Reading: Vancouver, Dec. 8, 7pm

I hope you can join me, Jim Johnstone and Adrienne Gruber 

for a reading at Spartacus Books, 684 E. Hastings.

Joseph Conrad, on the improbable start of his literary career

In the career of the most unliterary of writers, in the sense that
literary ambition had never entered the world of his imagination, the
coming into existence of the first book is quite an inexplicable event.
In my own case I cannot trace it back to any mental or psychological
cause which one could point out and hold to. The greatest of my gifts
being a consummate capacity for doing nothing, I cannot even point to
boredom as a rational stimulus for taking up a pen. The pen, at any
rate, was there, and there is nothing wonderful in that. Everybody keeps
a pen (the cold steel of our days) in his rooms, in this enlightened age
of penny stamps and halfpenny post-cards. In fact, this was the epoch
when by means of postcard and pen Mr. Gladstone had made the reputation
of a novel or two. And I, too, had a pen rolling about somewhere--the
seldom-used, the reluctantly taken-up pen of a sailor ashore, the pen
rugged with the dried ink of abandoned attempts, of answers delayed
longer than decency permitted, of letters begun with infinite
reluctance, and put off suddenly till next day--till next week, as like
as not! The neglected, uncared-for pen, flung away at the slightest
provocation, and under the stress of dire necessity hunted for without
enthusiasm, in a perfunctory, grumpy worry, in the "Where the devil _is_
the beastly thing gone to?" ungracious spirit. Where, indeed! It might
have been reposing behind the sofa for a day or so. My landlady's anemic
daughter (as Ollendorff would have expressed it), though commendably
neat, had a lordly, careless manner of approaching her domestic duties.
Or it might even be resting delicately poised on its point by the side
of the table-leg, and when picked up show a gaping, inefficient beak
which would have discouraged any man of literary instincts. But not me!
"Never mind. This will do."

Tom Riesterer Memorial Prize

I checked my UNB email account today for the first time in two months and discovered that last month I was awarded the Tom Riesterer Memorial Prize by the UNB English Department for my essay on Angela Carter's novel Nights at the Circus. Nice bit of icing on the cake for me, now that I've finished my MA. The essay will be published in a forthcoming issue of the department's Journal of Student Writing.

Some Love for Kenneth Leslie

Tim Inkster at The Porcupine's Quill has pointed out this nice little review of my Kenneth Leslie selection. So glad to see this book--to see Leslie's poems--getting some thoughtful attention.

MISSION

Here they come. Striding from the project

parking lot across the road, their white shirts

gleaming, their white faces beaming, they come

with congenial zeal, argon blue ties

flapping in the breeze like flags. I pretend

not to see them. I am bending over

my work, building dry limestone walls where grass

once grew, grass I grew tired of mowing

and tore up. My plan is to plant a tree

and shrubbery, things that need little

tending and that will grow to block the view

from our front windows of the bald brick

tenements, the asphalt lot and condemned

incinerator—a view that made our home

affordable because people fear

the proximity of the poor and all

their attendant malaises. I am filthy,

unshaven, squatting amidst my jumble

of antediluvian stones. These clean,

bright boys stand a moment on the sidewalk

until one speaks: “Quite a project you've got

going here.” Not half the job you're about

to undertake, is what I think, but say

instead, “It keeps me out of trouble.”

“Could you use some help?” the other one asks

and I, wry and homespun at my Frostian

task, rejoin: “I wouldn't want you to get

those nice shirts dirty, fellas.” “I've got plenty

more where this one came from,” he fires back

without pausing. No doubt you do, I muse,

an immaculate closet stuffed with stiff

white collars and a rack with a week's worth

of neon-bright ties flashing in my mind.

“Listen, guys, let me save you some labour.

I'm as firm a non-believer as you're

likely to meet and nothing in your spiel

is apt to alter that.” They stay silent

a moment, both shuffle their feet, one pokes

a polished toe at my half-built wall. “Well,

alright, but don't hesitate to call

if you need help with anything—anything

at all.” I am plagued at moments like this

one—standoffs between me and my negative

self—by staircase wit. After they've left,

their white backs a beacon in the sun

as they dwindle, pursuing their mission,

I wish I'd reciprocated their offer

of aid, but instead had just muttered, “Thanks,

but I can handle this fine on my own.”

Review in print

My review of Peter Norman's At the Gates of the Theme Park and Michael Harris's Circus has just been published in Fiddlehead 249. Both books are marvels.

POEM IN NOVEMBER

The tamaracks are golden.

The snow is on the ground.