And So, We Come to the End

Does anyone else get an odd feeling that something’s not quite right when they leave a movie theatre when it’s still light outside? Perhaps it’s because while you’re in the theatre you inhabited a different world for a while and when you get back outside in the daylight you see that it’s the same old place you left a couple of hours ago. If that’s the case then no wonder I was so disoriented upon leaving Moving Stories Films; I had just visited 13 different worlds in one afternoon.

Perhaps “different worlds” isn’t quite the right way to describe the diversity of the films. They were more like a variety of different dishes, all with different ingredients, methods of preparation and presentation. Yes, dishes is a more appropriate term. These little short films were just perfect wee morsels of delicious story. Watching the films sort of felt like being at a buffet where you nibble away at this and that and then realize later that you’ve actually had quite a lot to eat. Unlike a buffet though, where if you fill up on too many diverse substances, your stomach may rebel, the components of this buffet complemented each other very nicely. “No Bikini,” “The Perfection of the Moment,” and “Nagasaki Circus” were particularly memorable and tasty.

And this was the perfect end to a perfect festival. Such amazing and inspiring talent came through our fair city this week, and I learned so much, that I have absolutely no excuses to not write and I can’t wait find out who’s coming next year.

Thanks for reading!

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Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.

Oh dear...

...I got to the Afternoon Book Chat at McNally Polo Park a little late this afternoon. Curses, Winnipeg Transit! Is there anything more wretched than a bus into, or out of, downtown on a Saturday afternoon? Well, yes I suppose there is, but I’m grumpy today and I want to indulge myself for a moment.

My surliness was not helped by the fact that I missed JohnArno Lawson reading from A Voweller’s Bestiary, full of poems I really wanted to hear. All that word play and vowel juggling is right up my alley.

Crankiness was lifted when I got to hear Douglas Burnet Smith read a couple of selections from Sister Prometheus, Discovering Marie Curie. The poem about the death of Pierre Curie kind of sucked the breath right out of us all in attendance; it was so intense and heartbreaking.

I wish I’d been able to see all the Afternoon Book Chats, because if they were all as interesting as Saturday’s I would have enough inspiration and motivation to keep my creative fires stoked well into the winter. As it is now, it looks like I’ll be hacking up my furniture by February, for firewood and a fresh idea.

But I did get something of an inspiration boost by seeing these two fine poets, who couldn’t be more different in their approaches to their latest projects. Obviously, the material, word play for children and the inner life of Marie Curie, dictates a different approach for each, but the process of poetry for these two authors was fascinatingly dissimilar. JohnArno Lawson talked of keeping lists of vocabulary and dictionary definitions and “workshopping” his work with his children, while Douglas Burnet Smith explained that he did a lot of research in Paris and Warsaw and that generally he writes by himself, and tends not to seek or receive comment from fellow writers or editors.

This reinforces the idea, which has been told to me many times, that there is no right way or wrong way to go about the business of poetry. It’s heartening to see such different approaches both resulting in success. Now, though, I can’t attribute any lack of success in my future to: Poetry. Yer doin’ it wrong.

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Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.

Lucky, Lucky Students. They’ve Never Had it So Good.

I hope the members of the English class that was in attendance at this afternoon’s reading at the U of M appreciate how unusual and exciting it is to have actual Real Life Writers read their stuff to them in class. Why is that so rare? It’s just not right that so many of us got through our English degrees without hearing a single author’s voice. (Obviously some voices are kind of out of the question. If you ever hear Yeats’ voice at this point in time, you might want to check yourself in some place where they give you green Jell-O with every meal.) Given that Winnipeg, and the U of M, has so much readily available talent, it’s a shame that more students (so gloriously impressionable!) don’t get to hear and talk to practicing writers. Anyway, I digress…

Is it really a digression if I haven’t actually started in on what I came here to say yet? Anyway, again...

I must confess that I haven’t yet obtained The Cellist of Sarajevo, despite my fascination at the story of the siege of that city. What I’ve always found so compelling and frightening about the record of those events is just how terrifyingly quickly Sarajevo went from being a cultural and economic success story to being a city where nearly every single building was damaged, tens of thousands of people were dead or injured, where mortar shells were dropping out of the sky multiple times a day and where going outside to do something as basic as getting water became life threatening.

Even the fact that it so quickly turned into the sort of place where you had to go out to get water is kind of horrifying. It also gives me pause to think about how, once everything is stripped away, we so rapidly turn on people who didn’t bother us much one way or another before.

OK, now I’m getting dour. Thank the gods for Gerald Hill’s poetry. Not that his work doesn’t cover some serious subjects also, but he chose to lighten us up a bit with some Roughrider/Blue Bomber rivalry (yeah, I don’t know what he was referring to either) and poems about increasingly hostile and militant English students; progressing from reading the poet’s material on his office door to outright military style abduction, complete with individuals rappelling from helicopters, multiple ropes and vigorous, loud demands for explanations.

Oh wait, maybe that’s why writers don’t read their stuff directly to students...

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Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.

How Was It For You?

OK, faithful readers, if you were not at Wednesday evening’s Main Stage event you missed quite a treat. Not only did we get Matches and Misses, we got quite a bit of sex. By the end of the evening I needed a cigarette, and I don’t even smoke.

Well, that’s not quite true as most of the sex discussed was unsatisfying and generally quite unpleasant. If it’s true that bad sex is better than no sex then what can we say about great writing about bad sex?

Well, my keen observations of my fellow audience members tells me that we love to hear all the excruciating, squirm-inducing, horrifying details. Is that because it makes our own relationships seem not too bad, or because it feels all too true?

If you don’t believe me about the amount of sex we had going on Wednesday night you should have a look at The Prairie Bridesmaid for bare butts stuck to frozen lakes, and Nicole Martokic’s Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot for descriptions of intercourse without intimacy and almost entirely without touching. Sad encounters, for sure, but touching and funny too.

Gerald Hill finished off the first half of the evening reading his poems of absent or imagined lovers, and did anyone else notice that the one called “My Cock” was the longest?

The first sex filled half of the evening was balanced, fellow fans of fiction, with a second half of missed connections, monsters of varying stripes and characters seeking those who may not want to be found.

But if there’s one thing you should take from this blog post, savvy readers, it’s that you must immediately seek out Rebecca Rosenblum and Pasha Malla. Both authors were new to my consciousness and you can trust that I will be following their careers.

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Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.

Intro: Emma Hill Kepron

Aah, autumn in Winnipeg. Gentle readers, we all know what this means: back-to-school, sticky bands on tree trunks and, best of all, the Writer’s Festival.

Once again, I am blown away, humbled, and awestruck by the sheer number of events planned and the enormous level of talent represented.

You may see me, my fellow fans of fiction, (and other genres, naturally) furiously taking notes, as I strive to bring you the freshest festival observations I can manage; straight from my brain to the internet, piping hot.

Sadly, the job that supplies the bacon to my home will keep me from some daytime events. However, this intrepid blogger will not shirk from evening proceedings, even if they do keep me up past my usual bed-time. I am that committed!

With a line up like this year’s, though, I would gladly stay up for days. Can you believe how lucky we are to have the likes of Joseph Boyden, Paul Quarrington, Austen Clarke, David Bergen and so many other talented creators in our midst? And for free or for cheap to boot!

I know I will be gorging myself on this literary feast, but there’s plenty to go around and I’m happy to share.

See you there!

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Emma Hill Kepron is a librarian at the University of Manitoba.

She is also an aspiring poet.

Her writing takes place in a small blue house near the river, which she shares with her husband and her dog.