Colm Toibin on Elizabeth Bishop and Thom Gunn

I was very lucky to attend this talk the other night. It isn't edited, so start watching at minute 33.

Watch live streaming video from ukings at livestream.com

It Must be Nova Scotia

This has kind of snuck up on me. I'm giving a talk at the University of King's College (my alma mater) tomorrow morning. It's part of the Elizabeth Bishop centenary symposium taking place at King's. Lots of awesome stuff going on over the weekend. You can see the full schedule here.

Interview online

Maurice Mierau has posted a little interview with yours truly at The Winnipeg Review. It's all about e-books and whatnot.

LUXURY'S DECAY

My leather wallet went AWOL while I
was buying Lego at Walmart. I can't
afford another wallet that posh. I've spent
too much on home and tuition to buy

such a pricey pocket for my money.
I love building Lego with my daughter,
but in this land of loaned milk and honey
I'm watching all my wine turn to water.

Interview online

A couple of months ago, I received an email from Angela Rawlings inviting me to take part in a project she was coordinating. Angela had been working with high school students at Malvern Collegiate Institute in Toronto, getting them to write poems and introducing them to the work of contemporary Canadian poets. She thought it would be good for the students, having been introduced to the work of a poet, to make contact with that poet and conduct an interview. I've had fantastic experiences myself interacting with students of that age, so I agreed to take part without hesitation. Since I was going to be in Toronto at the end of March and beginning of April, I asked Angela if the class's teacher would be interested in having me visit. He was, and we worked out a date. I got my interview questions, from a student named Micaela, a few days before the visit, which was pretty great timing. As usual, I had a really fun and rewarding experience talking with and reading to the students at MCI (a school, it turns out, that my grandmother attended!).

Anyway, Angela has now made the interviews--with 30-odd poets in all--public. You can read them here. My interview is here. Angela and teacher John Ouzas deserve a lot of credit for organizing and guiding this project. It seems to me an example of how these things can and should be done, with minimal cost and ample reward.

SO MUCH DEPENDS ON

Whether affliction or infection
      Whether predator or virus
Whether p.f.o. or rejection
      Whether Billy Ray or Miley Cyrus

Whether metonym or metaphor
      Whether keyboard or stylus
Whether cell phone or semaphore
      Whether I-Pad or papyrus

Whether intuition or feeling
      Whether brain stem or gyrus
Whether stop sign or ceiling
      Whether they demote or they fire us

Whether chance or catastrophe
      Whether eyeball or iris
Whether chorus or antistrophe
      Whether chronos or chiros

Upcoming Reading

I'll be reading in Halifax this Saturday, May 21, 1 pm at the North St. Church, 5657 North St. Also reading are Matt Robinson and Sue Goyette. Readings will take place between sets of live music. It's part of the Long Live the Queen Festival. More details: http://longlivethequeen.ca/?page_id=13

 Come on out!

Lyrebird, Lyrebird, sing me a song

The good folks at the Best Canadian Poetry blog have just posted an audio clip of me reading my poem "To the Superb Lyrebird..."

Fun timing because I just got an email a couple of days ago from Brian Bartlett, who told me that he'd shared my poem with an Aussie friend, who told Brian that the line about a "dingo with rabies" was "crap" because there have been no reported cases of rabies in Australia. Far from making me want to revise the poem for greater accuracy, this makes me like the line even better. The idea of the lyrebird imitating a sound that it can't possibly have heard is enormously appealing to my imagination.

Review of T&T

Just came across this review of Track & Trace in Canadian Literature.

Gee, I hope they found what they were looking for

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Tatamagouche Audio

What a great evening. Tatamagouche is a hell of a cool little town. Fables Club is an amazing venue and the hospitality was peerless. We stayed overnight at the neatest B&B I've ever seen. My son was in heaven.

First recording features Anna Quon, followed by yours truly. The second is Carole Glasser Langille followed by Harry Thurston. As I say during my reading, it was especially great to read with Harry, because of longtime connections between his family and mine and because I've been a fan of his writing for years. His prose book A Place Between the Tides, a journal of a year on a salt marsh, is one of the best topological books I've ever read, and he's written a lot of really wonderful poems.

Tatamagoucheness

ANATTA

Sorry, I'm not myself today. Lately,
I think I never am. I was yesterday

beside myself and from that angle
I could see the cracks and fissures,

the stitches and seams. So it seems
this shifting complex of cells—each a self

that buds and blossoms and sloughs—has some
sort of unified purpose, but fact is

they're merely confined, yoked to a cubicled
lifetime till they die and return for more

of the same. And so I am reborn,
even before I'm buried and broken

down into dirt. If today I'm not myself,
it's because I'm busy being everything else.

Hickey, Wells and Trotter at the Dora Keogh Pub

The third and final reading of our mini tour. I missed the very beginning of Dave's preamble, but otherwise the whole thing's here. It was another wonderful night, with a good crowd in a great venue, graciously hosted by Rupert McNally, who was selling books for his father's store. Apparently the three of us sold more books last night than Sylvia Tyson did at a recent event. Songwriting: the new poetry.

It's been a great run for me, with half a dozen events in a dozen days or so. I'm ready to get home for a bit of rest. Not too much, tho. I'll be reading in Tatamagouche, NS on April 15. Details to follow.

Wells, Trotter and Hickey at the London Public Library

Here's the audio from last night's wonderful reading at the London Public Library. Almost fifty people turned out to hear local boy David Hickey and two guys with beards. A Q&A session follows the reading. Enjoy!

Audio: Hickey, Trotter and Wells in Windsor

Title says it all. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn on the recorder until after Dan Wells had begun his gracious introduction.

Belated Reading Report: Battle of the Bards

If you're the sort of person who reads this blog, you probably already know that yours truly was one of five readers chosen on Wednesday by the Harbourfront jury to read at the International Festival of Authors in October. I had the advantage, thanks to the alphabet, of reading last. The Gattling gun procession of poems certainly blurred for me, so I imagine it would have been quite a challenge for the jurors to keep track of everything in their memories whilst deliberating.

It was a very fun, albeit disorienting evening, and obviously I'm pleased with the results. Also happy for the other four: co-winners Gary Barwin and David Groulx and my fellow runners up, Ruth Roach Pierson and Souvankham Thammavongsa. Gary and Souvankham's work I've followed and enjoyed for some time. Pierson and Groulx were more or less new to me; a nice mix of styles and voices, overall.

I'm a bit disappointed that my Biblioasis stablemates David Hickey and Robyn Sarah weren't chosen. Robyn, especially, would have been a no-brainer for me had I been a juror; besides having read beautifully, she's widely and justly recognized as one of the leading poets of her generation, to say nothing of her top-notch contributions as a critic and editor. But so it goes in the world of taste and discrimination.

I'm really looking forward to spending some time with Dave's new collection, Open Air Bindery, which is fresh off the presses and most beauteous. As I posted earlier, I'll be reading with Dave and Joshua Trotter three times in the week to come. Should be a blast. TTFN.

The Moving Scene: The Poetry and Poetics of Description

Ok kids, I'm up way past my bedtime, but wanted to share this with you, since chances are you couldn't or didn't make it to the live version. Herewith, my talk at UNB on Monday. Two mp3s: 1)the talk 2)the discussion that followed. Voices in the discussion that aren't mine belong to Ross Leckie, Ian Letourneau and UNB doctoral candidate Lisa Jodoin.




In case the embedded player doesn't give you both mp3s, here's the link to the page where the recordings are archived.

After the Disaster

Been a while since I posted an audio poem here. Many minor malfunctions in my audio gear. I seem to have it all resolved now, and thought I'd post a poem that fits recent events altogether too well. A sharp, wry sonnet by Peter Norman from his fabulous collection, At the Gates of the Theme Park. Oh, and I have a bit of a virus, which I think adds something...

Upcoming Dates

March has been a gonzo month for me, with all the writing and editing I've had to do for school and work. And as we roll into April, the pace promises to continue unabated. I'll be getting out into the world a bit, tho, not just staying chained to my keyboard. Some upcoming dates, details sketchy for some of them at the moment:


Monday, March 28, Fredericton, NB: Lecture at the UNB English Department: "The Moving Scene: Descriptive Poetry." Room and time TBA; it'll be in the a.m., as I have to scoot off to catch a train to Toronto. This is the final assignment for the independent study course I've been working on all term. It'll involve a bit of overview of aesthetic theory (Plato, Aristotle, Erasmus, Gotthold Lessing, Ruskin, Tolstoy) combined with analysis of the descriptive techniques of John Clare, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes and others. It'll be as much fun as one can have on a campus on Monday morning. Seriously.


Wednesday, March 30, Toronto, 7:30 pm: Reading at this Harbourfront thing. Brigantine Room, York Quay Centre, 235 Queens Quay West. Apparently this makes me a whore, a slave and a lipsticked pig, all in one. Sounds fun!


Monday, April 4, Windsor: Reading with fellow Biblioasis authors David Hickey and Joshua Trotter, both of whom have new books out.  Phog Lounge, 157 University Avenue West, time TBA (7ish a safe bet). Should be wicked fun.


Tuesday, April 5, London, 7 pm: Reading with the same dudes. London Central Branch Public Library, Dundas Ave. More fun than a barrel of monkeys.


Wednesday, April 6, Toronto, 7 pm: Biblioasis book launch extravaganza. Same dudes, but in the big city! Dora Keogh Pub, 141 Danforth Ave. So much fun, it should be illegal.


Then I go home to reacquaint myself with my family, catch up on all the stuff I'll not have got done whilst on the road, finish my thesis, get back to some landscaping, heavy railroading, etc.