IanLeTourneau.ca

Just came across this movement: Oxford University Press is asking you to save the words that they are presumably thinking about dropping from the dictionary. Adopt one here! I think I’ll adopt “vacivity”: such a nice way to say empitness.

And just clicking around, I found what looks to be a fascinating book about a word that is in no danger: “the F word.”

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I’ve just added a new link to the blogroll: check out Branta.

Ok, I just saw this on Bookninja: the neverending poem. Apparently this website, The Longest Poem in the World, according to its creator, “is composed by aggregating real-time public twitter updates and selecting those that rhyme. It is constantly growing at ~4000 verses / day.” All I can say is wow, and I agree with George at Bookninja: this is creepy, too.

Here is a sample from when I clicked on the site:

my neck, my back. ahh my neck and my back! no more sleeping on the floor.
I woke up with a massive headache. Dreamed about boobs and a thrift store :X
Damn, I’m spending them and they aren’t going down. . .
@individually for how long and which town?
mayne i need a bigger and better black berry
Holy f. The sky is dark and scary.
up all nite, and i cant sleep, damn…
ITS SUNNY AND COLD WHERE I AM
Daddy (and you know who you are) I miss you already!
getting a shower soon, and then getting ready.
went to a bar and drank, and rolled balls. Danced the night away
Got the hannah montana movie and candy. Great day :]
Really tired. And not just physically but with all this drama. Boys suck
Thunderstorms are the perfect time to just get in bed and fuck
back!! =) i bought witch mag where McFly appears!!!!!! xD and one of twilight! =D
Saturdays and sundays are the longest days for me.
Education is such a wonderful and precious thing…
Portland needs a better theater, and a Burger King.
figuring out what to do tonight and what to do about school
You all warned me and I didn’t listen. I’m a fucking fool.

Genius! I guess I’m going to retire now!

and buy me this: the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. Gorgeous!

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(image borrowed from OUP website)

I mean, how many books have the words thesaurus and dictionary in their title? But seriously, I want this!

…here! If you’ve surfed here from Desk Space, welcome!

…on Desk Space: me!

Desk Space is a cool website that features Canadian writers (mostly) and their writing spaces. It’s a neat project and I’m happy to be a part of it. Thanks to Evie, who runs the place, for contacting me about it.

Carol Ann Duffy, the recently appointed poet laureate of England (and a mighty fine choice), has commissioned war poems for our times. Here is the result, published in The Guardian.

I admire this. Enjoy!

Brenda Schmidt has just commented about the three versions of my poem “The Turtle” on her blog . I never really thought anyone would notice, let alone think it would be a neat idea to compare them, so her words mean a lot.

(photo borrowed from Wikipedia)

And that makes me think of the revision process and how most famously W. B. Yeats continuously fiddled with his poems. One of my poems that has undergone even more extensive revisions than “Turtle” is “Cubist View of the Saint John River.” (And for those who don’t have a copy of Arc 54, where it first appeared, you can find it online here.) In the very first draft, even before publication in Arc, I remember really trying to get what it sounded like, as well as trying to reproduce the shapes of ice (I tried organizing the lines in vaguely triangular shapes).

Al Purdy said something along the lines once about how poems are never completed, only abandoned. But there is a cautionary note about revisions. In one of her letters home, Sylvia Plath claimed that “a poem is a rare little watch: alter the delicate juxtaposition of cogs, and it may not tick” (Letters Home 171).

…courtesy of Owen Percy at The Goose. It’s a very nice, positive review. You can access the review by clicking on the name in the table of contents.

Next weekend in Regina! Vertigo Reading Series.

April 26, 2009
Aegean Coast Coffee & Tea
1901 Hamilton St
Regina, SK S4P 2C7
7-9pm

First, here’s the most recent take on my book at Prairie Fire Review of Books. Thanks to my publisher Jackie for calling my attention to it.

And a review I did of Noble Gas, Penny Black by David O’Meara is up at poetryreviews.ca, which has a snazzy new look.

Happy reading!

I’m currently reading Grass, Sky, Song by Trevor Harriet. It’s proving to be excellent so far.

Ian