Pasha malla and Rebecca rosenblum.
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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Flickr-ing: lunch
A roasted chicken club and Austin Clarke at McNally Robinson pp.
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Out-take: owning the blur
* * *
I hate using the flash on my camera when shooting indoors. The light in the pics is usually stark and ugly while ambient light is usually warm and orange-y.
But if I ONLY shoot without the flash, sometimes I don't get a SINGLE sharp image. And that makes me mutter to myself...so when shooting events, I usually shoot lots of pics, some with the flash, some without.
And then I see what I get.
Shooting without the flash means standing really still or finding something to rest the camera against, because I do not, repeat not, have a tripod.
I mean, there are tripods at home, knocking about (did I mention my partner, M, is a Winnipeg Free Press photographer?), but who wants to try to fit one in my bag? Plus, M is leery about equipping me with anything that I could then use to hit him with.
So, here are a few of the photos I 'got' from last night's Bloodlines edition of Mainstage.
Leave a comment if you know who any of the people are. It'll be like a game, see...
(Psst. Tonight's mainstage should also be a cracker.)
* * *
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW. A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.
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.
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.
Recap: day two
There is something so decadent about a room full of people listening to authors talk about process, and work habits, and other authors during the middle of the day.
There is something so decadent about a room full of people listening to authors talk on a beautiful fall day.
What do you do with such privilege? The ability to ignore the (fleeting) sun, the need to earn money under the sun.
What do you do with such privilege? You enjoy it, because it's yours and things could be MUCH worse.
You enjoy that art and story is available, that you are one of many gathered in the interest of art and story, and you watch the closed and open faces of the others.
It strikes me that the few truly communal experiences we have left are all in the interest of art and story, as we've lost interest (for better or for worse) in more solemn gatherings.
Though the afternoon book chats are meant to be intimate spaces, with room for conversation and interaction with the writers, this felt thronged, in perhaps the best way.
It's my belief that we need to spend time in the dark with a room full of other human beings to be right in the head.
We need to rise to our feet as a group, to feel strong and full-throated, to hurt our hands and to yell yell yell. We need to laugh and hear other people laugh.
And David Bergen and Mary Swan were up to the challenge of a full-to-the-brim afternoon book chat. They were different enough, in terms of process, in terms of writing styles, to spark off each other.
The Q & A portion of the chat was good too, though the majority of the questions were addressed to David. Mary will have to forgive Winnipeg audiences for being so interested in David's brand new book, especially in light of his recent Giller long-listing.
(Mmm. Mary was also long-listed, wasn't she...but you know what I mean.)(Imagine Winnipeg actually being proud of it's successes! But that seems to be where we find ourselves, with two major novelists living in town.)
* * *
Though I was intrigued by Mary's answers to the questions posed her, I wasn't compelled to buy her book until after her Mainstage reading later that night.
She read a selection from her novel? book of linked short stories? that featured a character looking back on his life. A familiar pose that almost caused me to drift off but then, but then. Something about Mary's deep-ish voice, something about this character, this series of recollections.
Part of it was that the character - and the writing - weren't sentimental or precious about their recollections.
Quietly, solidly, Mary caught me. And I wasn't the only one. I watched Miriam Toews, sitting on stage, and she seemed to be getting caught too.
But I'm being unfair only mentioning Mary. Shockingly, I enjoyed EVERY SINGLE READING.
Usually, I usually like 2 of 6 readings. I admire one or two more, for the craft of the story if not the content, and I appreciate the performance of the piece, the performance of the author's personality, in maybe one more.
But to enjoy all the readings? Unprecedented. (Really. I mean it.)
And I wasn't alone, if the masses of people at the book table at the break and after it was all over (also, the attendant flushed exclamations: "Wasn't that GOOD?") was an indication.
Beyond the opportunity to spend some time in the dark with other people, I also appreciated being able to bring my love with me and hold his hand while listening to some very good writing.
I also was very happy, personally, to see two people. Gisela Roger, the administrator of Creative Retirement Manitoba's Senior Writers' Workshop, and Margaret Keller, a friend of my childhood who gets all worked up, and all worked up by reading.
As I walked out into the dark and rain, I was satisfied. By the chat, by the lit, by the writing life.
One final note: Maurice Mierau's poetry and his manner MORE than stood up to the fiction on offer. He came off wry and sad and smart, all very acceptable take-aways for a reading.
I'm very glad that poetry has snuck back onto the main stage besides just (just?) the Saturday Poetry Bash.
* * *
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW.
A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.
There is something so decadent about a room full of people listening to authors talk on a beautiful fall day.What do you do with such privilege? The ability to ignore the (fleeting) sun, the need to earn money under the sun.
What do you do with such privilege? You enjoy it, because it's yours and things could be MUCH worse.
You enjoy that art and story is available, that you are one of many gathered in the interest of art and story, and you watch the closed and open faces of the others.
It strikes me that the few truly communal experiences we have left are all in the interest of art and story, as we've lost interest (for better or for worse) in more solemn gatherings.
Though the afternoon book chats are meant to be intimate spaces, with room for conversation and interaction with the writers, this felt thronged, in perhaps the best way.
It's my belief that we need to spend time in the dark with a room full of other human beings to be right in the head.We need to rise to our feet as a group, to feel strong and full-throated, to hurt our hands and to yell yell yell. We need to laugh and hear other people laugh.
And David Bergen and Mary Swan were up to the challenge of a full-to-the-brim afternoon book chat. They were different enough, in terms of process, in terms of writing styles, to spark off each other.
The Q & A portion of the chat was good too, though the majority of the questions were addressed to David. Mary will have to forgive Winnipeg audiences for being so interested in David's brand new book, especially in light of his recent Giller long-listing.
(Mmm. Mary was also long-listed, wasn't she...but you know what I mean.)(Imagine Winnipeg actually being proud of it's successes! But that seems to be where we find ourselves, with two major novelists living in town.)
* * *Though I was intrigued by Mary's answers to the questions posed her, I wasn't compelled to buy her book until after her Mainstage reading later that night.
She read a selection from her novel? book of linked short stories? that featured a character looking back on his life. A familiar pose that almost caused me to drift off but then, but then. Something about Mary's deep-ish voice, something about this character, this series of recollections.
Part of it was that the character - and the writing - weren't sentimental or precious about their recollections.
Quietly, solidly, Mary caught me. And I wasn't the only one. I watched Miriam Toews, sitting on stage, and she seemed to be getting caught too.
But I'm being unfair only mentioning Mary. Shockingly, I enjoyed EVERY SINGLE READING.Usually, I usually like 2 of 6 readings. I admire one or two more, for the craft of the story if not the content, and I appreciate the performance of the piece, the performance of the author's personality, in maybe one more.
But to enjoy all the readings? Unprecedented. (Really. I mean it.)
And I wasn't alone, if the masses of people at the book table at the break and after it was all over (also, the attendant flushed exclamations: "Wasn't that GOOD?") was an indication.
Beyond the opportunity to spend some time in the dark with other people, I also appreciated being able to bring my love with me and hold his hand while listening to some very good writing.
I also was very happy, personally, to see two people. Gisela Roger, the administrator of Creative Retirement Manitoba's Senior Writers' Workshop, and Margaret Keller, a friend of my childhood who gets all worked up, and all worked up by reading.As I walked out into the dark and rain, I was satisfied. By the chat, by the lit, by the writing life.
One final note: Maurice Mierau's poetry and his manner MORE than stood up to the fiction on offer. He came off wry and sad and smart, all very acceptable take-aways for a reading.
I'm very glad that poetry has snuck back onto the main stage besides just (just?) the Saturday Poetry Bash.
* * *
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg-based writer and editor. Her poetry has recently appeared in PRISM International, The Fieldstone Review, and Prairie Fire. In addition to being Events Coordinator at Aqua Books, Ariel also contributes to the Winnipeg Free Press' Books Section and Prairie books NOW. A hand-made, limited-edition chapbook of Ariel's poetry, entitled The navel gaze (with Kingsville, ON's Palimpsest Press), will be launched Oct. 1 at Aqua Books.
Line of Inquiry: Saleema Nawaz
Saleema Nawaz has published fiction in Prairie Fire, Grain, The New Quarterly, and PRISM International, and she is an alumnus of the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She studied creative writing at the University of Manitoba, where her M.A. thesis received the inaugural Robert Kroetsch Award for Best Creative Thesis. Some of that work appears in her new debut collection of short fiction, Mother Superior (Freehand). Warren Cariou writes that “her observations are pitch-perfect, and her prose scintillates.”
Saleema Nawaz was born in Ottawa and lives now in Montreal where she is at work on her first novel.
* * *
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?
To be honest, I haven't done much performance as a writer. As of right now, I've only read for an audience four times, though that number will have doubled by the time I get to Winnipeg. By then, I might have more of a handle on what I can get out of it — and, with any luck, what I can bring to it! In general, though, I find it helpful to read my writing aloud: I can often be found muttering sentences in front of my computer to see if they have the right rhythm.
2) What do you want people to know about Mother Superior?
Well, without getting into the stories, I can say with great enthusiasm and complete modesty that, regardless of the contents, it's a beautiful object. Gorgeous cover, lovely fonts, guaranteed to attract notice on your bookshelves and earn the envy and esteem of your peers. Something in the fullness of its golden hue will even enhance the appearance of your other books, bringing them into an attractive harmony. (From below: See? Pretty!) Frankly speaking, it'll tie your whole bookcase together. Or maybe even the whole room — it's just that nice. But the contents, too, I think are pretty good.
3) Will this be your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I lived in Winnipeg for three years from 2002-2004, and about half of the stories in the book were written or started there. I moved to Winnipeg sight unseen, knowing almost nothing about it, and since then, I've developed rabid antennae for anyone uttering its name within a hundred yards. (More often, though, it seems like I'm the one talking about it.) It's a unique city. There's nothing like a Winnipeg winter — or spring! Or summer for that matter. And I miss my Winnipeg friends.
This will be my third time back since I moved to Montreal, and like the last trip, it will be much too short. I'm entertaining wildly unrealistic notions of what I can manage to squeeze into about a day and a half.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
I'm just finishing Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, a book most people I know read years and years ago and which is just as hilarious as I've been led to believe. I'm also reading Horse Latitudes by Paul Muldoon because I'm trying to become civilized and read more poetry. The last book I read and loved was The Darren Effect by Libby Creelman.
Right now I'm working on a novel based on the characters in "Bloodlines," one of the stories in Mother Superior, only picking up with them eighteen years later. I'm finding it exciting to work on something with such a sense of freedom as to length. (If you call 'sitting in front of the computer for hours on end' exciting ... as I do.)
5) Do you have any advice on writing good sex? (Or even bad sex?)
The Guardian book blog tackled this subject recently. And the novel excerpts on the shortlist for the Bad Sex Awards (discussed and available here) are also hilarious and instructive. The award was set up to discourage "unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels."
I'm no expert (sexpert?), but I think the old adage about writing holds true for writing sex: less is more. (Unlike sex itself, I might add.)
* * *
Saleema Nawaz will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:
September 24 - Mainstage, with Mary Swan, Joan Thomas, and Miriam Toews.
September 24 - Campus Program, University of Manitoba
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Intro: Ashley Sy
This past summer, I became an "emerging writer."
I decided that it was time to start the process of getting published. I had a few stories that upon re-reading them several months later didn't mortify me, so I started sending them out (after a few more edits, of course). Those three semesters I had spent in creative writing courses at the U of M had prepped me for what to expect—rejection.
But I was used to being published! I started writing as a wannabe music critic, using student papers as the forum where my opinion mattered. I hadn't taken any formal writing classes, so my foray into journalism was one of trial-and-error. All my stylistic mistakes are on record, but likewise, as I continued to improve, my flashes of insight were printed, too.
So how unusual it is to receive rejection letters, when my writing has been getting the OK from editors hungry from content. This is a different scene, I had to remind myself, time to pay your dues all over again.
When I was writing about music, I knew how to pull strings to get onto guest lists. In the Winnipeg literary world, I have no pull. My involvement with this blog is entirely selfish—I want to schmooze. I need professional help—as a writer, I mean.
Keep reading: to see who I meet, what I learn, and how I attempt to use this blog for career advancement.
As of today, I'm still emerging.
* * *
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 decided that it was time to start the process of getting published. I had a few stories that upon re-reading them several months later didn't mortify me, so I started sending them out (after a few more edits, of course). Those three semesters I had spent in creative writing courses at the U of M had prepped me for what to expect—rejection.
But I was used to being published! I started writing as a wannabe music critic, using student papers as the forum where my opinion mattered. I hadn't taken any formal writing classes, so my foray into journalism was one of trial-and-error. All my stylistic mistakes are on record, but likewise, as I continued to improve, my flashes of insight were printed, too.
So how unusual it is to receive rejection letters, when my writing has been getting the OK from editors hungry from content. This is a different scene, I had to remind myself, time to pay your dues all over again.
When I was writing about music, I knew how to pull strings to get onto guest lists. In the Winnipeg literary world, I have no pull. My involvement with this blog is entirely selfish—I want to schmooze. I need professional help—as a writer, I mean.
Keep reading: to see who I meet, what I learn, and how I attempt to use this blog for career advancement.
As of today, I'm still emerging.
* * *
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.
Reading: Joan Thomas
This was my second time seeing Joan Thomas read. Having added her book, Reading by Lightning, to my ever-growing pile of new books but not having had the chance to dip into it, I was re-intrigued by her reading.
I also wanted to note how very gracious and intelligent her introductions are.
It makes me hate her a bit, actually. I'm not good at thanking people in private, never mind in public, and sounding intelligent? Well...
In any event, I'm happy to share a longish chunk of today's reading...
I take full responsibility for the crappy sound and none whatsoever for the literary goodness on offer.
(It was a longer longish chunk, which I edited down...you missed camera shake and also a rather loud giggle.)
I also wanted to note how very gracious and intelligent her introductions are.
It makes me hate her a bit, actually. I'm not good at thanking people in private, never mind in public, and sounding intelligent? Well...
In any event, I'm happy to share a longish chunk of today's reading...
I take full responsibility for the crappy sound and none whatsoever for the literary goodness on offer.
(It was a longer longish chunk, which I edited down...you missed camera shake and also a rather loud giggle.)
Flickr-ing: throng!
The events alcove filled to the brim at the afternoon book chat.
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Flickr-ing: high noon 3
Janine and bev, writing and publishing types, at Joan's reading.
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Flickr-ing: high noon!
Joan Thomas greets people at her nooner event.
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Behind the Scenes #3: Perry Grosshans, GM
Or, More More More Behind the Scenes at THIN AIR Day 2
Well, we've had Lift Off and now we're in orbit!
Up early this morning to get to MTYP. The next three hours are rush, rush, rush, pray, pray, pray, as I wait for furniture, water, glasses, linens, wine and a fridge to arrive. We hang banners, and drap cloths, and pin skirts for tables, and arrange, arrange, arrange.
It's school event, very entertaining and fun, except that every now and then Ken's lapel mic sounds like a horde of bats is flying over him (really, no fooling...squealing little bats...weird but somewhat fitting).
But that's Day One - little bugs. Eventually Chris C the Tech Guy figures it out: the cordless mic is sharing the same frequency as the cordless mics in another rehearsal room. Fixed.
At the Mainstage tonight, a bunch of little blips and blurps: no quarters for change at the bar (begging people for change); No books for the draw (borrowed them from McNally); Charlene forgetting to mention the surveys and to direct people where to put the finished ones...and really, no designated place FOR them! We still managed to gather a bunch (thanks to all who filled them out), and tomorrow we'll designate a place for finished ones.
All in all, nothing to destroy the Festival, but all those little first night bumps you try to plan for...but can't.
Oh, and Tavia parking in the wrong spot and getting towed, and I had to go and rescue her and Genni Gunn from the U of Wpg and go get her car from the impound lot. Really - hard to plan for that.
Well, we've had Lift Off and now we're in orbit!
Up early this morning to get to MTYP. The next three hours are rush, rush, rush, pray, pray, pray, as I wait for furniture, water, glasses, linens, wine and a fridge to arrive. We hang banners, and drap cloths, and pin skirts for tables, and arrange, arrange, arrange.
It's school event, very entertaining and fun, except that every now and then Ken's lapel mic sounds like a horde of bats is flying over him (really, no fooling...squealing little bats...weird but somewhat fitting).But that's Day One - little bugs. Eventually Chris C the Tech Guy figures it out: the cordless mic is sharing the same frequency as the cordless mics in another rehearsal room. Fixed.
At the Mainstage tonight, a bunch of little blips and blurps: no quarters for change at the bar (begging people for change); No books for the draw (borrowed them from McNally); Charlene forgetting to mention the surveys and to direct people where to put the finished ones...and really, no designated place FOR them! We still managed to gather a bunch (thanks to all who filled them out), and tomorrow we'll designate a place for finished ones.
All in all, nothing to destroy the Festival, but all those little first night bumps you try to plan for...but can't.
Oh, and Tavia parking in the wrong spot and getting towed, and I had to go and rescue her and Genni Gunn from the U of Wpg and go get her car from the impound lot. Really - hard to plan for that.
Flickr-ing: the writer, the volunteer
Madeline coopsammy, poet, personing the hosp suite.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device
Consider yourself warned
I have made a horrible discovery. The Winnipeg International Writer’s Festival uses addictive psychotropic drugs to lure people into a life of literacy. I know this because I can feel them working their heinous magic this very second. I would have told you sooner, but I showed no signs of infection until today.
I suspect I’m feeling their effects faster than you because they got to me early (I knew I shouldn’t have taken Ariel’s lunch recommendation at that blogger meeting. The drugs were in the chicken).
I first noticed something was wrong around 8:00 pm last night. I was minding my own business, enjoying a quite a family gathering that had taken me away from the festival, when all of a sudden I started to get this funny feeling in my stomach. It was like there was a 5lb rock playing trampoline on my diaphragm. Within a few minutes I was having heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. I considered calling an ambulance, but it was too late, I was chasing the dragon.
Before I knew what was happening I was lost in a wash of memories. Soon the rock in my stomach and the flutter in my chest seemed familiar. In one brief moment I saw every party I wasn’t invited to and every school dance I couldn’t attend. I was feeling the regret of missing something that could be special. I was feeling it like I was sixteen. I was feeling it about the festival.
Luckily, I had enough of a grasp on reality left to remember that special moments at the writer’s festival only happen once in a life time. And since I had already seen one of those moments in my lifetime (my good friend George’s reading way back when), I knew that there was no way one could’ve happened tonight. I knew I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I knew it was impossible. I knew I must have been drugged. It was the only possible explanation.
At first I was frantic. Should I go to the hospital, should I try to vomit, should I call Chandra and yell at her for getting me into this mess? What should I do?
And then it came to me...warn as many people as you can.
So here it is:
They’ve got the drugs, they’ve got the writers and eventually, if you keep coming around, they’ll get you too.
Consider yourself warned.
* * *
Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.
I suspect I’m feeling their effects faster than you because they got to me early (I knew I shouldn’t have taken Ariel’s lunch recommendation at that blogger meeting. The drugs were in the chicken).
I first noticed something was wrong around 8:00 pm last night. I was minding my own business, enjoying a quite a family gathering that had taken me away from the festival, when all of a sudden I started to get this funny feeling in my stomach. It was like there was a 5lb rock playing trampoline on my diaphragm. Within a few minutes I was having heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. I considered calling an ambulance, but it was too late, I was chasing the dragon.
Before I knew what was happening I was lost in a wash of memories. Soon the rock in my stomach and the flutter in my chest seemed familiar. In one brief moment I saw every party I wasn’t invited to and every school dance I couldn’t attend. I was feeling the regret of missing something that could be special. I was feeling it like I was sixteen. I was feeling it about the festival.
Luckily, I had enough of a grasp on reality left to remember that special moments at the writer’s festival only happen once in a life time. And since I had already seen one of those moments in my lifetime (my good friend George’s reading way back when), I knew that there was no way one could’ve happened tonight. I knew I shouldn’t be feeling this way. I knew it was impossible. I knew I must have been drugged. It was the only possible explanation.
At first I was frantic. Should I go to the hospital, should I try to vomit, should I call Chandra and yell at her for getting me into this mess? What should I do?
And then it came to me...warn as many people as you can.
So here it is:
They’ve got the drugs, they’ve got the writers and eventually, if you keep coming around, they’ll get you too.
Consider yourself warned.
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Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.
Line of Inquiry: Andrew Hood
Andrew Hood studied in the creative writing program at Concordia in Montreal and won the Irving Layton Award for Undergraduate Fiction there. His first collection of stories, Pardon Our Monsters (Vehicule Press), won the 2007 Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in English. The Montreal Review of Books called it “a powerhouse of artistry” and the Globe and Mail calls it “uncannily, magnificently good.”
After graduating from Concordia, Hood filtered beer at the McAuslan Brewery, and then returned to his home town of Guelph where he now lives and writes.
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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?
The last step of editing I take - before I consider a final draft "done" - is reading the story out loud, refining the rhythm and diction that way, so I think my prose is generally conducive to performance. And performing a story is certainly more immediately gratifying and constructive, what with your being able to gauge a listening audience's reaction in a way you'll never be able to with a reading audience. When I'm alone and plugging away, I really relish the thought of eventually taking that piece out of that shut off place and into the fresh air. Over the two or so years that I was working on the stories in Pardon Our Monsters I had a lot of chances to perform the work, usually in a rough form, and I think that really helped shape them. At that time in Montreal (and probably still) poetry was fairly ubiquitous and I was often the only story writer on those bills.
The thing with poetry is that there's always something lost in either direction from page to the stage - I find that poetry which works really well on the page often falls flat when done live, and poetry that works well live just doesn't work in a book. Prose yarns, on the other hand, tend to be gangbusters in either medium. So much of reading poetry has to do with rumination over time, whereas fiction relies much more heavily on reaction in time. I find that nothing susses the proof out the pudding better that reading a story for a live audience; it either works or it doesn't, and your listeners will let you know.
2) What do you want people to know about Pardon Our Monsters?
Trying to work out a brief synopsis for the back of the book was all kinds of painful. The thing should speak for itself, hopefully. But if I had to speak on behalf of the book, then I'd probably assure people that, for the most part, the stories in there are all about love. There is plenty of violence, ugliness, confusion, rancor, and cruelty in the stories, sure, and it's easy to dwell and focus on those elements, but maybe more difficult is seeing that all of that bad business comes from want of love, or loss of love, or the stress of love. There's a line in the first story that, for me, sums up those that follow. It goes something like: "It's the hardest fucking thing in the world to love someone who hates themselves so much." The "fucking" might have been edited out, but that's the way it was originally written, and that sentiment is at "the heart" of the book. Probably.3) Will this your first time in Winnipeg? What have you heard?
I drove from BC to Montreal this summer. A friend was supposed to join me, though he bowed out on the trip a day or so before. I had planned the trip to get him to Toronto in time for a wedding in Toronto, and I just went ahead and kept that schedule anyway, so instead of taking my time, I blew through the country in five days, driving for as long as I had sun. So I passed through Winnipeg, but was then fairly delirious and pushing for Kenora.
That's the only time I've been to Winnipeg and I haven't heard much about Winnipeg except for that Weakerthans song that goes "I hate Winnipeg." And the people I have known from Manitoba have expressed the same sort of attitude. (On the other side of dour, I've also heard a great deal of good things about the tight, but crazy active art scene there.) But, like any real hate, there has to be a fundament of love. I think you can't help but hate the place you're from. I've moved back to my hometown, Guelph - which is the Corbet in the book - to do some research and some work, and I say every day that I hate it. But nowhere else feels like this place. I don't think you can have any sort of full, round love without a stain of hate somewhere in there. I suspect that we resent most those things that mean the most to us. So I'm sure Winnipeg is lovely.
4) What are you reading right now? What are you writing right now?
Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge blows my hair back; I read it at the beginning of summer and have been coming back over and over again. Just recently I've read Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms along with his Collected Stories. Those two - maybe by dint of their both being Southern - create these amazing children - children characters I mean - kids that are as smart as the Glass kids, but without the intelligence. Besides those, I've been reading a lot about the Russian Mennonites that settled in the prairies, so a lot of Rudy Wiebe and this guy Frank Epp. I just finished Lee Henderson's The Man Game. I enjoyed that.
As for writing, I've been about as distractable as a cat in an aviary this summer, so it's been all over the place--I can't seem to sit still with a story these days. I've been working away at some short stories that I've mentally collected as "Traps and Attractions", the title coming from a novella-in-progress about the vortexes in Sedona, the recreationists in Tombstone, and the notion of "sexual tourism." Alongside those stories, I've been working on some connected historical yarns that I see as, if not a sort of history of Canada, then at least one of Ontario, ranging from the Scots failed attempt to create a colony in Panama, the founding of Guelph by the novelist John Galt, the Great Toronto Fire of 1904, the Mennonite Selbstshutz during the Bolshevik Revolution, and the moon landing, with some diving horses, two headed colts, and decapitated cats thrown in there somewhere. (If it never gets around to being written, then I figure I'll at least have this description of it to remember it by.)
5) How is filtering beer like/unlike writing?
I'm glad you asked. Filtering and editing share many similar qualities, I've found. During the time I was editing the manuscript of POM and finishing up a few final stories for it I was working the 10pm to 6am shift filtering beer, so I had a lot of time to think about the correlations - it's called the graveyard shift because you're basically dead to the world. What it comes down to (or distills to, ha!) is patience. Brewing, filtering, and bottling beer on a rather strict weekly schedule is no easy feat, as you can't do squat with the brew until it decides it's ready. The beer calls the shots. Fermentation time can be predicted and controlled fairly well, but each batch will behave uniquely. Sometimes the beer will ferment quickly, and sometimes the yeast will be sluggish and take forever. When the time comes to filter the beer, the objective is to get all the shit out of there - the yeast is gotten out with a centrifuge, and the proteins with diatomaceous earth. Beer needs time to sit before it's filtered, the yeast that is suspended during fermentation needs to settle, otherwise your filtration will be hell.
Given time to sit, I find that a story sort of edits itself - all the redundant and cockamamie elements fall to the bottom, will separate themselves in time. For me, the best thing I can do from a story is walk away from it for a while, so I can come back to it with a perspective that's a little bit more on the outside, somewhat closer to a reader's perspective. And oftentimes, for me, it is those initial elements of the story, those impetuses and self-prompts, that are necessary to the writing of the story, that are the first to go in editing. The story has used up those activating ingredients, like the yeast eats up the sugar to make the alcohol, and when you've got your story just boozy enough, you need to get out the yeast.
Granted, all that's a bit of a stretch, but it made perfect, clear, sterling sense at the time.
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Andrew Hood will be appearing at THIN AIR, Winnipeg International Writers Festival:
September 23 - Mainstage, with Maurice Mierau, Mary Swan, and Saleema Nawaz.
September 24 - Campus Program, Red River College, with Rosanna Deerchild.
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