Paul friesen, a member of the Winnipeg slam poetry team, works on his poem from the fainting couch.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Flickr-ing: working title
The City blog
a city is a place you are/ who you are is a place in a city
Is it the way you are shaped by memories of walking across the Maryland bridge? Maybe you walk it everyday on your way to work/maybe all it is to you is that one time you were following the ambulance that was taking your sister to the ER/maybe its where you live/maybe you don’t even know where it is.
No matter what it is to you/ its presence or absence in your life/ it is a part of this city. And in some way, it is a part of you.
Maggie Helwig tells us that cities are about how we live in them/who is included and excluded.
Cities are about our lives/and our lives are about our cities.
And when we write, our setting is something that is living
Our characters live in it and through it.
Andre Alexis, with the soothing hum of his beautiful voice, read to us a story of a man trying desperately to kill himself. But his city just kept interrupting him.
Does your city ever interrupt you?
Larry Krotz told us of being in Nyrobi, Kenya. Of being the strange white man, there to learn from the Sex Workers Committee/saying the wrong half of the 2 part greeting he learned in Swahili. And when he is not in Africa/catching a hint of just the right accent/caught on the wind/sending him right back to Kenya.
Who are you when you are not in your city?
War-torn Sarajevo and a cellist who plays for hope. Steven Galloway asks us to come inside human connection in the midst of a snipers internal conflict with killing. The war inside the war, and the question “Does the music sound the same to him?”
How are you at war with your city? And how much is this about how you are at war with yourself?
Maggie Helwig, with her eccentric charm takes us under a bridge and into the mind of a man living in the liminal, both within himself and within the city.
Where do you exist within your city and where does your city exist within you?
Fantasies of having power over those who condemn you, by the colour of your skin, to a place of unrelenting powerlessness. So that you cannot walk down the street, take a breath, without remembering those hands of your back, that gun up your skirt. Austin Clarke takes us to a place of fear and resistance. A girl in a city that sees herself pushing back. A black girl that sees herself in the black man going through her garbage and begs him to push back too.
All of the faces in your city - who do you see yourself in?
What do you do with that/what does that do to you?
Charles Wilkins brings us to the city of the dead-with hints of who might walk there. Digging a grave that is filling with water, and dreams of a man with one arm who grows it back.
Is not our whole city one big cemetery? Which ghosts are yours as you wander through these familiar streets?
Home.
And the cities where we live.
* * *
Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”
She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).
By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.
Is it the way you are shaped by memories of walking across the Maryland bridge? Maybe you walk it everyday on your way to work/maybe all it is to you is that one time you were following the ambulance that was taking your sister to the ER/maybe its where you live/maybe you don’t even know where it is.
No matter what it is to you/ its presence or absence in your life/ it is a part of this city. And in some way, it is a part of you.
Maggie Helwig tells us that cities are about how we live in them/who is included and excluded.
Cities are about our lives/and our lives are about our cities.
And when we write, our setting is something that is living
Our characters live in it and through it.
Andre Alexis, with the soothing hum of his beautiful voice, read to us a story of a man trying desperately to kill himself. But his city just kept interrupting him.
Does your city ever interrupt you?
Larry Krotz told us of being in Nyrobi, Kenya. Of being the strange white man, there to learn from the Sex Workers Committee/saying the wrong half of the 2 part greeting he learned in Swahili. And when he is not in Africa/catching a hint of just the right accent/caught on the wind/sending him right back to Kenya.
Who are you when you are not in your city?
War-torn Sarajevo and a cellist who plays for hope. Steven Galloway asks us to come inside human connection in the midst of a snipers internal conflict with killing. The war inside the war, and the question “Does the music sound the same to him?”
How are you at war with your city? And how much is this about how you are at war with yourself?
Maggie Helwig, with her eccentric charm takes us under a bridge and into the mind of a man living in the liminal, both within himself and within the city.
Where do you exist within your city and where does your city exist within you?
Fantasies of having power over those who condemn you, by the colour of your skin, to a place of unrelenting powerlessness. So that you cannot walk down the street, take a breath, without remembering those hands of your back, that gun up your skirt. Austin Clarke takes us to a place of fear and resistance. A girl in a city that sees herself pushing back. A black girl that sees herself in the black man going through her garbage and begs him to push back too.
All of the faces in your city - who do you see yourself in?
What do you do with that/what does that do to you?
Charles Wilkins brings us to the city of the dead-with hints of who might walk there. Digging a grave that is filling with water, and dreams of a man with one arm who grows it back.
Is not our whole city one big cemetery? Which ghosts are yours as you wander through these familiar streets?
Home.
And the cities where we live.
* * *
Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.” She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).
By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.
Photos from this morning's Words On Screen seminar.
I needed a permission letter to get in. Note Tavia's stationary.
Perry videotaping the panel discussion.
The Words On Screen speakers: Judith Keenan, Susin Nielsen, and Paul Quarrington.
We got to watch a bit of one of Susin's projects, Alice, I Think. Susin has written episodes of Ready or Not, which I'd say is only to Degrassi High as the greatest Canadian teen sitcom (which Susin has done, too).
* * *
Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.
An Interview with Kerry Ryan
When I was first asked to blog for the Writers Festival, one of my many demands, my shouting, fist-banging-table demands, was that I be allowed to interview Kerry Ryan. I had never met Kerry (I still haven’t, come to think of it), but I had read her collection of poems, The Sleeping Life, and I really enjoyed it.
I would like to thank Kerry for taking the time to answer the questions below, and encourage everyone to pick up her book.
(Psst, I heard a little rumor that Kerry Ryan and Hot Air's own Ariel Gordon, who has her own book of poems coming out soon, will be heading out on a reading tour some time in the near future. I'd keep my ear to the ground on this one, if I were you.)
* * *
Brad Hartle: Many of your poems seem to exist somewhere between our sleeping and waking lives, and they do so with a very slow, dreamlike feel. In one, called writing to sleep, you write:
Kerry Ryan: First of all, thanks. That’s a nice thing to say. But, really, sleep: it’s such a good idea. I love, and am fascinated by, anything sleep-related – including those delicious overlaps between sleeping and waking. I find it such mysterious territory to think about and write about, but at the same time, if I try to analyze it too much it kind of loses its charm. Like trying to explain your dreams to someone and realizing that they’re not actually funny or terrifying, or even that interesting. Dreams only work when you’re asleep. So, I guess, in the poems, I was just trying to capture the little bit of that that secret, crazy other life and pin it down to look at it in the daylight.
And, in some ways that semi-sleeping, half-dreaming experience is kind of like my writing process, in the sense that I might know where I’m starting out but then have no, or little control, over where I go or what happens. I like that too.
BH: There are also a few travel poems in the book, such as saturday night in new orleans. How do you go about writing travel poems and what are some things that you watch for while traveling?
KR: I really don’t think of a poem being a “travel poem” or having any kind of label like that. But I do write a fair bit about place, now that I think about it, whether it’s my house or my neighbourhood, or wherever I am in the world. I don’t consciously look at things and think “there’s a poem in that” but I find that I remember little details when I travel. And sometimes those details become the basis of a poem that tries to capture a place. My husband and I were in Portugal earlier this year and after a few days all the churches and castles and important landmarks kind of blurred together for me, but I remember that in Serpa – a gorgeous, ancient, picturesque town – there was an old guy wandering around whistling Jingle Bells really loud, in March. So, that’s the kind of thing I’d write about.
BH: The language in your poems is never pyrotechnical, in that it never seems like you are reaching for obscure words (like pyrotechnical). Rather, your poems flow with a very smooth and plain spoken tone. Is this something that you strive for while writing. If so, why?
KR: I’m not sure if I’m striving for it or if it’s my default. Honestly, I think it’s just that I don’t have a huge vocabulary. If I’m not comfortable using a word in a regular conversation, or have to look it up in the dictionary, I won’t use it in a poem – even if it has the sound and meaning I’m looking for. I definitely feel there are some words that are off limits because they’re just not me. I think my aesthetic tends toward simplicity – I love really spare line drawings, or, musically, just a guitar and a voice.
BH: Once you have an idea or a draft of a poem on the page, how do you go about revising and editing?
KR: For me, revising mostly means cutting stuff out, paring a poem down to the essentials. I can tinker with poems indefinitely. I never have much of a plan and I don’t really know what I’m doing (shh! don’t tell anyone) so, I just wing it – trying to figure out why a line or an image doesn’t feel right and playing with it until it does, or – often – cutting it if making it work is too hard.
BH: What's the best advice you have ever received about writing?
KR: Don’t quit your day job.
* * *
Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.
I would like to thank Kerry for taking the time to answer the questions below, and encourage everyone to pick up her book.
(Psst, I heard a little rumor that Kerry Ryan and Hot Air's own Ariel Gordon, who has her own book of poems coming out soon, will be heading out on a reading tour some time in the near future. I'd keep my ear to the ground on this one, if I were you.)
* * *
Brad Hartle: Many of your poems seem to exist somewhere between our sleeping and waking lives, and they do so with a very slow, dreamlike feel. In one, called writing to sleep, you write:
i fall asleep inside a poem,Eyes like a camera and poems you feel asleep in. Its wonderful, and it seems sum up much of The Sleeping Life. What is it about this half-awake world that made you want to write about it?
inking dreams onto a page
until you gently slide the pen
out of my hand,
refill the aperture
with your fingers
Kerry Ryan: First of all, thanks. That’s a nice thing to say. But, really, sleep: it’s such a good idea. I love, and am fascinated by, anything sleep-related – including those delicious overlaps between sleeping and waking. I find it such mysterious territory to think about and write about, but at the same time, if I try to analyze it too much it kind of loses its charm. Like trying to explain your dreams to someone and realizing that they’re not actually funny or terrifying, or even that interesting. Dreams only work when you’re asleep. So, I guess, in the poems, I was just trying to capture the little bit of that that secret, crazy other life and pin it down to look at it in the daylight.
And, in some ways that semi-sleeping, half-dreaming experience is kind of like my writing process, in the sense that I might know where I’m starting out but then have no, or little control, over where I go or what happens. I like that too.
BH: There are also a few travel poems in the book, such as saturday night in new orleans. How do you go about writing travel poems and what are some things that you watch for while traveling?
KR: I really don’t think of a poem being a “travel poem” or having any kind of label like that. But I do write a fair bit about place, now that I think about it, whether it’s my house or my neighbourhood, or wherever I am in the world. I don’t consciously look at things and think “there’s a poem in that” but I find that I remember little details when I travel. And sometimes those details become the basis of a poem that tries to capture a place. My husband and I were in Portugal earlier this year and after a few days all the churches and castles and important landmarks kind of blurred together for me, but I remember that in Serpa – a gorgeous, ancient, picturesque town – there was an old guy wandering around whistling Jingle Bells really loud, in March. So, that’s the kind of thing I’d write about.BH: The language in your poems is never pyrotechnical, in that it never seems like you are reaching for obscure words (like pyrotechnical). Rather, your poems flow with a very smooth and plain spoken tone. Is this something that you strive for while writing. If so, why?
KR: I’m not sure if I’m striving for it or if it’s my default. Honestly, I think it’s just that I don’t have a huge vocabulary. If I’m not comfortable using a word in a regular conversation, or have to look it up in the dictionary, I won’t use it in a poem – even if it has the sound and meaning I’m looking for. I definitely feel there are some words that are off limits because they’re just not me. I think my aesthetic tends toward simplicity – I love really spare line drawings, or, musically, just a guitar and a voice.
BH: Once you have an idea or a draft of a poem on the page, how do you go about revising and editing?
KR: For me, revising mostly means cutting stuff out, paring a poem down to the essentials. I can tinker with poems indefinitely. I never have much of a plan and I don’t really know what I’m doing (shh! don’t tell anyone) so, I just wing it – trying to figure out why a line or an image doesn’t feel right and playing with it until it does, or – often – cutting it if making it work is too hard.
BH: What's the best advice you have ever received about writing?
KR: Don’t quit your day job.
* * *
Brad Hartle likes books. One day he may try to write one, though nothing is certain. For now, he spends his days in the basement of a big stone building in Downtown Winnipeg and his evenings in a big brick apartment in Crescentwood, where he lives with his wife, two cats, and a scattering of toothpicks, needed because he refuses to see a dentist. He is almost always happy.
Dear Ruby,
You are 16 months old and are learning to say things like “eye” and “soulier” (which currently takes the form of “shh shh” and you, pointing down at my foot).
When your mum asks you “Ruby, c’est ou ton bouton?” You lift up your shirt and show us your beautiful round belly and point to that one spot in the middle that allowed you to be brought into this world.
You love to dance by shaking your bum and throwing your arms up in the arm at random moments. You are like a magnet to anything expensive-like cell phones and cameras.
Mostly though, you really love to show me your books and listen to your maman read them to you.
And today Ruby, I went and listened to David Bouchard tell stories at the library, and I wished you were there.
He talked about being a father, an author and Métis. He told us how he gets to travel all around the world and how much he loves it, but it also makes him sad, because he has to be away from his 10 years old daughter.
But don’t worry, because every single night, he goes on his computer and reads her a bedtime story and then blows her a kiss, and it flies right to her, right through the computer screen and onto her cheek.
He played his drum for us, and sang a story. He showed us the eagle feather and the sweet grass that he keeps inside of his drum. Did you know that an eagle is a scared animal because it flies close to the creator and sees everything and knows what is true? And did you know that sweet grass is braided like hair because it is the hair of Mother Earth? He told us so today at the library.
He told something else too. He told us how important it is for kids to read. He told us how he didn’t read as a kid because he has this thing called dyslexia and that means that things get mixed up in his head. He thought this meant he couldn’t read or that is wasn’t important. But then he told us how, when the creator gives you a problem, he also gives you a solution. And he learned that he could read things that had rhythm. And he writes books now. He has written lots and lots of them. And they have beautiful pictures, and the words have rhythm. And he writes for kids like him, who have trouble reading. He writes so that kids will read.
I bought you one of his books today called “If You’re Not from the Prairie...” and I can’t wait to read it with you.
Love, Auntie Courtney
* * *
Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.”
She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).
By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.
When your mum asks you “Ruby, c’est ou ton bouton?” You lift up your shirt and show us your beautiful round belly and point to that one spot in the middle that allowed you to be brought into this world.
You love to dance by shaking your bum and throwing your arms up in the arm at random moments. You are like a magnet to anything expensive-like cell phones and cameras.
Mostly though, you really love to show me your books and listen to your maman read them to you.
And today Ruby, I went and listened to David Bouchard tell stories at the library, and I wished you were there.
He talked about being a father, an author and Métis. He told us how he gets to travel all around the world and how much he loves it, but it also makes him sad, because he has to be away from his 10 years old daughter.
But don’t worry, because every single night, he goes on his computer and reads her a bedtime story and then blows her a kiss, and it flies right to her, right through the computer screen and onto her cheek.
He played his drum for us, and sang a story. He showed us the eagle feather and the sweet grass that he keeps inside of his drum. Did you know that an eagle is a scared animal because it flies close to the creator and sees everything and knows what is true? And did you know that sweet grass is braided like hair because it is the hair of Mother Earth? He told us so today at the library.
He told something else too. He told us how important it is for kids to read. He told us how he didn’t read as a kid because he has this thing called dyslexia and that means that things get mixed up in his head. He thought this meant he couldn’t read or that is wasn’t important. But then he told us how, when the creator gives you a problem, he also gives you a solution. And he learned that he could read things that had rhythm. And he writes books now. He has written lots and lots of them. And they have beautiful pictures, and the words have rhythm. And he writes for kids like him, who have trouble reading. He writes so that kids will read.
I bought you one of his books today called “If You’re Not from the Prairie...” and I can’t wait to read it with you.
Love, Auntie Courtney
* * *
Courtney Slobogian likes to sit quietly memorizing all of the reasons she is in love with this city. She graduated from University of Winnipeg in 2007 with her BA in Women’s and Gender studies. Her honours thesis was entitled “mother[loss]: An exploration of our silences in grief and longing.” She is putting that degree to use mostly by insisting that there is a need for theory in everything. Along with writing academic papers for fun, she finds herself constantly playing with poetry (where it is desire, and not theory, that she finds most useful).
By day she busies herself with women’s reproductive health issues, by night she rides her bike.
Flickr-ing: sustenance
The line up for grub at pint of bitter murder.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Flickr-ing: the writer the book
Michael van rooy looking at his chapbook just before his reading at Aqua books.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Video: Roo Borson
Since most of my bloggers have commented on Roo Borson's Big Ideas lecture on creativity, I'm not going to try to find some angle not covered, some thought not aired.
So, here is a short reading by Borson from her new book Personal History.
So, here is a short reading by Borson from her new book Personal History.
Since Flickr hates me
My mobile provider, for all their youth-targeted advertising, isn’t Flickr friendly. My first attempt at a Flickr post was actually sent with a caption:
Rob Ross and Tricia Arden Caldwell: festival volunteers, emerging writers, my chums. We all met through being writers U of M. Trish and I were in the same creative writing class, and I met Rob at her post-Manitoba Book Awards party. Yes, we do sit around and talk about writing. It’s all very esoteric.
Rob hamming it up with my name tag, because he didn’t have his with him. For this year’s festival he played chauffer for the flown-in writers. Fun fact: Rob did his M.A. in Creative Writing at the U of M, the same program that Saleema Nawaz graduated from.
A very bad picture of Tricia. She’s actually quite cute. And a poet. On her Facebook page she claims her religion is “e.e. cummings.”
Two professional writers: Amy Karlinsky and Charles Wilkins. Amy is an art critic, curator, and teacher in Winnipeg. I took her Writing About Art class when she was at the university. You know that Bruce Head exhibit on at the Winnipeg Art Gallery right now? That’s her work. She’ll also be doing a stint as the writer-in-residence starting next week at Aqua Books. She’s pictured here with one of tonight’s readers, Charles Wilkins.
Tomorrow I will bring a real camera around. Expect lots of pictures of above-camera-phone quality!
* * *
Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.
“I checked out Shutter Speed by Larry Krotz from the library. After my overdue fines I should have just bought it.”Here’s a picture post to hold you over until I get down to writing something about the four events I went to today. These were all taken at The Mainstage event, The City.
Rob Ross and Tricia Arden Caldwell: festival volunteers, emerging writers, my chums. We all met through being writers U of M. Trish and I were in the same creative writing class, and I met Rob at her post-Manitoba Book Awards party. Yes, we do sit around and talk about writing. It’s all very esoteric.
Rob hamming it up with my name tag, because he didn’t have his with him. For this year’s festival he played chauffer for the flown-in writers. Fun fact: Rob did his M.A. in Creative Writing at the U of M, the same program that Saleema Nawaz graduated from.
A very bad picture of Tricia. She’s actually quite cute. And a poet. On her Facebook page she claims her religion is “e.e. cummings.”
Two professional writers: Amy Karlinsky and Charles Wilkins. Amy is an art critic, curator, and teacher in Winnipeg. I took her Writing About Art class when she was at the university. You know that Bruce Head exhibit on at the Winnipeg Art Gallery right now? That’s her work. She’ll also be doing a stint as the writer-in-residence starting next week at Aqua Books. She’s pictured here with one of tonight’s readers, Charles Wilkins.
Tomorrow I will bring a real camera around. Expect lots of pictures of above-camera-phone quality!
* * *
Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.
A Roo Borson Inspired Writing Exercise
I've been suffering from writer's block. I had some good stuff going earlier in the year, and then when school finished (and subsequently my creative writing class), I stopped. "The worse thing you can do is stop," my professor Struan Sinclair told me.
For the past few months I've been struggling to get my momentum back. I am stuck. I have fragments, but no real story. Before I could sit down and crank out 1000 words, now I trudge my way through 200. It's pathetic and sad. But more sad.
When I heard that Roo Borson was doing a talk on creativity for the Big Ideas series, I thought, "Ah-ha! Just what I need!"
Part of her creative process is writing fragments of ideas down ("Hey, I have those!"). She then takes years worth of these fragments, and collages them together like "newspaper clippings, except you wrote all the content."
I asked her, "What do you do when you have trouble putting together the pieces?"
Her response: "Rearrange them to get new ideas, but you'll likely have to write more to fill in the gaps."
"Write more."
So here are some fragments of my own from my Big Ideas experience:
Now to fill in the gaps. Arg.
* * *
Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.
For the past few months I've been struggling to get my momentum back. I am stuck. I have fragments, but no real story. Before I could sit down and crank out 1000 words, now I trudge my way through 200. It's pathetic and sad. But more sad.
When I heard that Roo Borson was doing a talk on creativity for the Big Ideas series, I thought, "Ah-ha! Just what I need!"
Part of her creative process is writing fragments of ideas down ("Hey, I have those!"). She then takes years worth of these fragments, and collages them together like "newspaper clippings, except you wrote all the content."
I asked her, "What do you do when you have trouble putting together the pieces?"
Her response: "Rearrange them to get new ideas, but you'll likely have to write more to fill in the gaps."
"Write more."
So here are some fragments of my own from my Big Ideas experience:
Would David Waltner-Toews consider writing about the appropriation of food chemicals by molecular gastronomists?
My best friend started to pick "fair trade" when we went for coffee, but I think she just liked the taste.
A man had a U-shaped foam cushion strapped to his hiking backpack. He placed on his seat, but spent most of the reading standing up.
I eyed the last piece of a California Roll on the platter. The disposable chopsticks wrappers said "Sushi Train," but I was so hungry it didn't matter.
It's silly to stop the elevator going down on the second floor.
Now to fill in the gaps. Arg.
* * *
Ashley Sy is a Winnipeg born and bred freelance writer specializing in arts, music, and culture. She has written for Stylus, The Manitoban, and MyWinnipeg.com, and has begun copywriting for the Regina-based firm Benchmark PR. Currently, Ashley is working on getting her short fiction published—she fully embraces the classification of emerging writer. You can hear Ashley every Saturday night on 101.5 UMFM, on her pop-punk nostalgia show, Parking Lot Rock.
Line of Inquiry: Lorna Jackson
After a decade singing in saloons, Lorna Jackson decided to study writing with Jack Hodgins and Mark Anthony Jarman. She has published a collection of short stories, Dressing for Hope, and a novel, A Game to Play on the Tracks. Now an exacting university writing teacher by day, Lorna Jackson is a raucous hockey aficionado by night, and two recent biblioasis titles are hard evidence of that. Cold-Cocked has been called “absolutely one of the best hockey books of our era.” Her other new title, Flirt: The Interviews, is a cheeky collection of fake interviews with real famous people—including several notable hockey players.
Lorna Jackson lives on Vancouver Island.
* * *
1) As a writer (i.e. someone whose artistic practice is predicated on time spent alone) how do you approach performance? What do you get out of it?
I spent many years as a saloon singer in some pretty rough BC bars and learned to call that performance and convince myself that I was getting something out of it. So reading and engaging with readers at public events feels incredibly civilized and genteel, compared to, say, that one grim Halloween, 1981, at the Blackstone Hotel in Vancouver.
I've also been teaching for about 15 years, so I'm relatively calm with a bunch of folks looking at me and expecting something to happen. Even so, the transition from that "time spent alone" you mention, to "time spent entertaining strangers" can be jarring, even mortifying. At least when we're at our desks, deep inside our own imaginations, even if we're filled with self-doubt, we seem whole and unified. But when we're on a stage and reading our work (also, self-doubting), the risk is a weird sort of fragmentation, or maybe disassociation when we're back at our desks. Who was that woman? Who does she think she is?
2) What do you want people to know about Cold-Cocked / Flirt?Both books are intentionally irreverent. Cold-Cocked: On Hockey reads the game - and certain players - and celebrates unofficial explanations as to why we watch and cheer. While I wouldn't say it looks at hockey through a woman's eyes, I think it looks at the game through the eyes of a literate, sensitive, aging and funny woman who happens to learn a great deal about herself through an unexpected obsession. I was determined to say something new about hockey, and to say something artful.
Flirt: The Interviews is essentially comic, although the stories – each takes the form of an interview with a famous person - are pretty dark and cover some unsettling topics: suicide, addiction, regret, grief, the role of the artist in an increasingly contemptuous culture. The interviewer is desperate to use her time with these people -athletes and musicians and writers who treat her with patience and even kindness - to unearth her own past and its tragedies.
3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
This is my first time, yes, and I've heard from writers that Thin Air is their favourite festival, that the audiences are fantastic. Of course I have a deep fondness for Winnipeg as not only the home of the Manitoba Moose, but as the only legitimate next home for an NHL team.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I've just finished Bill Gaston's wonderful, The Order of Good Cheer, Haruki Murakami's elegant little book on running and novel-writing, and my current fave writer, Tim Winton's novel, Breath, about a coupla surfer dudes growing up badly in Australia. I am full of their wonderful work. As for writing, I'm into a novel, a collection of stories, and just gearing up for hockey season and the blogging I'll be doing.
5) Your most recent book is Flirt, a "cheeky collection of fake interviews with real famous people." How do I know this interview isn't fake?
How do you know the ones in Flirt are?! Pour me another glass of ginger ale, take this cat off my lap, and ask me something else. Ask me about that time at the Blackstone Hotel.
* * *
Lorna Jackson will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:
September 26 - Rural Tour, Selkirk, with Cara Hedley and Randall Maggs.
September 27 - Afternoon Mainstage, with Cara Hedley, Randall Maggs, and Paul Quarrington.
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