Reprint: Writer Interview with Ariel Gordon

Read the entire interview at http://papirmasse.com/art/2012/writer-interview-ariel-gordon

What are your favourite things about where you live?

That it’s frumpy and grumpy and faded-at-the-knees (i.e. that we’re NOT a boom town). Which means that Winnipeg’s cost of living is reasonable and that there is an active arts communities in every discipline. There’s also this practical, get-it-on-sale-if-you-can mentality to temper the flights of arty fancy. I like that Winnipeg is a medium-sized city that feels, sometimes, like a gossipy village. Beyond that, that we have supportive arts councils.

What’s on your plate for the next year?  Any new developments and exciting events?

After nearly two years promoting Hump and then How to Prepare for Flooding, I’m so goddamn relieved to not have anything on my plate over the next year except writing. Specifically, I’m working on a manuscript of poems around/about Thomas Alva Edison, the American inventor (whose parents were Canadian, incidentally…). I’m also fleshing out the how-to poems in How to Prepare for Flooding on the side. And also writing one-offs, like the ones you’re tarting up this month…

March Readings

Laura Lush reading from Carapace

March 2, 2012 @ 8:00pm.
March Hare West Reading Series
Brass Taps, College Street. Toronto, ON.  

Shane Neilson reading from Gunmetal Blue: A Memoir

March 4, 2012. 7:30pm
The Lit Live Reading Series
Skydragon Centre, 27 King William Street, Hamilton, ON.

Kate Braid with Kim Goldberg, Catherine Owen, Heidi Greco 
and Sandy Shreve

March 24, 2012 @ 12pm.
Cascadia Poetry Festival.
Igniting the Green Fuse: Eco-Poetry Panel.

Seward Park Environmental and Audubon Center. 
Seattle, Washington. USA.

Cynthia Woodman Kerkham reading from Good Holding Ground

March 26, 2012 @ 7pm.
Wordstorm Reading Series.

The Diners Rendezvous. 489 Wallace Street. Nanaimo, B.C.

Reprint: Rusty Talk with Elisabeth Harvor

The entire interview can be found here: http://www.therustytoque.com/3/post/2012/02/elisabeth-harvor-novelist-short-fiction-writer-poet.html

KD: How would you describe your approach to revision?
EH: I value it. It's a purge and a freedom and a benevolent addiction. It’s also a second chance. Or a whole series of second chances, and as time goes by, I'm more and more grateful for second chances. But my approach to these second chances? It's often a matter of delete, delete, delete, especially when revising poetry. But it's a question too: Have I made the best emotional use of the space on this page? And also: Have I gone deep enough here?

KD: Your work is very honest. Do you think emotional honesty in a story, poem, or novel is absolutely essential?
EH: I do, but this conviction doesn't appear to rule out the occasional enjoyment of fictional inventions, fabrications, and lies. As both a writer and a reader, though, I prefer those moments when the surreal enters the real and does it naturally, without show-offy artifice.

KD: What other writers inspire you? How do they inspire you?
EH: Woolf’s To the Lighthouse for its mesmerizing voice, for its profound understanding of childhood, and for the depth and complexity of its emotion; The Journals of Sylvia Plath for its joie de vivre and its brilliant fury; William Carlos Williams for "The Ivy Crown;" one of the great love poems of all time; Penelope Mortimer for her authentic evocation of depression and the fierce economy of The Pumpkin Eater; Saul Bellow for the deep anguish and comedy of Seize the Day; Bernard Malamud for the inspired comic originality of A New Life; Paulette Jiles for the stomach-dropping drama of "Night Flight to Attawapiskat;" Grace Paley for "A Conversation with my Father," a terrific story about writing a story; Marian Engel’s tender ode to a bear in Bear; Nadine McInnis’s fetching (if frustrated) mother in "Legacy," and almost every poem in Plath’s extraordinary Ariel. As well as the work of so many other writers.

Oscar

Soon to be released:

Oscar 978-1-926794-09-9 
by Jordan Troutt and Sarah Preston

Oscar wants milk but his bowl is empty. In order to get some he must travel to outer space and visit the cats on the moon. In anapestic rhyming couplets, the narrative is fun, lively, and easy enough for young children to follow along. Filled with curiosity and a sense of adventure, children will love the illustrations of Oscar and his playful friends who help him on his way.

 Reviews of The Naming Book of Rascally Rhymes:

“It’s a book children will want to look at after you’re done reading.”
—Quill & Quire

“With silly wit that’s a hairsbreadth from nonsense, Troutt seems to channel the spirit of Lewis Carroll.”
—Our Children Magazine

“The collection of rhymes is very entertaining and full of silly fun, making it great for story telling.”
—Resource Links

Remarkable Women 2012 Reception

Congratulations to Kate Braid for being selected by the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation for their Remarkable Women: Honouring Women From Our Vancouver Communities poster series for 2012. Twelve posters have been produced as a unique way to remember, acknowledge, and honour women in our communities whose accomplishments highlight the important role women play in our daily lives. The posters will be available for viewing in community centres, schools and libraries in January 2012. The posters feature women from diverse backgrounds, abilities and are representative of different aspects artistic and creative endeavors.

 A reception will be held in the evening of Thursday, March 8, 2012 to honour the Remarkable Women from 2012. Details will follow, but everyone is welcome.

For further information, contact:
Anna Nobile, Community Arts Programmer
Arts & Culture, Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation
604-257-8479

www.vancouverparks.ca

Soon to be Released

Darryl Whetter's first poetry collection Origins:

I designed this cover to capture the movement of history and evolution, and the texture of fossils.

The cover has to be turned over and opened up fully to see the entire dinosaur skeleton. It looks almost as though it is running.

 

Origins will be released April 2012

BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Entombed within a thirty-kilometre-deep seam of rock, the fossils of Joggins, Nova Scotia are pried from a cliff-face by a version of the ocean out of which their creatures evolved—for the first time on Earth—more than three-hundred-million years ago. With probing metaphors and a keen eye on science, the poems in Origins create a multi-faceted portrait of evolution, extinction and climate change. Centered on the powerful Bay of Fundy, Origins compares the displaced, prehistoric marks of fossils with cultural marks like art and books. These varied poems observe eternal traces and lingering residues, from fossilized footprints to landscape sculpture to pollution and industrialization. With only one bone in a billion fossilized and a perpetually changing planetary surface, these celebratory yet cautionary poems also investigate chance, loss and ruin. The intersection of forces, which both create and destroy, are echoed by poems devoted to transitory art, the human addiction to energy, and an evolving media history (from nineteenth-century field drawings to twenty-first-century digital libraries). Origins is a nuanced ledger for a troubled world.

Palin-day for Valerie Stetson's The House Poems

“Palin” in the Greek-Latin lexicon means anew or again. Its origins can be found in such words as palimpsest. The first Monday of every month a poem will be presented again, from the printed pages of a book to the Palimpsest web blog.

House Poem #4

The Coquette

too delicate

to tongue the latch

the knob flirts

with engagement

but seizes against a grope

forbidding entry

its lock suffers

the key’s shaft

fumbling around

in the mechanism

unacknowledged

while the carved glass tilts

in its brass fitting

like a curtsey

From Valerie Stetson’s The House Poems

Palimpsest Press 2007

Limited edition chapbook

ISBN 978-0-9733952-9-7

http://www.palimpsestpress.ca/house-poems-p-301.html

Upcoming Carapace Readings

February 5, 2012 @ 7:30pm
The Lit Live Reading Series
Skydragon Centre, 27 King William Street.
Hamilton, ON.

March 2, 2012 @ 8:00pm.
March Hare West Reading Series
Brass Taps, College Street.
Toronto, ON.

Call for Nonfiction Submissions

At Palimpsest Press we have a passion for poetry and we see our role as an independent publisher as one that values the genre enough to take the risk. We select both form and free verse poetry that is well-crafted, uses precise language, and presents an authentic voice. Our nonfiction is written by poets and about Canadian poetry. This is a key time in terms of reshaping the Canadian literary landscape, and our nonfiction books contribute to this process. We are currently looking for essays on creativity and aesthetics, criticism on Canadian poetry and culture, and memoirs by Canadian poets that are marketed toward a general readership.

Please send queries by email to dawnkresan@palimpsestpress.ca before submitting an entire manuscript by snail mail. Our open reading period is between January 1st and March 31st. Manuscripts should be mailed to:

Palimpsest Press
5 King Street
Kingsville, ON.
N9Y 1H9

Previous Palimpsest nonfiction titles can be found at:
http://www.palimpsestpress.ca/books-literary-nonfiction-essays-c-22_38.html

Calm Things by Shawna Lemay
A Peepshow with Views of the Interior: paratexts by Aislinn Hunter
Population Me: Essays on David McGimpsey
edited by Alessandro Porco
Gunmetal Blue: A Memoir by Shane Neilson