Ottawa Craft Resources Online
This is a great link for local craft sales and events. Just found it!

http://www.debbiesdabbles.ca/

Ravenswing Christmas Edition
Topic: craft and zine fairs
Yesterday, while a couple of friends took most of the Dusty Owl inventory out to Montreal for ExpoZine, I packed up the Gandalf's Granddaughter stuff and headed out to Ravenswing.

Best Ravenswing yet, at least for me. I made more sales than I've done yet at Ravenswing (in fact so did Carolyn and Cathy,) and there seemed to be a lot of traffic. I think an event needs to be around for about six months before it really kicks off, and I'm thinking/hoping that Ravenswing is hitting a stride. Sure, we're off for two months because of Christmas, but it seems like Zio's idea for creating an open, accessible space for crafters and zinesters and indie publishers to get together and put their work out for sale is starting to click. There was a good mix of different crafts, four different zine tables, and a knitting workshop (free craft workshops are now going to be offered at the sales, which might pull in a few more people.) Really looking forward to seeing where this fair goes in the New Year.

By the way, if you want to get involved, or you just want to see what's going on, you can check out the Ravenswing Yahoo! group - it's an online forum for all the participants and other Ravenswing groupies/junkies/minions. And you can join if you'd like!

Oh, and at ExpoZine in Montreal . . . Dusty Owl Press sold more than $100 worth of stuff! Hooray for Montreal. What a town.

Come to Ravenswing!
Now Playing: As It Happens
Topic: craft and zine fairs
This Saturday, 1:30-5:00, is the Ravenswing Craft and Zine fair at the Jack Purcell Community Centre. Come on out! Cool crafts, an open mike, zines, vegan food, art. Christmas shopping at craft fairs is way cooler than Christmas shopping in a mall.

Sean Zio Reports from the land of the Streeteaters
Missives from expeditions beyond Ottawa - my friend Sean just went up to Montreal for the weekend to hang out with Paula Belina, who's with the Streeteaters zine/collective. Here's what he said:


I have just barely landed from the excitement of Montreal and of the Streeteaters.

The highlight of the weekend was, of course, the reading at Casa Del Popolo on Sun, Nov 20th. The night was called "Who is Sounding," named after an Anne Waldman workshop. The mc/organizer Paula Belina wanted the evening to include all that is 'sounding,' like spoken word, music, and, well ... sound. The concept sounded more dramatic coming from Paula.

The show featured nine performers and had four open mic performers. You would not believe the talent that graced the stage, One artist, Luna Allison, is someone to watch out for. She has a cd coming out in Dec. There were zinesters, spoken word artists, singers, and writers.

The best part about the show was the audience. They were actively listening - nodding and saying things like "Nice" or "Yes" when they heard something that resonated within them. While performing, I truly felt like I was in dialogue with each audience member.

And my performance --- I actually ended up on stage three times. Yes, I am a spotlight queen. First, I joined Paula Belina and Raphy (a oet/musician/artist) in a dance performance of Anne Waldman's "An Open Letter to Jesse James." It was so awesome. We wore these great masks Raphy made that day and we played out both the sound and content of the poem. It was so Montreal .. like, who the hell would take a contemporary dance performance to a spoken word poem seriously in Ottawa?!?!? lol

Following the intermission, I went on stage again with Paula Belina. I had collaborated with her on one of her poems and we performed it together. The poem was called "The Magic Poem" and that is what it was, magic. At the end of it, Paula got the audience to say, in three sections, "ma" - "gi" - "c." While they were playing out the three syllables, Paula was interspersing phrases like, "You are" -- "Life is" -- "The Day is" --- You would not believe how incredible it felt to hear and to be a part of that.

After the magic performance, I walked up to the mic. I performed "To Julian of Norwich," "Love Your Pain," "A Theory of Angels," and "Come to Gethsemane." I only messed up about two or three times and I was able to improv my way out of each one. Overall, the actual performance went very well. While performing, I feel most comfortable in my skin and Sunday night was no exception.

At the end of the night, I received some great compliments and I sold a chapbook and traded another. Later that night, Paula sincerely complimented me when she said my show was "tight" - meaning well-put together and seamless. I felt validated by her comment.

The best part of it all was that I was paid! I'm a real poet! They even contributed to my bus ticket. I had the time of my life and I made a few bucks. Life cannot get any sweeter than that, for me.

The rest of the weekend was a blur of joy, hanging out with poets and artists and going to great little spots where eccentric people eat vegan food, drink coffee + smoke.

Totally on Spins and Needles
Topic: art events
I finally came to my senses and went to Spins and Needles.

This was voted the Best Arts Event in Ottawa at the last Golden Cherry Awards, and it's deserved. Mostly, in my mind, because of the vibe, the attitude, the idea that art is an inclusive, collective thing, and - most happily for me - that you really shouldn't take it that seriously. Have some freakin fun. Tortured artists get into fewer cool conversations.

The idea is, you go to the basement of the Clock Tower Pub (Bank and Isabella right next to the Queensway), where there is a DJ, a bartender, and literally buckets of random crafty supplies lying around. You grab a table and a drink of your choice, and knit or collage or paint or sew or doodle whatever takes your fancy, while listening to house beats and chatting with a lot of other likeminded people.

I went with my friend Cathy, and luckily the "Craft of the Month" was collage on canvas! They'd provided canvasses, glue, string, buttons, magazines, paper, tissue, cloth, bottle caps, plastic grommets, you name it, and I actually got to work for the first time on a real canvas. I think it may actually have been my first ever collage. (I'm going to be finishing its edges, finding a frame, and hanging it on my living room wall soon - so it actually did turn out!)

We got in a little late and there were few tables open. So we asked a couple sitting at a big table if we could grab a couple of chairs there. They looked a little confused, but shrugged and said yes. We were at the table amassing our collage gear maybe eight minutes when I realized we'd sort of set up at the table with a first date. They hadn't had any clue that there was an event that night. Oops.

But it turned out to be wonderful - for one thing, we got to see what it would be like for a couple of 'straights' to suddenly find themselves in the middle of a freaky Ottawa event like Spins and Needles. The girl, Christina, was delighted; her date was definitely a 'dude's dude' and didn't really know what to make of the whole thing.

"I'm just so amused by this whole thing," she kept saying. "The - vibe - I don't know how to put it, but this is great. I don't think I've smiled this much... maybe ever." He mumbled something, and said, "If you guys get her hooked into this, she'll never pay any attention to me," and we said, "Well, grab some glue!" He didn't take us up on it. She kept looking around her, her face literally alight.

But he did offer a couple of interpretations on the weirdness we were both creating on our canvases - Cathy's involving a lot of strange hellish images and kitschy slogans from Jane magazines, and mine featuring a lot of postcards from Morocco, a giant black-and-white robot, and a recreation of Odysseus's ship. "That's awesome," Christina said, "That's so cool," leaning over to look at where I was gluing the words But before I send you home, you must make a journey over a strip cut from a postcard of the city of Fez. And she kept looking around. "Come on," she told her date. "No matter what, you have to admit, this is going to be memorable. We're going to remember this night for the longest time."

The rest of the room was full of people knitting, creating stunning textile collage, one table full of stencillers, and at least one painter. Brad, from World Beats & Eats, came around with chili chocolate cookies for everyone, because Spins and Needles was celebrating (sort of) having argued their fine for 'illegal postering' down to $90 from $360 (for more on that, check out their website.) They were fantastic. Cathy and I happily snipped and sliced and occasionally got advice from Christina, who turned out to also have some experience with collage herself and gave me tips on glazing my collage when I was done. She also convinced me to include the elephant in the top left corner...

Christina said, "You know, I have to be in the mood before I really create anything..." but we told her to come back for the next one anyway. She was cool. When we left, we shook hands with our inadvertent tablemates, and Christina said, "Thanks, guys, this was the best date I've ever had."

"Yeah, thanks for making this really interesting," her date said. We gave her a picture cut out of a National Geographic, of a rock covered in paleolithic handprints, as a memento.

Next Spins and Needles is, I believe, on December 15th? GO. Make Christmas presents for your friends and family.

Oh, and here's the collage I made:

The Trent U Zine Fair Rocks.
Now Playing: cold rain, Ashley MacIsaac
Topic: craft and zine fairs
I love the Trent U zine fair.

We went down there last weekend - we only knew about it because my friend Steve Curtis is living in Peterborough and found out about it, and got us a table. So we rented a car, and the Zytvelds and I drove down to Peterborough Saturday morning, packing carrots and sandwiches and coffee and all the Dusty Owl books.

I don't know what it was, but this was the best fair we've been to all season. The Trent U OPIRG group helped to organize it, from what I understand, and it was held in Satleir House, which is a beautiful old house reclaimed by the Trent Student's Union. It was small - eight or nine tables, I'd say - but the energy was fantastic, and the traffic was surprisingly high. People seemed genuinely surprised that we'd come all the way down from Ottawa (and we really wouldn't have been there if it hadn't also meant getting to visit Steve, or Kuma, as we have somehow wound up calling him; Kuma is Japanese for 'bear.')

This is also the kind of crowd that runs a Free Market (a room in the basement that just has stuff - if you want to get rid of anything, give it to them, if you need something, come see if they have it, it's all free... what a brilliant idea! I walked away with a rice steamer...) and who provide pasta salad, drinks and desserts to all the vendors at the fair. My hat off and my undying devotion to them.

I'll have to get some pictures up when Cathy gets the film developed. High points were the visual artist kitty-corner from us; the strange post-verbal zine Cathy picked up; and the fact that the fair also included a performance by The Cheshire Smile, a band from Oshawa (I think) who were absolutely stunning. Good, strange, original, totally collective-weird, with a healthy dose of Broken Social Scene going on. And a painter (who was part of the act; he had a shaker, but mostly he was just up there to be working on a painting while they played...) I gave the lead singer my address, so hopefully they'll be sending me a copy of their CD. I really, really hope they do, they were great.

We also got to poke around Peterborough a little, as Kuma took us to Speak Volumes (a great indie bookstore, and I'm not just saying that because they carry our books) and to the record store next door, which was mindboggling, and the Spill, which was the sort of coffee shop we don't have anymore in Ottawa, not since Screaming Mimi's closed anyway. After the fair, we dropped in at the Only, too - the last bastion of smoking in bars, and absolutely wall-to-two-story-wall coated in old photos, beer ads, and paintings... very cool.

And we got to crash on Kuma's couch and head groggily back to Ottawa in the morning. Fun. Chaotic. I was actually glad to see the back of the rental car by the end of the weekend. But absolutely worth it. If they run another of these, we want to be there. The fair was small, but it was clearly full of talented, intelligent people, and the energy was way better than at any of the bigger fairs we've been to this year.

Shooting Angels at the Dusty Owl
Topic: readings
It's too bad it was dark, rainy, and miserable outside yesterday - it made for a very quiet Dusty Owl. It was also not our regular night, and I think not enough word had gotten out (partly my fault: it was Thursday before I had time to send out the announcement.) But the reading was warm and fun, and I think the small crowd and grey day made for a more laid-back atmosphere.

Interesting, though, having a large collection of the Sasquatch regulars coming out to the Owl. It's a whole different vibe- you could feel that they were expecting a pre-prepared introduction from Steve, and after the reading Mary Lee asked if there were any questions. (There were; one person asked if she ever had younger people ask about the political events in the book, since they happened ten years ago, and then the second question was from a fifteen-year-old asking about the political events in the book....)

The reading itself was entertaining. Mary Lee Bragg's novel, Shooting Angels, was published last year, and I've heard sections of it before. Keep meaning to buy it and being broke when she has it for sale. She has a great ear for dialogue, coming out with snappy, funny, true-to-life conversations that sound familiar. (I also particularly admire her ability to deliberately write bad poetry - tougher than it appears.) The incidental descriptions, however, fall a little flat sometimes (I especially found myself caught out by whether a child's lips would "part slightly in a pout" - wouldn't they close in a pout? It bothered me because it made the phrase sound . . . unconsidered.)

And there was a kind of ... slyness in the way she opened with a reading from her gardening journal - which I'm not really qualified to judge, since I know a lot of people write about gardening, and I really don't get it - long botanical lists of flower names don't really grip me, but as a meditative, localizing device I'm sure it can be effective. It would just have to take a really original tack on the theme to grab me. In this case, the bit where I started really listening was the section describing the provenance of a particular rhubarb plant, which had, by various complicated paths, made its way to Ottawa from Wyoming or somewhere, and involved a really quite dramatic real-life murder story.

But there seemed to be a point to the long descriptions of hostas and violets and snapdragons in this case - she seemed to be lulling us into thinking that she was just reading a puttering-in-the-garden meditation on the seasons, like a lot of others, and then sucker-punched us with the last entry, made on September 11, 2001, where the home-bound, local, complacent journal is suddenly derailed by world events, much like the main character of the novel.

Anyway. She got laughs with the down-to-earth tone of the novel, and its oddly-amused-and-yet-somehow-appalled take on the Language Issue, and the Quebec referendum, in the mid-90's. My favorite part of the whole book, so far, is when the protagonist, newly returned from Bosnia, rounds on his new tenant for saying that the exodus of Anglophones from Montreal is "ethnic cleansing."

The open mike afterwards was short - four readers - but sweet, with a couple of poems by Kevin Matthews, who I am always happy to hear read - I'm not even tired of "The Love Song of Roy G Biv" yet, and that's his most popular poem. Jim Larwill also brought out a couple of sonorous poems. Both of those guys are doing things with sound that I think people should pay attention to. They listen for assonances and internal rhymes, repetitions of sounds, and they both pay attention to the voice, and to the performance. Jim's old guard, Kevin's new guard. I was happy to see them both on the same stage. There was also a reading by Paul Leroux, from an online blog-novel, at http://thehandsIlove/blogspot.com... I have yet to check that out. I've seen him around though - his T-shirt says "Meet The Author" and his website on it in prominent letters, and he wears it to all kinds of literary events. Which I think is pretty cool.

Yup, that and a magic trick pretty much rounded out the night...

Ever notice something you never noticed before. . .
. . . and all of a sudden it becomes a predominant theme in your life? This only adds to my delusion that I'm a character in someone's RPG and the Game Master repeats himself a lot...

I woke up this morning to an interview on CBC with the late Ninjalicious' wife (who also wrote the obit I read earlier this week.) I'm only sorry I'm just discovering this guy's work two months after his death. But I think I need to get hold of a copy of his book, Access All Areas. When I get it, I'll review it, how's that?

I'm now fascinated by this Urban Exploration thing, too. Sounds like I've unwittingly done a little in my time, but not for a while and not enough. Check out the Urban Exploration Resource forum here. And Infiltration's webpage is a great place to start... look here.

triple take on a doublethought
Now Playing: Rob Zombie
Topic: publishing
I posted the last entry on my online writers group and got this response from my friend Christopher. I really liked it, thought I'd share. I asked him if that was okay.

- triple take on a doublethought -

"Honest publishing comes in all shapes and sizes. from glossy coffee table books, and leather-bound bookshelf filler to a single sheet of paper folded in half. An ISBNumber doesn't make it good. Staples rather than stitching and glue doesn't make it bad. The thing that it is, is honest! You know what you are holding in your hand.

"A self-published zine that looks like some starving artist had something to say and wanted/needed to share it is not 'vanity press'. There is no deception. It is what it is.

"A glossy stitched hardcover book has, by virtue of the production value/cost, gone through several edits and rewrites (if a single piece) or some form of adjudication (if a collection). The annual anthology available from Poetry.com is not such a thing. It is vanity press of the worst kind, as it is not even honest enough to call itself that.

"Putting the Dusty Owl brand on something you don't like, or wouldn't have published without pressure feels dishonest. People who claim to be published, rather than self-published are trying to impress/deceive. (unless they are in fact published and paid for their contribution)...

"I'm thinking as I type so I haven't got it all worked out...but perhaps there are 4 types of publishing.
the contributor is paid/rewarded by the publisher (commercial press)
the publisher is paid/rewarded by the writer (vanity press)
the artist and publisher co-operate without payment (small press- i.e. Dusty Owl)
the artist and publisher are the same person/group (self press)

"I think you are on the right track there at the end K8. Its not how many have you printed - its how many have you sold.

"my two cents"

I'm Doublethinking!
Topic: publishing
I picked up the latest copy of Broken Pencil this evening when I got home, and started flipping through it. I got as far as the in memoriam to Jeff Chapman, AKA "Ninjalicious," the founder and editor of Infiltration, which was touching and in a way inspiring - this was obviously a guy who thought originally and clearly about things, who struck out on his own with confidence, and who managed to do a lot in only 31 years. So I'd managed to read 3 pages, including the opening letters to the editor from passionate zinesters, and I got hung up on the sentence, "Jeff [Ninjalicious] was a true independent in every sense of the word. From his free-thinking spirit to his enthusiasm for self-publishing, Jeff made the world his own..."

Here's my disconnect; I admired that, and I thought of my own friends who self-publish, my efforts at indie publishing, all the fun I had at CanZine being around people who were making their own art and promoting it. And then I hit a mental roadblock; a conversation I had with my father a year or two ago about what constitutes a 'published author,' or, in the context of a poetry competition, a 'previously unpublished poem.' My problem at the time, I think, was that I didn't know - if I put a poem up on my website, have I disqualified it from competition? But we'd scoffed, in probably very superior manner, about people who said, in a CBC interview about How To Get Published, "It's SO easy to get published. I've published a whole BUNCH of poems. You just go on line, get a website, and put them up!" I laughed at those people. I said, "that's not really published." I don't print my own work in Dusty Owl Press, because I don't feel it's quite.... right.... to print my own poems in the zine I edit. And the stories I self-publish are only created for friends. I never intend to sell or distribute them.

I admire the zinesters who are out there creating their own fold-and-staple literature and art, like Paula Belina and Streeteaters in Montreal, or Nekusis Distro here in Ottawa. I really admire the Jim Munroes, Hal Niedzvieckis and Jeff Chapmans of the world, who 'make it' from the springboard of DIY, and stick with the culture instead of going corporate. And yet I joke around with my friends that "self-publication" is our new euphemism for "masturbation." As in, "self-publication in public? Isn't that a crime?..." I get upset with authors who decide that Dusty Owl is a vanity press, use our logo to disguise the fact that they're really self-publishing.

See my problem? I'm stuck, between my academic, hardcover, English-major upbringing, in which you're not published until some governing body has seen you, sniffed you, and deemed you worthy - and the organically growing, ephemeral, beauty-in-the-moment world of indie publishing, where official adjudication = subjugation to the Powers That Be and their Agenda.

Unlike my split between spoken word and page poetry (I think it really helps you cross from one to the other if you stop trying to think of them as the same animal) this one may have to be resolved. It seems clear that some indie books and zines can make it across the divide, get published with a wide enough distribution and publicly-appealing enough design that they can be judged by the opinion of the marketplace. But that usually involves a Canada Council grant, which are tough to get. (Nice work if you can get it though!) And whether or not the book looks 'professional' also starts to jar with the prevailing aesthetic at most zine fairs, where the more scribbled, Scotch-taped and india-ink-blotched a publication is, the less it bows to the pressures of *ahem* Convention (and therefore the more virtuous it is.) Maybe my line is, if you're willing to starve on it, fine, but to live on your work the public's gotta buy it, and for the public to buy it, it helps to have someone In Authority sniff it and pronounce it good.

Maybe the trick is to have the authority come from the sheer fact that people like it, buy it, and recommend it to their friends. "Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some... farcical aquatic ceremony!"