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I will probably miss this event, as it's one of our noon Masterclasses and I'll be in schools all day every day that week, but I really wish I could make it to "Why Poetry Antimatters: Metaphor, Entanglement and Particle Physics" with Jeramy Dodds and Matthew Tierney on the 30th.
Apparently they'll be presenting in lab coats. That's ... nerdily awesome.
I think I counted about 250 people at Saint Brigid's tonight to see Anne Michaels. That's the biggest fiction audience I've seen since... Michael Ondaatje?
I really enjoyed getting a chance to hear her tonight. It's always nice when someone who is a beautiful writer can also read their own work well. (I also think that the sound is getting better and better at Saint Brigid's, as the sound guys get used to the space - I was sitting way at the back and she came through clear as a bell.)
I know I've read a couple of articles that made it seem like she would be a bit of a ... prickly interview, but I think maybe the interviewers may have contributed as much to any awkwardness as she might have. At least, she certainly didn't seem as standoffish as some of the reviews have made her out to be.
And wow - hard to believe the Festival starts next Wednesday. I'm going to have to get busy deciding on the Al Purdy poem I'm going to read at the Al Purdy fundraiser on the 21st - and then it's full swing into the Festival, with the Earth Day vernissage kicking the whole thing off at 5:30 PM on Wednesday. Deep breath before the plunge, folks. I will attempt to write stuff during the Festival, but you know how it is. The Writers Festival's Discussion Board has a couple of Festival bloggers who will also be posting things, and I may sign myself up to do that as well. Assuming I'll get a couple of moments to blog as things are tearing along.
I've been creating posters, spreading event announcements, and whatnot for the Writers Festival Spring Edition this week. It entails a lot of surfing around on the web following links and finding out some neat stuff (being on Twitter for the Festival also helps.)
And I was putting together the announcement for what is certainly MY most hotly anticipated evening of the Festival... May 2nd. The day I get to meet one of my personal literary heroes, Ursula K. Le Guin. She'll be closing the Festival, right after a Writing Life session featuring Mike Carey (of Lucifer, Hellblazer, X-Men and Felix Castor fame), Jo Walton (author of Farthing, Ha'penny and Half a Crown, books set in a creepily believable fascist Britain), and Kelley Armstrong, Canada's first lady of vampires, witches, werewolves and demons.
And I find that Kelley Armstrong has been writing the Angel comic book lately. Hm, now I suppose I should check to see if Jo Walton has ever written for comics. It would make for a really interesting conversation when they do their onstage.
I've always been sort of interested in writing for comics, actually. Ever since I read the script that Neil Gaiman reprinted in the back of the trade paperback Dream Country. Doesn't it seem, somehow, that it would be easier to foist the visuals onto an artist - someone who's really good at visuals - and just focus on the story?
But then I think about issues of collaboration. Of 'canon.' Of fitting into a much larger story arc, in some cases - jeez, if Armstrong's taking over Angel, think of the years' worth of the TV series (both of them), and what's been laid out already by the characters' creator and the dozens of writers that have already used those characters and settings, not to mention what the millions of fans have, in their groupthink way, established as rules about the world. (Fantasy and SF fans, in general, are among the world's most encylopedically continuity-bound - any inconsistencies spark mini-tornadoes of debate, speculation, and attempts to find ways of tying everything in to "the canon." But, this can lead to fascinating outbursts of collaborative creativity.)
And I think that's part of what fascinates me about 'genre fiction' - about comics and series in particular - the way the writers and the readers become co-creators, and the way stories spread from genre to genre. They're as fluid as folklore.
The Guardian.co.uk's "Books" reporting has been feeling a little like the Mister Noodles of the lit world lately. At least it leads to good reponses, but the articles themselves... you read them, then realize how little content there actually was.
This is brought on by something I linked to because of the whole social media network thing, which I find leads me to more fairly pointless web content than I should really be putting up with. Take this article on "the top 10 best coffee moments in literature," for example. I don't see how any of these make the cut for really cool coffee moments, or even particularly cool literary moments. Maybe I'm just not reading well because it's onscreen and I've been staring at the screen for a few hours.
But, but! The Guardian also suggests that I must be better at reading things in depth, (screen or no screen, perhaps) because I'm a woman. Don't think I'll even get into the pop-psych vacuity of the piece... the funny thing is that it formed the basis for another article on how publishers could "masculinize" books in order to encourage men to read them. (I can point them straight toward Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and that's without even thinking too hard about it!)
Bookninja.com to the rescue - with a competition that makes me wish I'd thought of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because it would be awesome... Re-masculate an existing book to make it more appealing to the male market, and win!
I really need to stop blindly following links. But it's nice to know I can at least wind up somewhere that's clever... regardless of where I start...
I'm heading out tonight to catch Daniel Cox at the Hard Cover Book Club meeting. . . his first novel, Shuck, just got nominated for a Lambda! He's reading at GayZone, 420 Cooper, at 6:30 if you got a hankering for some retro-90's New York hustlering!
Tomorrow I'm catching the Five Years of Dusty Owl photography vernissage, kicking off a showing at Swizzles. Photos from the last five years of the Dusty Owl Reading Series will be on display and for sale, and there will be wine and cheese!
Saturday, the inimitable Warren Fulton is ringmastering the annual Pooka Pub Crawl (this one titled 'Mapping Shadows") - should result in interesting drunken poetry and random mayhem.
And Sunday is the Fifth Birthday Party And Dusty Owl Family Reunion reading at 2:00! Past features will be taking the mike and rocking the house in honor of our five years in our new home.
When I get a moment, too, I've got to do a little reviewing. I'm feeling the urge.
Had to say it - happy first day of spring!
I rang it in last night at the Fireborn reading with the other Kymeras - we also got to plug Marie Bilodeau's upcoming book launch at Maxwells on April 9th. The Kymeras will be performing, there will be poetry and stories, and copies of her book for sale (Princess of Light - the first of a trilogy which, according to her, she ill-advisedly signed a contract for before realizing that meant they were going to be expecting the second and third books, and sharpish.)
I'm not sure what it is that works so well about the four of us, but it is a great feeling to find a group of writers that have that kind of click. A couple of times last night people told me that the show had a tangible chemistry, and I think I have to agree. (It's not bragging, cause I know it wasn't my doing. It just happened, but it's so much fun to be a part of.)
I get something similar from the core group at Sean Zio's Dusty Owl Playdate - five or so committed folks that show up on Tuesdays to stretch the writing muscle, and to write whatever we write, fearlessly, whether it's good or not. We get to know each other's work, we start to point out to each other what our strengths are, and, in a way, maybe it's a little like a support group. Once it gels, you feel a lot safer with the other participants, and you're freed up to surprise yourself.
Note: being fearless with your writing doesn't necessarily mean it's great... but it does mean it gets written in the first place. Maybe it sucks, but it's writing. Pearl Pirie says something similar in her lovely interview on Ottawafocus.com today, about writing reams without obsessing over how great it is. (She also says a lot of other smart stuff. Read the interview!)
Energy, energy, energy. Must be spring.
I was pointed to the original article by a friend via Twitter (I don't twitter, really I don't, but the Writers Festival does...)
Gabriel Sherman writes, in a piece on TheBigMoney.com:
"Taken together, the latest magazine failures signaled to many publishing observers that magazines—long thought to be partly insulated from the digital forces battering the newspaper industry—are locked in their own death spiral. For evidence, they point out that since last March, more than two dozen major magazines have folded.
But a closer look at the types of magazines that have closed reveals a more nuanced and, in many respects, hopeful portrait of the magazine business. According to a list compiled by Advertising Age, titles that have shut down in the past year come from the shelter, technology, travel, luxury, and teen categories. The reason for each category's challenges are obvious, from a meltdown in the housing sector to teenagers' wholesale abandonment of print for Facebook and Twitter.
Yet the general conclusion that many extrapolate from these recent shutdowns is wrong. It's not that magazines are dying; it's that magazines that were created solely for advertising or market-share purposes are. New magazine titles often fail from a combination of bad timing, bad thinking, and a bad choice of brands to extend. Put simply, there are too many mediocre magazines (as anyone who gazes at the newsstand at Barnes and Noble would conclude).
In one way, publishers are suffering from the same tendencies as traders binging on mortgage-backed securities: When the advertising market in a particular genre begins to rain really hard, publishers respond by trying to create more buckets, instead of working to find the next bucket where passion resides. The reality is that once a market is mature enough to support a national magazine, chances are it has already peaked."
The full article is worth reading, if only for the scary (and failed) spinoff magazines he mentions: O at Home? How is that different from O Magazine? More interior decorating? My God, how much interior decorating can the market bear? (Don't answer that, I don't want to know.)
He seems to conclude that advertising-driven spinoff magazines are most likely to fail, and magazines that feel like they're actually written for their audience will keep their readership. Come to think of it, doesn't that sound suspiciously like common sense?
I know that my loyalty to, say, The New Yorker has got to do with issues of identity and community (my family all read it, there is an established image of the type of person that reads it, and I feel that the editors are speaking to me and my community.) If someone tried to spin off a New Yorker Teen, or even a New Yorker Canada, with an eye to generating new audiences, I'd peg that for an underhanded marketing ploy by Conde Nast, and I would be righteously indignant. I also wouldn't buy the magazine.
We've gotten so suspicious of advertising, I think, and so attuned to it, that we resist it in a lot of ways. Another thing that might be going on here is a turning away from static print advertising to more dynamic and interactive kinds of marketing. I'm thinking viral videos on YouTube, feeds on Twitter, and some of the intense website-based promotion that movies are getting into.
Maybe this means - gasp - that magazines will go back to having to focus on quality and content to gain and keep readers. I have no problem with that!
I did a couple of interviews with Jane Crosier. The strangest, I think, was one that I called in, from a car rocketing through the dark in Montreal, worried that I'd probably lose cell phone reception as we dove into the tunnel. Luckily, Steve Zytveld was on the other end, in the studio, and held it together when my reception burbled - not in the tunnel, but on the far side of Montreal. (It seems true - east of Montreal there be dragons.) It was fun, and a couple of days after I got home I got a card from Jane thanking me for being there - a real touch of thoughtfulness, and of being invested in this work of making and nurturing art, of cultivating the earth you're planted in. When I found out she was a gardener I was not suprised.
Jane's been holding down the mike at Literary Landscape as long as I've been aware of the show. I heard this morning that she had passed away - I'd known she was sick, but I hadn't known how serious it was.
The people that love, read, follow, think and talk about writing are fundamental to writing. Take a moment to think about a theatre with no audience, no critics, no reviews, no engaged receivers. What I love about the literary community in this town is that people talk about and care about what's going on. Shows like Jane's are a common home for all of us who inherited that kink that made us word-addicts. It goes without saying that Jane will be missed.
Here's her son Matthew's announcement of the funeral details.
Feel free to post or re-send this information to anyone who may be interested.
Crosier, Jane Ann (Rioux) died March 2 2009 age 61 after a heartbreaking battle with cancer. Beloved wife to Peter, loving mother to Matthew (Valerie) and Benjamin. Devoted grandmother to: Catherine, Alexander and Tessa. Daughter to Ray and Dora Rioux. Sister to: Raymond, Francis, Carol and Nancy. Lovingly remembered by the Crosier and Rioux families.
Born and raised in Port Hope, a graduate of York University Winters College. She worked for the OCDSB for more than 30 years at Glen Ogilvie, Gloucester High, Colonel By and Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Host of the Literary Landscape on CKCU for 12 years.
An inveterate gift giver and unrepentant doer of good deeds. Jane loved gardening, her felines, skating on the canal and preparing wonderful family events. "getting out and doing something".
The service will take place at Saturday March 7 @ 1:30pm, in the Library of Gloucester High School, 2060 Ogilvie Road, Gloucester, Ontario, K1J 7N8.
The reception will follow starting @ 3:30pm. The reception will take place in Kanata. For details call (613) 552-1832 or e-mail familycrosier@gmail.com
Sorry Mom we will be showing pictures. In lieu of flowers donations can be made to the Canadian Cancer Society.
thank you
Matthew Crosier
I got this list from John Barton and the Coalition to Keep Canadian Heritage Support for Literary and Arts Magazines. On February 17, 2009, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore announced in a speech he made in Montreal (http://www.pch.gc.ca/pc-ch/minstr/moore/disc-spch/20090217-eng.cfm) that the Canada Magazine Fund and Publishing Assistance Program will be merged to create the Canada Periodical Fund. Initiatives from this new body will come on stream in 2010.
Departing from his prepared remarks, James Moore indicated that eligiblity for funding could potentially be restricted to those magazines with an annual circulation above 5000. With notable exceptions, the circulation of virtually every Canadian literary and arts magazine, large and small, is below 5000.
That's a lot of government funding that could potentially be yanked from the magazines that need it the most (because they don't make money from advertising, the way glossy stuff like the Walrus does...) How ass-backwards is that? "Because you don't already have circulation or advertising revenue, we're not going to get you the support you need to get circulation and advertising revenue"?
And as a poet, I have to say, if it wasn't for little magazines how many of us would have a hope of seeing print?
So, here's another list of governmental addresses you can write to. I think I'm going to start keeping a file of stock paragraphs, facts, and well-crafted objections that I can cut and paste into letters every time another government initiative threatens to remove support from our cultural sector. Save me some writing time so I can focus on writing stuff to send to all those little magazines.
Minister of Canadian Heritage: Hon. James Moore
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
T: 613-992-9650
F: 613-992-9868
E: moorej@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office
2603 St. John’s St.
Port Moody, BC V3H 2B5
T: 604-937-5650
F: 604-937-5601
Liberal Heritage Critic: Pablo Rodriguez
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
T: 613-995-5080
F: 613-992-1710
E: rodripa@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office
7450, Les Galeries d’Anjou Blvd, Suite 530
Anjou, QC, H1M 3M3
T: 514-353-5044
F: 514-353-3050
NDP Heritage Critic: Charlie Angus
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
T: 613-992-2919
F: 613-995-0477
E: angus.c@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office
20 Duncan Avenue S.
PO Box 276
Kirland, ON P2N 3H7
T: 705-567-2747
F: 705-567-5232
Bloc québecois Heritage Critic: Carole Lavallée
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
T: 613-996-2416
F: 613-995-6973
E: lavalC@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office
110-5540 Chambly
Saint-Hubert, QC J3Y 3P1
T: 450-926-5979
F: 450-926-5985
Liberal Leader: Michael Ignatieff
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
T: 613-995-6364
F: 613-992-5880
E: ignatm@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office
656 The Queensway
Etobicoke, ON M8Y 1K7
T: 416-251-5510
F: 416-251-2845
NDP Leader: Jack Layton
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
T: 613-995-7224
F: 613-995-4565
E: laytoj@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office
221 Broadway Avenue, Suite 100
Toronto, ON M4M 2G3
T: 416-405-8914
F: 416-405-8918
Bloc Québecois Leader: Gilles Duceppe
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
T: 613-992-6779
F: 613-954-2121
E: duceppe.g@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office
1200 Papineau Ave, Suite 350
Montreal, QC H2K 4R5
T: 514-522-1339
F: 514-522-9899
Conservative Leader: Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON K1A 0A6
T: 613-992-4211
F: 613-941-6900
E: harpes@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office
1600-90th Avenue SW, Suite A-203
T: 403-253-7990
F: 403-253-8203
Please don't feel obliged to write to all of the above!
Pick and choose based on how much time you have. However, do send the letters to write to both the House of Commons and constituency offices. That way, the entire staff of the recipient will be aware of the letter. Encourage them to read our magazines as well.
Finally, even if you only write one letter, write your own MP.
I'm reposting something that came through the Capital Poetry Collective. . . I find this really hard to believe. Not only is Ottawa, the city that hosted the first ever Canadian Festival or Spoken Word, and which has a stellar, active, vocal, diverse, and prolific literary community, not represented in the 2009 list of participating cities for the Poetry Faceoff, but there isn't a single city from Quebec represented. Yet Nova Scotia gets two? The hey? Is Cape Breton now a distinct society and the Quebecois not? I have nothing against Nova Scotia, but I'm really confused here.
This is the notice from CPC.... who are now starting to make noise about hosting a "CPC Poetry Faceoff" in response:
"I post this message with much disappointment. CBC, the Canadian
Broadcast Corporation, has just announced the line-up of cities taking part in the 2009 Poetry Face-Off and Ottawa has been left off the list? For some reason, the NATION'S CAPITAL has mysterious been excluded from a NATIONAL poetry competiton? Hmm...
Lets look at the facts:
Ottawa has upwards of five monthly reading series, Capital Slam has sold out nearly all of its shows this month, the 2008 Ottawa Slam Team placed 3rd at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word and the CBC Poetry Face-Off sells out at the NAC 4th stage every year it happens. They definitely aren't hurting for writers. Did I mention the Capital Poetry Collective has invited CBC personalities to host the Slam Finals and countless other events? So why would they deny Ottawa in 2009? Who made this call and what were their reasons for doing so?
This is not just about the city losing a cool event, we'll survive, this is about CBC denying five Ottawa poets the opportunity to be on regional and national radio as well as receiving payment for their work. How can they claim to support Canadian arts and culture and then deny artists an chance to get paid and have their work broadcast?
No reason has been given for Ottawa's exclusion.
This type of subtle censorship is hugely disappointing from those that claim to supply Canadian content to the Canadian people. I don't have any answers, but if you'd like some answers, ask CBC for yourself."
The list of cities participating can be found here:
http://www.cbc.ca/poetryfaceoff/
