Walking to the Poetry Bash or Confessions of a Kid from St. James

My relationship with poetry is a reluctant one, like there is something echoing through me saying, don't waste your time on this. I don't know why this is, or where it comes from. But it's there and I struggle with it.

Growing up, poetry was not a part of my life. Hockey, basketball and video games, snowboarding, drinking and girls: this was high school and a good chunk of university. It's not that I don't think poetry isn't compatible with these things, it just wasn't in the mix. It wasn't even a thought.

Last night, on my way to the Forks for the last night of the Writers' Festival, walking down McMillan and Wellington, through the Village, over the Osborne Bridge and then East on the River Walk, I decided that tonight, at the Mainstage Poetry Bash, I would try to figure out what poetry has come to mean to me.

As far as what poetry is, I'm not sure. Last night, Charlene Diehl put it well when she said there really isn't much point in trying to define what poetry is. Whether you think it's just playing around with the way words bounce off each other, or it's just writing with forms, like sonnets and villanelles, or if it's about images and metaphors, chances are that sooner or later you'll come across a writer that shatters your expectations and understandings of what a poem is or should be. Besides, I find myself more interested in how poems come about and why.

Roo Borson, as I wrote in a post below, mentioned that she collects images and thoughts and conversions wherever and whenever she can, scribbling them on whatever scrap of paper she can find, keeping them for later. I thought I might try this as I walked to the Forks, to see what came of it and to see if it helped me to understand why I have come to like poetry. Here are some things that I wrote:

• The railing that runs the length of the Osborne Street bridge is a little wider than my hand, fingers spread. Last week I watched a man walk this railing like it was a tightrope. There was a slight wind and he would wobble when it blew, throwing his arms out for balance. Cars slowed as they passed. I worried that he would fall, knowing I'd be helpless to save him.

• An old man shuffles his walker forward, leans on it, takes a couple steps, and then starts again from the beginning. A young man and a young woman walk at his side, checking their strides so as to keep the old man's pace, careful not to walk ahead. We are kind in small and important ways.

• Some fallen leaves are scratching and tumbling along the sidewalk. I'm still trying to figure out what Rilke meant when he wrote of Autumn that: Whoever has no house now, will never have one./ Whoever is alone will stay alone,/ will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,/ and wander along the boulevards, up and down,/ restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

• There are some people standing along the banks of the Assiniboine River, fishing. There is something about this that immediately disgusts me. But I don't know why it is that they're standing there, what it is that brought them there, and I shouldn't assume.

• Some graffiti on a wall reads: The wind dies.

• Using the kids urinal, which is lower to the floor, is oddly emasculating.

These thoughts are pretty random, yet so are the things that can happen to you and occur to you through the course of a day, let alone a thirty minute walk. The above is not supposed to be some sort of poem as a list, but I am starting to think that what I like about poetry is that it helps me make sense of this randomness.

Roo Borson, to refer to her again, writes about a friend whose cabin had recently burnt down. When the friend went to see what was left of the cabin, Roo went with her. She writes that, while there, looking through the charred remains, a neighbour approached them:

"'We'll always have our memories," said a kindly widowed neighbour, 'nothing can take those away.' But I wondered. There is the random, roving willfulness that plays through the senses - and a willful randomness which tampers, in our very cells, with what we hold beloved." (Personal History, page 61)

I still don't know what poetry means to me. In a way, I hope I never come to a firm answer. Yet, I think I will let the idea of "random, roving willfulness" guide how I approach poetry for the next while: willfully roving and logging all this randomness.

Until, of course, something comes along and changes everything.

* * *

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.

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:

i fall asleep inside a poem,
inking dreams onto a page
until you gently slide the pen
out of my hand,
refill the aperture
with your fingers

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?

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.

Roo Borson on Creativity

Dressed in black - black blouse, black pants, black shoes - and standing against the matte black walls of the Carol Shields Auditorium at the Millennium Library, Roo Borson looked like a talking head, literally.

I decided, before she started speaking, that if her talk was in any way dry and uninspired, if she was only going to stand there and ramble like so many professors I've had in the past, then I would go with the talking head angle, and the post would write itself.

But then she started her discussion with the following quote, taken from the epigraph of the essay she was going read:

"Are both your parents still alive?"
"Yes."
"Then you still have two lessons to learn."

It was then that I shimmied up to the edge of my seat. She had me.

For the next forty-five minutes, Roo read from her new book, a collection of essays entitled Personal Histories, periodically stopping to explain and elaborate on what she had finished reading.

For Roo Borson, creativity is grounded in experience, and writing is a response to experience - to the way our experiences echo inside us and throughout our lives. It's as though she logs all the little ways she associates the people she loves with the world around her; little associations we all make without always realizing, such as the faint rumbling sound her father's car made as it pulled up to the house. After our loved ones have died, we begin to miss these little things, and it is this absence that our writing responds to.

She also took a few questions after her reading, teasing André Alexis, who was seated in the crowd, to come up and answer one she wasn't sure how to answer. Her answers, like her reading, where honest and well thought out (and after watching Katie Couric interview Sarah Palin, I almost forgot questions could be answered that way).
Roo's talk was anything but dry and uninspiring. It was personal and engaging. She is far from a talking head. She is a poet, in the best sense of the word.

* * *

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.

An Interview with Chandra Mayor

Chandra Mayor, the ever-so-gracious Winnipeg writer, agreed to answer a few questions about her new collection of short stories, All the Pretty Girls.

Chandra is the author of two previous books: a novel, Cherry, and a book of poetry, August Witch.

She also teaches creative writing here in Winnipeg.

Brad Hartle: There is something about your writing that is unmistakably Winnipeg. It's in the tone of the stories, the language that characters use, in the things they spend their time doing and the things they scoff at doing. How has Winnipeg influenced your writing and what is it about this city that has made you want to write about it (aside from the fact that you live here)?

Chandra Mayor: Actually, part of my answer is, truly, because I live here. I realized the other day that I haven’t spent more than a week in any other place than Winnipeg for over 20 years. That’s a long time. Mostly, though, that’s by choice. There’s much that I like about living here, and very much that I like about writing here, and about writing about here. I think that in some ways it’s much harder to set a book in New York or Toronto or London; so very many of those stories have already been told, and so many of those places have already been written. And so many of Winnipeg’s stories are still unwritten. For me, it’s a city of ghosts (ghosts of people I’ve known, places that might or might not still exist, and ghosts of various versions of myself), without quite the same literary ghosts clouding one’s vision. (How do you write about Toronto ravines, for example, without Atwood’s terrifying little Cat’s Eye girls smirking at your elbow?). And chasing ghosts always feels compelling to me.

Plus, Winnipeg is such a bizarre and ornery and tangled up city – wildly diverse and defiant neighbourhoods that barely deign to be part of Winnipeg at all (think Transcona or St. Boniface). Winnipeg is permeated with this fierce, no-bullshit, blue collar mentality that cuts any attempts at pretension off at the knee caps, and yet it wraps its arms around these incredible, abrupt, and almost unbridgeable socio-economic and racial divides – our dirty little secrets. It’s an isolated prairie island – hours and hours away from any other city – that serves to both protect its quirkiness, and also to nurture a DIY attitude to everything from culture-creation (music, theatre, festivals, etc. etc.) to fashion (remember late 80s Cougar boots and long-johns under flowered peasant skirts?) to accents (listen to Jian Ghomeshi interview Randy Bachman sometime) to political movements (Nellie McClung was a Manitoban).

It’s a “Hey, let’s put on a show!” kind of town – and the people putting on the shows all have booster cables in the trunks of their cars, and know how to use them. Winnipeg’s hearts are tough and scruffy and scarred and frost-bitten – and still, wide-open. As a writer, what more could you ask for?

BH: With the publication of All the Pretty Girls, you have now completed a book of short stories, a novel and a book of poems. As you were writing the stories within All the Pretty Girls, did you find that writing short fiction is more like writing poetry or closer to writing a novel? Or is writing just writing?

CM: When you’re sitting at the computer, staring at the blank screen and weeping a little, writing is just writing. At the same time, the interplay between form and content fascinates me. When I started the stories in All the Pretty Girls, I didn’t really know a damn thing about short fiction. I’m not sure that I still do, but I learned a lot. The short story form requires a similar kind of economy, of writing close to the bone, that poetry does, and yet, more like a novel, is engaged with different kinds of plot requirements. (Or, at least, expectations of plot). It’s the notion of plot that I feel I learned the most about in this project.

Sometimes I’d send drafts of the stories to my girlfriend (then living in Montreal). She’d call me and say, “The writing’s really beautiful [she’s required to say that, obviously], but, you know, nothing really happens.” I’d be silent on the other end of the phone for a moment, and say, “Oh, yeah. Do you think that matters?” “Umm,” she’d very diplomatically answer. “Yes. Yes, I do.” And I’d laugh, and take another crack at it. I started off that project trying to capture moments. I hope, by the end of it, I also, sometimes, figured out how to capture movement.

BH: Your stories are filled with telling little gestures, gestures that hint at the reader that everything isn't as it seems. Sometimes these gestures suggest that things are far worse than they seem, like the way an old man runs his fingers through the hair of a little girl, and sometimes these gestures are in the form of small acts of kindness, even grace, like a bag of Wonder Bread left on the doorknob of a down-and-out neighbour. These moments, however brief, however sparse, seem to shine amidst all the gritty-meanness and selfishness that mark so many of your characters. Why is it important to you that your fiction contain these little gestures and how do you work to incorporate them into your stories?

CM: This is a great question, and a difficult one to answer. I’m not sure how to respond without sounding trite. I think that people are complicated, messy, and fragile. No one is reliably selfish absolutely all of the time (just as no one is reliably kind all the time). It’s part of what makes bad relationships so hard to extricate yourself from; just at the moment that you decide that your partner is a total jerk, they do something small and vulnerable and sweet, and you get sucked back in. Black-and-white characters and situations don’t make for compelling fiction – largely, I think, because they’re just not true. And if it’s not true, it doesn’t resonate. And if I’m writing untrue things and characters, and it doesn’t resonate with anyone, I’m doing a lousy job as a writer. (And probably being lazy). When I write, I try to get right inside of those places and those people. For me, if it doesn’t feel emotionally wrenching to create, then I’m probably not actually inside, and I’m probably not writing the true things. But when I can get inside the true things, then those small gestures and moments don’t feel like something I have to consciously incorporate or layer – in some ways, the gestures and moments themselves are the story, and everything else gets built around them.

BH: Children play an important part in your stories, like in Casey and Finnegan. The kids are usually on the periphery of things, but they are crucial to the tension that your stories have. What is it about children you hope to capture and what are the challenges in writing about them?

CM: One of the biggest challenges in writing about children is just getting it right...would a three year old really say that? When is it they start walking? The children in my stories are all quite young, but my own daughter is 14 now. Trying to remember some of that stuff is like digging back into the dark ages. I don’t have any illusions about the supposed innate wisdom and purity of children – like everyone, they also have immense capacities for cruelty and kindness and everything in between. There is sometimes nothing more boring in the world than playing the same game, for the millionth time, with a two year old. And there is sometimes nothing more astonishing and revelatory than playing the same game for the millionth time with a two year old. They’re creatures of routine, and yet also wildly unpredictable. Incredibly resilient, and yet immensely fragile. Children, especially small ones, are often the wild card in any setting or life, both in terms of their own selves in their own bodies, and also in the various ways that adults interact with and react to them. They exist in completely separate worlds, and yet are entirely dependent on us, on our own capacities to care for them. Or not.

BH: How do you edit your stories? Do you finish a draft and then go back over it or do you edit as you go? What have you learned about self-editing since you started out?

CM: I do a lot of editing as I go, and try to not have drafts that need substantial revisions. (Probably due to the aforementioned laziness). Learning more and more about writing (through reading, through courses, through just doing it, and a great deal through teaching) has taught me a great deal about self-editing. I think I learned the most crucial thing about self-editing from Catherine Hunter. I’d write something, and I’d suspect that there was a word or a line or something that wasn’t quite working. But I’d think, “Oh, good enough. No one will notice.” And, of course, it was always, always the first thing she’d notice. And circle. And write a pointed comment about. It was fantastic. It helped a lot with the laziness. And it also helped to create and strengthen my instincts and critical awareness of what I was doing. Or, at least, trying to do.

BH: What's the best writing advice that you have been given?

CM: Oh, this one’s easy (and also came from Catherine Hunter). The best writing advice I’ve ever been given is to just write. Write and write and write. I mean, you have to read, talk to other people and writers, learn about the craft however you can, etc etc etc. That’s all important too. But at the end of the day, it’s just you and your notebook. You may have read millions of books, know lots of important authors, and have taken hundreds of courses. But whether or not your notebook is blank or full is only up to you. No one’s first poem is any good. Probably your fiftieth poem still isn’t particularly great. But maybe, maybe your two-hundred-and-fiftieth poem will finally be getting somewhere. You learn by doing it. So do it. Lots of people in this world have great ideas, or a facility with language, or a particular sensitivity to whatever. Lovely, wonderful. But writers write. Even (albeit unwillingly and occasionally interrupted by weeping) the lazy ones like me.

BH: Thanks Chandra!

* * *

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.

CAMPUS PROGRAM: Austin Clarke

As I found a seat near the back of the classroom where Austin Clarke's reading was to take place, a women standing next to me asked, "Would you like me to take your assignment up to the front for you?" I hesitated, looked around at all the unfamiliar faces in the cramped, sunlit room, the empty desk in front of me, and thought, I've had this dream before.

She then said, "Never mind, you're not one of us." And I thought, I've had this dream, too.

As it happens, the classroom where the reading took place was near full with students studying Austin Clarke. I hadn't read much of Austin's work, only a short story from the Oxford Book of Canadian Short Stories, so I am not that familiar with his work.

But after he began speaking, introducing his new book, More, I quickly began to realize what a fascinating man he is, and how much is embedded in the pages of his fiction.

He began by giving a bit of background on his main character, Idora, who is a female from Barbados living in Toronto. He spoke about the experience of Barbadian women moving to Toronto, and how Idora is modeled after these women.

He then read a section, his voice assuming Idora's slight accent. When finished, he went on to introduce the next bit he was to read, and he spoke about some of the images used in the section and what they conveyed.

Idora lives in a basement apartment and the only window is above her head. As she looks out the window, everything she sees is skewed, disjoined. The basement apartment, Austin noted, is meant to suggest she is down on her luck, and the skewed view she has of the street outside her apartment is just as skewed as her view of the world she lives in.

After his second reading, after he looked up at a room spellbound by his voice, he had to remind everyone to breathe. We laughed, and so did he.

After fielding a few questions, a woman near the front asked him about race and poverty and violence in Toronto and whether or not he sees any improvements. He said no. She asked if him if he has an solutions. He said not really, but then he offered a wonderful story of his trip to Winnipeg.

He flew, and seated behind him on the plane was a baby that cried the whole time. People were noticeably frustrated. After a while, he began to wonder if the pin holding the baby's diaper had slipped and was poking the child in the side (he joked that, of course, diapers don't have pins anymore, but that's not the point). He added that, when he was a young father, he was home one day with his child and the child cried and cried all day. He couldn't figure out why and was feeling very frustrated. He then realized, some time later, that the bottle his child was holding had a piece of plastic blocking the liquid from getting out and the child couldn't drink it. It was the child who was frustrated, because of a mistake he had made.

Whether you are looking to read some well-crafted fiction or you are looking to learn something, to experience something, Austin Clarke's More seems to have a great deal to offer. I can't wait to read it.

* * *

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.

AFTERNOON BOOK CHAT: Davidson & Friedman

Andrew Davidson and Elyse Friedman both have a flare for eccentric characters. Whether it's a burn victim who is convinced there is a snake crawling up his spine or a grown man who gets sexual gratification from being treated like a baby, complete with soother and diaper and smoochie-gootchie speaking, these writers have an amazing ability to stick themselves into some twisted, twisted shoes.

This afternoon, at McNally Polo Park, they spoke about their writing, how they accomplish such leaps of imagination, how they edit and how they become inspired.

What was interesting was how different their approach to writing was. When asked about where their stories and their characters originate, Andrew said that "I don't find my characters, my characters find me." Elyse, on the other hand, finds that by taking common pop-culture characters and flipping them on their heads (her example was, instead of a celebrity stalker, a celebrity that stalks his fans), she can create some interesting people to write about.

When it comes to the editing process, they also had completely different methods.

Elyse prefers to edit as she goes, writing small amounts daily and then going over it before she moves on. Andrew, on the other hand, says that he throws out 85% of what he writes, preferring to get his ideas onto the page and giving himself complete freedom to throw away anything and everything.

He also had a piece of editing advice that I thought was really good, saying that, while he needs to write in absolute silence, he prefers to do his editing in coffee shops. His reasoning was that he needs the little distractions public places provide, because without them he would over-think every word.

There was plenty of good advice aside from the stuff I've posted here today, and I understand that there will be a video posted of the conversation later on the WIWF website. I encourage everyone to check it out.

* * *

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.

Thoughts from Oodena

"How long will $100 last in a crack pipe?"

"Not long."

"If you smoke the memories of your son, will they last longer?"

"Yeah."

The words above are from a poem Jordan Wheeler read at the opening night of the Writers Festival (and forgive me if they are not Jordan's exact words, I'm quoting from memory). Before last night, I had never heard of Jordan Wheeler. When he took the stage, the small cobblestone circle at the bottom of an amphitheatre near the point where the Assiniboine River flows into the Red, a place called Oodena, he told us how he was asked to write something about Winnipeg, something that speaks to his relationship with the city.

Before beginning, he apologized to the City Councilor standing behind him for what he was about to say. He laughed a little, and so did the 100 or so people seated and standing around him. He then went on to read three of the most honest and unflinching pieces about the lives of aboriginal people in Winnipeg that I have ever heard. He spoke about disease, about addiction, about tasers, about poverty, about "Sweet Honey Brown" women found in the river downstream from where we sat, and about fathers who have lost their sons. He spoke of the cycles that keep people living these lives, and he did so in a way that could shock the complacency from anyone.

I had intended for my contributions to this blog to be about the craft of writing, and I went to last nights readings hoping to glean some insight into this topic. But Jordan's poems really grabbed me, as they probably did to so many of the people there, and they haven't let go.

I spent the next while trying to figure out why. Was it the fact that there was a City Councilor seated behind him, that he was speaking truth to power? Was it the immediacy of the images he conveyed? Was it the tone he spoke in? The experience he spoke of? I couldn't pinpoint it. I still can't.

As he finished, as people began clapping, I noticed a few gulls swooping through the sky above. As they flew, some turned their stark white stomachs towards the last glint of sun still showing, warming themselves in that warm dusk-light. I thought of how they have always flown over this spot and how I hope they always will. I thought of how, for thousands of years, people have sat where I was sitting and have listened to others tell stories, and how I hope people always will.

I then thought of the stories Jordan told. I hope he will continue to tell them, but I do not hope that he will always have to. I thought of how, with writers like Jordan telling their stories, there are good reasons to hope.

Thank you Jordan.

* * *

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.

Intro: Brad Hartle

Ariel sent me an email before I knew who Ariel was.

I don't get many emails, for reasons I would rather not talk about, so I opened it with some interest. I'm glad I did. A mutual friend had given Ariel my contact info, suggesting me as someone who might be interested in blogging for the Writers Festival.

I nodded to myself, raised my eyebrows a bit and thought, yes, yes that would be something I'd be interested in. She then went on to promise me a free coffee mug. At this point I pushed the reply button.

As someone who is just starting out writing, I thought it might be interesting to focus on what writers at the festival have to say about the craft of writing fiction, be it novels, short stories or poems.

Where do their influences and ideas come from? How do they make their characters believable? How do they approach form and voice? What have they learned as their careers have progressed? It is questions like these that will be the focus of my postings.

I would like to thank Ariel and the good folks at the Writers Festival for this opportunity. I hope I don't blow it.

* * *

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.