Goal Reached!

As you can tell by glancing to the right, I have not only achieved my fundraising goal, but have now exceeded it. I had no expectation of the campaign being this incredibly successful; thank you so much to everyone who has contributed. As I said, I will be redirecting funds raised in excess of my goal to Colin Carberry, to help cover any costs he's incurred as a result of funding lost when the Linares government pulled its support.

Around forty copies of the translation chapbook have been claimed to-date; Jim Johnstone and I have decided to publish it in a limited edition numbered print run of 100. The translations are almost finished; I should be receiving final draughts from Lidia Valencia Fourcans in a few days. So I'll start mailing them out, along with other books claimed, when I get home from Mexico in three weeks or so. I'll be keeping the campaign open for another six weeks, or until all the chapbooks are claimed, whichever comes first.

Onwards and upwards!

Putting the micro in microfunding

Contributions to my campaign have slowed in recent days, but I'm still edging ever closer to my goal. In the hopes of stimulating things somewhat and because I know all about how lean things are for a lot of people these days, I've added a  couple of econo-perks. Donating less than $10 has always been an option, but now it's more explicitly so. If you've been meaning to contribute, I hope you stop by campaign HQ. Thanks again to everyone who has contributed.

Talk re-posted

For anyone who's interested and missed it when I first posted it here, the Elizabeth Bishop Centenary blog has reposted my talk on descriptive poetry and poetics.

Patching the Potholes

Great news tonight from Mexico. Seems that locals in the private sector are stepping up to replace much of the support withdrawn by the Linares government. The festival was going ahead regardless, but this is welcome news.

As of the present moment, I have received almost one third of my campaign goal, with 54 days left till the deadline. This is wonderful; like the festival, I'm going ahead with or without funding, but the support makes it so much easier. Thanks to everyone who has contributed.

Potholes on the Road to Linares

So, there have been some developments in Mexico that are less than ideal (I've provided details on my campaign website, which you can click to on the right), but the festival is going ahead and I have now raised 24% of my campaign goal, which is wonderful. Gracias a todos!

I have also received an offer to publish the translation chapbook, from Jim Johnstone of Cactus Press. This will save me production costs and time, so it is a major contribution to my campaign.

Campaign Update

I won't be posting daily about the campaign, but today's a significant day because I've received the rough draft translations of my poems from Lidia Valencia Fourcans. Very exciting. We need to get our heads together to work out some knotty problems of diction and syntax, but it's great to see the poems taking shape in Spanish.

Also great to receive all the generous donations yesterday. I certainly didn't expect to have almost 15% of my goal within 24 hours. Muchas gracias to all who have pledged support.

Crowd Sourcing

Regular readers of this blog may recall me saying a while back that I'd been invited to read at the Linares International Literary Festival in Mexico next month. I applied to the Canada Council for a travel grant to cover my airfare (the Festival can only pay for my hotel and meals, which is pretty standard), but the CC deemed the Linares Festival to be insufficiently "large" for my participation to merit funding.

So, as an experiment, I've decided to try out this micro-funding thing that's all the rage. On the right, you'll see a link to my funding campaign at Indiegogo.com. Contributing to the campaign isn't a simple matter of donating money to me (tho it can be, if you'd prefer): you get stuff in return. So please do check it out and make a contribution if you're so inclined. And by all means, spread the word.

Muchas gracias, amigos y amigas!

Publications galore!

So, I've got four poems up at the Maple Tree Literary Supplement site, for your reading pleasure.

Aaaaaaand, today in the mail I received my copies of UNB's Journal of Student Writing, wherein is printed my essay on Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. Probably pretty hard to find unless you're on campus, I'm guessing, but if you're stone-cold jonesing for a bit of left-field scholarship, you can read it here.