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.

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.

Sex & Politics

How do you call the Northern Lights?
How do you cope with a broken heart in middle age?
How is your sexuality represented ?
What do you want to say about it?
Who will be listening?

There are huge political under and over tones to the topic of last nights main stage event “Me Sexy”. We could get into them here.

Certainly my response last night was in part about what it means for the sexuality of First Nations people to be represented in the media in one of three ways, as outlined by Drew Hayden Taylor, 1)focusing on sexual abuse suffered in residential schools 2) dead hookers 3) sexual transmitted infections.

And because of this reality, how revolutionary and necessary last night was. How essential it is for everyone to have space to speak the truth of their experience and to be listened to. We could speak of that here.

But what about how to call the Northern Lights?

Richard Van Camp says, Rub your fingernails tonight. And whistle.

But if you’re in Nunavut, rubbing your fingernails together will send them away.

You need to know how to do that too.

So that they don’t come down so far that they scoop you up and take you away forever and ever.

What about the Earth that seduces the moon in Rosanna Deerchild's poem?

What about Marilyn Dumont being greeted with teenage angst in the midst of a broken heart in middle age?

What about Joseph Boyden’s characters moving towards each other for the first time, undressing each other with all of the new smells and unfamiliar skin that goes along with those first moments of exploration with someone different?

What about desire and longing. Passion, hesitation and self worth. What about sadness and heartache.

What about aching.

Can we deny, like in Richard Van Camp's reading - that we all have baby pictures? That we were all babies once?

Can we ignore that we all have valid and interesting and complex sexualities, desires and sexual lives?

And if we deny and ignore it - what does it do except create violence. And send us further and further apart.

I’m more interested in being drawn towards you, not pushed away.

Last night pulled you in, wrapped you up in words of sex and pain, love and lust, childhood first kisses, and making love with someone new for the first time.

Last night was layered in its meaning and significance.

Last night left me longing for more.

* * *

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.

20 minute survival plan

You can survive anything for 20 minutes (except holding your breath underwater).

This is one of the many things Miriam Toews’ characters shared with the audience yesterday afternoon, over lunch. Reading from her new book The Flying Troutmans we learned that the best way to cope with life is to pretend everyone is stoned; there is a difference between graffiti by bored kinds wandering around vs. hate crime; there is nothing quite like a high quality pen museum; and when in doubt, follow the 20 minutes survival plan.

(My list of) things you can survive for 20 minutes:

uncomfortable conversations
anxiously awaiting a phone call from your partner when you know you have to have a ‘talk’ (you know the kind I mean)
standing at the bus stop in the middle of a Winnipeg winter day
your best friend being mad at you
listening to your mom cry at your dad’s funeral
your dad’s funeral
dental work

20 minutes, and then you need to switch. You can come back to it in a while. Because you know you can do it for another 20 minutes if you have to. And usually you do.

Ms. Toews seems to be able to capture unsettlingly honest experiences, in words that are light and humorous enough to speak truth, without preaching it. It makes it so that these truths - like the unbearable moments that feel endless but can and are survived - for at least 20 minutes at a time-reach a space in you that connects without resistance.

And to hear her read her own work brought a whole new level of life to her characters. I could have listened to her read forever.

There is a pelican on the cover of her latest book. When asked why she chose the pelican, she explained (after mentioning that once the publisher rejected her working title “Who Do You Have?” she suggested the title be “Pelican”, which was also rejected), that when a pelican’s young are starving, the pelican will actually peck its own chest until it bleeds, and then feed the young its own blood.

You can survive anything for 20 minutes.

* * *

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.

Words for Lunch

Ok, I’m a little late. (It’s in my nature, it’s how I roll, I can’t help it. Would you like any other, really bad, excuses?)

Furthermore, I am also totally busted for taking so long, because Ariel saw me there and has likely been waiting for this blog entry. (Call it intuition. It has nothing to do with the fact that it is her current Twitter status….)

Yesterday for lunch I decided to eat words.

And they were delicious. (I also had a fake turkey sandwich and a bowl of soup.)

I attended the nooner with Joan Thomas reading from her new novel Reading by Lightning.

I have been having trouble deciding what aspect about this event to write about. So perhaps I will just give brief, point form feelings and observations.

- Joan Thomas made the most perfect comment before she began reading, conjuring memories of being read to in grade school after lunch time. Head on your desk, being able to sit back and listen to the teacher read. This is exactly what attending this reading over my lunch hour felt like. A little break from the expected Monday-Friday work routine. A little dose of imagination and play. Like recess for grownups.

- Ms. Thomas' novel is, in part, about the experiences of British immigrants to Canada. This brings up very interesting political issues, around the notion of what it means to look at the experiences of a group of people who have white privilege, but were also subjected to the occurrence of recreating a notion of home in a new and unfamiliar land. It is interesting the think about how issues of choice around immigration, as well as white privilege, play into and shape the feelings of displacement that come with re-establishing home in a new country. This brings up more issues then I care to get into here, but it was certainly something that got me thinking.

- The excerpt she read was about one of the characters, a young girl, finding her grandmother in her bed during the last moments of her life, and the process of grief surrounding that experience. It is difficult to write about grief, partly because in western culture we are not really provided a language with which to speak of the realities of grief/grieving. Ms. Thomas’ portrayal of this young girl's physical sensations - from running to get help, to the feelings in her body at the time of the funeral, all manage to convey elements of one of the most difficult emotional processes to articulate in words.

(I told you I love theory. Sorry if that was a little too much theory for a lunch hour reading break. I just can’t help it sometimes)

And today, I will be off to the nooner with Miriam Toews. Which I will report back on much more promptly. I promise.

As for my first festival experience, these lunch time breaks are finding themselves to be quite popular with me.

* * *

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.

oh winnipeg

If only a city could be a lover, I would pick you.

Curled in on the cement steps of Oodena, the ironic backdrop of the Asper institute shining in the distance, I am left feeling settled, disturbed and at home within the atmosphere of opening night.

And that is just it. This city, full of painful irony and beautiful repulsiveness somehow gives way to [for lack of a better word] magic. Almost addictive in its elusiveness.

I keep trying to grab at it/whatever it is/ this obsession I have with this ridiculously imperfect city. And just like the authors tonight, I am often left struggling with just what words and stories to use to convey these intimate, deeply rooted feelings.

What I loved so much about these five, very diverse writers, was their honest commitment to trying to find something, at least one thing, to name and hold onto as a way to frame what it means to be here/to exist in this “one great city”.

And whether it was the work of Jordan Wheeler, Chandra Mayor and nereO Eugenio; passionate dialogue infused with a politically critical lens, or the work of Carol Matas and Marc Prescott which carried a lighter but equally as intimate tone, opening night was made up of writers being asked to pull out pieces of themselves that felt something, anything, towards this little prairie town.

And nothing makes me happier then people sitting around, talking about Winnipeg.

* * *

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.

Intro: Courtney Slobogian

There is this sense that Winnipeg is constantly keeping secrets. But not the kind of secrets that spread around high schools and make kids hide in bathroom stalls or drive in around in their Ford tempos instead of going to class.

No, it’s more like Winnipeg keeps the kinds of secrets that are aching to be told / secrets that keep you moving through the seasons / secrets that you carry around in your back pocket / secrets that give way to smiling shyly at strangers or leaving a nice note on the napkin at your favourite breakfast spot for the server.

Winnipeg keeps secrets that remind you it is alive.

That’s what this years festival feels like for me. It is my very first year partaking in this wondrous event. And while I am partly very ashamed of this fact, I am treating it like a secret. Now clearly it is not exactly a secret.

And I wasn’t even sure I was going to admit to you that I had never been to the festival before (“does this make me less legitimate?!” I asked myself in a panic). But I have decided it will be our little adventure together.

Are you in?

As I tip toe through the festival with fresh eyes and a relentless curiosity of what this Winnipeg secret holds, I will share with you what it feels like to uncover the festival for the very first time.

I have been writing academically for a long time, but have only begun to own up to myself and others that I am in fact, a writer. Whatever the heck that means.

As I hesitantly embrace this new identity it excites me to be able to dive into a community of established, as well as newer writers, and take part in a week of work and play dedicated to the love of words.

Oh and I sure do love words.

It’s time to fall into the week, and see where I come out at the end of it all. The best part is that I get to take you along for the ride.

Talk to you soon!

* * *

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.