Sneak Peak
Can’t say the day wasn’t earthshaking in some sense. Anyone between Ohio and the coast, or Montreal to Toronto knows that we were a few miles from the epicenter of an earthquake. 12 miles underground it was big enough to rattle things and cause minor damage in 15 seconds or so.
And I got my hands on my new chapbook. You can’t tell in the picture, but the cover of “over my dead corpus” is shiny metallic silver. Yay for book bling!
There are 50 copies made. It is to be launched at the pre-small press fair reading at 7 pm June 25 at the Carleton Tavern and will be for sale there, and at the Angel House table at the Ottawa Small Press Fair on the afternoon of Saturday, June 26. More info here.
Quote: “Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.” ~ Doris Lessing
The Mobile Spectacle
If we want any diverting events, this weekend is ample. A Francophone Festival (Festival franco-ontarien) started last night all over downtown. Robin was there too to see Transe Express.
Where do so many people pour out of?
An aerial acrobat was at the top of their mobile hung from a crane.
The troupe from France had literally drummed up a crowd on ground level first.
They wove around and thru the crowd. At one point they went behind a cluster of 3 women who were swaying to the beat and encircled them. They started totally dancing in the middle then.
A few people chose a roof with a view.
What else?
It’s the start of Fringe Fest for theatre starting last night, with a week of Capital Poetry Collectivedoing a week of evenings at the Royal Oak Pub on Laurier,…John Akpata, Prufrock, Faye Estrella, Thomas McKinlay, Nadine Thornhill, Jessica Ruano, Rusty Priske, Danielle K. L. Gregoire and Kevin Matthews.
And the Dragonboat Festival start today with a Chinese fair on the knoll.
Or to go further afield, the Lanark Highland’s Orchid festival with free guided tours from the conservation area’s boardwalk. (16,000 blooms estimated last year.)
I could say more, but the time-relevant things trump the quieter things I’d planned to say today. Maybe tomorrow…before I toddle off a mini snapshot:
Glad Game: By happenstance you can come across the things you didn’t know you were missing.
Time in the sunshine is good, no matter what you’re doing.
Aunt’s results of liver biopsy are still not back but another aunt is getting treatment that makes her go from chronic arthritis to ooh, blink. I can move. I can move.
Brains can unfry, unlike eggs.
Only have seen seasons 1 and 3 of Little Mosque on the Prairie (which is now aired in over 80 countries) but glad it has started filming its 5th season. And creator of the show Zarqa Nawaz talks about the show and reactions.
Got 4 books in the mail this week. How wonderful is that?
3 consecutive days of spattering food on white shirts all came out in the wash, literally.
Glad for that peculiar biological alarm clock of mine. My temperature spikes when its time to wake up. So much so that this morning when I put on my glasses, they steamed up.
Our tomato plant has beads of tomatoes.
You can’t make nothing out of nothing but there’s rarely entirely nothing.
Link Dump Which Tree did you fall from is a celtic horoscope that’s been cycling the internet since at least 2001 but fun enough to mention. (Hubby and I are both weeping willows.)
I am the warrior by Japanese measure. [via Presurfer].
My pesbo may be appreciated for poetry but pesbo.com is a real lifesaver.
Unnecessary Quotation Marks are amusing “in the wild” or when compiled at that blog.
What if you let it all go? a guest post by the writer of positively present [via Poco-Coco]
Use Twitter without computers? Celery is a service where you handwrite your tweets, fax them and can have your fax machine print out your twitter feed.
Quote of the Day: “Everything someone does on a daily basis should be traceable back to an annual or quarterly plan.” ~ Richard E. Griggs
Rogue Stimulus Launches
Leigh Nash in her Canada scarf and Christine McNair at the Parliament Hill launch in her team Canada Jersey.
They were readers at the afternoon and evening launches of Rogue Stimulus, 72 poems for the prorogued parliament. I’d guess there’d be 35 to 45 people at the reading at any given time at each of the readings. Some drifted in late or for a while.
The next Rogue Stimulus launch is in Toronto on March 2 at 7:30 pm at The Monarch Tavern, 12 Clinton Street.
There are some of the advantages of seeing a reading live, not just getting the book
In person adds some textured ambiance. As Christopher Doda (pictured right in the evening reading) read his own poem about things he’s like to prorogue from his life and from Priscila Uppal’s poem Canadian Parliament: Reality TV Version. At the centennial flame (used as a wishing well fountain), Doda had just arrived at the part of her poem, proposals and supplications/ with fire in their mouths and dollars in their bellies as a dad and few kids arrived behind the reading and dad was instructing kids “throw the money at the fire”. The two words “fire” nearly overlapped and so echoed one another. The poem and family group proceeded along and as the dad urged the pitching of pennies “at the flame, got it” while the poem’s words of Money erupts like a volcano. Stadiums belch cars. Kinda neat.
Or as when Gwendolyn Guth proceeded from her poem The Canadian Politician Don’t Meet to her reading Amanda Earl‘s poem I have a cat named Stephen Harper which was named before there was a Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and now everyone hates her cat — and the sky opened up with hailstones. You don’t get such a dramatic special effect indoors.
Guy Simser reading Brenda Schmidt‘s poem to Harper, About My Boob. Like many of the poems, there’s a light-heartedness matched with skill. (And on right) Michael Dennis read his poems as well as those of George Elliott Clarke we were instructed to picture Dennis as taller and more handsome for this bit.
A few people read in the day, for the hour and half of rain, snow, wind, hail, sleet and fun and different ones came out for the night launch. Here is the flickr set of 33 pictures from the launch on Parliament Hill and at Gallery 101 on the 27th. Or for excellent pictures, two of John’s. And a few more below:
Jim Smith, H Masud Taj, Steven Artelle and Andrew Faulkner. Taj’s poem was a response to press galleries closed, so let us ask the PM about roses. He also remarked, if it takes proroguing parliament to make a collection this good, it’s worth it. Artelle’s poem was entitled “Findings: Commission of Inquiry into the Supernatural Animation and Fatal Plunge of the Central Block of Parliament into the Ottawa River”.
There were 15 readers in all, at each and a couple speakers, one from CAPP and one from the Mansfield publisher. Jamie Hawes and Mike Buckthought made it out to the afternoon one. Mike was back for the evening among others and Amanda Earl and Marcus McCann made it out as readers to the 101. The room was full that night.
The evening ended with The AB Series hosting Call Me Katie and a reading of new material by Monty Reid.
The music was transporting as ever. Some new songs. Some familiar ones. Good sweet notes.
And the Reid reading was fun as well, but given the poet, how could it not be?
A bit of the background of the anthology is here and here. Keep up to the news with Mansfield Press on twitter.
Quote: “Must a government be too strong for the liberties of its people or too
weak to maintain its own existence?” ~ Abe Lincoln
Glad Presiding: ditch and other things
Rather cool in poetry news….I’m in ditch, anthology 2 (canadian women) (innovative poets) which was launched today. People in the anthology: Marine Gadd, Nathalie Simpson, Erín Moure, Chris Turnbull, a. rawlings, Nathalie Stephens, Margaret Christakos, Amy Dennis, J. Mae Barizo, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Christine McNair, Lynn Crosbie, Liz Worth, Alice Burdick, M. Jay Smith, Louise Ball, Ingrid Ruthig, Frances Kruk, Judith Copithorne, MAC Farrnat, Nathalie Zina Wlaschots, Meredith Quartermain, Susie DeCoste, Camille Martin, Pearl Pirie, patti sinclair and Sandra Huber.
Have you seen these seasonal mushrooms? Pink Oyster. Apparently they last about 12 hours so I had to make quick work of them. They have a rich scent. Probably informed part of my dream situated in a mushroom farm.
I know people tend to follow this blog or the other but Eaten Up is still updating daily. Related to there, I’ve decided to accept an invitation to an Ottawa Food blogger meetup. What could I lose? Probably nothing. I’ll probably tell you after tomorrow.
Glad Game: Apart from the above, this sense of ampleness of life has been most persistent today. I haven’t felt harried and hurried as I have been from time immoral (from time immortal, time a morel? Skunk it. You know what I mean.)
I feel grateful in life to have been gifted by healers and sharers and those who witness what I say and do and don’t judge or begrudge, or go into a flapping tailspin, just nod and we all keep going in loose or tight formation.
I am glad to know that a few people I’m fond of are making time for reconnection and regrouping and decompressing.
Glad to get out for a walk and re-remember that sense of hot burn when really cold skin starts to warm up again. (Glad also for every heating vent en route.)
Glad to actually arrive early at the dentist. I surprised the front desk, that’s for sure. On time, I have managed. Late? Oh my, yes. Early might be a first. Plus, I managed to trip over a rather prominent chair and sprawl diagonally, causing her to laugh. She apologized, and then started again. It’s ok, I said, slapstick is my sideline.
Quote: “He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away.” ~ Raymond Hull
Fibred Reading
Showtime is tomorrow night. Fibred Optics Reading in SAW Gallery (near Rideau Centre) 7:30 Jan. 28th. Apparently this is in a bar.
Poems, literary, ideological responses and/or performances by Grant Wilkins, Pearl Pirie, Sandra Ridley, Carmel Purkis, jwcurry, Jen Books and John Lavery.
Quote: “Look to the future, because that is where you’ll spend the rest of your
life.” ~ George Burns
