The ever-excellent Kevin Spenst has organized a great multi-venue, multi-reader event in Vancouver! I’m reading with the incredible Cecily Nicholson (From the Poplars, Talonbooks 2015), but come see everyone!
Details are here.
xoxo
m.
The ever-excellent Kevin Spenst has organized a great multi-venue, multi-reader event in Vancouver! I’m reading with the incredible Cecily Nicholson (From the Poplars, Talonbooks 2015), but come see everyone!
Details are here.
xoxo
m.
This man rarely leaves my mind, or my pen. As I work towards an understanding (read: impossibility of grasping air) of how remembering works, and with my mother’s fading memory, this poem cuts into my mind and leaves its own stones.
“I Keep to Myself Such Measures…”
I keep to myself such
measures as I care for,
daily the rocks
accumulate position.
There is nothing
but what thinking makes
it less tangible. The mind,
fast as it goes, loses
pace, puts in place of it
like rocks simple markers,
for a way only to
hopefully come back to
where it cannot. All
forgets. My mind sinks.
I hold in both hands such weight
it is my only description.
Real Vancouver Writers’ Series returns in 2016 with our annual anniversary showcase on Friday February 26th at Chinatown’s The Playground (thisopenspace) located at 434 Columbia Street in Vancouver’s DTES.
The showcase is also coinciding with Freedom to Read Week and we’re happy to partner with this great organization to reaffirm our commitment to making terrible jokes and slurry proclamations, or, um, intellectual freedom, as it is guaranteed to all Canadians under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We take our jokes seriously and we hope you won’t laugh.
The stellar line-up includes:
Chelene Knight, author of Braided Skin, Mother Tongue Publishing.
Billeh Nickerson, author of Artificial Cherry, Arsenal Pulp Press.
Rahat Kurd, author of Cosmophilia, Talon Books.
Annelyse Gelman, author of Everyone I Love is a Stranger to Someone, published independently.
Beni Xiao, author of poems and things as yet uncollected and released upon the world.
Billie Livingston, author of The Crooked Heart of Mercy, published by Penguin Random House of Canada.
So take that cold and indifferent grip of winter!
As always admission to the event is by donation and nobody will ever be turned away for lack of funds.
Real Vancouver Writers’ Series is a volunteer-run independent non-profit society that produces 4 to 6 events a year showcasing the work of writers from Vancouver and beyond. We provide a welcome and convivial atmosphere to enjoy great writing and great people together in one room.
And there’s always books and beer.
A brief but good interview with Coates, who talks Shakespeare, Bernie Sanders, Sonia Sanchez, and baaaad teenage poetry.
hello dust
and fragrance
of concrete
february is the kindest month, breeding
regeneration out of the cold
flicker of pulse across the wasteland
a hand outstretched towards oblivion
and your hand
we drank coffee in the terminal
and rode the train
where you felt confined and impatient
the mountains in the distance
full of judgement and snow.
(Vancouver, 2016)
The folks at Roundhouse Radio (Vancouver 98.3FM) were good enough to have me on as part of a profile of those who appear in The Revolving City anthology that came out last year with Anvil Press. I talked with Kirsten Sharp about cities, a sense of place, the olympics, and more. You can listen to the interview here.
Happy sunday.
m.
We lost a master. This hasn’t been a great year for keeping people on the planet…so join me in a toast to CD. Here’s her poem “Obscurity and Selfhood”.
Read more about her here.
Not far
from a college.
Nevertheless.
A man
living by himself
kept his fighting cocks in plain sight. Each had its own tether and
miniature shed and dish with embossed sobriquet. Their domestication
reserved for battle before the table. Gallus gallus domesticus. A young
male, a cockerel, my husband’s patronymic before the adoption. Some hens
are disposed to poach another’s egg. Once there were teeth. Given certain
conditions they could come back. If not a full set. Even now a breathing hole
has to be pipped for the offspring to break out. This is done with an egg tooth.
Not a true tooth. Love among the chickens involves a circle dance. He is
a wonderful dancer. It goes straight to her brain. Before and after they prefer
to wash off in dust. Ashes will work if no dust. If they aren’t forced into shedding
one another’s blood, they can live until their heart gives out.
The cock
the man
could not
resist
loving.
He withdrew
from
the ring.
Yet
relinquished.
To settle
an unforgiven
debt.
My question is this:
Would you describe yourself
as a wanderer, a friend of the court, amicus curiae, falsely construed as a snitch, a blue yodeler,
an apostate, a lost cause, a bird in the house, a biter, a common blogger, a contender, a purse
snatcher, a false witness, a palterer, a silkie, a backyarder, channeler
for malevolent spirits, girt in the loins, figure on a shard of black pottery, moderately active, a fog
machine, a visionary miserabilist, a chook or a cuckold, a roundhead, a little seditious, a slow-wave
sleeper, a dead mule, a gongorist, honey on the comb, half goat half god, a white throwback, crossed
with a mongrel, a genesis, a retired fighting
cock,
a doll
named
Memphis.
Thanks to Fran Bourassa and staff and organizers of LINES at Seymour Gallery in Deep Cove. A nice turnout and a talented bunch of artists to write towards / read alongside…