A Cover: Matthea Harvey ‘Setting the Table’

Daniel requested a cover of a Matthea Harvey poem called Setting the Table. If I look fucking tired, it’s because I am. I was balancing my laptop on my knees, and just realized my glasses are rather crooked. The poem is beautiful, though. You can find more of Harvey’s poems here, including a bunch of audio versions. (You can compare our takes. I just realized she did this one, too!)

Broken Pencil 46 & ‘Can Feminism Pay the Bills?’

Check out my reviews of Sina Queyras’ book Expressway, BluePrint Magazine volume 3, Culture Slut #20 and The Devouring Grief of ‘Angelheart’ Mitchum in issue #46 of Broken Pencil.

And news from my neck of the woods:

- ‘My things, my grandmother’s things’ got a review over on too many cookies!

- Pearls Before Swine Flu / this is plague city will soon be available with Gimme Brains! distro. I just sent the zines out in the mail to them, so look for an update here when they’ve got them listed in the catalogue.

- I’m going to be tabling at an event put on by Ladyfest Toronto on February 17th. If you’re in Toronto, drop by! Details are below:

“Can Feminism Pay the Bills?”
Hosted by Kim Katrin Crosby
Wednesday Febraury 17, 8pm
The Tranzac

A night of creative, comedic, academic, grassroots, and musical
responses to the topic of feminism and money. From personal finances
to organizational funding, we’ve all felt the squeeze and it’s time
for this movement to pay up! How can we balance demanding recognition
of our labour and support of non-profits we believe in? How do we talk
about inequity and lack of resources when many of us have dinner on
the table and a roof over our heads? How can we sell this thing to
make a cool million? Come out and learn and laugh about where our
collective stocks are sitting, how to increase their value, and when
we should just sell. Accompanying feminist vendor fair with some of
the most talented artists, crafters, business-owners and zinesters
will be open 8pm-11pm.

A Cover: 2 poems by Karen Solie

The first poetry readings I ever did involved a fair number of covers. In that tradition, here’s the first in an occasional series of cover-readings: a video I made of two selections from Karen Solie’s longer poem Four Factories.

(And a cover band always takes requests: what do you want to have read to you?)

Docked

“It was hard enough to eat
a picnic lunch at Labadee before
the quake, knowing
how many Haitians were starving-
I can’t imagine having to choke down a burger
there, now.”

(found text from a cruise-ship forum user, quoted in an article on Royal Caribbean’s decision to continue docking their luxury ships in a resort in Haiti shortly after the earthquake)

__________________________________

Haiti: Responding to the Situation, by the INCITE Women’s Health and Justice Initiative

I let out a cry, as if I’d heard everybody I loved had died – Régine Chassagne

interview with rob mclennan at Open Book

I did an interview with rob mclennan over at Open Book Toronto, as part of his ‘12 or 20 questions’ series. While you’re there, check out his recent interview with the brilliant CD Wright!

postcard story call for subs

Opium Magazine has a 7-Line Story Contest posted on their website. The stories are being judged by Amy Hempel! A friend from the States emailed me, and I think we’ve corralled a few of our other friends into trying to submit things as a collective writing project. Why don’t you, too?

(Can I also just say that I totally want to take my style tips from Amy Hempel, or Patti Smith when I go grey? Sadly, when I go grey, I’ll probably also be going bald, too… Ah, heredity.)

And, a more pressing deadline: Dave, over at Wooden Rocket Press has a call for submissions for a choose-your-own-adventure style postcard story project. The closing date on that is FEBRUARY 28th, 2010. He’s got a mini style-guide at the link above, as he’s trying to make the stories cohesively linked.

On reviewing

Sina Queryas has a great interview with Jennifer Scappettone on the nature of reviewing. I’m just off the heels of reviewing some things for Broken Pencil, which always leaves me contemplative of my role as a reviewer, particularly if I’ve just written reviews that aren’t positive.

Some acquaintances I was out with today were talking about a play that had been fairly universally panned in the local newspapers. One of my coffee-mates was saying that a review – even a negative review – should be ‘balanced’ by positive comments. I can see the point as a teacher, but is a reviewer’s role different? Do we always need to quilt criticism in compliments, even if those compliments may be inauthentic? It’s this role of a review as an act of building community that i feel on shaky ground about.

I think i initially took on this whole reviewing business as a means to build a vocabulary for myself to talk about writing, so I appreciate Scappettone’s addressing writing reviews as a means to “force [herself] to explore what enthralls or disgusts [her] for reasons [she] cannot immediately name or identify”. It’s easy / socially normative to say that something is ‘good’ and when asked to quantify why, for your ‘just because’ or ‘because it made me happy/sad/angry’. I feel like the absence of debate or deeper discourse about art, and particularly poetry, is really common. It’s easy to get intimidated and unplug, or be concerned about your interpretations not being correct. It’s easier to move around in silence, taking in art, but not verbalizing anything about it.

For awhile, when in my late teens, i had this affected way of describing things with sounds – a theatrical gesture or noise that pointed at what was so appealing to me about the work. I remember a teacher in a writing workshop telling me to stop noise-making and just NAME what I liked, and i felt silenced. I realized I didn’t feel equipped or qualified to talk. Writing reviews for print has allowed me to work out quantifying what I feel is working or not working in art, rather than letting me off with saying something is good or bad, shrugging and walking away.

___

and an aside: Jason Dewinetz on writing

Mayworks Poetry Marathon video

Here’s a video of one of the poems I read at the Mayworks Poetry Marathon today, a piece called ‘in the backyard’. And here’s a copy of the poem in pdf, so you can read along! (When the chime sounds, turn the page. Or something.)

The video is grainy as my camera is old and the venue was low-lit. Apologies for the cave-like atmospherics.

ringing in the new year with mayworks

Mayworks is doing their annual poetry marathon on New Year’s Day. The show goes from 3-8 or so, at the Raging Spoon (761 Queen W, west of Bathurst), and I’m on the early bill, reading at 3:30…. early, but late enough to give you time to shake off the bleary night before and get down to the cafe. It’s sliding scale at the door, with 7$ being the suggested donation. Come welcome 2010 with us!

There’s a lot of great readers on throughout the afternoon. If you come around 3-4 you’ll also be able to catch Kenji Tokawa and Karine Silverwoman, two folks who always have the most solid, certain performances. I’m excited to see what they’ll bring.

a review, a fire and thou

There’s a lovely review of a bunch of my zines over at rob mclennan’s blog.

And here’s a photo of the fire some of my friends and I held this weekend, as a prelude to the winter solstice- the longest night of the year (which is tonight!):

And here’s a married to the sea comic, just because.