Wednesday, September 24, 2008

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.

* * *

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.

Flickr-ing: the poets


Flickr-ing: the poets, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Colin Smith and Gerry hill chat at intermission.
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Flickr-ing: she lives!


Flickr-ing: she lives!, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Young adult writer Anita Daher, still alive after a greyhound stabbing.
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Fear Not: the fan letter

I got a late start to the festivities due to a sudden cold, so I didn't make it to my first event until last night. I went to Bloodlines at The Mainstage, where my poet crush, Maurice Mierau read from new book Fear Not.

I didn't have my volunteer schwag yet, so I swung by the hospitality suite in a vain attempt to pick up my golden ticket (i.e. name tag) in time for Bloodlines. Of course, no one was there except for the volunteer host, Adrian Michael Kelly. Adrian and I chatted for a bit over cheese and crackers, and I learned that he just moved to Winnipeg from Calgary. It turns out, the one Calgary writer I've talked to, Adrian knows as well. Or maybe just met him. Once. At some point.

Adrian convinced me to try to talk my way into Bloodlines. "I'm blogging about this event," I said at the door.

Too easy.

By the time I got in, Joan Thomas had just finished. But like I said, I was there for Mr. Mierau. I fell into literary lust when I first saw him read a few months back at the launch of Prairie Fire's Home Place 2. One of the poems he read at Bloodlines was "How to be a man," which there's actually a clip of him reading at a different event on youtube:



He cemented my adoration last night with "Friends Fail," a poem about my favourite reality TV show, America's Next Top Model. Mr. Mierau provided footnotes for the audience, but I'm actually so obsessed with this show that I would have been able to pin-point which season he had been watching. I liked that he assumed the audience was too cultured to know anything about this show, and suggested that they may even be too cultured to know who Tyra Banks is.

An index is provided in the back of Fear Not, because "poetry should be more friendly." So how many poems about ANTM are there in this book?

I'm still swooning, but unfortunately Bloodlines was Mr. Mierau's only reading at Thin Air. So until his official book launch on October 16, I'll get to work on a crafting perfect fan letter (or e-letter). Something sweet, but not aggressive—and genuine!

Mr. Mierau, if you're reading this, the current season of ANTM features a contestant that was born biologically male in the absence of Janice Dickinson's fake tits. Surely, some discourse in that...

* * *

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.

Flickr-ing: the books


Flickr-ing: the books, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Heidi grips her copies of this afternoon's books.
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Flickr-ing: head on


Flickr-ing: head on, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

Pasha malla and Rebecca rosenblum.
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Flickr-ing: lunch


Flickr-ing: lunch, originally uploaded by hotair.2008.

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.

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.

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