Lampert n Lowther

Apparently insensible to the ironies of announcing a prize list on April fool's day, the League of Canadian Poets has published the shortlists for the Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther Awards.

Is it just me or are these shortlists longer than they used to be? I guess that's to the good, but it makes it harder to say "it's an honour just to be nominated" with a straight face, particularly considering that one award excludes all members of one sex and the other excludes any book that isn't a debut.

Anyhoo, there are some strong candidates on both lists. I've read one third of the Lampert nominees (Langer and Peerbaye) and am working on a third (Stewart) in piecemeal fashion. Langer's book I think is terrific; Peerbaye's not so much. Stewart's, which is sharing space on my toilet tank with a book on Nabokov's lepidoptery, I'm quite enjoying thus far. I've been hearing great things all around about Kate Hall's Certainty Dream, which I hope to read before long.

Karen Solie's Pigeon (which I think is great) has to be the odds-on favourite for the Lowther, tho Sina Queyras' Expressway was recently shortlisted for the GG and Elizabeth Bachinsky's last book was nominated for a GG, too (still haven't read God of Missed Connections, I'm ashamed to confess). (The number of major nominations for writers on this shortlist raises the always awkward and controversial question of whether a ladies-only prize for poetry isn't anachronistic, or even retrograde. Thoughts?) I'm also a fan of Damian Rogers' Paper Radio, a review of which is forthcoming in the next issue of Arc.

I'm surprised that PR didn't make it onto that capacious Lampert list, too. No other egregious snubs spring to mind immediately, but I'm sure they're out there.

Some Love for Track & Trace

Newfoundland writer and blogger Chad Pelley has a post recommending Track & Trace as a book to "stick on your radar," along with Pat Warner's Mole and Matt Robinson's Against the Hard Angle. Thanks!

Another Run

Just got word that Track & Trace is going into a second printing, just six months after the first one. Thanks to all those who've helped make my litel bok the modest success it is!

The mistake of the last hundred years

Another terrific interview, this one with Michael Lista (conducted by Jacob Mooney), whose Bloom I'm really looking forward to reading. Like now.

The baroque and the rococo underneath

Thanks to Paul Vermeersch for pointing out this wonderful interview with Australian poet Les Murray, conducted by J. Mark Smith. I generally take Poe's line on long poems, but Fredy Neptune is a helluva book.

Me 'n' Ennui response

That Taproot by Brenda Schmidt.

Hold On to Your Hat

Very cool. A song by Raccoon Bandit. Lead singer Fraser McCallum grew up down the road from me; I used to babysit him and his siblings. And the farmer in the video is none other than poet John MacKenzie.

HAT - Racoon Bandit from Adam Perry on Vimeo.

THE EDITOR'S SONNET

Hello. I've been assigned to slaughter
your darlings. Don't worry, you won't feel
a thing. I'll gently lead you to water,
then shove your head under.
Slasher cum surgeon, I wield steel
and feed the fat to the hogs.
I drain and pave over your marshes and bogs.
Your story's our bastard daughter.
I'm not bothered that you don't credit me as the father.
It's all part of our barter.
Enough to know that I've cured your disorder.
Most limbs are stronger a foot or two shorter.

Me 'n' Ennui

He accused me of being mentally
lazy. Which wasn't true, not fully,
because what I am is fundamentally

lazy. Which means that my ass
has a taproot and that my ass-
umptions are mired in a morass

of self-regarding half-truths.
Blame it on my uncouth
environs. Blame it on youth

or the views of my parents.
Blame it on my aberrant
behaviour, the apparent

offshoot of corrupt institutions,
a flawed constitution
of country and corps, the dissolution

of my generation's esprit,
an overfond embrace of entropic ennui—
but buddy, don't blame it on me.

A Whole Lot of Everything

That's what's going on in the Atlantic provinces during the upcoming Atlantic Book Festival. I'm looking forward very much to my own readings in St. John and Charlottetown (my first on home soil since the publication of Track & Trace).

Some Love for Kenneth Leslie

A brief, but very nice, notice for The Essential Kenneth Leslie in today's Telegraph Journal (New Brunswick).

UPDATE: Somehow missed this little note from Paul Vermeersch a couple weeks back. Google Alerts, why hast thou forsaken me?

Audio: James Langer and Anne Compton

A reading I attended at the St. Mary's University Art Gallery a couple of nights ago. Enjoy:

Thus Spoke Nietzsche

The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not me"; and this No is its creative deed. This inversion of the value-positing eye-this need to direct one's view outward instead of back to oneself-is of the essence of ressentiment: in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile world; it needs, psychologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all--its action is fundamentally reaction.

The reverse is the case with the noble mode of valuation: it acts and grows spontaneously, it seeks its opposite only so as to affirm itself more gratefully and triumphantly -- its negative concept "low," "common," "bad" is only a subsequently-invented pale, contrasting image in relation to its positive basic concept -- filled with life and passion through and through -- "we noble ones, we good, beautiful, happy ones!" When the noble mode of valuation blunders and sins against reality, it does so in respect to the sphere with which it is not sufficiently familiar, against a real knowledge of which it has indeed inflexibly guarded itself: in some circumstances it misunderstands the sphere it despises, that of the common man, of the lower orders; on the other hand, one should remember that, even supposing that the affect of contempt, of looking down from a superior height, falsifies the image of that which it despises, it will at any rate still be a much less serious falsification than that perpetrated on its opponent -- in effigy of course -- by the submerged hatred, the vengefulness of the impotent. There is indeed too much carelessness, too much taking lightly, too much looking away and impatience involved in contempt, even too much joyfulness, for it to be able to transform its object into a real caricature and monster.

...

While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself ... the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints: his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert strikes him as his world, his security, his refreshment; he understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally self-deprecating and humble.

-On the Genealogy of Morals 1:10

Oh Lord, it's Hard to be Humble or Why Is Everybody Always Pickin' on Me?

This is quite amusing.



Some context.

Bonus points to the first commenter to identify which Canadian poet was last associated with the above graphic on this blog.

Audio: Cooked and Eaten Reading Series: Gabe Foreman, Zach Gaviller, Leigh Kotsilidis, Joshua Trotter, Zachariah Wells

Dudek and Souster

David Kosub has a post up about a couple of Canadian poets who, it seems to me, are of more historical than literary interest. Souster's always been an egregiously prolific hit-and-miss kind of poet--and most of his hits are singles, rather than homers. (See, I prefer baseball metaphors to hockey, tho I certainly appreciate when the latter are used to describe my "dekes and turns.") Dudek, on the other hand, I don't think ever got out from under the oppressive weight of Pound (apologies); he seems to have been more concerned with writing Important Poetry Relevant to his Historical Moment than in writing good poems. An interesting figure, nonetheless. But neither one of them comes close to their one-time partner in crime, Irving Layton, who was both an interesting figure and an artistic genius (at his best, which I concede he frequently wasn't).

A trivial sidenote: Souster was responsible for one of my earliest publications, when he chose an early version of my poem "Stacking Boxes in the Belly of a Flying Whale" for an anthology he was editing in the late nineties. So yeah, he cut me some slack! Probably too much...

T&T Review

Track & Trace has been reviewed in The Lance, which appears to be a student paper out of the U of Windsor.

Just waiting on a couple of fellow travellers before embarking on a five hour drive from Montreal to Peterborough. If you're in the Peterborough area tonight, please drop by our reading. (Details a couple of posts ago.)

Audio: Corruption of the Youth

I'm off to Peterborough today, via Montreal. At last, here's the audio from my epic session with the youth of Peterborough last week (couldn't visit them this week as they're off on March break). Like I said before, it was an absolutely incredible day for me, one of my best as a writer.

Back at 'er

Little Fishcart Night
Featuring Gabe Foreman, Zach Gaviller, Liegh Kotsilidis, Joshua Trotter and Zachariah Wells

March 18, 2010

Peterborough

At the Kubo Lounge, 413 George Street North, 8:00pm
Admission is Free

With music by Mike Wallace (Muddy Hack) and Jordan Mack (The Birthday Boys)


More info at cookedandeaten.com

Derry, Wells and Rawlings Live!

More audio, this time from the Pivot reading in Toronto the other day: David Derry, yours truly, A. Rawlings. It's another multi-part recording, so I'll just point you to its permanent home rather than embed the player. If you listen to nothing else, check out the first recording. Before David Derry reads, there's a rather ... interesting impromptu performance. I love live readings for shit like that.