spent teaching English to elementary students in the Republic of China. She takes a look at the boundaries acknowledged and dissolved both in the classroom and beyond the school gates, and the change in China's politics and collective thinking, succumbing to Western influences. Her memoir is both humourous and startling from the daily activities she relays, and life-altering adventures she encounters in a communist country. The book is a reflection of her acqaintances, choices, observations of people and ideas, and emotions while in a foreign place as she struggles with her foreign concepts and assimilates herself into a new world.
She organized her launch to be held in a new art gallery called Dales in Chinatown, Victoria, BC. A fit setting and a phenomenal turnout, as her audience was packed to the rafters. She graciously invited a few local writers - Steven J. Thompson, Yvonne Blomer, Liz Walker, Missie Peters, and myself -to read our selected poems (her favourites) before she read excerpts from Little Emperors. As part of her launch, she also invited a spokesperson from the Free Tibet society. Her memoir is a sharing of her broadening perspectives and embracing of Eastern culture, as well as a message to Westerners about the atrocities that still occur in that part of the world; atrocities that are against basic human rights.
I am honoured to be able to call such a brilliant, adventurous writer my friend, and to have witnessed her great accomplishment and be a part of the celebration of her book.
You can check out her book at: http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Little-Emperors-Year-Future-China-JoAnn-Dionne/9781550027563-item.html

Poems

2008-02-24T15:04:00.000-08:00

Bare Branches
A fugue

The branches are bare outside my window.
It has been many days since we slept here.
I try not to watch
the little hand move through the day.

The branches are bare.
Outside my window I see stars begin to form.
They mark another day
gone since we slept here. I try not to measure
These mornings I don’t wake in his arms.

The branches bore leaves
for a season. The stars formed slower in blue sky.
It has been many days since
we slept here.
The morning won’t wake in his arms

and I rise in a bed full of night,
try not to watch my little hands move
through the day.
The branches will bear leaves again
and outside my window stars form.
Here we will sleep for many days.

Because You Love Me

I will spill drinks.
I will break things unceremoniously,
stick my foot in my mouth,
but never chomp on my tongue.

Because you love me I will forget some,
but never the scars you hold;
everything you say in quiet darkness.

I will say the wrong thing,
still sound awkward on the phone,
bang my funny bone.

Because you love me I will sing in the car,
challenge yellow lights.
I will tell you off in jest or no –

I may have one drink too many,
burp like a man,
eat with my hands, order squid,
wrap up restaurant dinners.

Because you love me I will stay where you are,
be the last voice you hear before sleep.

Turnstiles - Excerpt

2008-02-24T14:56:00.000-08:00

You pay a fee to be admitted through life’s turnstiles; to be propelled into experience.

1.

Marty

Martin opened his eyes. He squinted between his zippered lashes, stuck together with sleep. A small army of shoes marched past his face, half-hidden inside a dingy, blue sleeping bag. His first instinct was to place a limp, protective hand on his nearby knapsack. He was inside a short tunnel that lay beneath a busy London street beside Hyde Park. He didn’t look up. He knew what their faces would convey; their cowardly faces. He was experiencing the real Europe, instead of peering out at it through heated hotel windows or army bunk beds and tour buses. He didn’t have to pay anyone for his space of concrete bedding. He was free. He closed his eyes again. Martin was free.
He ignored his growling stomach. He could smell the subtle waft of French fries from the nearby Hard Rock Café. Tourists - they were all missing the local colour. He would visit Joe, the hotdog vendor, later on for lunch. He got his hotdogs free from Joe. Then he would lie under a tree in the park and watch the tourists get dinged two pounds for using the lawn chairs. He felt as though mindless sheep surrounded him. He had it all figured out. A year ago he had bought a cheap ticket to London and decided to depend on the day to see him through. Martin cherished every consequence. He held on to every face that examined him with curiosity and disgust. He always kept a plain expression. He had no reason to indulge anyone with emotion. In fact, he barely spoke. Except to people like Joe.
When he opened his eyes again, a different army of shoes were marching past. The tunnel was never quiet, and he had long gotten used to the intrusion of echoing sounds and rustling pavement. It was a small sacrifice. He wriggled out of his bed and began to pack up. He would return later that night. Martin had become a familiar sight, and some of the locals knew this tunnel was his home. So did the other shoestring backpackers. Martin marched alongside the army out of the tunnel. The sun was out, and again he squinted. He ran a hand over his stubble head and rubbed his eyes. He turned left.
The sun was already seated royally in the sky as Martin strolled down the wide, crowded sidewalk. He could see the faint shape of an umbrella a few blocks away, and as he came closer he recognized Joe. Martin’s stomach began to growl again.
“Get your hotdogs here! Hello Sir, what a gorgeous day. Would you like a hotdog? Get your hotdogs here! Good day, love! Can I get you a hotdog? Would you like the works?” Joe called to the passing public all day long. He set up his stand on the same corner every day, and everyone who frequented that spot knew him. Some just by his ruddy, round face and others knew him well enough to have a word or two. Martin felt he could relate to Joe because it seemed they were both stuck in London making a living on the sidewalks, and most of the people bustling by chose to ignore them.
“Hey, Joe,” Martin showed a couple of teeth and then retracted his smile. Even though he liked Joe, he was still careful not to let anyone get too close. “Catering to the North American public, are we? It’s amazing you are able to sell hotdogs here. I guess if you had your way, you’d be selling cans of haggis.”
“Marty, my boy!” Joe’s face opened wide with good-natured eyes. “How was your night? Those bloody bed bugs didn’t bite ya, aye, lad?” Joe boomed in his rich, Scottish accent, completely disregarding Joe’s offhand remarks.
“Nah, Joe. No rats, neither. Just the bloody tourists waking me up in the morning,” Martin grimaced.
“Bloody tourists?” Joe raised his eyebrows so high they looked comical. “You better button your tongue, Marty. If there were no tourists there’d be no hotdogs! Besides, what the devil do you think you are... a member of the general voting public?
“You’re the worst kind of tourist, Marty. You don’t pay taxes and you don’t leave!” Joe chuckled and flung a hotdog with ketchup and mustard into Martin’s waiting hand.
“See ya tomorrow, Joe,” said Martin without looking at his friend, and began to walk away.
“See ya, Marty,” Joe said quietly to himself because Martin was already out of earshot. And they both knew they meant it. Tomorrow. Chances were they would find themselves in the same skin, and doing the same thing. The two of them were like hamsters trapped in transparent, plastic balls looking out at the world without being able to break free of their bubbles, and constantly bumping into walls.

Wil

The radio alarm clock began to hum in Willis Hancock’s hotel room. He groaned, rolled over, and slapped an unseeing hand on the off button. He rolled back and stared groggily at the dented pillow beside him. She was already gone, and he tried to recollect the night before. He rolled his eye towards the dresser. There was his wallet, open and most likely empty. His pants lay crumpled beside it. He rubbed his hands over his face and gave a self-deprecating chuckle. Then he began to rise. He was anything but happy. She had definitely served her purpose, but the others had been more professional, and much more discreet. When this happened, he usually didn’t realize he had been robbed until hours later when he found himself at a store counter fumbling for his credit cards.
“You cheeky little bitch,” Willis mumbled to himself as he flipped through his wallet. She hadn’t been discreet, but she had been thorough. Even his lucky Franc coin from his trip to Paris in 1980 was gone. It must have caught her eye. Ignorant street kid.
“She’ll never use it,” he mumbled. “Never in a million years.” And suddenly he felt vulnerable without it. He was a lawyer, and was used to having small charms in his pockets. They were little reminders that there was some luck in the universe, good or bad. This afternoon he was going to the courthouse to hear his father’s will. His father. He sure as hell had never been a Dad. He hadn’t earned the title. Dads played cricket on summer days. Fathers called from foreign cities to say, again, that they wouldn’t make it to the biggest day of your life.
Willis was tempted to throw the wallet in the wastebasket, but he gently placed it back on the dresser with an air of defeat.
An hour later he was showered, sharply dressed, and hurriedly locking the hotel room behind him. He strolled with purpose through the chic lobby and out onto the pavement. He was not rushing to his appointment with excitement or even mild anticipation. He was rushing to get it all over with. He desired the whole matter to be dead and buried. There was a shameful question repeating itself over and over again in his head, and he tried desperately to ignore it… ‘What did the bastard leave me? His only son. What did the bastard leave me? Bastard… bastard… bast…’ he began walking faster.
As he rounded the corner, the large impersonal, grey building loomed before him with its long stone steps. He vaguely imagined guillotines. Willis couldn’t remember the streets he had walked, as though something else had brought him to this place without his knowing or consent. In many ways, it had. He did not want this part of his life to exist. Where was Occam’s razor for moments like these? How wonderful it would be to splice out all the undesirable bits.
Willis threw these encroaching thoughts from his mind and scurried up the stone steps. The engraved wooden entrance doors looked large and imposing, but were surprisingly light and swung open with ease. Willis couldn’t help thinking that perhaps these doors were much like his father. If only he had taken the time to turn the doorknob. Once again he banished his useless mind chatter. None of it could be helped now. His father’s lawyer was waiting for him, perched on one of the many benches placed along the sides of the grandeur hallway. The white marble floor was immaculate. Almost so that if he desired he could see his reflection near his feet, but few dared to look at themselves in a courthouse.
The man rose to meet Willis. Willis knew this man well. Too well. Sometimes the disappointing calls from his father would be telegrammed through this man’s voice.
“I’m sorry, son…” the voice would say, “your father has been held up in a meeting.” Even this man knew his father well enough to know he was only that. A father. A sperm donor. An absent male figure. The dictionary was far too generous with the word. Father. A male parent. God. One who originates, makes possible, or inspires something. The word Dad was merely listed as a colloquial term or a short-cut for Father. It was all so backwards.
“Hello, Wil,” the man extended his hand, which was taken without hesitation. However, Willis shook hands limply. He was still overwhelmed by this place and these people and papers and things. They were all just things. Was he grieving? He didn’t know. It was all packed somewhere inside his big toe. Everything would take a very long time to reach his mouth, and then his brain.
“Hi, Sam,” he answered in a voice that seemed barely audible. Sam motioned him into another imposing room nearby. There were too many thresholds today. The room was small and dimly lit. The blinds were down and the large desk and tall bookshelves seemed to judge Willis from their standpoints. Willis loosened his tie, feeling the musty tone of the heavy dark brown books and neglected carpets. It was a furnished closet where many unsaid things happened.
“Would you like some coffee?” Sam offered. Willis thought he could use something a bit stronger, but he politely raised his hand in decline. Sam poured himself a cup and settled in behind the modest oak desk. He folded and unfolded his hands and then laid them flat before him. There was no real sense of sorrow in the room, but the situation was delicate and Sam wasn’t sure where to begin. He didn’t want to touch a raw nerve.
“I have your father’s papers, Wil,” he began. He pulled an envelope out of a large, squeaky drawer in his desk and deftly handed it over. Willis didn’t make any move to open it.
“Shouldn’t mother be here?” Wil stalled.
“Your mother conveyed point blank that she isn’t interested in what he had to say.” Wil nodded solemnly. She was still his widow, but he had been less than a husband to her. She had known the truth behind his unscheduled business trips years ago. However, she had kept quiet and continued to pack his lunch every morning and make pork chops every Tuesday night. It had been a different era then and she probably made herself believe there was nowhere else for her to go. Maybe it would have been easier if he had run off and left her for good. Besides, she had to stay. She had Willis to think about. And now Hancocks Sr. was dead. The freedom of it was suffocating. Wil squirmed in his seat. Sam noticed and decided to move things along. He was starting to feel uncomfortable, too. He jerked the papers impatiently towards Wil and he could tell that Sam was struggling with the fine balance between urgency and regret.. Wil glanced at him sharply, warily, as though he’d been wakened from a deep sleep. He didn’t want anything from his father, either. Not like this. But, feeling cornered, he accepted the envelope and toyed with the seal.
“Do I have to open this now?” he asked, sounding like a child who didn’t want to do a chore. “Here?”
“I must be a witness to make sure you understand all the implications of your father’s last wishes,” Sam answered in a distant voice. Wil began to peel open the seal. The package felt quite heavy for a man who had been so empty. He pulled out a stack of papers attached with a paper clip. There was too much print. Large blocks of paragraphed ink that Wil didn’t want to swim through. He passed the document back to Sam with a plea in his eyes for some comprehension.
Sam replaced his reading glasses with an air of formality and began to read:
Here states the last will and testament of I, Willis Hancocks Sr., to be read upon my time of death. To my faithful wife I leave my property estate…”
Faithful! How the bastard could even constitute the word and never know the meaning. Wil felt his innards turn and was relieved for his mother’s absence in this obscene mockery.
“…and to my only son I leave a portion of myself that I can only hope will fill the gaps I have left behind…” the remainder of the document contained instructions for the dividing of his assets, including a generous portion, which was granted to Sam for both his personal and professional services through the years. Wil barely heard the rest of it.
“How much?” he interrupted. Sam stopped in mid-sentence and removed the ominous glasses. His eyes were small and beady. A dusty blue. He had a luke-warm glance that took on a cooler slant if disrupted.
Sam had been a dutiful friend, even when it had gone against his better judgement. He was trying to be discreet about the will even now, by sounding vague and assuming his business voice of authority, but the younger Wil knew him too well. Sam’s voice began to trail off.... losing its facade.
“It’s quite a sum, Wil,” he replied in a serious tone.
“How much?”
“Your father wasn’t very good with his feelings. He didn’t really know how to express…”
“How much?” Wil was becoming irritable.
“Two hundred and fifty million pounds, son.” His voice was like a dull thud in the room. Then he added, “I’ve already taken the liberty of depositing the funds directly into your account.” Wil felt immobilized in his chair. The cushion had suddenly become quicksand. He was a millionaire, just like his father. Just like his father.
“What if I don’t accept?” brilliant, he thought. Wil wanted no part of his father’s impersonal, hard cash world.
“Then the money will be given to the city,” Sam looked urgent. His loyalty still lay with his friend. And the last thing Hancocks Sr. ever wanted was to invest one cent in the government. He never trusted the politicians to do the right thing with their liberties. If Wil had known that he would have marched down to the city hall and delivered the boodle himself. But, he didn’t, and the affections he had carried unreturned for his father lay like silt in his stomach. He didn’t want his father’s money to go into a new McDonald’s or a city parade. The men stood up abruptly and shook hands. Wil just wanted to escape. When he emerged from the ominous courthouse doors, he took a long pause on the entrance steps. He drew everything in and the world looked stranger. Even the clouds appeared to be moving faster across an otherwise pleasant sky. The voices around him slowed down. The tempo in the atmosphere was out of step. The mechanics in his brain had been reduced to a hamster in a wheel, overworked. What had just happened?

Martin had been wandering the streets all morning. The sidewalks were wide and crowded. The streets themselves had a smaller ratio of traffic and he was tempted to walk along the painted dotted lines in the road and dodge the cars. At least he would get paid if someone bumped into him. The mobs on the sidewalk lived by the rule of every man for himself. He tried to avoid the shoving and also give it back where he could, and rarely did he make eye contact. He had grown sour and didn’t want to admit his own thoughts, even to himself. But the truth was he was young and ready to accept his creature comforts again. He began to miss pillows, basic warmth, and friendly conversation. Only now he had delved so deep into his notions of the world being dictated by money, politics, and fads, that he didn’t know how to slip back into the norm undetected. His rebellious nature had won him a reputation in the spreading vicinity of his tunnel life. His thoughts pushed behind his eyes as he walked recklessly. What could he do now? He had no money. Suddenly the colourful printed paper and accumulative clinking coins he once detested seemed essential. He kicked the pavement in defeat. There was no use fighting the greedy gods. Could he work? Would anyone hire him? Here? His appearance was almost frightening. He prayed for rain between using the public showers twice a week, which cost two pounds. Martin didn’t want to admit that he had failed in his attempts to rail against the grain, to not be a sheep. He always returned to the underground walkway. He considered it his home – after all, wasn’t home a place you could escape to after your legs grew weary and your head swelled with the pressure of people and words and laborious tasks. Perhaps Marty’s home didn’t provide the best comfort, but it provided him with shelter and a place to submerge from the busy streets. The hum of cars and shoes clanking on the grates above him provided company late in the night when only a few stray souls might join him or pass through, stealth-like, hiding also from the moonlight or police car beams. Marty wandered the streets of London by day and hid from them in the late, dark hours. As he headed back to Hyde Park, he would often see the homeless people cluster together in alleys. They were prohibited from seeking soft grass beds in the parks, even in the warmer season. So, in alleys they lit each other’s cigarettes and spat on the sidewalks. They swayed from the drink, and huddled together to keep warm and upright. They cajoled with each other and laughed with smoker’s lungs. Marty knew none of them and he avoided them. Whatever choices those poor, fading souls had ever made in their lives, they had not chosen to live on the streets with every door closed against them. At least, the choice had not been a conscious one. How the warmly lit windows in every flat on every block must have appeared to them. Marty was painfully aware of his free will in the matter. He wasn’t ready to surrender, yet. He still chose the broadness of the streets over being confined in those brightly lit boxes of windows looking down. Now his smug feelings had turned to jealousy. He suddenly hated the tourists brushing by him cheerfully with their Harrods bags, for a different reason. They had something he didn’t have. They were free. Martin sat down and occupied a piece of concrete.
As Wil rounded the corner he almost tripped over a grungy looking young man sitting on the pavement. The man looked as though he had walked across the continent. The blue of his eyes as he glanced up, startled, looked lost and old. The young man’s expectant hand emerged from his jacket sheepishly, and wavered open before him. Wil hesitated for half a second and then pulled out an executive leather booklet from his inside pocket. He then pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and began scribbling furiously inside the booklet.
“Here chap, here’s a big fat cheque and all you have to do is sign it,” Wil said. Wil roughly stuffed the content into the man’s waiting hand and hurried off, jamming both his empty hands into his deep pockets.

2.

As soon as Martin had sat down on the sidewalk, a man came around the corner at a rapid pace. He stopped short and caught himself from stumbling over Martin’s hunched frame. The moment was confused and Martin was rarely surprised these days. But the look in this man’s eyes was stricken and tormented. He thought he knew his own suffering until now. By habit, he already had his hand out and he suddenly felt ashamed. But before he could take it back, the man hastily said something about a cheque, and impatiently shoved something into his palm. The offering was so abrupt; somewhere in the back of Martin’s mind he wondered if it was a curse. And then the man was gone. Disappearing into the crowd and covering ground with long strides. Martin slowly uncoiled his fingers and stared at the crumpled ball of paper nestled in his palm. He began to delicately pull at the corners, as though recovering some ancient artefact, to free the item from its condensed shape. Then he stared longer in disbelief. The implications of the treasure in his hand registered rapidly. Okay, it was a cheque. He could barely get past all the zeros before he saw that it had not yet been signed. His fingers trembled as he held the thin paper. His hands did not grasp the cheque and pull at the corners as though trying to stretch more zeros out of it. They were not so confident. Instead, he held the cheque as someone might examine the feather of a long extinct bird. The greedy gods had shown some mercy. Martin quickly folded the cheque and shoved it deep into his pocket. He did not move. He sat for a long time with his hands clasped around his tucked in knees. He sat in an upright foetal position while wrestling with his inner voice. As harsh words ping-ponged between his ears, his own self-deprecating words, he wanted more than anything to feel comforted. He had seen the name on the cheque. Willis Hancocks, Jr. Even the name sounded like money. Why not Edmond Shawshanks III? He smirked at his runaway thought and then caught himself with a strange wave of guilt. Even in this humble moment, Martin could not lose his zeal for sarcasm. Perhaps he was still trying to shake the tormented look he saw in the stranger’s eyes. His train of thought turned. The entire episode was ridiculous. For over a year he hadn’t had to juggle more than fifty dollars, and that was on a good day. The only thing he had to do now was endorse the cheque. Fortunately, he would not have to forge the signature. Willis Hancocks, Jr? Hell, Martin didn’t look like anyone’s junior. Some people even gossiped in low tones that he didn’t have parents. Martin had picked up word that apparently he was an abandoned orphan. Perhaps they also thought he had been left in the London tunnel. Martin smirked to himself again.
He was not a malicious man. He knew that. He hadn’t put out his hand for charity until the thread got too thin and he could barely scrounge enough to eat. He hadn’t asked for this, had he? He wanted to run after the man and throw it back at him. If the man didn’t want it, then why didn’t he just tear it up? Why couldn’t he tear it up? Martin wasn’t sure about the workings of fate. He admitted to himself how he had brought on his own failures and, consequently, he was faced with a no exit sign. It was everything he had said he wanted, once. To be his own master and treat his experience on earth as being no more than a human body occupying space and living day to day, just as people had before government and laws and technology. Martin hadn’t expected a dead end to come so soon. And now there was an opening folded neatly in his pocket. But it wasn’t really his opening. It was a door in which that haunting, hasty man had closed.
Martin crouched on the pavement for the remainder of the day and, as the sun began to set, he slowly rose to his feet and started trudging back towards the tunnel. Home was only the distance of one foot in front of the other. He kept his hands out of his pockets deliberately until later he forgot his reasons why, and habitually shoved his chapped, closed knuckles into the shallow tweed pockets. The corners of the folded paper brushed against his startled fingers and, instead of rapidly jerking out his hand as though it would get bitten, he retrieved the cheque and toyed with it for a few minutes. He walked slower with a small grimace on his face. He placed the cheque back in his pocket and walked past the tunnel at Hyde Park. He always returned to the underground walkway. He considered it his home, but not tonight. He vaguely knew that he couldn’t go back there anymore.
. Martin aimlessly covered the streets of London for the better part of the night, and eventually found his sleep on a park bench in Soho. The morning came earlier than he was used to, since being in the tunnel he was sheltered from the sun’s dawning beams that pierced him like swords. He opened one confused eye to witness a familiar sight. Only this time he saw briefcases, flouncing skirts, and wristwatches marching past him. He didn’t really care to know what hour it was. Filling the hours today would not be an uncertainty. Today had a purpose. He sat upright and stretched his neck about to determine in which part of London he had landed. Soho. He hadn’t ventured so far in months. Already he was beginning to stretch his boundaries and now there was nowhere to go except further. He had tried not to think too much about the cheque in his pocket as he concentrated on the sound of the worn soles of his shoes scuffing the old cobblestones the night before. Everything seemed to echo at night without the buffer of bodies crowding the narrow back streets. He had been able to hear his thoughts in the rhythm… scuffle, scuff… scuffle, scuff… move ahead, move ahead.
Martin’s eyes had adjusted to the sunlight, and for the first time in ages he genuinely smiled to himself, mostly because the border between yesterday and today was ironically fated. Pray for rain and you might get hit by lightning. He noticed that the passers-by in Soho didn’t notice him, and he was quietly relieved. Sadly, he could not have smiled to himself so easily in Hyde Park. He was finally abandoning an identity that had created his own villian. Martin was shedding an old and useless skin. He spotted a barbershop on the opposite side of the street, reached into his other pocket, and pulled out five pounds. As he waited for a break in the traffic and jogged easily between the slowing cars, he was struck by another humorous thought that only the day before he would have wished for a car to hit him so that he could claim injury. Despite Martin’s growing lightness of heart at the change of events, when he reached the barbershop’s door he did not bounce through it like a normal person with an average weight on his shoulders. None of this was routine for Martin, and the reality of it smacked him in the face. For a moment, he suddenly felt like a criminal or a sub-human as he lingered outside of the establishment. He opened the door slowly and went inside, but not without a few bewildered looks from the handful of customers sitting in a row with their coffees and magazines. Even the barber, Antonio, who was doing a routine beard trim, raised one eyebrow, and mainly because almost all of his customers were regulars and he had never laid eyes on Martin. At first glance, the young man looked grubby and moth-eaten. His hands and face were dirty and his tweed jacket and jeans had hanging threads and discernible holes. His stubbly head was growing in dark roots. The most he required to look presentable was a bath, new clothes, and a clean shave. As long as he could pay, Antonio didn’t care what he looked like.
“Hey, look what the cat dragged in!” exclaimed one of the younger men waiting, but he had no supporters.
“Shut yer pie hole, Danny,” mumbled an older man seated beside the boy. Danny gave the man and Marty a cutting look and poked his nose back in the daily paper he was reading. Marty’s first instinct was to thump him, but he felt he was out of his league in this joint. He was the stranger.
“Take a number, lad,” Antonio shouted from the barber’s chair. He also gave Danny a disapproving glance. “I’ll be with you in two shakes.” Marty picked up a magazine and settled into the only empty chair left. He tried not to notice the gentlemen beside him, as they examined him. The older man at the end of the row piped up, “leave ‘im alone, boys. Yer no bein’ very subtle!” Antonio smiled to himself with his back turned. Marty remained unmoved until his number was called.
As he climbed in the chair, he noticed Antonio made no enquiring looks towards him.
“What’ll it be today?” he asked in a friendly jaunt.
“I…I guess I just need a clean up,” Marty muttered. He felt small in the chair. He wasn’t used to having anyone take care of him in any fashion. Now he was at the mercy of this man’s razor.
“I agree, you haven’t got much to take off the top… but you do look a bit grizzly,” Antonio jabbered on, “I mean no offence!”
“None taken.”
“Alright.”
Then Antonio kept jabbering. Barbers were like Bartenders. And as a customer, you felt an obligation to tell them everything because they were being intimate with either your beard or your beer.
“So, where did you roll in from?” he asked easily.
“Hyde Park.”
“No, no… I mean, where are you from?”
Martin wasn’t sure how to answer and kept silent a moment. Then he uttered, as if he was afraid it were the wrong answer “…Hyde Park.” Antonio was silent as he trimmed Martin’s beard and moustache. There seemed to be a shift in the air, and Martin felt sorry for it. He was more different than he realized, and it was becoming rapidly apparent. How was he ever going to fit in again? It was a nightmare. Antonio wheeled Martin around to face the mirror.
“There you are, Mr. Hyde Park… like a new man!” Antonio exclaimed.

Wil slipped out of the alley and began to move with the crowd until he ducked into a familiar pub a few blocks away. That day there was a new face behind the bar, possibly the bartender’s son. He gave Wil a passing glance as he cleaned the mugs. Wil was thankful not to see a familiar face. He didn’t feel like shooting the breeze. He approached the young bartender and ordered a pint of Scottish Ale. The darker the better. And he proceeded to order the same for the rest of the afternoon, trying to clear away his own murky waters he found himself drowning in. Eventually, the man behind the bar, who he now didn’t recognize at all, asked him to leave.
“I think you’ve had enough drink for today, sir.”
“What? Oh shut up and pour me another.”
“I can’t do that, sir.”
“Well, then, I’ll get behind there and do it myself, then,” Wil shot back as he attempted to clamber over the bar. He felt a strong grip on the back of his shirt, and he knew it couldn’t be the young bartender because he was square in front of him, looking very bewildered.
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s rude to go helping yourself?” the deep voice from behind growled, and the next thing Wil realized he was standing out on the curb with a trail of jeers and laughter behind him. He wobbled for a second and leaned his hand on the wall. His arms and legs were like spaghetti.
“Cheeky blokes,” he muttered. He lifted his head to see a sea of people moving towards him, and in his drunken distortion he laid himself flat up against the building, in fear of being trampled.
“Whoa, there, where’s the fire?” he exclaimed. The only response he received were the disgusted grimaces on the faces of the passers-by. Wil began to move slowly against the crowd. He clung to the wall like a first-time ice skater. And then he saw him, and he remembered. That crouched, sorry figure was still squatting on the concrete. Wil’s eyes narrowed. He stood only a block away from the remains of his life, one block away from what could have been his future. But he knew that either way he would have still felt hollow. He had exorcised all of his ghosts by relieving himself of that cheque. That gift. That burden. Hadn’t he? Or had he invited more demons? He stood and watched and felt perilous. His form was highly conspicuous in contrast to the bustling sidewalk. And so was this strange beggar’s form. Neither of them seemed to fit, and somehow they were connected. Anyone watching from a distance would have taken note of this blocked interaction - the watcher being watched. But the beggar never glanced in Wil’s direction. He remained naïve to the entire scene, as he stared ahead, battling with his own spiralling thoughts, like demons ascending back into heaven.
The sun went down behind the buildings and Wil, still in a drunken stupor, was leaning lifeless against the wall. He had not moved an inch in an hour, and his eyes were still fixed on the crouched figure until it began to stir. The figure leaned forward and stretched into a tall, animated being, which then disappeared around the far corner of the street. Wil caught his breath; he had to remind his legs to move until they collapsed into an awkward trot. He followed the stranger, keeping a calculated distance. Part of him wanted to reach out his hands and grab him, apologize, and scour his pockets. Mostly, he felt obsessed about the man he had given his destiny to. Suddenly, the cheque was not just a symbol of money that had replaced his father’s affection. Wil had been irrational. He saw that now. And there was still a chance to make it right. If only to see where this man went… like a mother giving away her baby… simply wanting to know if the right choice was made. Wil was not in the right state of mind, and he had no real intention of doing anything. He followed the stranger all night, all the way across London, just to watch him fall asleep on a park bench in Soho. And he waited until morning.
When Wil awoke by the curb, he met more grimacing faces. He had once been one of those faces, thinking to himself “damn bum.” However, these faces were mixed with puzzlement at the way he was dressed. Wil appeared to be nothing more than a crumpled gentleman, except for the fact he still reeked of beer. He glanced across the street and further down to find that the park bench the young beggar fell asleep on was empty. He reeled around frantically, startling those around him with his wild, jerky movements. Then he spotted his target, entering a barbershop. Wil was willing to wait, but a bobby approached him.
“No loitering here, move along. There’s a hostel down the road. You can clean yerself up there.” Wil stalled for a moment, and made a motion to tie his shoe when he felt the swift pat of the bobby’s stick. Wil gave him a wary look before slinking away down the sidewalk.
“Get movin’, man.” The bobby growled and stood in an authoritative stance, surrounded by happy-faced, law-abiding citizens, and watched him go.

Wil felt a gnawing inside of him. A driving force that he didn’t agree with and one he couldn’t ignore. He was obsessed with the loss of his father, which led back to his childhood. Wil hated his own desire to be near him; to have a piece of him. And he had thrown his father’s last and only gift away, haphazardly, into the hands of a stranger. A stranger who, seemingly, was also leading a less than ideal life. Perhaps his father’s gift would bring this man happiness, if not love. There was such a bitter irony to it all. Still, Wil returned to the barbershop after he had sobered up.
When he reached the entrance, he lingered outside for a moment. The shop was empty except for Antonio who was sweeping the hair on the floor into a pile, which began to resemble a small, furry animal. Antonio looked up and saw an agitated-looking man loitering outside his shop. The man did not look like respectable clientele, so he decided to confront the stranger. A little bell sounded in the doorway as Antonio poked his head outside, startling the stranger.
“Can I help you with something?” Antonio sized up the stranger. A funny vibe told him that he was not in danger of offending a potential customer.
“Uh, yeah… yes,” Wil stammered. “I’m looking for someone who might have come into your shop earlier.”
“This morning has been very busy…”
“A tall fellow, tweed jacket, a little on the scruffy side?”
Antonio’s eyes visibly scrutinized Wil. He couldn’t explain why, but a protective inkling came over him.
“I vaguely remember a chap like that… but that was this morning…” he tried to sound evasive.
“Any idea which direction he might have gone?”
“Oh, I don’t know…”
“Think.” Wil was growing impatient, and then he realized how he was behaving and internally he kicked himself. He saw the suspicion in the barber’s face. “I mean, well, it’s important. If you can remember anything at all…”
“You could try Hyde Park.”
“Hyde Park?”
“That’s all I remember, chap,” Antonio was growing irritable. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Right… thanks,” Wil moved on down the street, not sure if he wanted to traipse back across London. Antonio stood in his modest doorway, watching him go, wondering what he had done.
“Hope you don’t find him,” he whispered.

3.

Instead of taking the barber’s advice and heading towards Hyde Park, Wil headed back to his apartment. He sat in a chair near the window, his head tilted back, not bothering to put a light on. The next morning, his alarm clock sounded, as usual. He rubbed his head, trying to soothe his hangover from the day before. It wasn’t working. His back ached from a night spent on a park bench, and he wondered how the street people did it. They had no choice, of course. At the time, he felt he didn’t either. His father was gone, completely – every part of him that had been there or not. The possibility of him was gone, which rattled Wil most of all. He tried to rub out the truth, and moved off his bed in his rumpled suit that he been too drunk and tired to take off. He shed his suit on the ground and stepped out of the room, naked, into the shower. The steady pulse of water felt like a gift. Warm water, cleansing him; a bar of soap – he was rich. He stood there, eyes closed, wanting to stay there, feeling the weight rubbing on his skin. But, he knew he couldn’t, which kept his insides cold. He turned off the tap abruptly, like ripping off a Band-Aid; done. Okay, get on with it, he thought. He towel-dried and put on a new suit, the same dark blue colour.
The traffic seemed more chaotic than usual. Yesterday, he had shut out everything except his duty and then his pursuit. He forgot there were more people living and making daily decisions, clambering over each other for some greater happiness. Where were they all going? He hailed a cab.
“Where to, mate?” the cab driver asked, half-interested. It was his job to know where people were going.
“Hancocks and Associates Law Firm. Earl’s Court Square.”
“Law firm? Are you a lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“What kind of lawyer? My brother-in-law is a small claims lawyer,” Cab drivers always wanted to talk, Wil sighed in his head. They drove around in their hard shells all day, disconnected from the world, but seeming to no everything about it through the sources they found in their customers or through the car radio.
“A criminal defense lawyer,” Wil answered, tersely.
“Oh, ho! You’re one of the big lawyers. Big cases, I bet. Are you handling the case of that murder that happened in downtown London last week?”
Which one? Wil thought, cynically. Instead he answered, “Possibly. There are a few recent murderers that are being looked into.” He was tempted to add, no trials, yet. But that was privileged information. The police were still trying to track down a few, as well. They only had the stories, no suspects. The newspapers were chomping at the bit, and he was glad he didn’t have to answer their phone calls, yet. Instead, he was trapped in a moving vehicle and being questioned by this guy, a roadway philosopher.
“You know, people can say what they like – but I don’t think they all need to go to jail.”
“No?” Wil mused, “You’d rather have them hanging around your neighbourhood then? Jolly good.”
“No, that’s not what I mean, exactly. I mean, they have to go somewhere where they can’t hurt anyone, including themselves.”
“We’re still just talking about the murderers, then?”
The cab driver was silent for a moment, as though he was being challenged.
“No, not exactly...” he started off slow and careful. “Anyone who had done any kind of harm to another human being – couldn’t they do something more useful to pay for that crime, rather than just rot in a jail? I mean, does anybody learn from that?”
“Most people don’t care if they learn,” Wil answered, more thoughtfully. It was a question he sometimes caught himself asking.
“How does it ever get better, then?”
“Sometimes it doesn’t. People want to see those criminals either die or they don’t want see them at all, ever again. They don’t want to know that those people still exist and that they are being sheltered and fed.”
“But, you try and get them off...” the cab driver let his thought hang out, somewhere near the windshield, still inside the car.
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“That’s my job, to try and make sure the wrong people don’t go to jail.”
“How do you know?”
Wil didn’t answer right away. It was too early in the day to question his existence as a lawyer – his life, his career. For some reason, he was supposed to have this conversation. Here, now. Something was stopping him in this cab to give an answer, or something close to it, for his choices. “I don’t always know. I try to have faith in people’s stories; or find some explanation for their guilty actions. I guess I try to show that people aren’t always bad just because they may do bad things.”
“No offense, mate, but I’m glad I don’t have your job.”
For a second, Wil desperately wished that he was in the cab driver’s seat.

The Death of A Partner

2008-02-24T14:51:00.000-08:00

He felt like a policeman who should turn in his badge, a politician who needed to resign, a cheating athlete who stepped down from the first prize podium, and all for the moral good. After all, he was the criminal setting his guilty client free. He was obliged to do everything in his power to prevent him from serving a life sentence. Seconds after the trial ended he reminded himself of this absurd oath, an oath that would protect him from his conscience.

The jury was beginning to file out as doggedly as they had shuffled in with their declaration of innocence. It was time to leave. Through the midst of dismay and elation, his client sauntered over to shake his hand.

“Thanks for all of your hard work, Coach,” he said with a relieved smile. He hated how his client insisted on calling him Coach. Even though he was the one calling all the shots on his client’s defense, it was unnerving. His client only contributed short and concise answers in their pre-trial meetings. He sensed there was a larger story to be told. In truth, he didn’t trust his client.
“That’s my job.”
“Well, you’re a damn good lawyer.”
“Thanks,” he was polite, yet curt. The handshake he extended to his client was firm and resolute; he was closing this case. The only problem was that his client wasn’t leaving the courtroom.
“So, what did you think of the trial, over all?” his client asked. He seemed more interested in the trial in retrospect than when it was occurring. In fact, he seemed to watch the trial from some distant couch in his mind; as if it was a syndicated episode.
“Grueling,” he replied. “There were a few surprises, though.”
“Oh, from the prosecution you mean?”
“Yes, them,” he wanted to get home to his wife and dinner. “I wasn’t counting on an old girlfriend testifying against you about a past anger management problem.”
“Sorry about that, it hasn’t been a problem for years.”
“Gary, your wife was found in the living room with a remote control lying next to her head, busted.”
“Well, between us married men, you know that once you give up the remote control to your wife – you may as well give up everything.”
He had closed his briefcase and had one side fastened. The other side was flipped open, like a tongue protruding with no words of conviction.
“What did you say to me?”
“Oh, she always wanted to watch some stupid reality match-making show, like... oh, what is it called... the batchelorette,” he waved his hand casually in light conversation about his silly, dead wife. “She was always talking about how good-looking the candidate grooms were, and how she wished I would woo her and dress better and talk more like a gentleman to her.”
“Uh-huh,” he was caught in a web. This man he had been defending for months was slowly beginning to talk. He could still hear his story in their pre-trial consultations of how he had come home from work to find his wife face down on the sofa.
“It must have been a break-in,” he had said, tensing his face. “They must have crept up on her. They took my truck, too.” There had been a bit of minor wreckage. A lamp was knocked over. He could have worked late that night, and no one at his workplace had stayed past 5pm to say otherwise. His truck had been found crushed at the bottom of a gravel pit nearby. His lawyer mentioned it now.
“I never did like that truck, either,” he said. “Thanks, again, coach.” His client winked at him and left. He watched him go, and closed the other fastener. In a stupor, he partly acknowledged one of his senior colleagues in the law chambers.
“Congratulations Mark, I heard about your winning the case. After a win like that, well, we can really use your keen instincts in this firm. How would you like to become a partner?”
Mark stared at the man, “I think he did it.”
The man started, and then said, “Sometimes they do.”
“I can’t accept, I’m sorry,” before his colleague could protest, Mark said goodnight and left the building.
When he got home, his wife was putting the finishing touches on dinner.
“How did it go?” she asked, flitting between the kitchen and dining room table. He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached over the couch cushions for the remote control, threw it on the floor and stamped on it. Its flimsy back popped out.
“I won,” he said.

Announcements

2008-02-02T17:49:00.000-08:00

Please check out http://www.blueskiespoetry.ca/ on February 11 & 14, 2008.
You will find two of my poems: "Bare branches" and "Because You Love Me"

Morning Couplets

2008-02-02T17:45:00.000-08:00

We have a pumpkin to carve, his eyes to slant and crooked
mouth to menace, his seeds to roast and innards to light.

Rain puddles shrink on the pavement, after we fall asleep
in a flood – our warm ark holds off winter showers.

My kitten shrouds herself in bubble wrap, after she destroys
most of its armour – small capped gun shots, clear and deadly.

My roof, a sound tarp; these walls, a windbreaker
against a steady sheet of rain, as the sky douses the Earth with fire rescue pails.

We rise from our comforter mid-afternoon, billowed out
as the wind touches window pane, we rest through winter starting.

The violent sway of branches keeps us inside, makes us
put the kettle on more often, re-hook up cable, live under blankets
while nestled in pages.

Our kittens play in their safe confinement, they watch the trees
dance with no fear of cold forces; far from the street, they attack
chair leg with no fear of cars.

We rise from bed at three in the afternoon, after a night
of industry, eat chocolate for breakfast, still call it morning –
these are decadent days.

Slow into this morning posture – corpse pose to sun salutation –
light pen tip, fingertips on morning scales, this massage.

Ingredients for breakfast, too little. The soy milk gone and
eggs dissolved past expiry; this poor fridge maintenance. Still, I feed him.

Writing on Week Twenty-three

2008-02-02T16:58:00.000-08:00

I have been away from my blog for sometime. To be honest, I am starting to believe that my day job as a government correspondence writer is sucking the writing life right out of me. Also, it is winter. I had approached the beginning of our winter season with the romantic notion that this would be a time to reflect on my various writings. I went so far as to purchase a journal for the sole use of recording my thoughts about the poems I enjoyed reading. I've made one entry so far on my own amateur perceptions of Emily Dickinson's poetry. I've been taking her into the bath with me, reflecting on her long-dead passions on life. Here are my thought on her poem titled, Hope (I encourage you to look it up):

In the poem, the poet is personifying hope by turning it into a grounded bird within us - something that hasn't yet tested its wings. Still, the bird sings, ever faithful, and unrelenting to its caged existence. It knows how to free itself, and to look beyond the danger and hostility of the unknown. Hope asks for nothing and needs no promise. It simply knows and believes, beyond any and all circumstances, in the truth, regardless.

Perhaps sharing these musings will evoke another category for my blog participation. I would like some feedback, once you've read the poem yourself. I know this is work, and I am the last person to boast staying on schedule these days, but I would like to create some more dialogue.

I have completed my second poetry manuscript, and am now making the preparations to submit it to a publisher. This also takes time, and careful consideration in the presentation of one's work. I need to construct a synopsis of my book of poems, which is a challenge in itself. There is a much fainter line connecting the poems, which look at the aspects of human existence from different angles. The poems are slices of life, relationships and death; snapshots in time and how we perceive our world individually, emotionally and critically.

As for my novel, I am near approaching a word-count that complies with the standard novel length of 80,000 words. I've managed to pound out 7,000 more words since the Surrey International Writers' Conference I attended in October 2007. I am weaving the scenes together, and digging deeper below the surface of a few once-shallow characters. There are gaps that I've identified and am working to close - some more easily than others. I've found I've reached a point of critical research, which will require extensive reading, note-taking, discussion and observation. I've already begun. My goal for finishing the first draft of my novel is summer 2008.

Lately, I've been attending different events at the Solstice Cafe in Victoria. There is another poetry troupe that convenes on the second and fourth Thursday of each month, Tongues of Fire. Their poetic style is more performance-based, but really anything goes. I have one poem that I would like to commit to memory and perform because I believe it would be much more powerful. It is a poem written from a disturbing memory. The poem is called, Bully. I was also invited to submit another poem to the upcoming issue of the Tongues of Fire chapbook, Sparks. If you're local, watch for it. Tongues of Fire is becoming my second poetry home.

The other event I've attended at Solstice is the Cafe Philosophy, which occurs every Wednesday night. My main purpose in attending these philosophical sessions is to gain research for my novel, as I have a few scenes where a group of men meet in a tavern to discuss the problems of the world and human nature. So, I decided to engage in such an environment. I found the discussion very open, inviting and stimulating.

Basically, a topic is thrown out and there is a facilitator who passes around a cordless microphone to those who would like to share their thoughts, ideas and arguments on the topic. Some refer to academic findings in the field of philosophy or psychology to support their ideas, and others draw from personal experience or belief.

I will attend again. The winter nights are hindering me in some ways. You would think that being in a warm coffeehouse with a mug of hot chocolate, coffee or chai tea would not be an obstacle... but the evenings are short and the work days are long. I've also been fighting off colds and struggling to fit in all of my writing pursuits. I have more projects and ideas on the horizon (I reassure myself that I will finish them in this lifetime).

I am enthusiastic about the writing connections I am establishing. I've reconnected with someone who is eager to share our novels-in-progress for support and feedback. I am also continuing to meet with other aspiring poets, through my workplace, who are making time to meet for coffee or lunch to share our literary work and ideas.

I would like to create more reading opportunities to sell the last few copies of my first book, and then move on from there. All of this requires the energy to split my life in various ways, and save my ambitions for the end of the work day -- the one that, for now, pays the bills.

Writing on Week Twenty-two

2007-12-19T14:41:00.000-08:00

With all of the Chrismas chaos, my blog updates have gone temporarily to the wayside. I recently took a course on how to organize your life so that you can fit everything in and achieve balance and serenity. Aside from staying on top of my daily work tasks, I'm not sure if I'm following my life schedule as closely as I had intended.
At the end of November, I was able to escape my day-job desk and immerse myself in poetry. For the past six years, I have attended an annual 4-day retreat at a place called Glenairely (Centre for Earth and Peace) in East Sooke, BC. Our fearless instructor for these retreats is Patrick Lane, who with tongue-in-cheek usually kicks off the retreat with a confessesion of his own mixed feelings and dread about setting us all up for failure in the assignments he's prepared for us. At the end of the retreat, he always comes back to this point and tips his hat to us for astonishing him with our work. His main mantra is that a writing block is simply fear - we all have something to say. During these four days, each of us is challenged to say it, and say it in the best possible way through our poetry. This year, we accommodated 17 poets (in the past, our limit was 12) and yet we still managed to cram ourselves around the kitchen table. We pay a reasonable amount for beds, meals and a quiet space to write. Our meals are prepared by our maestro chef, Wendy Morton. We spend our days sharing our poems in a circle, then breaking to work on our own writing, and being called for meals by a clanking bell on the porch (makes one feel as though they are on a homestead).
In this place, we each strive to stretch our own personal boundaries and comfort zones, as well as lose ourselves in the words and lives created by our fellow poets. Often, for me, a theme will arise in my writing. On this retreat, I began to explore the lives of my grandparents. For the first time, I wrote a poem for my father's father who passed away when I was 14. I didn't have a strong connection with him, and sometimes I grieve it, not really understanding who he was and what he wanted in his life. Therefore, I wrote a brief poem about his coming to Canada from Scotland in mid-life, and having so much uprooted. So much left behind.
These retreats are soul-feeding and sacred, and every year (usually the following Autumn) we publish a beautiful chapbook through Leafpress (leafpress.ca) from one of our poetry assignments. These books are memories, rewards and gifts.

After the retreat, a few of us were fortunate to read poems at the Mole Restaurant in downtown Victoria as part of a Chocolate and Poetry evening. The restaurant revised their dessert menu to include raw chocolate, and there was a good-sized, yet intimate audience to indulge in both features. It is always helpful to discover a new venue that is willing and enthusiastic to lend a space for our poems. A sweet success, to be sure!

Morning Couplets

2007-12-17T07:01:00.001-08:00

He returns with tea and grapefruit, six slices, a slight rendition of Cohen.
I am a bare-breasted Cleopatra, a romanticized bargain-bin Suzanne.

As a chemist, I mix lemon and milk without curdling;
as a writer, I sleep late, blend outside radio words with dreams.

A deep blue sky clear of stars and planets, and I am awake
with the teachers and garbage collectors; stealing a piece of the day for myself.

The parked cars, treetops and buildings are silhouetted
against almost day; a simple contrast I try to resolve.

My couch, a garden of detached flowers and leaves,
this depiction of fall, while I write in late morning.

Two small, furry bodies wait through the night,
to bound into morning and explore the wilderness of the living room.

Our third day half gone, and still nothing is lost;
we exist in our own hours, determine the sunset.

I drag you from sentence to sentence, and we spend days
driving through my paragraphs and looking for full colons: trying to
complete my list – you know you are the commas I rest upon.

Like a squirrel, I munch on almonds, as my mind climbs trees
and stores away friends and stories for the winter months.

There are too many words in this room, not enough seconds
in a minute, in an hour, in a day to absorb this lucid work.

Announcements

2007-11-18T17:23:00.000-08:00

Karen Chester (grand prize winner) and me

Last month I entered a poetry contest through Cafe Fairfield, and this past week I received a book prize as a runner-up. There were three of us - a grand prize winner ($50 and a book) and two runners-up. Okay, it wasn't a first prize of $1,000, but I don't really care. This was my first prize for writing poetry.

My significant other continues to remind me that I was a short-listed participant in the CBC Radio poetry slam in March 2006. I was paid for my efforts (handsomely, I might add). So, perhaps I do exaggerate when I say this is my first prize or acknowledgement. To put it into better perspective, it is the first time I entered a contest, received a phonecall, showed up, shook someone's hand and received a prize (in this case, I won a book), and then was able to showcase my poem. It was a sign of encouragement to keep going, and that there will be more opportunities to earn prizes in the future.

Thank you Cafe Fairfield!

Writing on Week Twenty-One

2007-11-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

The established laws of form poetry, and the dead white male poet. How do we break away from it? The answer: with time and historical changes. It is no different than learning from the masters, and then trying to either mimic or challenge what they did, taking a form and making it your own. I met a new poet friend for lunch this week, who showed me a new form he is playing with (although I don't think anyone can possibly write the same poem or truly steal poetry, I will only reveal that his poetic form strives to reflect the structure of music in a unique, concrete way). We entered a discussion on whether a new form or idea of poetry would be accepted, since it doesn't necessarily follow the time-tested rules of poetry. Are there rules? Yes, there is definitely a craft and a science to poetry, but there is also room for new expression.
I likened his frontiering endeavour to Bissett. In Bissett's poetry, there is a structure, but the entire infrastructure of language is challenged within that structure. How else did poetry evolve from the iambic pentameter of the Chaucerian age, to the Sonnets of Shakespeare, to the 'no holds barred' cavaliers, to the sentimental romantics, to the prim fundamentalists, to the naturalists, to the modern beatniks and post-modern, free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness poetry, and then reverting back to form and trying something new from the beginning. Always, as poets, we are questioning language -- how we can reign it in, twist it around, make it fit, and finally let it go and transform into what it will. We can hold in the lines, but not always the content that flies off the page. Sometimes, the poem begs to be something else, and if you don't let it - it will find a way anyhow, at times something completely unexpected. Or else it will play dead and not do anything you ask.
We also discussed the notion of the dead, white, male poet - and how His poetry was revered for centuries. Women poets were forced to not reveal their gender when submitting their poetry, and very few or none were brought into the classrooms of the last generations for study. Even fairly recently, students of the 60's were busy re-discovering poets such as Keats and Blake. These poets have their genius and their place, but we are now enjoying an age where a range of female poets are bursting onto the scene.
My friend was acknowledging to me how, by reading my work and the work of other women poets half his age, his perspective is refreshed. He admitted that he never would have been inclined to explore the poetry of female voices when he was younger. As a young man, perhaps he felt a young woman's perspective of the world would clash with his own ideals, or simply not have anything of substance to offer him. How far from the truth. We are not classes of race or gender - we are human beings (I believe I've stressed this point before). As human beings, we are all going to view the world and interact with it differently, given our own personal environments and history that shapes our path and existence; how we perceive everything. At a later stage, my friend was able to look at this writing of a wholly different perspective than his own, and appreciate the fresh view. As well, to his astonishment, many of the themes and ideas and perceptions meshed with his own. He wrote a poem, which he shared with me, about his coming to the words of women poets who were not born when he was first navigating his way through poetry, and the gifts they bring him.

Morning Couplets

2007-11-07T18:54:00.001-08:00

My pulse is strong in morning meditations, a neglected rhythm;
find a blank page, a reliable pen, put ink on paper, repeat.

Nothing is truer than a rush of words, moments when – on your hands,
skin, any makeshift slate or canvas, another’s arm or forehead – you simply must!

The day is locked in my glass table top, I only need look down
to see blue skies reflective, to predict a change in the wind.

He plays Sudoku, wrestles with numbers; I read the newspaper –
wrestle with untimely deaths in another landscape.

No machine gun-fire in these clouds, only brown-tinged leaves,
flowers to deadhead and the passing season to mourn.

A brown bird visits, knocks on the neighbouring window
like an expectant guest, and his crew awaits for stirring of other life.

There is a kind of bustle in days with no page breaks, a constancy
to fill in these short chapters with some sensible prose, to maintain order.

Today is a white page, like any day, but blinding
like a blizzard it tosses me to the furthest corner; a rolled ball.

We start in mid-elipses... after an evening of wine and dance, still floating
on white-dressed sentiments and exchanging our own silent vows on ivory pillows.

He stumbles out of our sheets with a scratchy throat,
his eyes not yet in, and a coating of dreams too short.

Writing on Week Twenty

2007-10-28T16:13:00.000-07:00

During the weekend of October 19-21, 2007, I had the opportunity to participate in the Surrey International Writers' Conference. This was my first conference and, as I continuously heard throughout the weekend, I had chosen to attend the best writers' conference in North America. By the end of the weekend, although I had no previous scale of reference, I could understand why this was voiced so strongly. The conference boasted an attendance of 800+ writers this year, including many returning conference-goers. Participants came from all over - from the Maritimes, Florida, Texas, and Scotland, to name a few out-of-the-way locations. There were also a handful who were lucky enough to be local attendees, and lived in a few miles radius of the Sheraton Hotel, where the conference is annually held.
I was so impressed with the organization and caliber of the conference, not to mention the list of guest authors (Anne Perry, Diana Gabaldon, and Meg Tilly, to name a household few), agents and editors who were conveniently on hand to give feedback and insider tips to the writing world. For many of us, the weekend could mean having a gateway into the land of published authors. Still, in the same breath, we were told to write for the love of writing without the expectation of becoming full-time, self-supporting authors on the best-sellers list... but of course, you never know.
I came to the conference feeling energetic and hopeful, having prepared a portion of my first novel manuscript and a small bundle of business cards in case I should rub elbows with any up-and-coming or established authors or literary scouts.
In between attending the useful workshops - how to research, how to organize your life around writing, how to create dynamic characters, and so on - I booked time with a literary agent and an established author.
First, my meeting with the agent. Our meeting would be an interval of ten minutes. It felt like speed dating! I could not control my butterflies, as I power-walked through the hotel lobby to the meeting room with my manuscript pages tucked under my arm. I had vaguely rehearsed the points I wanted to touch on. I've been writing my book for nine years - why was I so nervous to talk about it? I knew these characters and what they wanted. I knew the setting and plot. I could rattle this off, no problem. Well, my voice certaintly did rattle - uncontrollably, I might add. At mid-point in my spiel, the agent stopped me to say, "you're doing great! There's no reason to be nervous." Tell that to my nerves.
In the end, after making a few helpful suggestions (one being that my word count was low, which I already knew and was able to speak to, as well, in a positive way), she asked me to send her the first five pages along with my book synopsis and literary bio. Great! Now I have ideas poring out of me to beef up my plot and add layers to my characters. I'm excited and overwhelmed, all at once, because I am hitting - no, facing - that high wall of research, and through it we go.
Second, feedback from an established author. I managed to meet with Diana Gabaldon, an admired author, and one whose series I am currently wading through (if you are familiar with her work, you will appreciate how prolific she is!). I tried to lose my star quality and suppressed the urge to tell her that I had named my kitten Sassenach after the nickname of one of her main characters.
Again, I went through the business of explaining the basis of my story and talked a little about the main and secondary characters and their motivations. Then Diana read the first eight pages of my novel (a very good sign, indeed), and made only a few stylistic changes to my prose. Otherwise, her comments were that she found the idea for my novel interesting and told me I had a nice flow to my writing style. She also asked me how my book ends - and on this point I was quite vague. Something to the effect that it all turns out hopeful.
This is all highly encouraging, as I am not being told to go back to square one, but instead being asked "what could happen here and here?"
So, now I am home and hanging onto the floating remnants of a high-energy conference. I am also gluing my seat in front of my computer and putting my endless jabber and ideas to the page, not to mention more meat on the story bones. My personal deadline... by next summer I hope to have my manuscript ready to send to the waiting agent. I'm sure she won't be sitting by her computer and wondering when my novel is going to arrive, but I will submit it with the same degree of hope and energy.

The Last Day of Random Acts of Poetry

2007-10-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

Before I started my Random Acts of Poetry, I will admit that I found the prospect of approaching strangers with my poems seemed a bit daunting. However, after committing my first Random Act of Poetry on a bus, I was given a very warm and encouraging reception. After that, it was no problem at all. I went forward, spending an entire day poeming passers-by and city workers in coffee shops, malls, street corners, grocery stores and book stores. I poemed 15 people on my first day, in the course of 6 hours (stopping for lunch, etc).

I was also armed with a self-made T-Shirt, promoting Random Acts of Poetry, and two of my own couplets written on the back that read:

One poet thinking;
holding a universal thought.

Sharing poems, extending words to teach;
strangers, connecting, creating community.

I also arranged to be on the local TV news, and scheduled for a reporter and cameraman to follow me around poeming people. They commented on how some people were adverse to my attempts at poeming them, and maybe viewed the poem as something scary that not everyone is open to experiencing. So, the exercise was also an act of awareness for poetry and that it doesn’t have to be the dry, rhyming poem, centuries-old, that perhaps made little sense to someone in highschool. The TV crew also interviewed Claire Rettie at the READ Society as part of this segment, to connect the accessibility to language through poetry for those ESL students and adults who struggle with literacy.

I met some incredible people. One gentleman was strolling downtown with his baby girl, and he later emailed me to share the story of his daughter’s terminal illness – Spinal Muscular Atrophy – with only a life expectancy of 4 years. She is two. He told me he and his wife had quit their jobs to care for her around the clock, and that he had only been downtown about 3 times in the past two years. He was also a writer himself, and was very touched and appreciative to have “some unexpected art thrown his way”. We are now email buddies, as he has invited me to share any news with him because the computer is his lifeline to the outside community these days. I received a few emails from the strangers I poemed, as I had included my contact information, personal email and writing blog, in the books I handed out.

The next morning I learned that a local radio station saw my 15 minutes of fame, and decided to focus on the topic as part of their morning show banter, which also lent more publicity for the cause of Random Acts of Poetry.

During the rest of the week, while focusing on my full-time day job, I managed to poem my colleagues and strangers in their work cubicles and in the lunch room. I also poemed the security commissionaire at the front desk, who thought being poemed was the coolest thing in the world. I also had an opportunity to poem my entire yoga class, a moment before we began our practice, and set a beautiful calming and uplifting mood to bring us all out of our hectic days and into the room.

Only three people refused to have me read them a poem, out of the 53 I asked. Not too bad. Yesterday I poemed three people in a Starbucks coffeeshop, including one woman sitting down with her little girl. I read them a poem about mothers called Picking Flowers, and afterwards the woman turned to her little girl and asked her what she thought the poem meant. The little girl said she liked to pick flowers, and her mom said, “Well, I think the poem is saying that you and your brother are my flowers.” Needless to say, I was almost teary. Everyone who I gave a book to was very touched to receive it, and one or two men said, “My wife will really enjoy reading your poetry, as well.”

Here are the emails I received from those I had poemed:

Hello Andrea. Thank you for a copy of your book! I really appreciate it and it was a pleasant surprise to have some art thrown my way today. I write a bit also but mostly about my experience looking after my terminally ill daughter Shira (song in Hebrew). You can check out some of my articles on Shira’s web site. May you have great success with your writing. Brad.

Visit Shira's Web Site At: http://www.asonginthisworld.com/

View videos of Shira at: www.youtube.com/Shira2

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andrea:

I really enjoyed your poem at lunch. Thank you.
A nice way to start the week-end.

Best of luck in your writing career.

Martine

Morning Couplets

2007-10-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

A soft purr from my kettle beckons me and I stumble
to awaken my fingers and toes, as I tumble back into reason.

I purge these useless belongings; bring new shine
and I revel in everything possible and forgotten.

Morning propels me forward into another age, retrospective,
the same sun, or is it, rising closer and setting further away.

A million ways to spend this sunshine, trap it in jars,
singe my garden petals – I choose only to let it sink deep.

He wants the simplicity of his skin today;
I crave the complexity of ink strokes – and we stay in.

The morning breeze moves high tree clusters; a barrier,
and the wind is too weak to rustle these lethargic grass stems and tiny blooms.

We wake from fuzzy dreams, take turns in the bathroom,
boil water and kiss, set down hopeful plans.

My belly swells late with morning overcast, wind overpowers
and sun struggles to land on our shoulders, a bright light constantly cooled.

In the rush of tires, footsteps, and the sound of work – there are birds,
and I carve out a minute to sit in this chair, let these sounds circle outside.

Drowsy leaves bend with the weight of sunlight,
my back stem straightens in the glow of mid-morning summer.

Random Poeming

2007-10-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

I am three days into my Random Acts of Poetry Week, and I thought to give an update. Thankfully, Monday was my flex day, so I had the opportunity to knock off a bunch of Random Acts of Poetry. I headed downtown via bus in the morning. As my bus came along the road, I took in a deep breath. I knew I was going to make myself poem some unsuspecting passenger before the end of my ride. I sat beside a woman who looked groggy, but approachable. She set the ball rolling with her openness and enthusiasm. Thanks Courtenay! From there, I hit a couple of familiar coffee shops, and then I plunged into the unknown - the passers-by on Victoria's downtown streets. Needless to say, I got a few wary looks and a few curt 'no thanks!' but I wasn't going to be deterred. I wandered into friendly businesses and, if the staff weren't too terribly busy, I poemed them and they thanked me.
Later in the day, I made arrangements to have a reporter and cameraman from A-Channel News follow me around for awhile. They got a great story, and I got some more needed publicity. They portrayed me as the 'predator poet', but also commented on the people who ran away or tried to avoid me and how nonthreatening I was. After all, it was poetry! Then the question arose, is poetry scary for people? Possibly, if they already think they hate it or that they won't understand it. Luckily, I poemed a gentleman on camera who was thrilled to be poemed and an advocate of the arts. He even quoted Jack Kerouac! Later, he shared a very moving story with me about his baby girl who is living with SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) disease. The gifts we are given... the stories we share...
So, all in all my first day was a relative success. Fifteen in total poemed.
On to Tuesday... I was at work, so I tried poeming my colleagues, and getting in a couple of fellow bus riders. Four in total poemed.
Today... again I was at work, so I poemed the executive administrative assistant who hugged me, and I also received a word-of-mouth request for poeming. Tonight I poemed my yoga class, which set the peaceful and reflective mood for our practice. Later, I poemed a cashier-in-training with a poem about being a cashier. The woman helping her exclaimed, "This is a Random Act of Poetry, isn't it?" It turned out she was the student of another local poeming poet, Susan Stenson. I am only halfway through this wonderful week... and I can't wait to poem again!

Writing on Week Nineteen

2007-09-29T19:19:00.000-07:00

This past week was out of the ordinary, as I attended a nude poetry reading at the Solstice Cafe. The event was called "Poetry in the Raw" and was a fundraiser to send a local team of poets to Halifax to compete in the National Poetry Slam. These seven brave poets: Steven J. Thompson, Missie Peters, RadaR, strong.cottonwoods, Jane Bee and shaye avec i grec bared their souls, and everything else, on stage to a warm, understanding and receptive audience. Their performances were so powerful, the nudity was secondary. After a short time, the general focus was taken off their bodies and invested in their beautifully vulnerable words - all recited from memory.
A portion of the audience also showed their support to the troupe by stripping down as well. Myself included. I spent the latter part of the evening comfortably baring 'my girls', and didn't think twice about it or for one minute feel oggled by some disrespectful spectator. The environment was safe, the vibe was good and the context was clear. We were being human, together, and the poetry was set on promoting positive body image and self-actualization. Beautiful. I am sending out my best wishes to these amazing poets - set the competition on fire!!

Reviews

2007-09-17T21:56:00.002-07:00

Thorburn Ages in Memory, Body, Poetry and Jazz
by Andrea McKenzie

If only we could step back through a mirror to have a closer look at our younger selves, while cross-examining and contemplating our present, aging bodies; to have conversations with those who are gone, and understand the inevitability of moving forward.

In Russell Thorburn’s book, Father Tell Me I Have Not Aged, the poems are like slide photos or quick glimpses of the past and other places. The reader is taken into a different age, whether it is younger, older or in another geographical setting. Thorburn’s poems explore fear and love, and an underlying danger exists.

There is a struggle between clinging to impermanent snapshots and mental pictures, and the paradox of the poet’s desire to release these memories. The reels of memory continue to reveal what is alive, even in the hint of death, and bring back those who are dead, acknowledge their death and, in turn, bring back life.

The poems are an entranceway into dreams and memory; there is a longing or regret, and a slant of betrayal in the depth of honesty when resurrecting old lovers and weaving them into the poet’s present, waking consciousness, as seen in “First Love”. The reader is left hanging in-between patches of memory, but the images are clear and alive.

Seasons and nature are prominent. For instance, in the poem “February” Thorburn uses the seasonal landscape to create a delicate and suggestive setting. In the poem, “For Those of Us Who Have Lost Our Jobs” the poet employs snow, and the cold weather to lend a harsher element with the cold biting the spirit. Nature often sets the stage for emotion to say what can’t be expressed otherwise.

The second section begins with the title poem, “Father, Tell Me I Have Not Aged”, which allows the poet to step back into the shadows of his childhood. There is also a strong focus on his mother and a yearning to enter her secret, silent world. The poet mirrors himself in his parents, and re-visits his own world and perceptions at various stages of growth.

In the third section, more eros appears and the poet manages to escape into a cinematic world, reflecting real life. The referencing of characters or real actors creates a limitation in these poems. Thorburn is asking the reader to work harder and develop a deeper interest and understanding of specific movies and plot lines. He invites a certain generation of readers. Still, the play by play scenes are melded with the poet’s imagination and interpretation of human themes – love, sex, fear and death.

The last section of the book turns to sophisticated literary references ie. Kafka, Sonnets to Orpheus, and Rilke in “Waiting for the Bus”. The imagery becomes surreal, opening up and slowly leading the reader out of the book, having come through the labyrinth. There is a stronger use of image repetition, such as ‘star-bulbed sky’, as the literary actors exit the stage. Thorburn also experiments with different line structures, such as fragmented couplets, and there is a gradual breaking down of thought and movement. The lines are sparse, creating more space to move, such as in the poems “Last Night on Michigan Street” and “Zeno Remembers”. Throughout the book, the rhythms of his poems ride different movements with a steady heartbeat. There is an unleashing and reigning in, like a jazz tempo.

Thorburn’s poems are about ending, or facing an end; another kind of passage for growing up and growing old, and being thrust into another unknown or kind of death.

Writing on Week Eighteen

2007-09-17T21:34:00.000-07:00

Last week I held a successful poetry reading during lunch hour at my place of work. There was a good turnout, and everyone seemed to enjoy the mental break from their daily grind of phonecalls and meetings. One gentleman brought his own poems to read, as I had stated in the invitation for the event, and also bought a copy of my book. So, I have befriended another fan of poetry at work. Over the weekend, I enjoyed reading a copy of Hafiz's 50 Ghazals, which this poet friend kindly lent me.
As much as I am writing poetry when inspiration strikes (or I have the motivation to dig down and find a poem), I am concentrating on reading the works of other contemporary and classical writers. I am gaining new appreciation for the common link all poets share - the eagerness to write about our worlds and put it into one world. There is no difference of time. A poem could have been written 200 years ago or 1000 years ago - the human condition doesn't change and our relationship with nature doesn't change.
Back to the reading; I was thrilled to have the support of my colleagues, and even those who were not able to attend showed interest afterwards and shared their encouragement. I tend to vibrate after having an unexpected discussion about the importance of poetry and the arts, and the basic recognition that we are not all simply slaves at our desks, but breathing people with whole passions and universes away from our 8-hour work days. If we are lucky enough to briefly combine our two selves, our worlds unite and new galaxies are formed. I was asked whether I have considered organizing another poetry reading at work. The answer is an enthusiastic "yes".
Random Acts of Poetry is also quickly approaching, and my poet friends are currently hanging out at The Poet Tree outside Munro's Bookstore on Government St. in the afternoons (for you locals!) reading their poems and giving them away on beautiful postcards to passers-by. Poetry is everywhere. It is an entity that is alive and well, and being well-fed, and it is clearly being sought and found by all those in need.

Poetry Chapbooks & Anthologies

2007-09-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

http://leafpress.ca/books/Dinner%20Party.htm

http://leafpress.ca/books/Letters%20We%20Never%20Sent.htm

www.leafpress.ca/books/Object.htm

http://leafpress.ca/books/Anecdote.htm

http://leafpress.ca/books/Sparrows%20On%20Snow.htm

Turnstiles - excerpt

2007-09-11T07:00:00.000-07:00

Martin opened his eyes. He squinted between his zippered lashes, stuck together with sleep. A small army of shoes marched past his face, half-hidden inside a dingy, blue sleeping bag. His first instinct was to place a limp, protective hand on his nearby knapsack. He was inside a short tunnel that lay beneath a busy London street beside Hyde Park. He didn’t look up. He knew what their faces would convey; their cowardly faces. He was experiencing the real Europe, instead of peering out at it through heated hotel windows or army bunk beds and tour buses. He didn’t have to pay anyone for his space of concrete bedding. He was free. He closed his eyes again. Martin was free.
He ignored his growling stomach. He could smell the subtle waft of French fries from the nearby Hard Rock Café. Tourists - they were all missing the local colour. He would visit Joe, the hotdog vendor, later on for lunch. He got his hotdogs free from Joe. Then he would lie under a tree in the park and watch the tourists get dinged two pounds for using the lawn chairs. He felt as though mindless sheep surrounded him. He had it all figured out. A year ago he had bought a cheap ticket to London and decided to depend on the day to see him through. Martin cherished every consequence. He held on to every face that examined him with curiosity and disgust. He always kept a plain expression. He had no reason to indulge anyone with emotion. In fact, he barely spoke. Except to people like Joe.
When he opened his eyes again, a different army of shoes were marching past. The tunnel was never quiet, and he had long gotten used to the intrusion of echoing sounds and rustling pavement. It was a small sacrifice. He wriggled out of his bed and began to pack up. He would return later that night. Martin had become a familiar sight, and some of the locals knew this tunnel was his home. So did the other shoestring backpackers. Martin marched alongside the army out of the tunnel. The sun was out, and again he squinted. He ran a hand over his stubble head and rubbed his eyes. He turned left.
The sun was already seated royally in the sky as Martin strolled down the wide, crowded sidewalk. He could see the faint shape of an umbrella a few blocks away, and as he came closer he recognized Joe. Martin’s stomach began to growl again.
“Get your hotdogs here! Hello Sir, what a gorgeous day. Would you like a hotdog? Get your hotdogs here! Good day, love! Can I get you a hotdog? Would you like the works?” Joe called to the passing public all day long. He set up his stand on the same corner every day, and everyone who frequented that spot knew him. Some just by his ruddy, round face and others knew him well enough to have a word or two. Martin felt he could relate to Joe because it seemed they were both stuck in London making a living on the sidewalks, and most of the people bustling by chose to ignore them.
“Hey, Joe,” Martin showed a couple of teeth and then retracted his smile. Even though he liked Joe, he was still careful not to let anyone get too close. “Catering to the North American public, are we? It’s amazing you are able to sell hotdogs here. I guess if you had your way, you’d be selling cans of haggis.” (Joe is a Scot – even more unwelcome in London)
“Marty, my boy!” Joe’s face opened wide with good-natured eyes. “How was your night? Those bloody bed bugs didn’t bite ya, ay, lad?” Joe boomed in his rich, Scottish accent, completing disregarding Joe’s offhand remarks.
“Nah, Joe. No rats, neither. Just the bloody tourists waking me up in the morning,” Martin grimaced.
“Bloody tourists?” Joe raised his eyebrows so high they looked comical. “You better button your tongue, Marty. If there were no tourists there’d be no hotdogs! Besides, what the devil do you think you are... a member of the general voting public?
“You’re the worst kind of tourist, Marty. You don’t pay taxes and you don’t leave!” Joe chuckled and flung a hotdog with ketchup and mustard into Martin’s waiting hand.
“See ya tomorrow, Joe,” said Martin without looking at his friend, and began to walk away.
“See ya, Marty,” Joe said quietly to himself because Martin was already out of earshot. And they both knew they meant it. Tomorrow. Chances were they would find themselves in the same skin, and doing the same thing. The two of them were like hamsters trapped in transparent, plastic balls looking out at the world without being able to break free of their bubbles, and constantly bumping into walls.

The radio alarm clock began to hum in Willis Hancock’s hotel room. He groaned, rolled over, and slapped an unseeing hand on the off button. He rolled back and stared groggily at the dented pillow beside him. She was already gone, and he tried to recollect the night before. He rolled his eye towards the dresser. There was his wallet, open and most likely empty. His pants lay crumpled beside it. He rubbed his hands over his face and chuckled. Then he began to rise. He was anything but happy. She had definitely served her purpose, but the others had been more professional, and much more discreet. When this happened, he usually didn’t realize he had been robbed until hours later when he found himself at a store counter fumbling for his credit cards.
“You cheeky little bitch,” Willis mumbled to himself as he flipped through his wallet. She hadn’t been discreet, but she had been thorough. Even his lucky Franc coin from his trip to Paris in 1980 was gone. It must have caught her eye. Ignorant street kid.
“She’ll never use it,” he mumbled. “Never in a million years.” And suddenly he felt vulnerable without it. This afternoon he was going to the courthouse to hear his father’s will. His father. He sure as hell had never been a Dad. He hadn’t earned the title. Dads played cricket on summer days. Fathers called from foreign cities to say, again, that they wouldn’t make it to the biggest day of your life. Willis was tempted to throw the wallet in the wastebasket, but he gently placed it back on the dresser with an air of defeat.
An hour later he was showered, sharply dressed, and hurriedly locking the hotel room behind him. He strolled with purpose through the chic lobby and out onto the pavement. He was not rushing to his appointment with excitement or even mild anticipation. He was rushing to get it all over with. He desired the whole matter to be dead and buried. There was a shameful question repeating itself over and over again in his head, and he tried desperately to ignore it… ‘What did the bastard leave me? His only son. What did the bastard leave me? Bastard… bastard… bast…’ he began walking faster.
As he rounded the corner, the large impersonal, grey building loomed before him with its long stone steps. He vaguely imagined guillotines. Willis couldn’t remember the streets he had walked, as though something else had brought him to this place without his knowing or consent. In many ways, it had. He did not want this part of his life to exist. Where was Occam’s razor for moments like these? How wonderful it would be to splice out all the undesirable bits.
Willis threw these encroaching thoughts from his mind and scurried up the stone steps. The engraved wooden entrance doors looked large and imposing, but were surprisingly light and swung open with ease. Willis couldn’t help thinking that perhaps these doors were much like his father. If only he had taken the time to turn the doorknob. Once again he banished his useless mind chatter. None of it could be helped now. His father’s lawyer was waiting for him, perched on one of the many benches placed along the sides of the grandeur hallway. The white marble floor was immaculate. Almost so that if he desired he could see his reflection near his feet, but few dared to look at themselves in a courthouse.
The man rose to meet Willis. Willis knew this man well. Too well. Sometimes the disappointing calls from his father would be telegrammed through this man’s voice.
“I’m sorry, son…” the voice would say, “your father has been held up in a meeting.” Even this man knew his father well enough to know he was only that. A father. A sperm donor. An absent male figure. The dictionary was far too generous with the word. Father. A male parent. God. One who originates, makes possible, or inspires something. The word Dad was merely listed as a colloquial term, or a short-cut for Father. It was all so backwards.
“Hello, Wil,” the man extended his hand, which was taken without hesitation. However, Willis shook hands limply. He was still overwhelmed by this place and these people and papers and things. They were all just things. Was he grieving? He didn’t know. It was all packed somewhere inside his big toe. Everything would take a very long time to reach his mouth, and then his brain.
“Hi, Sam,” he answered in a voice that seemed barely audible. Sam motioned him into another imposing room nearby. There were too many thresholds today. The room was small and dimly lit. The blinds were down and the large desk and tall bookshelves seemed to judge Willis from their standpoints. Willis loosened his tie, feeling the musty tone of the heavy dark brown books and neglected carpets. It was a furnished closet where many unsaid things happened.
“Would you like some coffee?” Sam offered. Willis thought he could use something a bit stronger, but he politely raised his hand in decline. Sam poured himself a cup and settled in behind the modest oak desk. He folded and unfolded his hands and then laid them flat before him. There was no real sense of sorrow in the room, but the situation was delicate and Sam wasn’t sure where to begin. He didn’t want to touch a raw nerve.
“I have your father’s papers, Wil,” he began. He pulled an envelope out of a large, squeaky drawer in his desk and deftly handed it over. Willis didn’t make any move to open it.
“Shouldn’t mother be here?” Wil stalled.
“Your mother conveyed point blank that she isn’t interested in what he had to say.” Wil nodded solemnly. She was still his widow, but he had been less than a husband to her. She had known the truth behind his unscheduled business trips years ago. However, she had kept quiet and continued to pack his lunch every morning and make pork chops every Tuesday night. It had been a different era then and she probably made herself believe there was nowhere else for her to go. Maybe it would have been easier if he had run off and left her for good. Besides, she had to stay. She had Willis to think about. And now Hancocks Sr. was dead. The freedom of it was suffocating. Wil squirmed in his seat. Sam noticed and decided to move things along. He was starting to feel uncomfortable, too. He jerked the papers impatiently towards Wil and immediately felt sorry for it. Wil glanced at him sharply, warily, as though he’d been wakened from a deep sleep. He didn’t want anything from his father, either. Not like this. But, feeling cornered, he accepted the envelope and toyed with the seal.
“Do I have to open this now?” he asked, sounding like a child who didn’t want to do a chore. “Here?”
“I must be a witness to make sure you understand all the implications of your father’s last wishes,” Sam answered in a distant voice. Wil began to peel open the seal. The package felt quite heavy for a man who had been so empty. He pulled out a stack of papers attached with a paper clip. There was too much print. Large blocks of paragraphed ink that Wil didn’t want to swim through. He passed the document back to Sam with a plea in his eyes for some comprehension.
Sam replaced his reading glasses with an air of formality and began to read:
Here states the last will and testament of I, Willis Hancocks Sr., to be read upon my time of death. To my faithful wife I leave my property estate…”
Faithful! How the bastard could even constitute the word and never know the meaning. Wil felt his innards turn and was relieved for his mother’s absence in this obscene mockery.
“…and to my only son I leave a portion of myself that I can only hope will fill the gaps I have left behind…” the remainder of the document contained instructions for the dividing of his assets, including a generous portion, which was granted to Sam for both his personal and professional services through the years. Wil barely heard the rest of it.
“How much?” he interrupted. Sam stopped in mid-sentence and removed the ominous glasses. His eyes were small and beady. A dusty blue. He had a luke-warm glance that took on a cooler slant if disrupted.
Sam had been a dutiful friend, even when it had gone against his better judgement. He tried to be discreet about the will even now, but the younger Wil knew him too well. He could sense by the way Sam’s voice began to trail off.
“It’s quite a sum, Wil,” he replied in a serious tone.
“How much?”
“Your father wasn’t very good with his feelings. He didn’t really know how to express…”
“How much?” Wil was becoming irritable.
“Two hundred and fifty million pounds, son.” His voice was like a dull thud in the room. Then he added, “I’ve already taken the liberty of depositing the funds directly into your account.” Wil felt immobilized in his chair. The cushion had suddenly become quicksand. He was a millionaire, just like his father. Just like his father.
“What if I don’t accept?” brilliant, he thought. Wil wanted no part of his father’s impersonal, hard cash world.
“Then the money will be given to the city,” Sam looked urgent. His loyalty still lay with his friend. And the last thing Hancocks Sr. ever wanted was to invest one cent in the government. He never trusted the politicians to do the right thing with their liberties. If Wil had known that he would have marched down to the city hall and delivered the boodle himself. But, he didn’t, and the affections he had carried unreturned for his father lay like silt in his stomach. He didn’t want his father’s money to go into a new McDonald’s or a city parade. The men stood up abruptly and shook hands. Wil just wanted to escape. When he emerged from the ominous courthouse doors, he took a long pause on the entrance steps. He drew everything in and the world looked stranger. Even the clouds appeared to be moving faster across an otherwise pleasant sky. The voices around him slowed down. The tempo in the atmosphere was out of step. The mechanics in his brain had been reduced to a hamster in a wheel, overworked. What had just happened?

Martin had been wandering the streets all morning. The sidewalks were wide and crowded. The streets themselves had a smaller ratio of traffic and he was tempted to walk along the painted dotted lines in the road and dodge the cars. At least he would get paid if someone bumped into him. The mobs on the sidewalk lived by the rule of every man for himself. He tried to avoid the shoving and also give it back where he could, and rarely did he make eye contact. He had grown sour and didn’t want to admit his own thoughts, even to himself. But the truth was he was young and ready to accept his creature comforts again. He began to miss pillows, basic warmth, and friendly conversation. Only now he had delved so deep into his notions of the world being dictated by money, politics, and fads, that he didn’t know how to slip back into the norm undetected. His rebellious nature had won him a reputation in the spreading vicinity of his tunnel life. His thoughts pushed behind his eyes as he walked recklessly. What could he do now? He had no money. Suddenly the colourful printed paper and accumulative clinking coins he once detested seemed essential. He kicked the pavement in defeat. There was no use fighting the greedy gods. Could he work? Would anyone hire him? Here? His appearance was almost frightening. He prayed for rain between using the public showers twice a week, which cost two pounds. Martin didn’t want to admit that he had failed in his attempts to rail against the grain, to not be a sheep. He always returned to the underground walkway. He considered it his home – after all, wasn’t home a place you could escape to after your legs grew weary and your head swelled with the pressure of people and words and laborious tasks. Perhaps Marty’s home didn’t provide the best comfort, but it provided him with shelter and a place to submerge from the busy streets. The hum of cars and shoes clanking on the grates above him provided company late in the night when only a few stray souls might join him or pass through, stealth-like, hiding also from the moonlight or police car beams. Marty wandered the streets of London by day and hid from them in the late, dark hours. As he headed back to Hyde Park, he would often see the homeless people cluster together in alleys. They were prohibited from seeking soft grass beds in the parks, even in the warmer season. So, in alleys they lit each other’s cigarettes and spat on the sidewalks. They swayed from the drink, and huddled together to keep warm and upright. They cajoled with each other and laughed with smoker’s lungs. Marty knew none of them and he avoided them. Whatever choices those poor, fading souls had ever made in their lives, they had not chosen to live on the streets with every door closed against them. At least, the choice had not been a conscious one. How the warmly lit windows in every flat on every block must have appeared to them. Marty was painfully aware of his free will in the matter. He wasn’t ready to surrender, yet. He still chose the broadness of the streets over being confined in those brightly lit boxes of windows looking down. Now his smug feelings had turned to jealousy. He suddenly hated the tourists brushing by him cheerfully with their Harrods bags, for a different reason. They had something he didn’t have. They were free. Martin sat down and occupied a piece of concrete.

As Wil rounded the corner he almost tripped over a grungy looking young man sitting on the pavement. The man looked as though he had walked across the continent. The blue of his eyes as he glanced up, startled, looked lost and old. The young man’s expectant hand emerged from his jacket sheepishly, and wavered open before him. Wil hesitated for half a second and then pulled out an executive leather booklet from his inside pocket. He then pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and began scribbling furiously inside the booklet.
“Here chap, here’s a big fat cheque and all you have to do is sign it,” Wil said. Wil roughly stuffed the content into the man’s waiting hand and hurried off, jamming both his empty hands into his deep pockets.

Video Clips

2007-09-10T13:24:00.001-07:00

http://www.facebook.com/share_redirect.php?h=c64ba397ee740bd0a8cb709ed22283ad&url=http%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D1P3FLz3Ky08&sid=10559450246

Writing on Week Seventeen

2007-09-06T22:53:00.000-07:00

A Writing Room of One's Own

I am posting this blog entry from my first writing room, and it's been a long time a-coming. I am also posting this from my first 'stand alone' house. Who says a writer has to be starving? Well, after the mortgage payments we might be, but that's alright. I have a writing room --and it is far away from the television set. I have been used to balancing my laptop on my lap, on the couch, in front of the TV for so long... now sitting at a real writing table, being flanked by my stocked bookshelves and inspirational decor is, well, heaven... if you believe in that sort of thing. Next, paint. A warm colour that will draw me in, but not give me an additional headache (writers tend to rub their foreheads a lot).

My co-homeowner has also donated his beloved reading chair to my room... a simple reclining chair with blue padded fabric from IKEA. Ah, the poetry books I'll savour there... Okay, I know I'm going on a bit. It is all I can do to stay in my desk chair, writing, and not dancing around the room like Natalie in West Side Story.

At work, it is sometimes mildly distracting, thinking of my room and the ideas hatching...

I have already been more productive in this room over the past week, then I have been all summer. In my defense, house-buying, -selling, and -moving is a labour.

I have completed and sent off another poetry review to a certain online and print magazine (I will reveal more details if, and when, the review is published), and I am gradually preparing for my commitment to Random Acts of Poetry in October. Already, I am scoping out likely, less-intimidating people on the bus to share my poems with.

Today, my official announcement for a lunchtime poetry reading at work was sent out. The internal Communications Coordinator was kind enough to create a snazzy event poster for me. I feel encouragement all around, and I know it will be a great time.

For now, the reality of my day job looms and the evening has disappeared, yet again, so I will end here... happy to dream about my writing space, knowing I will find it is still here in the morning.

Morning Couplets

2007-09-06T22:50:00.001-07:00

I tend to forget my breath during the day,
to expand my lungs as though first coming out of sleep.

One bird with a sprained wing under a tree, another dodges tires
for morsels on a busy street. We, too, take great risks to thrive.

A day to discover the world again, to break out
of this hum-drum bubble we can only stretch so far to burst.

I inaugurate this new season with a journey, one foot in front
leads the other to some hopeful destination; the sun, a bright compass.

These days when dogs chase the waves back to the mountains,
I retreat, too, into babies on blankets of rock broken into fine ground.

A trill of bird song drowns the tired sound of city work;
I strain to hear the dialect of such small, winged creatures.

I watch the vines as they twine around my patio,
knowing no plateaus, only opportune room to grow and bloom.

In this quiet, half-naked noon, I cure his ailment;
a night of little rest bending to a day of massive hope.

A night in bloom as colours resonate in scented dreams;
a changed landscape from stretched limbs reaching out to light petals.

Dragged back into the sensual, less lucid world; I leave
one of intuition and boundless flight not given by chance.

Random Acts of Poetry - 2007

2007-09-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

VICTORIA POETS TO COMMIT ‘RANDOM ACTS OF POETRY’

Random Acts of Poetry, a celebration of poetry and literacy, begins its fourth year during the week of October 1st to 7th, 2007. Random Acts of Poetry is a project of the Victoria READ Society, a non-profit literacy organization, established in 1976. Random Acts of Poetry is funded by The Canada Council for the Arts.

During the week, 37 poets across Canada, from Victoria to Newfoundland, including three of Canada’s Poets Laureate, will commit Random Acts of Poetry in their cities. On buses and subways, in donut shops and cafes, police stations, grocery stores, shelters, curling rinks, on city streets and country lanes, poets will read poems to strangers and give them their books. Poets will also read their poems in ESL and Adult Literacy classes across the country.

In the Greater Victoria area five poets will offer poems to passersby: Victoria’s Poet Laureate/road kill inspector/Sunday school teacher Carla Funk; Random Acts of Poetry founder/private eye/raven watcher Wendy Morton; Barbara Pelman, teacher at Reynolds Secondary School/wannabe tango dancer; Susan Stenson, teacher at Claremont Secondary School editor of the Claremont Review/bodytalker and Andrea McKenzie, daydreaming journalist.

“Poetry,” says Wendy Morton, “is the shortest distance between two hearts. I have read poems to people who hadn’t heard a poem in thirty years, and watched their eyes fill up with tears. Some burst into laughter or laid a hand on my shoulder, hugged me, took my hand. Poetry can connect us with each other as humans as no other art form I know. Poetry is a gift that we can create from whatever life has in store for us.”

Across Canada poets will commit random acts in: Victoria, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Calgary, Edmonton, Moose Jaw, Winnipeg, Stratford, Markdale, Brantford, Toronto, Collingwood, Ottawa, Windsor, Hamilton, Montreal, Fredericton, Sackville, Saint John, Charlottetown, Halifax, Antigonish, St. John’s.

http://national-random-acts-of-poetry.blogspot.com/2007/08/andrea-mckenzie.html

http://www.victoriabookprizesociety.ca/doc/Book%20Prize%20Showcases%20Literary%20Arts.pdf

Favourite Poem of the Month

2007-08-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

The Lady of Shallot

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Part I
On either side the river lieLong fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro' the field the road runs by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shallot.
Willows whiten, aspens quiver,
Little breezes dusk and shiver
Thro' the wave that runs for ever
By the island in the river
Flowing down to Camelot.

Four gray walls, and four gray towers,
Overlook a space of flowers,
And the silent isle imbowers
The Lady of Shallot.
By the margin, willow veil'd,
Slide the heavy barges trail'd
By slow horses; and unhail'd
The shallop flitteth silken-sail'd
Skimming down to Camelot:

But who hath seen her wave her hand?
Or at the casement seen her stand?
Or is she known in all the land,
The Lady of Shallot?

Only reapers, reaping early
In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower'd Camelot:

And by the moon the reaper weary,
Piling sheaves in uplands airy,
Listening, whispers " 'Tis the fairy
Lady of Shallot."

Part II
There she weaves by night and day
A magic web with colours gay.
She has heard a whisper say,
A curse is on her if she stay
To look down to Camelot.

She knows not what the curse may be,
And so she weaveth steadily,
And little other care hath she,
The Lady of Shallot.
And moving thro' a mirror clear
That hangs before her all the year,
Shadows of the world appear.
There she sees the highway near
Winding down to Camelot:

There the river eddy whirls,
And there the surly village-churls,
And the red cloaks of market girls,
Pass onward from Shallot.

Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad,
Sometimes a curly shepherd-lad,
Or long-hair'd page in crimson clad,
Goes by to tower'd Camelot;

And sometimes thro' the mirror blue
The knights come riding two and two:
She hath no loyal knight and true,
The Lady of Shallot.

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often thro' the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:

Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two young lovers lately wed:
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The Lady of Shallot.

Part III
A bow-shot from her bower-eaves,
He rode between the barley-sheaves,
The sun came dazzling thro' the leaves,
And flamed upon the brazen greaves
Of bold Sir Lancelot.

A red-cross knight for ever kneel'd
To a lady in his shield,
That sparkled on the yellow field,
Beside remote Shallot.
The gemmy bridle glitter'd free,
Like to some branch of stars we see
Hung in the golden Galaxy.
The bridle bells rang merrily
As he rode down to Camelot:

And from his blazon'd baldric slung
A mighty silver bugle hung,
And as he rode his armour rung,
Beside remote Shallot.

All in the blue unclouded weather
Thick-jewell'd shone the saddle-leather,
The helmet and the helmet-feather
Burn'd like one burning flame together,
As he rode down to Camelot.

As often thro' the purple night,
Below the starry clusters bright,
Some bearded meteor, trailing light,
Moves over still Shallot.

His broad clear brow in sunlight glow'd;
On burnish'd hooves his war-horse trode;
From underneath his helmet flow'd
His coal-black curls as on he rode,
As he rode down to Camelot.

From the bank and from the river
He flash'd into the crystal mirror,
"Tirra lirra," by the river
Sang Sir Lancelot.

She left the web,
she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look'd down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack'd from side to side;
"The curse is come upon me," cried
The Lady of Shallot.

Part IV
In the stormy east-wind straining,
The pale yellow woods were waning,
The broad stream in his banks complaining,
Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower'd Camelot;

Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shallot.

And down the river's dim expanse
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance--
With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.

And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shallot.

Lying, robed in snowy white
That loosely flew to left and right--
The leaves upon her falling light--
Thro' the noises of the night
She floated down to Camelot:

And as the boat-head wound along
The willowy hills and fields among,
They heard her singing her last song,
The Lady of Shallot.

Heard a carol, mournful, holy,
Chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
Till her blood was frozen slowly,
And her eyes were darken'd wholly,
Turn'd to tower'd Camelot.

For ere she reach'd upon the tide
The first house by the water-side,
Singing in her song she died,
The Lady of Shallot.

Under tower and balcony,
By garden-wall and gallery,
A gleaming shape she floated by,
Dead-pale between the houses high,
Silent into Camelot.

Out upon the wharfs they came,
Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
And round the prow they read her name,
The Lady of Shallot.

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross'd themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:

But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shallot."

Writing On Week Sixteen

2007-08-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

The fear of making something happen, like standing on top of a ski slope. There is the momentum of the passion to create pushing you, and the pull of opportunity. The only trouble is that you don't know what is at the bottom of the slope. So, I have to write and trust, and send it out for someone to catch.

I haven't been sending out many poems lately. At times it feels like an endless cycle of rejection. I just haven't hit the right time. I'm not completely discouraged, I am simply focusing on the creating process and marketing what I already have published. I am selectively submitting poems a couple of times a year to different literary publications, but I'm not going broke on stamps and contest entry fees.

At the moment, I am working on my second poetry manuscript and concentrating on editing the first draft of my novel. I continue to envision success, and wonder what it could mean. As writers, we are the most fragile of egotists. The hard part is bringing it forward, and making the world listen. We want to set free our words, and yet hang on to our last edits for as long as we can. (This sentence was edited numerous times)

This week I started the ball rolling again... I put forward a volunteer commitment to organize a poetry reading at work. The incredible part ( or maybe not so incredible) is that I work in an environment where people would actually assemble and give up their regular lunch hour to listen to poetry. My co-workers are already encouraging me, asking about the details and making promises to attend.

I've decided to leave a few minutes open at the end of the reading for anyone who wants to read poetry, their own or a favourite poems, so that it is more accessible. This won't be a poetry cafe atmosphere where people are accustomed to celebrating creative thought, so I want to transform this work space and let the audience breathe and feel comfortable and engaged. This isn't just about me and my book.

Still, I am trying to bring my work forward and, at the same time, kick off a poetic vibe. The fact that I am the catalyst for this event thrills me, and causes some mild trepidation. I've been getting in the habit of putting myself forward, and pushing down the fear. I've made contact with an established poet, Russell Thorburn, offering to review his most recent book of poems titled, Father, Tell Me I Have Not Aged. My drive is active and my mind is filled with ideas, plots, phrases and poems. I'm letting my passion push me and not worrying so much about what lies at the bottom of the ski slope.

Morning Couplets

2007-08-07T09:45:00.000-07:00

I survey my unfinished room, think of great sketches,
sculptures without limbs, a musical score hidden in a mislabeled box.

Five mornings out of seven days, a single pillow, a radio voice;
today the week ends, our life starts. Your birthday is May, and mine July.

I wake beside emptiness on this heavy-clouded day;
a still tap in the bath, a piano in the corner, a morning waits to be filled.

A few hours traveled in another place; I unpack
luggage from my eyes and remove night shoes.

A jigsaw with bent and missing pieces, a ribcage
of sunlight shows an unswept floor.

I try not to ponder too much on how the sun rises,
not the logistics, but the eternity of it.

A soft, bright breeze stirs the new, confirms the uncertain,
something lost in the evening, pushed up by the descended moon.

When our morning becomes the entire day, we leave the rotation
of earth to its work; his beard shimmers red and gold sparks in sleep and in love.

A stillness in sun-touched branches, I try to model this:
in another flurry of morning we train ourselves to sip tea, and he tells me “write”.

In this world there is a light, and in this light there is a door,
and in this door there is a crack, and in this crack there is a dream.

League of Canadian Poets' AGM in June 2007

2007-07-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

Yvonne Blomer's reading at the League of Canadian Poets' AGM, June 9, 2007 -

short-listed for the 2007 Gerald Lampert Award

Yvonne & Andrea Yvonne & fellow poet Kate Braid

Writing on Week Fifteen

2007-07-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Poetry is everywhere. It is on everyone's lips and sometimes in the most unexpected places. I work in government and, for employee morale and just for fun, there is a whiteboard in the stairwell for people to write down their thoughts, draw goofy pictures or solicit opinions. I saw a written comment "There is no money in poetry, but then there is little poetry in money." Someone else had come along and written "there is money in poetry, if you know how to find it." I wrote a simple "Cheers!" beside it.
The fact is, I've been able to turn my work cubicle into a mini poetry booth, and sold five copies of my book by displaying it on my file cabinet. No supervisors have shut me down, yet! People have a leaning towards the arts; it is part of our human make-up. One colleague of mine was generous enough to share a poem he had memorized in University, and I was treated to both the Greek and English translation.
Even those who swear up and down that they don't like poetry and never understood it - read them a good, accessible poem and they could change their minds right in front of you. I will be participating in the annual Random Acts of Poetry event in October 2007, and am feeling more encouraged about it. In the past, the thought of approaching strangers and ambushing them with a poem had scared me to death. I thought I might be verbally abused or shoved to the side, but then I look at the buskers belting out their creativity every day, all over town. Perhaps not everyone throws a coin into their hat, but I think we all secretly applaud them. The proof is in the pudding - and I've been given support and praise at my work for my efforts. People understand the importance of the arts, and it is warming to witness.

A Memoir

2007-07-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

I was conceived by the hopes of strangers who would become my parents by a written signature. Little did they know what they were taking home - what to do with me when I danced out of control, drew pictures on any blank surface, except the walls, and wrote down words. I stood alone on stages and danced for darkened audiences, sang in the backseat loudly, yelled at my sister when I tried to teach her how to write full sentences when she was three. My red-faced pupil shrinking in her chair as I bleated, "No, no, no!"
To this day, she refuses to know how to spell. I smiled for pictures, showing my top teeth or my bottom jaw, or both. I roared down black diamond ski hills when I was eight. My dad calling behind him, "meet you at the bottom!" I hung out of roller coasters and gondolas, wanting to see the distance from earth and my rush to the ground. I wrote bottomless pages, willing myself into a tailspin, to the point of forgetting how I began. Going further down.
I fell into men who like to decide for me at the flip of a coin. Will I love her or not? I stepped on the coin. Kept walking, only after a lifetime.
I fell into women who poured me into bottomless glasses of booze and said, "who needs men?" and we danced on night club speakers, kissed strangers, fell into taxicabs and tailspin beds.
I put one foot down to make the room stop. I lived alone, packed my life full, quarrelled, wrote, walked around in the dark. I went to funerals. Too many funerals, but not so many as some. Still, I grappled with loss. I clung to loss, fell into men I couldn't touch, couldn't touch me, who made love to me through computers and phonelines. Men who could let go when they wanted to, at the drop of a dime.
I watched a broken clock on the wall, only for a lifetime. I put in a new battery, drove forward, threw myself into time - papers, textbooks, teachers and bosses.
I learned instruction. I learned to be happy. I learned the pain of submission. I learned to fall into myself. Eventually, I fell into a man who I decided could love me.

Writing On Week Fourteen

2007-07-09T12:52:00.000-07:00

The power of memory - how we cover events, or let them dance somewhere far in the background - it takes courage to bring them to the front again, center stage. Last weekend I participated in a one-day memoir writing course with Yvonne Blomer. Throughout the day, we were given prompts to reactivate our memory cells and take us into other, long forgotten places - or places and events that have always been close to the surface, still sitting on our shoulders and directing our current paths.
We were asked to write about the following, with time constraints: the story of our life, a meditation on our name, a phrase in another language, a cab ride, our hands, a fa vourite movie, a personal event linked with a world or pivotal event, a favourite book, and a childhood photograph.
We were given the opportunity to share our writings and, as with any piece of writing, a part of ourselves. There were a few passes, which is not unusual with such intimate parts of our being. When we are asked to let anything come from the recesses of the past, often everything does come - raw and uncensored. For me, it was a surreal memory from my childhood that I still can't quite sort out, from a time when everything seemed strange and confusing and I wasn't in the pilot's seat. Then there were pleasant, interesting memories that I was more willing to dissect and take another close look. Funny how we remember different events differently, and how we can take a new perspective looking back. Sometimes more compassionately of another person's perspective from the same memory.
There is often a sense that we don't quite have the right to attempt writing a memoir because we feel we need to be at the end of our life, or have led a wildly interesting life to validate writing about ourselves. Not true, as we learned in Blomer's course - we each have a valid story to tell. One woman in the course made a comment about how she prefers to take a real memory and embellish it, make it something more or something else and drift away from the truth. So, instead, she uses her memories as springboards for other creative ideas. A memoir can take so many directions, inwards and outwards, back and forth into so many new and forgotten discoveries.

Morning Couplets

2007-07-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

Waking before light and slow numbers on the bedside clock;
the soft thud of newspaper, the world begins again.

A calling of purpose to rise from warm, flannel sheets,
the last day of the week; a day to be ready.

The early morning birds sing me awake, while I dream
of traffic routes, movement, speech - the tests of today.

The urgency of Sunday, church chimes float through
my heathen space, my heart belongs to this pen - a creative, unbuilt worlds.

A deceptive spring peeks in my blinds, bright
icy air beckons, while my love blows a kiss, and breezes out the back.

A red room, blue sky, white dreams -
a new day - how can I choose my colours?

An alarm clock spills the world into my room, chaos of political strife,
ticking bombs, dividers - I find safety next to a warm body, unclenched hands.

Tea for one, an unfinished book, still morning;
an early international call. A warm breeze off the sea.

I wake, on the other side of strong cross-currents, in this place -
a table of poets, a lofty bed, soft light through bay windows and no bay.

Four walls and a cup of tea greet me, a sense of somewhere
and the hours roll out before me like curled receipts.

Short stories

2007-06-24T12:08:00.000-07:00

The Woman Downstairs

The woman downstairs heard every noise that wasn't there. Her husband was no longer there to snore and roll in his sleep, so she turned her ears to the small thumps and shallow breaths of the people upstairs. Every sound in the dark resonated like a bomb exploding. She would wake up to listen, and then roll from her bed to write letters, to perhaps hear some sympathy. She would press the send button, thrusting her indignant cries out into the night, to send rude awakenings to the morning recipients who had to do something to stop her letters from waking them, after everything had changed and the noises vanished. Even though there were the same soft thumps and shallow breaths, the daylight provided a sound buffer. A sound wall. Something for her obsessive thoughts and unsound mind to ricochet off.

She kept a notebook by her pillow, ready for the next midnight assault and her onslaught of complaints. Her two-bedroom suite caused too much noise. Silence can be loud. Her letters began to fly around the world - out of her head, fingers and room. Her lonely dementia; a one-dimensional life. And the letters came back, acknowledged. Her thoughts confirmed. There was a sound in the world and she kept everyone awake with it - presidents, council members, plumbers, carpenters, teachers, government servants, and the writers, who wrote more replies and received more letters.

Every complaint reached the door of the people living with their small thumps and soft breaths upstairs who barricaded themselves in layers of carpet, sweaters, and stacked boxes. The quiet people who she dream of in the night, living themselves into a corner of existence who had enough of paper, who protested fiercely. The people who defended their slow breaths and late night thumps on the hard surface - their floor, her ceiling. Noise trickles through the cracks, old pipes bursting, and rotting walls.

How could they not hear each other? How could they live? The woman's empty bed, cold and deprived of her late husband's soft breaths in the night, his footfall on the floor going to run water through the old pipes in the night. Her adversity to the low sounds of breathing, and other people living.

Writing on Week Thirteen

2007-06-23T15:36:00.000-07:00

I am working on relieving tension in my life because, as a writer, I find that my emotions often get in the way of reality. There is often a struggle to let go of the ego, that universe in the self that shields us from the conflict of a different reality happening outside the body and, essentially, the mind. As writers, we can use this to our advantage, to create worlds. Still, I tend to stay in that world and lose sight of the daily grind that, at times, gets in the way. Also, my ego will get in the way of the writing process. I find it difficult to follow my own rule to keep writing and let it happen. I have constructed projects in my mind, written on long-term 'to-do lists' that will keep me motivated and creating for a long time; however, this will to sit down and start sometimes goes sideways. I journal before I sit down to work.
I recently had a discussion with my yoga instructor about consciously slowing down and being more aware of the mind's internal and external realities. I tend to internalize everything and not look more closely at what that external influence may actually be, and whether it has much at all to do with me. The world is an overwhelming place - is the trick to accept it all, or try to harness it into some manageable, bite-sized way?
This is not an attempt to sort out the question of reality. We have our own realities and one reality can be complete imagination - in writing, and in life. The question is how to stay firm to my own reality without allowing the realities of others to manipulate my perceptions.
I move deeper into my postures and, when the mind chatter happens, which is a running dialogue, I try to channel it into some creative energy. The mind chatter goes onto the page and off my shoulders.

Writing on Week Twelve

2007-06-11T11:09:00.000-07:00

I have returned from attending my first League of Canadia Poets AGM, held in Edmonton, Alberta. I met brilliant poets and had an opportunity to join in and share my work. During the AGM, there were a number of panels presented on writing. I was thrilled to be in a place with other writers, and an organization that supported writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje and Al Purdy, to name a small few. I attended the Form Poetry and Technology and Poetic Collaboration panels. Form poetry is far from being a lost form, but it is having a revival. There was an insightful conversation about the use of the traditional sonnet and liberated sonnet, and the possibility of creating other sonnet forms. I have been working only in free verse for so long, I was partly intimidated to try form. As a result of the panel, I was inspired to write a sonnet today - the first of many.
The second panel addressed the use of today's technology for poets collaborating with other artists i.e. websites, blogs, poetry CDs, music lyrics, photography, video poems. There are so many possibilities at the click of a button.
The league organized a new members reading at a restaurant called The Kasbah in downtown Edmonton, and it was a wonderful evening with words and wine flowing. On the last evening, we were treated to a stirring lecture from Mark Abley, more wine and words flowing, and an awards presentation for the Pat Lowther and Gerald Lampert book awards at the Edmonton City Hall.
Our own wayword poet, Yvonne Blomer, was short-listed for the Gerald Lampert award for her first book of poetry, a broken leaf, fallen mirror. She gave a thoughtful reading and left a firm mark as an up-and-coming poet and new member of the league. Steven Price won the award for his first collection of poems about Harry Houdini, An Anatomy of Keys. Gary Hyland, a poet from Moosejaw, Sasksatchewan, was presented with a well-deserved Lifetime Honourary membership of the League.
The weekend was a great introduction to the League of Canadian Poets - to be present and involved - and brush shoulders with wonderful writers in all career stages. To spend a weekend away talking about the sound, placement and magic of words, what could be better?

Morning Couplets

2007-06-05T07:16:00.000-07:00

I awoke on his side of my bed, tangled in the comforter;
his body pillow stowed away on the floor, instead the empty space kept me warm.

Remnants of yesterday fall like dry, dead skin in the carpet,
the smell of dust particles in sunlight, receding shadows called back to the dull stars.

A bloated tea bag, cherry blossoms dangling from branches,
plump raisins suspended in milk – the patience of mornings and seasons.

Sunlit branches sway in a cold wind, birds serenade
spring in this winter month.

The waking world is blurry; I lap up my tea, tasting,
and watch my slowed hand move across the page.

Writing on Week Eleven

2007-06-03T21:34:00.000-07:00

How is your writing? Are you managing to send out submissions, enter contests, manage to put a stanza or two on paper? Are you able to harness in your words and make them dance? If so, I am living vicariously through you this week. My flex day is another week away - my day to write - and in the meantime I work at writing morning couplets and keeping track of the days' events. Mostly, I'm trying to stay away from the usual distractions, but it can be a losing battle. Sometimes, the constant notifications of contests and literary events can be overwhelming. We are still struggling with the perameters of space and time. I'm glad these words, alone, are coming.

I find it helpful to discuss writing with a handful of friends I am able to bounce ideas off of, including my supportive Waywords. I have a co-worker with whom I can debate punctuation and discuss writing, in general - our styles, inspiration, influences, energies, authors, articles - whatever is niggling at our writing brains.

For writing incentive, I find the freedom of being wireless helps as I am not confined to my cubby-hole closet with all of its paper and books piled around me. You would think this mound of paper clutter would lend inspiration by osmosis, but it is often mere clutter that clogs the way for new work.

Sleep is overrated and I wish I didn't need it as much as I do. There are too many pages to fill and pore over.

The draft of my first novel should be bound in book form for review by next week, thanks to a friend who has offered to do this for me. I will have 10 copies to give to friends and family for their editing comments.

This week I will be flying to Edmonton to attend the League of Canadian Poets AGM (June 8-10). I am exhilarated by the thought of meeting other writers and sharing ideas.

I realize this entry is greatly dis-jointed - little spurts of thought as I try to start my ignition. Let me know how you are doing and, if you feel comfortable, share your published work or writing intents.

Favourite Poem of the Month

2007-05-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

He Sits Down on the Floor of a School for the Retarded

I sit down on the floor of a school for the retarded,
a writer of magazine articles accompanying a band
that was met at the door by a child in a man's body
who asked them, "Are you the surprise they promised us?"

It's Ryan's Fancy, Dermot on guitar,
Fergus on banjo, Denis on penny-whistle.
In the eyes of this audience, they're everybody
who has ever appeared on TV. I've been telling lies
to a boy who cried because his favorite detective
hadn't come with us; I said he had sent his love
and, no, I didn't think he'd mind if I signed his name

to a scrap of paper: when the boy took it, he said,
"Nobody will ever get this away from me,"
in the voice, more hopeless than defiant,
of one accustomed to finding that his hiding places
have been discovered, used to having objects snatched
out of his hands. Weeks from now I'll send him
another autograph, this one genuine
in the sense of having been signed by somebody
on the same payroll as the star.
Then I'll feel less ashamed. Now everyone is singing,
"Old MacDonald had a farm," and I don't know what to do

about the young woman (I call her a woman
because she's twenty-five at least, but think of her
as a little girl, she plays the part so well,
having known no other), about the young woman who
sits down beside me and, as if it were the most natural
thing in the world, rests her head on my shoulder.

It's nine o'clock in the morning, not an hour for music.
And, at the best of times, I'm uncomfortable
in situations where I'm ignorant
of the accepted etiquette: it's one thing
to jump a fence, quite another thing to blunder
into one in the dark. I look around me
for a teacher to whom to smile out my distress.
They're all busy elsewhere, "Hold me," she whispers. "Hold me."

I put my arm around her. "Hold me tighter."
I do, and she snuggles closer. I half-expect
someone in authority to grab her
of me: I can imagine this being remembered
for ever as the time the sex-crazed writer
publicly fondled the poor retarded girl.
"Hold me," she says again. What does it matter
what anybody thinks? I put my arm around her,
rest my chin in her hair, thinking of children,
real children, and of how they say it, "Hold me,"
and of a patient in a geriatric ward
I once heard crying out to his mother, dead
for half a century, "I'm frightened! Hold me!"
and of a boy-soldier screaming it on the beach
at Dieppe, of Nelson in Hardy's arms,
of Frieda gripping Lawrence's ankle
until he sailed off in his Ship of Death.

It's what we all want, in the end,
to be held, merely to be held,
to be kissed (not necessarily with the lips,
for every touching is a kind of kiss.)

Yet, it's what we all want, in the end,
not to be worshipped, not to be admired,
not to be famous, not to be feared,
not even to be loved, but simply to be held.

She hugs me now, this retarded woman, and I hug her.
We are brother and sister, father and daughter,
mother and son, husband and wife.
We are lovers. We are two human beings
huddled together for a little while by the fire
in the Ice Age, two hundred thousand years ago.

Alden Nowlan

Poems

2007-05-28T08:43:00.000-07:00

Touchstone
for Grandma

One by one, we take her energy and try
to give something back; a shape, sound or colour.
Something she can hold onto or take.
She is scattered on the bed like rune stones.
We touch her fingers, her hair.
Give her sips of water
so that she may speak. Tell us what we can do.
Grandma, our oracle, our history fading with her.
She is a touchstone, my cornerstone,
my rock.
I watch her shift from someone I know, I remember
in part, or I don’t recognize.
It is the same for her, this quiet exchange
of energy moving in and out.
She squeezes my hand, rubs off on youth,
youth rubs off on her. A charm, fading.
A light touch, and go.

Writing on Week Ten

2007-05-28T08:08:00.000-07:00

I've heard back from some of you, in relation to my blog posts, and wish to thank you for your encouraging comments and heartfelt condolences (my grandma's passing).

I hope to see more discussion happening around the scenarios I've put out there in my seminar questions... please don't hesitate to give me something to chew on.

The fear of writing and deadlines - I have two quotes (or paraphrasing, really): The minute you set out to write a masterpiece, you've already defeated yourself. - Patrick Lane

I love deadlines - I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by - Douglas Adams

First, the pressure a writer puts on themselves can be self-destructive. If you expect only greatness to happen in your writing and are afraid to write unless greatness comes, you are sunk. The reason? Writers can freeze up if they think they don't have anything spectacular to write, and if they are already evaluating the worth of the end product. It is writing suicide. This piece of wisdom is freeing for writers - write out the junk, if it is junk. The importance of writing is to keep writing. There are gems that you will be able to lure out later. As I was working on my novel, Turnstiles, I would refer to the manuscript as my first draft. A writing friend of mine helpfully pointed out that it was my 'zero draft', which meant I should not harness my writing or be too particular. My first draft would involve the editing part, my zero draft was meant for 'getting it all down'. I think this is an important approach to any writing. See the object, write the object - you can get it right later, after you've put it down on paper and looked at it from every angle.

As for deadlines acting as a writer's freeze, I don't find it to be an issue. I actually work best with deadlines. For me, I think there is a bigger fear of the world ending if I don't get a submission in on time. I tend to mentally whip myself for a week after, knowing there was an opportunity missed.

There is usually a fear of productivity in writing - lacking in it, the value of it, beginning it, and even completing it. Break off little bits, stay on track, give yourself small affirmations, and trust in the end result. Michaelangelo's David was once a huge slab of marble and, although they say that sculptors simply remove the excess clay or stone to reveal what is already there, they still had to chip away at it.

Writing On Week Nine

2007-05-20T23:07:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are counting, week eight is forever lost in the week of non-writing. I will try my best to make up for it. Actually, this past week has been a struggle to keep up my writing momentum, as life seems to be rolling along and picking up large debris in its path. One major event slowed me down a little... the passing of my nearly 90-year-old grandma. She was another creative spirit in my family and, as the rest of my relatives will tell you, they are few and far between. My grandma encouraged me artistically since I was very young - she would even send me cut-out ads for youth writing contest entries when I was in elementary school. One year I did have my entry published in a local magazine on the theme of 'my best Christmas' or 'what Christmas means to me' or something to that effect. So, I have been carrying my grandma around with me for a few weeks now, or so it seems. There seems to be an additional energy and weight to me, happening simultaneously, and one tends to defeat the other from time to time. I still talk to her and let her know how everything is moving along.

... what I have been dwelling on recently is the split that sometimes occurs with regard to the writer's passion and the self. I am writing in my head constantly, but the writing doesn't always make it to the tablet (ok, it does eventually, it has to, but not when I necessarily want it to). I've been giving into fatigue and sacrificing myself to the long hours of writing for work. Once my working day ends, part of me can't wait to retreat to my notebook/computer and unleash my own creative writing, and the other part of me deflates and says "the words will come -- first let's watch an old episode or two of Friends and then fall asleep". Still, a poem will trickle out, an article is written, a journal entry is made, and now I am returning to my responsibility as a blog writer. So, why do I feel as though I'm not giving everything I have to my writing? I believe it is because I have three novels in my head that aren't finished and numerous books of poetry yet to be published or written. Still, a poem trickles out, a book review is published, a character unexpectedly speaks, and the journal entries continue...

... funny about the journal entries... when I talk about the act of journaling to people who are non-writers, I feel as though I'm talking like a 12-year-old and I'm not always sure why. I have always had a nagging obsession to write down my thoughts, record actions, describe my days and how I felt in them, as though I can imagine creating and recording my own legacy. It is not egotistical; it is a must. For me, and perhaps others. I start to feel threadbare if I don't, and I often try to stretch out at least three pages. If not, I feel lazy, as though I'm only skimming the surface of things.

I've talked to a few people who are keenly interested in journaling, but don't know where to start or what to write. Or even what they should or shouldn't put down on paper. It is like starting at the beginning of a spiral labrynth... you have to either go deep inwards to get out, or start at the outermost point to get in. I say, write... start with the weather and you'll be surprised where you end up. One analogy comes to me, from my grandma (I will be in this place with her for awhile)... no matter how a conversation was started with her, somehow you ALWAYS ended up in World War II. You could start telling her about your cat, your neighbour, your neighbour's new car, a movie you went to see, school, work... anything at all... I could guarantee that by the end of it she would be telling you about something that happened during the war, or the great depression, take your pick. Sorry, I got side-tracked. Enough said!

So, my suggestion is to flick off the critic or ghost or whatever block you have lurking over your shoulder, and write. Talk it out.

Already I am feeling better - I think I've had a tinge of guilt this weekend, too, because I missed Planet Earth Poetry (and I may have had a few prospective sales of my book, which I hope will still be possible next week at the last PEP until September 14) and my writing group today. Brian and I are exploring the housing market, hoping to step into that new realm of having a single family dwelling with no cranky neighbours beneath us to complain about morning showers and our cats playing. We are working full-time, stick-handling steep learning curves and strata noise complaints, and simply trying to find some time in the day when we can both breathe and not think of the next thing to plan, fire to put out, or place to rush to. I've needed to slow down this runaway train. The question is the split between the passion and the self - one needs refueling to help the other exist. I am reconciling with this, with life in the way, knowing it will come back around to me in words that need to be written.

So, these are my belated ramblings. The words have been in storage, forming themselves and handling a few road obstacles - death, living, new opportunities, and self.

Reviews

2007-05-04T22:51:00.000-07:00

Writing On Week Seven

2007-05-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

A space to write. This seems like a simple concept, and that any space large enough for a pen, paper and a little elbow room is enough space. Sometimes, finding space can be the most difficult part of writing. Not only does a writer need to have physical space, but also to be in the
'right space'. At the moment, my space is a cubby hole closet and, when my neighbour's wireless connection is strong enough, I can move my space into the living room.

I look forward to the day when I have a home office to write, a place where I know I can go to and work without having to balance my writing materials on my knee. Organization is the key and I have a growing list of writing projects. I'll be happy if they are completed in the next ten years, or longer. My second poetry book, chapbook ideas, editing my novel, a second novel idea, and freelancing articles. These days I'm lucky if I can keep my journal updated.

There are times when you have to let everything go, and write. I tend to put off sleeping and eating (not for too long... I'm not a university student anymore!), simply to finish a favourite book or become engrossed in writing. I'm able to carve out a piece of the clock, settle into my cubby hole or well-worked dent in the couch cushion. From here, I bring words and test my elbow room, for now, balancing my laptop on my knee and juggling stacked books, until I have a writing room of my own.

I'd love to hear about your room to write and your creative spaces... what you need to breathe and get into an energetic writing space. Don't make me too jealous!

Photo Gallery

2007-05-01T07:01:00.000-07:00

Morning Couplets

2007-05-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

There is a morning scent, perhaps a mix of damp leaves and lawn
near the sidewalk, a still pool of last night's fury; the calm, labouring earth.

Sideboard heaters keep me in a dizzy dream state, a thin pane
of glass separates this warm bubble from winter's cold pin.

In winter's gray morning wind, the trees find their rhythm,
they sway in a whimsical ballet, bursts of petite jettes.

Gray hangs over my view frame like a canvas
from the couch, through the sliding glass the day is a still-life.

The day is submerged in water, drowns the thirsty plants,
we look to the sky for small pools of mercy, are given the skim off the Atlantic.

Writing On Week Six

2007-04-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

It's all about marketing, baby!

The more I am writing, and the more I am putting myself out there, the more I am learning... it's not so much about the writing as it is the marketing of your writing. If you have a publisher who is investing in you and making sure you are out in front of different audiences, then you really have it made. This doesn't mean you will become a famous author overnight, but it certainly gives you a fighting chance.

It's hard. Especially when you are juggling other full-time commitments in your life. I find that I've been doing better with my book sales, simply selling them face to face and on the spot. This last week, I wandered down to Munro's Books in downtown Victoria because my boyfriend had told me that the last time he checked the shelf my two copies were no longer there. I hadn't received any phone call, but I was still hopeful that this meant my books had been sold. I waited at the checkout, and eventually one of the staff came back with my two lonely copies in a plastic Munro's bag saying, "we've been waiting for you to pick these up. I'm sorry." After nearly a year on the shelf, and my tireless efforts to direct people to the bookstores to buy or order my book, they were still handed back. And yet, I usually manage to sell at least two copies at each reading. The difference is that they can hear my work. Otherwise, I am a no-name poet with my slim spine sticking out on a shelf. People don't often like to take a chance, unless they are referred to a particular writer by someone they trust, or they've had a taste of the writer.

This weekend was a success, reading at The Black Stilt on Friday and Dark Horse Books on Sunday. On Friday night, I shared the stage with another up-and-coming writer, Sean Horlor. I knew Sean from my professional writing world, working for the provincial government, so it was fortuitous to cross paths again. I have to say that I felt a bit green when he mentioned his book tour. Your what?

I suppose that is only natural -- as writers, we all want that support. I try to set up readings locally and it is a little difficult for me to get off the island as often as I might like to, but it is still possible. This is why the AGM in Edmonton will be a significant stepping stone - stepping out and beyond to share my work and meet with writers from across Canada.

I felt good and solid knowing that I had initiated the reading at Dark Horse Books on Sunday. The trick is to make things happen, and not wait for someone else to set up events and alert you when you are needed at the mike, thrusting your book into your hands. The same applies to printing off those poems, shoving them in envelopes and licking the stamps like good-luck kisses for hopeful publication. It is all you, baby. Just like the writing doesn't appear on the screen without you typing, the audiences don't show up without you hollering.

Photo Gallery - National Poetry Month Readings 2007

2007-04-30T08:45:00.000-07:00

Poetica Erotica April 21st, Bean Around the World Cafe

Barbara Pelman, Andrea McKenzie, David Pimm, Cynthia Woodman Kerkham, Yvonne Blomer (no photo), and other sexy readers

When you touch me just there, well,

you know what will happen.

I’ll arch forward to meet your finger

touch tip from nose to toe

and ohhhh, a small flick of

something just wet enough to taste –

and sometimes a tongue in your ear

left too long is, well, just a tongue

in your ear.

So, don’t stay there too long

if you don’t want me to giggle –

if you want a different kind of

uncontrollable wiggle of body to breast

to bum and oh! just touch me some.

by Andrea McKenzie

The Black Stilt Cafe, April 27

Andrea McKenzie and Sean Horlor

Dark Horse Books, April 29

Barbara Pelman, Eric Miller, Yvonne Blomer, Allan Brown and Andrea McKenzie

Writing On Week Five

2007-04-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

Every Friday night (nearly) I lug 3 to 5 copies of my book to Planet Earth Poetry at the Black Stilt Cafe, hoping I'll come away with one or two less. On the odd occasion, my hopes are realized, as I will encounter an old acquaintance or a random listener who felt a connection. On these nights, I usually float out of the cafe and run around in circles in my condo when I get home, repeating over and over to my boyfriend's unending patience "I sold my book!" I have a feeling that no matter how many books I publish or sell or how many readings I attend, this will always happen. I love that after 11 years of reading at the open mike series, my legs still twitch and my hands get shaky. I hope to never lose this nervous energy.

On the evenings that no books are sold and I have gone on my own, my boyfriend must endure my excited babble and maybe a few poems from the featured reader's book I bought. It is wonderful simply to have a place to go and converse with writers and share.

We are told again and again that our reading series in Victoria is the best in Canada, from poets who have travelled and read at many other venues. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the League of Canadian Poets for funding writers to come to our humble, long-running series - as well as Wendy Morton, our faithful, tireless organizer, promoter and hostess (and matron of the 5-minute, one poem rule). We really do have something to treasure.

I look forward to meeting other members of the League when I attend the AGM in Edmonton from June 8-10 in June. Until now, I have been timidly on the fringe of the larger writing community, marvelling at the poets who come to visit and read through the invitation of Wendy and funding of the League of Canadian Poets. This month, I will be giving my first reading for which I will actually receive payment from the League, and this year is my first year as a recognized full member (I received a package in the mail as proof!).

My point is, it is time for me to stop hiding in my room with my computer and to move beyond the borders of Planet Earth Poetry. It is time to get out there!

Blogs to Watch

2007-04-16T22:39:00.001-07:00

http://www.patricklane.ca/

http://www.heatherpoet.blogspot.com/

http://www.stephenkarr.blogspot.com/

http://www.robmclennan.blogspot.com/

http://www.iambiccafe.blogspot.com/

http://www.uponthewind.ca/

Speaker's Corner

2007-04-16T22:08:00.000-07:00

Seminar Question #4

How To Trust Your Own Writing Voice

There was a question that came out of my writing group, The Waywords, which I thought was worth putting out there to the masses, as it is something that I believe every writer struggles with. Okay, we know we are writers, but we spend a lot of time trying to 'find our voice'. We absorb the words of the great writers armed with the comfort that good writers borrow and great writers steal, but when are we secure enough in our own voice and stop looking to others to say 'here's my poem, fix it'.

Now don't get me wrong - the idea of workshopping is a great tool, but there is a fine line between useful critique and giving someone your poem. You have to also trust the critique and come into a situation knowing on some level where the poem needs tightening - there is already some work that's been done. Individuals at a reading will arrive with their own tastes, and you won't be able to cater to all. That's not your goal, and there is a danger that sometimes those who work on your poem are really writing their own poems.

I realize this is a tender area because most writers have editors. Bottom line - I believe the writer first needs to trust in the direction a piece of work is meant to unfold, in the hard centre of what brought it into existence, and not be lead far elsewhere. The individual writing voice lies in the organic tone of the piece, where the line breaks fall, even if they are gently shifted in places and, most of all, the writer needs to be able to spearhead the suggestions of the editor as they come and not feel as though they are being led down a path that doesn't feel, well, like the intended writing.

Your voice may sound familiar to you from something you heard or read somewhere else - a certain reading voice or a tone of a favourite poet - and the more you interact with literature, the more muddled your writing voice may seem. Isn't that the beauty of finding your individuality? Don't we all take in thousands of pieces of media a day to sift through and decide how we will rearrange it to accommodate our lifestyles and own sets of values? Still, the writing is yours and the work will find its own place.

Thoughts? These are merely mine.

Writing On Week Four

2007-04-16T06:31:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a writing treat, as well as a retreat. On Friday night, Gary Hyland read at The Black Stilt from his most recent collection of poetry titled, Hands Reaching In Water. I had heard Gary read at Mocambopo last year and also attended a Sheri-D workshop with him. Gary is a large advocate of the writing that occurs in his native Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, and a generous soul. He bought a copy of my book, which I tried to press on him as a gift. No dice - he was determined to help out a younger, aspiring writer. The evening was a gift.

On Saturday, we (my unexploited boyfriend and I) drove to Nanaimo to attend the 30th Anniversary of the Federation of BC Writers. My writing colleague, Yvonne Blomer, also attended. The event was hosted by David Fraser, the Regional representative of the Federation, and proved to be an entertaining afternoon. I was glad to have a new audience, and thrilled to sell three copies of my book before jumping in our car and heading back down the island. In truth, it was a treat simply to be out of Victoria for a few hours on a gorgeous spring day.

Thank you to those of you who have left comments and sent emails to let me know that the blog is working, and not just on a technical level. I am excited to keep up a weekly writing profile and engage in any writing-related thoughts, debates, tips or events that we all have to share. I'm also going to create a section for any recommended books or particular writers - so please add your favourites. Lately, I am concentrating more on reading and studying, than cannon-balling into my own work. I have a healthy list to start from with writers waiting patiently to be revisited on my bookshelf from university days, and courtesy of my poetry retreats with Patrick Lane. I'm also making a better effort to bend the spines on the monthly literary journals that come into my mailbox. However, with that said, there are so many dynamic and evocative voices, new and old, so I would appreciate knowing of any writers that knock the wind out of you!

Morning Couplets

2007-04-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

Rain keeps me in, wrapped in my own dry skin; this warmth
of paper piling around me ready to ignite, this mountain of me.

The soft, expectant keys on my laptop accompany
the fractional opening of bedroom blinds to let in some light.

Dusty bulbs on the chandelier, unlit, hanging above
a bouquet of lilies, carnations, mums - a single rose bulb, dusty pink.

The sun-streaked sky fills with light mist, a paradox,
while winter clouds charge like cattle overhead, a mindless drove.

I sip coffee beans, sit to hear my body awaken to this brighter room,
myself in it, content, glad for silence and ceilings.

I wake up in fog, blocking my passages and the taste of near rain;
this closed-in day, licked and sealed before I unwrap my covers.

This is our morning ritual - propped pillows, mugs of tea, unstifled yawns
and animal stretches, a slow caress with lightly pressing palms.

The spindly trees stand outside like soldiers, after battling high winds
and rounds of machine-gun rain, they stand at the morning's command.

Writing On Week Three

2007-04-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter, everyone! For the first time in a few years I have the luxury of a 4-day weekend, and am using this time for writing, as well as taking care of housekeeping items. Taxes, for one. Okay, I won't think about that at the moment, as it will only make my blood rush (in a not-so-good sort of way) and thwart any other activity. Instead, I'll think about bunnies and chocolate - and how did we ever get bunnies and chocolate out of Easter? All of these strange holiday rituals that seem to stumble off the intended path... but, I must admit, in my heathen tendencies I might choose chocolate over carrying a cross up a hill any day. At Planet Earth Poetry, one poet made a thoughtful remark about why we ever came to call the Friday before Easter 'Good Friday'. Shouldn't it be considered 'Bad Friday'? Good point. The holiday seems to be more sugar-coated than the stores alone can make it.
Friday was a good Friday, though, because Planet Earth Poetry featured Bill Bissett. For those of you who have not been treated to one of Bill's readings, keep your eyes and ears peeled for a performance near you. I believe everyone should hear Bill at least once in their lifetime, as he takes on both an intellectual and child-like view of the world and everything in the world. He spreads an innocent delight that we can all identify with... if we look at the world from upside down or tilt our head at a certain angle...

I feel privileged simply to have him recognize me at our sporadic meetings at his poetry readings. Bill possesses an openness and sincerity that few embody as a constant in their everyday existence.

I digress, but what a way to spend the long weekend -- a good book, an opportunity to walk in the sunshine, write, reflect on family and friends (however that is defined for you), and seep in poetry. The taxes can wait... for awhile.

Reviews

2007-04-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

In Paper Trail, Paré Writes Her Way into Work

by Andrea McKenzie

In Arleen Paré’s first book, Paper Trail, published by NeWest Press, she examines the everyday ritual of people dreaming themselves into and out of working. Nearing the end of her long career, a sentence, in the public service, Paré dissects the surreal and all-too-real aspects of life in the office.

The book is a series of fleeting or consuming observations, memories, thoughts and mental schedules that flow into each other like the days of the week. Paré leads us through her inner files, a briefcase filled with poetry, poetic prose, memoir and fiction. She records the misconceptions about work, both inside and outside of the office, in relation to who we are. There are sections of her book that focus on the social graces of work life and the unwritten code of fitting in, and using appropriate, airy topics for conversations with colleagues.

There are dense pages and white spaces, like work and the life in-between work. Paré looks at work as a commodity for life and how we calculate our happiness. She gives us the plight of a career woman, shifting gears between different roles that include mother, wife, daughter, and civil servant. Interestingly, she brings in another examination of how the roles of women and their existence differ in comparison with her mother’s generation.

She pairs the surreal, seemingly arbitrary working world with the concrete, practicality of life, and the surreal experiences of life with the encroaching reality of work; measuring security and what her work allows her to have in life. She uses a Cinderella complex to draw a parallel in the idea of work, security, and perceptions being impermanent.

In the midst of all this, she has short, unexpected conversations or daydreams with her own personal Kafka, which is developed throughout the book, trying to find answers, a balance or an anchor, and preparing for this transformation of leaving work.

The notion of working as part of our freewill, and subjecting ourselves to the weight, fear, demand and criticism of our work is a crucial part. She writes about trying to write herself out of her office where she feels boxed in, drawing on the story of a man who spends twenty years in a jail cell and was afraid to leave it when the door was finally opened. He wouldn’t leave. There is an invisible chain that links the civil servant to his or her desk, and the security of a full pension dangling in front of them like a gold carrot.

From there, she launches into the lists of survival kit items for everyday, to survive the office wilderness. Her briefcase is both a burden and a necessity. Paré also identifies herself and her work through the personal sacrifices, self-preservation and resourcefulness of her Parénts’ working lives. In the same vein, Paré likens work to religion and takes another look at these beliefs and values.

In Paper Trail, Paré writes another story between the musings of her work poems, writing herself into a real fiction.

Poet Explores Colours Coming Out of the Blue in New Work

By Andrea McKenzie

On December 1st, Betsy Warland, a Vancouver-based writer and the director of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, will read from her most recent work, a book of poetry titled Only This Blue at the Martin Batchelor Gallery 5:30 pm to 7 pm.

Only This Blue is a long poem that explores coping with a life-threatening experience through the guidance of colour. Warland experiments with usage of words and poetic structure, such as line breaks and white space to create depth and meaning. The narrator of the long poem struggles with the effects of an illness, and learns a new and uneven landscape through the use of words and colour. There are four dominant colours in the poem: green, red, yellow and, finally, blue. Warland uses colour to identify a language for her experience.

The concept of the long poem was not something Warland had initially designed. The colours came as she was going through treatment. She had been writing non-fiction for four years and facing a life-threatening experience brought her back to poetry, as she said she had a need to write “closer to home”. The book was originally meant to be written in four suites of colours, and then gradually became one long, united poem. Her inspiration of colour stems from the colours of nature. Blue is the colour of the sky, and “the sky is unknowable and yet it holds great comfort and wisdom”. Colour “became a major guide for me.”

“I don’t have a negative association with any colour, as they represent the natural world for me. When going through a life-threatening experience, it is important to find a companion or relationship. As a child, a great companion to me was nature. When we are going through a crisis it can provoke fear in other people but nature is never afraid of you,” said Warland. “Now I live in an urban environment, but I value the natural world still thriving amidst the concrete.

There is a significant absence of blue throughout the poem, until the end of the book, when blue appears as a symbol of knowledge and calm; a realization and acceptance of the illness and knowing there is nothing we are able to control.

“There is a tendency when facing a big unknown to seek structure and answers. Once you go through something like that, you realize that you don’t know what will happen. This is our human condition – our awareness of uncertainty– and learning to embrace that is freeing; is a relief! For me, blue bridges everything, as it holds all colours.”

Warland has published nine books, which includes – What holds us Here (1998) and serpent (w)rite (1987) – a memoir, Bloodroot: Tracing the Untelling of Motherloss (2000), and essays, Proper Deafinitions (1990).

A Broken Mirror, Fallen Leaf: Crossing the Cultural Divide

by Andrea McKenzie

As Yvonne Blomer explains, the title for her first book of poetry published by Ekstasis Editions, a broken mirror, fallen leaf, depicts the idea that we cannot go back from a journey without transformation.

Crossing borders is more than boarding a plane and crossing geographical borders. It is embracing another world – the people, language, culture – and accepting yourself as always being a fraction separate from that world. Her book explores the barrier between cultural images that both divides and bridges the experience of being a Caucasian woman living in Japan. She has the advantage of being an outsider to eavesdrop on situations that are both foreign and startlingly human.

The book itself is divided into four sections, or seasons, of her journey: Four Seasons, Gaijin da (foreign person), Small Japan, and The Path Leading Home. In Four Seasons, Blomer looks at these quiet barriers and an intimacy that occurs with the natural world, as seen in her poem “Crabs”. The armchair reader is given a glimpse of sensual and historical Japan in “Onsen 1”, and is treated to a ‘fly on the wall’ account of tender relationship rituals holding everyday gestures of beauty and surprise.

In many of her poems, the language is sparse and full, all at once, such as in “Ofuco”. There are near haikus, and small moments not to be forgotten that hold the universe, as in the poem “Ways of Seeing a Firefly”. The variation of poem structures serves to capture each scene in its own organic rhythm.

Blomer also reveals a confessional side to her poetry, as in her connection with her own husband while adjusting to a new world and becoming more familiar with this landscape. Still, the reader is aware of a sharpness in the contrast that is felt as an outsider invited, but not entirely belonging, as shown in the poem “Four Seasons in Japan”.

The second part of the book, Gaijin da, is a series of poems that are a kind of awakening. These poems are jolting, yet subtle, and lend a braver, closer look at the surroundings and mysteries of Japan, such as in “Through the Temple with Buddha.” Blomer delves into a more observational scope with these poems, and the sketches of the local people and activities. She engages and comments largely on her own strangeness and peculiar presence to the Japanese, as seen in “The Bats Came in Place of the Swallows”. Her four-part Ghazals piece together these abstract lines, trying to make sense of disjointed ideas, sights and movements.

Blomer has included a glossary in her book to help the reader navigate through this other world. This added touch is a necessity, but also a gesture of invitation by the author to join her, and to stumble over these foreign sounds and make sense of them.

A broken mirror, fallen leaf is a journey in which a new life is adopted and, as with any new experience, we are never quite the same.

*A broken mirror, fallen leaf is short-listed for the 2007 Gerald Lampert award, which is a prestigious award developed by the League of Canadian Poets to recognize the best first book of poetry in Canada.

Published in Monday Magazine, April 24, 2007