The Persnickety Reader

This coming Saturday I will be in Saskatoon to launch my poetry book, Terminal Moraine.

September 13, 2008
Off-Broadway Dinner Theatre, 7:30pm

Check out this month’s Alberta Views. I have a poem in there!

Two poems went up on blue skies, an online literary magazine, today: “Noticed” and “Pump Jacks.” These poems will appear in a special Writing the Land anthology at the end of the month, to be launched at the Writers’ Guild of Alberta AGM in Grande Prairie.

I’ve seen a .pdf preview of the cover and it looks good. Here’s a blurb:

See the land around us with new eyes, as some of Alberta’s finest poets explore the magnificent and diverse landscape of our province, and how we interact with it. From the tar sands in the north, to the towering Rockies, to the grasslands of the south – not to mention the rich farmland, prairies, boreal forests, coulees and wandering rivers in-between – this land and its resources have shaped and continue to influence the history, culture, and economy of Alberta.

Now that Wyatt is getting to be on a better sleep schedule and I’m settling in at the job, I have time to read again. I picked up two books last time I was in Edmonton and have been reading them, rather than the pile of lit. mags that have been piling up since September (though I’m looking forward to the latest Fiddlehead, which has a large feature on Australian poets). The first one of the two books I read was Frieda Hughes’ latest, Forty-Five. It is in the same vein as her father’s Birthday Letters, autobiograhical and confessional, but lacks the power and range of his stuff (though that’s somewhat an unfair comparison, because I think Ted Hughes is one of the best poets last century). Where images from his book are still seared into my memory, I can’t remember much from her book, and I only read it a few days ago. It was competent stuff, though, just not amazing. I also picked up Simon Armitage’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which I’m having difficulty with. There are random passages that are inspired, but on the whole, it is uneven in tone and diction. I’m not as fond of it as I was W. S. Merwin’s translation. i still have about 1/4 of it to go.

Got great news today in the mail. The Canada Council has awarded me a $10,000 project grant!!!!

Yeah!

Now I can work on some poems.

I’ve been working on this all weekend and surfed to the site to see if there were any updates. And there were. As of this writing, I’m about half done. Writing a commissioned piece with a specific theme is harder than I thought it would be. Which is obviously why I am procrastinating slightly right now…

Any friends or people in Edmonton reading this, come out to CBC downtown on Feb 21 at Noon.

Yesterday, I got asked to write an article for Legacy Magazine on Stephan G. Stephansson House. Stephansson was an Icelandic poet who homesteaded and farmed in Alberta in the nineteenth century. He is known today as one of the best Icelandic poet since the middle ages. He is more famous in Iceland than here, even though he never wrote a word in Iceland. I haven’t read him: he didn’t write in English and the only translation of his work is out of print now.

And today, I got a letter from Gaspereau Press saying that they were including two poems from Defining Range in an upcoming anthology of the best stuff they’ve published in the last 10 tyears, the first volume of which is set to be released in April. There are three planned and the first is poetry. I get 4 free copies and royalties. So, it’s been a good week so far.

Add to that the offer of more students for my job, bringing me to the equivalent of full-time and you can call me busy.

Yesterday, a huge box of books arrived in my mailbox: 150 copies of Defining Range, my chapbook of poems. The design is great. Thank you Gaspereau Press!

Frontenac House is publishing the book this year. I’m glad it’s not Red Deer–they were less than impressive last year. Here’s the book page on Frontenac’s site. The book looks very nice.

The book will be launched in Edmonton and Calgary. Edmonton’s event will be held on November 2 at Greenwood’s Volume II at 7pm. Info on the Calgary launch can also be found here, on the CBC site.

My poems will air on December 8 at 12:45pm on Wild Rose Country and December 10 at 7:40 on Daybreak Alberta. The broadcast schedule for other winners can be found here.

The winners were announced today on the air. The winners are posted here. So this is two years in a row I’ve won. There were some familiar names like Marty Chan and Gary Garrison, two writers I met down in Banff back in February. According to his website, Marty has won four years in a row.

In other news, an overzealous nurse recommended that we go check in at the Athabasca Hospital because she thought SHerry was going to have the baby in a few hours. It didnt happen, but we packed the car with our stuff and headed up. (In fact, we just heard the CBC announcement before going in.) So now we’re back home. But stay tuned, because the due date was Tuesday, a few days ago, and we could be driving in to St. Albert anytime.