riddlehoard

retreat

2012-02-21T10:35:00.000-08:00

I've retreated to a secluded house outside of Pense to work on writing during this week-long break from school. The house is located right beside a train track. Some of the rail cars have been parked here, their red and blue metal a contrast against the fields of prairie. Some of the trains have passed by with really interesting graffiti. I took some pictures I'll post later. I've seen more owls here than I ever have in the past. Two grey owls like one of the trees right beside the house. There's two white owls that hang out right where the cement road turns to gravel road. We went on a walk along the train tracks and found two deer following us, watching.

So far I've done some revisions on a story started back in the fall. After many drafts I think the story is close to being "finished." The structure finally matches (more or less) what I had hoped to achieve. I started work on a new story, as well. I'm still in the beginning stages. 2500 words and I deleted two pages this morning. There's some old issues of The Walrus hanging around here and I've been reading some amazing fiction. Sarah Selecky's "This Cake is for the Party"(nov. 2011) was amazing, juxtaposing past, present and future in a seamless manner I want to achieve. Grace O' Connell's "Noisemakers (June 2011) was also really inspiring. Started reading the first paragraph and then I couldn't stop. Beginnings are important.. I'm thinking of Clark Blaise's essay "To Begin, To Begin" where he writes: "The first paragraph is a microcosm of the whole but in a way that only the whole can reveal. If the story begins one sentence too soon, or a sentence too late, the balance is lost, the energy diffused” (266) and then suggests, “Art wishes to begin again. The impulse is not only to finish, it is to capture. In the stories I admire, there is a sense of a continuum disrupted, then re-established, and both the disruption and reordering are part of the beginning of a story” (267). I think what led me to delete two pages was to reconsider what the story is doing.. Both stories mentioned above maintain a consistent tone throughout, a consistant feeling. (or maybe I'm just addicted to this impulse to begin again and capture..!!)

I haven't been working on any poetry. I have received some rejections and notifications for contests that were a longshot anyway--So far a productive week! Since September I've only had about 15 rejections. Still waiting on about the same amount. It's still a dream to have a piece of fiction published. Maybe I'll do some polishing and send my best stories out. Other writers I follow make it seem so easy. I know I can't compare myself or my work. What I am doing in my stories is different from what other people are doing. What I hope to achieve is different. But still. Moments of doubt, uncertainty. If I was really awful someone would tell me, right? Even the lady at the post office seems unconvinced by my delusions of sending to certain addresses. I'm keeping the faith that hard work will pay off. Maybe it's more about the yearning anyway.

...And back to the story!

working on a poem...

2012-02-06T08:43:00.000-08:00

...that isn't a riddle. It is about apricots and opals and my grandmother. I was revising a riddle, but then this new poem came into my head, and I went with it instead. I just finished reading Mostly Happy by Pam Bustin which I thought was an incredible and heartbreaking story. I loved the structure, the objects held within a red Samsonite suitcase. Maybe it got me thinking about what objects mean to me... thinking of how apricots and opals make me think of my grandmother. Because I remember the first time I tasted an apricot was at my elementary school beside her. And I remembered a ring she gave me that isn't an opal but looks like one. Thanks to Pam Bustin for the inspiration. I've also found it interesting that in her novel, she describes a certain highschool in Regina as "North Central collegiate." In some stories I've written about the same highschool, I've called it "Central Collegiate." Place is very present in Mostly Happy too: ideas of distance, home, moving, longing, absence of home. I read Mostly Happy in three sittings I was so engrossed in the story--highly recommended if you haven't read it already.

Yesterday my mother said she thought it was a good idea I am thinking of writing poems that aren't riddles. I think she was just being supportive. But I've been paranoid everyone secretly hates my riddles and is just too afraid to tell me. I had to make my boyfriend promise to tell me if they were horrible. I feel like if you really care about your writer friends, you should tell them if the projects they are doing might be a waste of time. On the other hand, maybe a writer had to go through the many unpublishable novels and horrendous poetry manuscripts before reaching their potential. Is this good advice to give a creative writing class? "Everything you write is probably going to be horrible and it probably won't get published, but you have to go through it in order to improve so let's just write some stories and get to work." I have a feeling half the class would walk out--like you aren't selling them what they want to hear.

I'm thinking of going on a train... after getting together with a dear friend who considers them, in part, a writing retreat. There are some deals on train rides right now, I've noticed. To the very place where I have a room to stay in. And the very time when I have ten days to spare. If only I had a red samsonite suitcase (which I hear you can now buy at futureshop). Buy myself a suitcase and go on a train? What objects would I put inside? Or find to bring "home" with me?

alliterative verse

2012-02-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

I've been searching for contemporary poets writing in some form of alliterative verse. Reading various literary journals, both print and online, I've been feeling rather lonely and wondering how old fashioned my work must appear. If writing poetry is taking part in a conversation... am I just talking to myself? or talking to poets long dead or so far distanced I can't reach them? wondering if I can even answer the question "why imitate an Old English form of poetry?" Well, why write in any form? Why acknowledge any tradition?-- Part of it is that form and "content" must be in tune. But why is alliterative verse better suited to my work?

Here is Simon Armitage speaking on his translation of the Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: "to me, alliteration is the warp and weft of the poem, without which it is just so many fine threads. In some very elemental way, the story and the sense of the poem is directly located within its sound."

Of course he is speaking on the green knight specifically, his translation, and not the attempt to write original alliterative verse in modern english. But, still, this line embodies what I want to achieve: sense and sound entrenched in one another, melded together.

Or Heaney speaking on his translation of Beowulf and his interest in Old English:

"What happened was that I found in the glossary to C. L. Wrenn’s edition of the poem the Old English word meaning ‘to suffer’, the word þolian; and although at first it looked completely strange with its thorn symbol instead of the familiar th, I gradually realized that it was not strange at all, for it was the word that older and less educated people would have used in the country where I grew up. ‘They’ll just have to learn to thole,’ my aunt would say about some family who had suffered through an unforeseen bereavement. And now suddenly here was ‘thole’ in the official textual world, mediated through the apparatus of a scholarly edition, a little bleeper to remind me that my aunt’s language was not just a self-enclosed family possession but an historical heritage, one that involved the journey þolian had made north into Scotland and then across unto Ulster with the planters, and then across from the planters to the locals who had originally spoken Irish, and then farther across again when the Scots Irish emigrated to the American South in the eighteenth century."

For Heaney, the sound of old english poetry is ingrained in his family tradition, cultural tradition, and literary tradition. But I didn't grow up with Irish relatives, family members whose "words they uttered came across with a weighty distinctness, phonetic units as separate and defined as delph platters displayed on a dresser shelf." Heaney's interest in Old English is found in a sense of connection: to himself, to others that have come before him.

I too have experienced a deep familiarity in the sight and sound of the thorn. But is it anything greater than an identification or interest? Does it need to be anything deeper-- does it require a rationale? Do poets who write a series of sonnets need to justify their use of the form? (probably).

Today, searching for contemporary poets writing in alliterative verse besides Earle Birney or Seamus Heaney or Simon Armitage, I found a riddle by Carter Revard, published in 1992:

A Trinity Riddle

I spread, descending, a samite of stars.
White fingers bring me for breakfast Mont Blanc,
and I develop on earth's negative
the prints proving a presence absent.
Rainbow-dancing, my restless soft-self
teaches the sun at his summer turn to
reprise in dawn-prisms the light-praise of plants,
or stars in winter the still song-homes
with brittle jewels dropped bright from darkness,
or shifts my shape to a shimmering self-trap.
NOW Speak, if you spy it, the spECIal name
I bear in spring when I baRE TAWdry alleys
to wear till dawn night-diamonds, till dusk the jewel of time.

***

The "solution" to this riddle is found within the text: ice, snow and water. But the imagery reveals its solution as well, the "dawn prisms" and "night-diamonds" symbolizing dew of plants, or sparkling snow. The poem emphasizes the shifting nature of water and similarly the shifting nature of language: from liquid to snow to ice, that the object can be "read" in different ways. There is also the imagery of reflection: the object "develops" on the "negative" of earth; the language of photography points to the poem's attempt to capture some aspect of the world, further heightened by the literal reflection found in the capital letters spelling out "ice" "water" and "snow" in reverse. Reading this poem, I feel renewed, inspired, lightened.

I don't know precisely what draws me to the Germanic sounds of alliterative verse, or the lighter dance of Gerard Manley Hopkins' sprung rhythm.... it is something in the caesurae dividing each half-line, and the distance and space. Something in the deep sounds, and their resonance within me. Maybe I long for the simplicity of line and inventiveness of kennings. As Szumigalski phrases it: "For want of thorn for want of edh"

New

2012-01-30T07:47:00.000-08:00

-There is a new Saskatchewan and Canadian lit book review blog by Devin Pacholik. Devin's done some reviews for Global Regina, the first of which he's posted. He is one of the smartest, funniest, most passionate people--send him all your books to review!

-There is a new short story by Daniel Scott Tysdal on Joyland Magazine. This story is crazy and is going to stay in my mind all day.

1928 criticism of "futurist poetry"

2012-01-24T12:17:00.000-08:00

This is from: Modern Poetry. Ed. Guy N. Pocock. London: J.M.Dent & Sons Ltd, 1928. 157-9.

"PART IX.— A NOTE ON FUTURIST POETRY

When a new movement in Art attains a certain vogue, it is advisable to find out what its advocates are aiming at, for however far-fetched and unreason- able their tenets may seem to-day, it is possible that in years to come they may be regarded as normal. Such things have happened before. Moreover, one cannot shut one's eyes to the very significant effect of these modern ideas in the matter of painting and music.

With regard to Futurist poetry, however, the case is rather different ; for whatever Futurist poetry may be — even admitting that the theory on which it is based may be right — it can hardly be classed as Literature.

This then, in brief, is what the Futurist says: that for a century past conditions of life have been continually speeding up, till now we live in a world of noise and violence and speed, of trains and motorcars and wireless telegraphy, of aeroplanes and giant howitzers. Consequently, our feelings, thoughts and emotions have undergone a corresponding change: we live ten times as fast as our great-grandfathers did.

This speeding up of life, says the Futurist, requires a new form of expression. We must speed up our literature too, if we want to interpret modern stress.We must pour out a cataract of essential words, unhampered by stops, or qualifying adjectives, or finite verbs. We must leap from one idea to another without check, using plus and minus signs instead of full-stops and semicolons; and regulate the pace and tone by musical signs, such as rallentando or crescendo. Instead of describing sounds we must make up words that imitate them; we must use many sizes of type and different coloured inks on the same page, and shorten or lengthen words at will.

Well, they may be right; and certainly their descriptions of battles and so forth are vividly chaotic. But it is a little disconcerting to read in the explanatory notes that a certain line describes a fight between a Turkish and a Bulgarian officer on a bridge over which they both fall into the river — and then to find that the line consists of the noise of their falling, and the weights of the officers: "Fluff! Fluff! a hundred and eighty-five kilograms."

Perhaps we may explain what is meant by making up an example. Suppose the poet set himself to rewrite the Nursery Rhymes, the famous adventure of Jack and Jill might appear in this guise :

Children + clumsiness =disaster

Jack+Jill incline i in 8 puff pant summit + pail Bubble-bubble-splash incline 20° + carelessness =biff bump rattle SFLOSH Jack minus water plus crown -f abrasion of epidermis + Jill weight 4 stone 2 lb. = Misery.

This we feel, though it fulfils the laws and require- ments of Futurist poetry, can hardly be classed as Literature. All the same, no thinking man can refuse to accept their first proposition: that a great change in our emotional life necessitates a change of expression. The whole question is really this: have we essentially changed?

ADDITIONAL POEMS

The remaining pages of this book are intended for the insertion of new short poems from newspapers, periodicals or new volumes of verse. Select carefully and write neatly."

Year of the Dragon

2012-01-23T10:41:00.000-08:00

I've changed the format of the blog around a bit, adding a couple pages that you can check out. The banner image is from the petroglyphs. (Recently, I was hanging around the Royal Sk museum and noticed they have a display reproducing some of the Petroglyphs. There wasn't much of a description, but they really resembled the St. Victors petroglyphs I visited this past summer.)

And I am excited to share two upcoming events:

-First, on Thursday March 8, I am reading as part of a fundraiser for International Women's Day... This will be a really amazing event with some really incredible women participating. It is at the Artesian, which is one of the nicest venues in the city.. tickets are by donation. You can check out the details for this on my new "event" page above.

-Then, as part of the Trash Talking conference, poet Jeramy Dodds will be coming to read on Friday March 9 at the U of R Thorn Hall (Luther College). Regina writers Kelly-Anne Riess and Coby Stephensen will also be reading. We are accepting Trash Talking abstracts until January 30, so you still have time to submit a piece on pop culture, or a piece of creative writing. If you register for the full conference, you get to attend the reading for free (and get pizza)! If you don't register for the whole conference, then it is $10 at the door to attend the reading (and the pizza might be all gone). I can't wait!!

Other than this, I have been busy working on my thesis. We are starting to form my committee and seek an external examiner, which is both frightening and exciting. I was sort of hoping to drag it out a bit longer... I sent out a few poems to a few places. I found out I was rejected from the banff centre. I've been listening to a lot of Bjork. We got a new bookshelf in our apartment, and moved the books from the windowsill onto the shelf. I've been working on short stories slowly, but happily, and gaining some understanding of how my short story structure is operating.

new year

2012-01-06T09:19:00.000-08:00

I had a really great christmas vacation. My brother and his wife came to visit from out east and I spent a lot of time hanging out and sleeping in.

My writing goals for 2012:
-get something accepted for publication somewhere
-Finish poetry manuscript
-work on short stories
-get accepted into a writing retreat
-decide whether I want to apply for mfa programs this year and if so, apply to them.

I've just finished reading The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and found it really amazing. I've started reading Flaubert's Madame Bovary and I have Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler lined up next. I don't want to make any reading goals this year, but rather keep following my nose...

Rilke

2011-12-18T13:28:00.000-08:00

"With every day that passes I see more clearly how right I was to resist from the start, with all my strength, the catch-phrase beloved of my relations: that art is just something for leisure hours after coming home from the office or whatever.--I find that a frightful statement. For me, it is an article of faith that he who does not devote himself to art with all his desires and everything in him can never reach the highest goal. He is simply not an artist. And it cannot be overweening pride if I confess that I feel myself an artist, maybe weak and hesitant in power and boldness, but still conscious of a luminous aim, of all the seriousness, splendour, and truth of all artistic creation. I don't see art as a martyrdom, but as a battle which the chosen one must fight, with himself and those around him, to strive pure in heart towards the great objective, the one great day of festival, and to pass on with full hands, to those who come after, the serene reconciliation achieved. But that needs a whole man! not just a few free hours of weariness..."

-From an 1896 letter of Rilke's. He was 21.

Trash Talking 2012: Opportunity for Creative Writing Students

2011-12-09T10:47:00.001-08:00

Trash Talking is a student conference focused on popular culture and contemporary writing. This year, it will be held on March 9-10, 2012 at the U of R.

To present your work at Trash Talking, all you need to do is submit a 8-10 page paper on any topic concerning popular culture or contemporary writing by January 31, 2012. The call for papers is available here: http://www.trashtalking.ca/Registration.

For many students, Trash Talking is an opportunity to write a paper on something fun that you don't usually get to write about in an academic setting. This could include your favourite band, movie, video game, or cultural icon. You could also share visual art, or a performance.

In addition (and this is the part where students from Creative writing 485/820 might be interested), Trash Talking accepts creative writing submissions. That means if you have 8-10 pages of poetry, or short fiction, or creative memoir, or a combination of creative and critical writing, you can submit it to this conference and have the opportunity to share your work with a live audience!

If it's been a while since you've done a reading, or you just want to share your work again, I think Trash Talking is a great opportunity to do so. Reading your work at a conference gives you attentive readers, the opportunity to mingle with other writers, and a chance to practice reading in front of an audience. When I read my riddles at Literary Eclectic in September, the Q & A session was especially valuable, and made me think about some things I had not considered before.

There's also an amazing poet reading on Friday March 9, which I am going to announce soon..... you definitely do not want to miss this.... so stay posted.......!!!!

structure

2011-12-05T12:57:00.001-08:00

I am in the process of organizing my riddle manuscript. I have decided to separate it into three parts since all my riddles seem to fall into roughly three categories:

1) riddles that most closely resemble the Exeter Book riddles both in content (vegetables, tools, minerals, weather) and form (kennings, formulaic)

2) riddles that describe objects of technology (cars, appliances atm) and/or a divide from the exeter book riddles (my animal riddles describe mainly dead or imprisoned animals while the exeter book mainly describes animals in the wild)

3) riddles about artifacts, encounters, or "existential" riddles that ask questions no one can really answer (i have many riddles about death, art objects, riddles about poetry itself)

While I am organizing my manuscript, I am also writing new poems to add to the collection (sorry Medrie!) Considering that Aldhelm wrote 100 riddles, Symphosius wrote 100 riddles, and the Exeter Book very likely contained 100 riddles, I am finding it impossible not to write 100 riddles. I also want to write a few extra to replace the ones that suck.

I recently took another look at Nick Montfort's Riddle & Bind. I read this book early in the riddling process and found many of the riddles impossible to solve. Now after writing a bunch of my own riddles, I was pleased to solve many of Montfort's riddles! I was also interested in the different categories of things he riddled about. Riddle & Bind contains many riddles describing parts of the body, while I have not written any bodily riddles; he wrote a series on a book, an eraser, and other objects surrounding the scriptorium. He has a couple riddles about death, and the natural world, which is in keeping with the riddlic tradition.

Most exciting to me is that Riddle & Bind contains a riddle about execution. This is huge because I recently wrote my own execution riddle. Montfort's execution riddle is written in the form of a riddle but it also questions. The execution riddle draws similarities between the execution chamber and the theatre and in doing so, points out the absurdity of certain justifications of capital punishment: "Because we want / for things to not repeat, and think that by / creating such a non-repeating thing, / repeatedly, we'll put an end to lethal / acts on other stages or in other rooms" ("The Spectacle" 8-12)

I am inspired by Montfort's execution riddle and this direction of riddling: asking ethical or existential questions about the modern world, our rituals, and habits. In his introduction, Montfort writes that he thinks the riddle should reveal "new ways of seeing" (xiii). This is where I think the power of the riddle lies!

Book haul

2011-12-01T19:36:00.001-08:00

In the past couple days I've been reading the collected stories of Amy Hempel, which I'm finding amazing. Here's an interview with her that I'll put on the blog so I can read it later.

Then I picked up the new Arc Poetry annual, poet vs. poet issue. Featuring hilarious poem by Jeramy Dodds, article by Aislinn Hunter about competition in poetry, and some interesting looking interviews.

After reading Lorrie Moore's "People like that are the only People Here" in our class, and being emotionally destroyed by it, I decided to buy two of her books: Self-Help and Birds of America. I'm feeling in a short story mood.

Then I picked up Paul Muldoon's Moy Sand and Gravel. Mostly for Nathan.

Today was the last class of our fiction writing course. It was also the last class of my Masters degree... After I hand in my final portfolio for fiction class, all I'll have is thesis work left. I also found out I'm not able to TA next semester (or work at all), so I'm a bit nervous about going insane with all this time on my hands.

I go through periods where I read nothing for months, and then times where I ingest everything in sight. I'm hoping these next few months I will get a lot of reading done, especially with creative writing class absent from my life!

[And remember when I blogged about McGimpsey's new book Lil Bastard? He's got a poem up on The Walrus, which Starnino calls "perhaps the most moving poem" in the collection (I'm inclined to agree).]

Life in a Day

2011-11-25T10:21:00.001-08:00

A friend shared this video on facebook called Life in a Day

The concept for this documentary was that on one day, July 24, 2010, thousands of people all over the world recorded their days. The 4500 hours of footage was then collected and edited into a 90 minute movie that is at times funny, heartbreaking, and mundane.

Most of the footage is very high-quality and obviously shot by semi-professionals. What I found most interesting was the footage from developing worlds such as Afghanistan... the meaning of the film seems to derive mainly from juxtaposition. You get the petty concerns of upper-middle class life held up next to someone uncertain whether they will live through the day. But there's something beautiful in the mundane and trivial too. (as Ulysses shows us!) Many of the shots are just visually very striking. The film is also organized from midnight to morning, afternoon, and night again, so there's a bit of narrative thread and reoccurring characters.

My only qualm was that I had to turn away at a few moments of violence (mainly against animals). But I suppose if the film is being accurate about what it means to be human and to be alive, then the way we treat animals is a part of this.

how a-muse-ing!

2011-11-14T12:10:00.001-08:00

I finished watching the lord of the rings trilogy last night at 2 am... Again, I had forgotten much of the plot, and also how emotional the ending is. Very cathartic but also just a lot of weeping on my part (Hobbits!!! Gandalf!!! Elves!!!)

For all my musing on time, I am beginning to learn just how unpredictable scheduling writing time can be. A lot of the time I try to set a schedule, so that I can (hopefully) get work done, and feel like I've accomplished something at the end of the day. But you really can't force it. Sometimes sleeping until noon and watching movies is just as important to the artistic process (I think?).

An example of this: During my laziness this weekend, all of a sudden I was struck by the need to expand one of my 5-pg stories into something longer. Without even torturing myself, I knew exactly what to do: what the story would look like, the structure and plot. In a flurry, I started writing. And consequently, I felt like I had "accomplished" more than anything in the past week.

Is this the muse? Mysterious, unpredictable, yet totally commanding?

I still think it is important to set a schedule, especially for editing and longer projects that you've already outlined. But it is this type of unexpected inspiration that excites me. It is probably the reason I am addicted to writing.

Tolkien's riddles

2011-11-12T09:52:00.001-08:00

These are from Bilbo and Gollum's riddle game. Highlight to reveal answers!

1)
What has roots as nobody sees,
Is taller than trees,
Up, up it goes
And yet never grows?
Answer:A mountain.

2)
Thirty white horses on a red hill,
First they champ,
Then they stamp,
Then they stand still.
Answer: Teeth in your mouth.

3)
Voiceless it cries,
Wingless flutters,

Toothless bites,
Mouthless mutters.
Answer: The wind.

4)
An eye in a blue face
Saw an eye in a green face,
"That eye is like to this eye"
Said the first eye,
"But in low place, Not in high place."
Answer: Sun on a field of daisies.

5)
It cannot be seen, cannot be felt
Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.
It lies behind stars and under hills,
And empty holes it fills.
It comes first and follows after,
Ends life, kills laughter.
Answer: Darkness.

6)
A box without hinges, key, or lid,
Yet golden treasure inside is hid.
Answer: An egg.

7)
Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail, never clinking.

Answer: A fish.

8)
No-legs lay on one-leg,
Two-legs sat near on three-legs,
four legs got some.

Answer: Fish on a little table, man at table sitting on a stool, the cat ate the bones.

9)
This thing all things devours:
Birds, trees, beasts, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
Answer: Time.

Interesting things to note:

-Gollum's riddles reveal something about his character and the fact he's spent 500 years in a cave... Number 5 belongs to him, for instance.

-Tolkien was a master of Old English, yet did not compose these riddles using alliterative verse. Most contemporary riddles stay away from alliterative verse (which makes sense considering they're written in modern english, which is better suited to rhyme and modern metre)

-Here is a link to a collection of illustrations of Gollum. They vary so much!

lotr and time

2011-11-11T11:18:00.001-08:00

This past week I've started re-watching the Lord of the Rings movies. This time, I've noticed how much time permeates the trilogy. The story is so self reflective; Samwise wonders whether their story will ever be made into song, if they'll sing about Frodo and the Ring. Bilbo writes about his journey in There and Back Again. The fellowship encounters ancient statues, ruined cities, the frozen trolls, mythology forgotten, traces left behind, cities turned to tombs. The ents speak and move so slowly; the time of the elves is ending; Arwen must choose between immortality and love; gollum spends hundreds of years in a cave; Gandalf returns from blackness and fire; Frodo's journey is so long.

Amidst all this, the world of man is fleeting. Aragorn struggles against fate, against the path that's been laid out before him. Can he act of his own accord or is he doomed to repeat the past? As the ring calls to Sauron, the past calls to man.

One of my favourite lines in the movie is one that Gandalf speaks: "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

Seems so simple..

update

2011-11-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

I've been feeling a bit off this past week. First, I got a rejection letter which was accompanied by a bit of commentary that made me second guess the way I've been presenting my work. Then I read over my course evaluations for TA-ing last semester. Some of the comments were really positive, which made me glad that I had helped many students, but many were quite harsh (which made me vow to never write rude things on a course evaluation in my life). Then I've basically been hibernating each morning (maybe in preparation for the snowfall?), and not getting up until noon-ish. All of this has made me feel very lethargic and annoying.

But life goes on. Maybe I've been feeling weird because I'm now 100% not applying for graduate programs next year. No mfa. No phd. I am taking a year off (for the first time ever). Ideally, I'm planning on travelling.... to Europe. I want to see the Acropolis and old churches and paintings and stuff. I barely want to type this out loud it sounds so cliched. None of this is planned yet. I have some money saved and a travel-buddy, who happens to have a year off from school as well. So we're sort of stumbling through the next year, uncertain of where we will end up afterwards. I was thinking of teaching esl, but it turns out you typically need qualifications and a visa for that type of thing. (You'd think a masters in creative writing and mediocre course evaluations would be good enough??) So we'll see.

One thing I was reflecting on: Last semester's creative writing class is when I started my riddle project.
Now this semester's creative writing class is when I've started writing a short story sequence. I've written three stories about the same character, and one story from my honours project which could be altered slightly to fit into the same universe as these stories (changing a couple names and ages). I'm hoping to work on this collection over the next while.

But I'm sort of wondering about genre definitions as I go along... Every review I read about short stories usually favours "variety." If the stories in any collection are all too similar, this is usually seen as a bad thing. So where does a short story sequence, or a collection of stories dealing with the same character fit in? So far, I think the main thing I need to keep in mind is that each story must be complete or stand on its own. I think I can achieve this with Poe's idea of "a single effect," Munro's idea of the "feeling" of a story, or some coherence in the form of each individual story. (or something).

Hope everyone's weeks are going well!!

Found Poetry

2011-11-01T14:43:00.000-07:00

Recently, one of my favourite activities is reading restaurant reviews on websites such as urbanspoon. I'm not even looking for a place to eat; I just like reading the reviews. I find them so hilarious. Everyone takes themselves way too seriously, or comments on really strange things, or offers really detailed imagery and information about their lives.

Today I started thinking I could make a found poem using (stealing) excerpts from these reviews. Here is my first attempt.

Cheese Pizza: A poem found in restaurant reviews

We stopped in for a drink and a bite around 10,
when most of the surrounding eateries were shut down
for the evening. Most of the servers were wearing
yoga pants/capris (some with stains). The sauce was bland
(it should have been at least moderately spicy).
The toast was soggy and cold. So much cheese
that one could barely see the thick coating of sauce
underneath. On top of the cheese sat oil, a huge
puddle of oil due to the enormous amount of cheese.
As I age, and fight every bit of fat so I can continue to fit
my suits, this place offers temptations that I do not need.

Leaving Berlin

2011-10-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I picked up Leaving Berlin, a new collection of short stories by Britt Holmström.

I have just finished reading it now, and I think it is one of the best collections of short stories I've read in a while. Holmström's stories are filled with women who dream and fantasize, who gossip about other women (but are more similar than they may realize), who fall in and out of love, and who, in some cases, confront the narratives they've constructed in their lives. Ordinary topics such as working in a busy office and interacting with female co-workers, moving in with a roommate after a divorce and having her convict brother visit, visiting a sister in Europe, and the end of relationships (both romantic and familial) are treated in this collection.

I admire Holmström's narrators, who are funny, and sometimes sarcastic, and often poetic, especially in descriptions of European cities or prairie skies. I admire Holmström's depictions of time; in some stories, past and future are melded together. In others, the plot seems to reach out into glimpses of years later, or decades in the past. These stories held my attention in their descriptions of the drama of everyday life, which is given significance through character's yearnings or hopes.

As I continue my fiction class this semester, this is a book I will look to, particularly for examples of short story structure and narration that proceeds with ease and confidence.

The cover image is lovely as well:

Update on riddle project

2011-10-21T14:47:00.000-07:00

I am on riddle number 60. Not all of the riddles are worth keeping, but it feels good to have a strong foundation to work with. Number sixty is a riddle about charms. So I've returned to The Word Exchange, an anthology of Anglo-Saxon poems in translation to get re-acquainted with Old English charms. I am considering Northrop Frye's ideas about charms as hypnotic and rooted in music. His notions about the riddle, rooted in image and picture. How this emphasis on image might explain my recent interest in writing ekphrastic riddles. I am reading Old English poems aloud, feeling the thorn and edh on my tongue, the words spoken hundreds of years ago. For want of þ, for want of ð, as Szumigalski phrases it. The charms designed to ward off evil, to scald dwarves and thwart rivals. I am meditating on the importance of naming: of speaking the charm aloud or naming the concealed answer to the riddle. Of Rumpelstiltskin. I am reflecting on the game of the riddle I have created: the half-lines wherein sound and sense create a puzzle, a constant push and pull that I must balance. A pulling away from form or pushing towards it, as Eliot might have conceived a similar game. The tension between alliterative verse and metre and rhyme. My use of rhyme in recent riddles, to create an additional component to this puzzle. Choosing between the meaning I want to convey, and the alliterative sound I want to keep. Choosing sound over sense, the charm over the riddle. And when I find both, the joy in the line.

"caught playing doctor with myself"

2011-10-20T20:43:00.000-07:00

Class today was so much fun. I laughed a lot during, and afterwards.

I am always nervous and excited to get my stories workshopped. Today in the minutes leading up to my workshop, I felt anxiety, the familiar nervousness in my stomach like before I have to give a paper at a conference, or give a lecture in some random 100-level class full of texting students.

But once the workshop began, I just enjoyed it. I enjoyed everyone's comments and insights. Sometimes working on a story for days or weeks, you think you have everything figured out. People were noticing things in the story that I hadn't thought about at all. That's an amazing feeling because it reminds you that a story is more than just what the writer puts on the page; it belongs to the reader too. I feel grateful because I know this is one of the only times I will have a room full of careful readers giving commentary on my work.

And the free-write we did at the end of class was just hilarious. I discovered that Courtney and I are basically the same person, haha. This entry's title is a paraphrase from the paper that got passed over to us... there was more comedic gold where that came from but I don't want to plagiarize the Authors of that Work.

Tonight I feel grateful for the creative writing program at the U of R. Without even realizing it, and probably because I only have one class this semester while I work on my thesis, I've fallen into a routine of writing creatively almost every day. This is what the MA program has given me-- a greater love of words, and the time to work with them.

I would encourage the Honours students in the class to think about pursuing another 1.5- 2 years for a creative writing degree. The program involves 3 academic courses, 2 writing workshops, and working one-on-one with a professor on a full-length manuscript of fiction or poetry. In your last year, you have time and space to simply read, write, and maybe laugh a bit too!

I guess I'll join in on the discussion..

2011-10-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

...prompted by Natasha's recent blog entry.

What makes someone a writer? I feel like I'm opening a huge kettle of fish/ can of worms/ bag of cats by even asking this question.

I like what Natasha wrote: "I just think of myself who participates in the act of writing."

The moment when I feel most like a writer is when I am actually writing, not just talking about it or thinking about it, or even workshopping, but working on my computer, in the middle of a story or poem. It's the moment where you have to drop everything and just write. It's the moment of participating in the act, fully, and completely. Not before. Not after. Only during. And perhaps the reason why I keep doing it is because I'm addicted to that feeling, like Proust trying to recapture the taste of the madeleine (or whatever).

The moment when I feel least like a writer is when I'm doing the boring, arduous task of writing addresses on envelopes and choosing groups of poems that somewhat go together and hoping I don't get the cover letters mixed up (how embarrassing that would be).

What makes someone an uppercase Author versus a lowercase writer? Are these definitions totally wrapped up in literary theory? How does the distance between art object and food tie into all this? (half-joking...)

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

2011-10-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

I recently saw The Cave of Forgotten Dreams, directed and written by Werner Herzog, at the RPL.

The Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a documentary about the Chauvet Cave in Southern France where archaeologists have discovered cave drawings more than 30,000 years old. The paintings are so well-preserved because a rock slide hid the cave's entrance for tens of thousands of years until archaeologists felt a waft of air coming out of the cliff, and discovered a tiny entrance in 1994. Some scientists believed the paintings were frauds because they were so well preserved. They showed charcoal remnants on the cave walls and floor from the last time torches lit the cave, probably 25,000 years ago. I was a little disappointed I did not get the chance to see it in 3-D, as the film was originally conceived, because many of the cave drawings make use of the shape and form of the rock surface.

It was surreal seeing these beautiful and intricate drawings. The film showed bones from cave bear and other animals on the cave floor, many of them covered with thick layers of calcite, which takes thousands of years of water dripping in the exact same place to form. The cave is important to art historians because many of the drawings depict predators rather than prey, which is the norm in other cave drawings from early human periods.

This movie blew me away. It is crazy to think that our ancestors existed at the same time as neanderthals, and wooly rhinos. It is crazy to think that we existed when glaciers covered much of the earth and the sea level was so low that you could walk from France to Germany. I liked the artistic liberties that Herzog took, though it seemed many of the audience members did not. Some younger university students were sitting in front of me, and scoffed at many of the lines. I felt the film tried to communicate different ways of experiencing the world. We are so used to trying to interpret the world "rationally" or linearly. Humans 30,000 years ago had completely different conceptions of themselves, and of history. A quote from the film summarizes this notion: "We are trapped in history. They were not."

One of the scientists Herzog interviewed also talked about how these humans 30,000 years ago had a sense of permeability. They saw no difference between the physical world and the spiritual world. Humans at this time saw no distinction between categories such as trees, animals, humans, rocks. Herzog tried to convey this sense of the world by interviewing other scientists who had discovered shards of flutes. Herzog implored us to try to listen to these songs. Try to hear these silent songs, as if caught in the stone. Attempt to feel the footsteps of a boy, his footprint still caught in the mud alongside a wolf's pawprint, preserved for 30,000 years. Try to smell the scents of a cave. Try to understand this.

Herzog also interviewed a scientist who talked about an Australian Aborigine who toured some of the wall paintings in Australia. When this man came across a fading painting on the stone, he took up a brush and began adding to the painting, strengthening its lines. When the scientist asked him why he was painting, he responded (paraphrasing from memory), "I am not painting, the stone is painting through me."

So when you scoff at lines such as these, I think you are missing the point of the film, and what it is trying to convey. There is no sense of progress in the way Hegel suggests we are at "the end of history." Human beings have always been drawn to create art, to make music, to dance. We have only traces of these things, only remnants left, that we can try to put back together. We will never understand. We will never know these early humans, and as a result, we can never know ourselves.

I feel such a yearning for the humans of 30,000 years ago. What were they like? What did they think? Why did they paint these horses and cave bears? What did they love? What did they fear? What stories did they tell? What did they dream about at night?

Here is the only partial drawing of a human in the cave, a woman's legs and labia, combined with the head of a bison. Can't help but think of the minotaur.

I found this film as inspiring as "The Tree of Life," and for similar reasons. I feel inspired to write about Chauvet Cave, and will probably write riddles describing its art. The riddle in this case, is that we will never know the answer. And do we even know the right questions to ask?

Fort Qu'Appelle

2011-10-10T20:18:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I went out to Fort Qu'Appelle to do research for a short story I'm working on.
For those in my fiction class: This is the piece I'm working on for my portfolio.

The story deals, in part, with the protagonist's return to a place significant to her childhood. Because much of this story is based on real life experiences (more than anything I've ever written), it was helpful to return to this place to secure the images in my mind. But the trip did more than this; the story deals with how the protagonist's interactions with this physical place changes throughout different times in her life. So it felt incredibly surreal and self-reflective for me to actually go out and return to this place, as though I was acting out the story... I've never performed a story in this way before.

I had written a first draft before driving out to the Treaty 4 area, but once I explored the hills, and came across many of its spatial aspects that I had forgotten were there, it became necessary to alter the story. I had forgotten about a cemetery that overlooks the town, or the precise layout of the hills. The story also deals with memories, subjectivity, and first experiences of grief. It felt eerie to encounter the rusted truck atop one of the hills at the edge of a grain field, more than ten years after my first encounter with it. I feel grateful for the experience to encounter this world again... not only for the story, but for my own understanding of the past.

As I make revisions now, I feel an increasing gap between what is "real" and what I am fabricating to suit the form and art of the world I am creating. It feels like I have begun with raw memories, but I am carving these to create something spatial, and something meaningful that resonates with readers who don't share the protagonist's specific experiences.

I am looking forward to workshopping the story later in the semester. In the mean time, I would like to share some photographs from this trip.

I am also wondering: has anyone else has intentionally "acted out" a story in order to understand its characters or themes?

the hills:

the abandoned car:

plants growing through its shell:

another angle:

field:

the cemetery:

entranceway at the top of a hill

growth:

hills:

Li'l Bastard

2011-10-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

David McGimpsey has released a new book of poems, L'il Bastard (Coach House Books)

MORE AFTER THE JUMP!!!

My boyfriend and I heard about this book from Michael's Lista's review in the National Post.. A week or so later it arrived at our apartment.

It is one of the funniest books I've read in a while. I said something similar about Matrix Magazine when I read their recent hockey issue. Well it turns out, some of the stuff I was laughing at in Matrix was written by McGimpsey, too!

Most people know McGimpsey for the presence of pop culture in his poetry, but Lista comments that McGimpsey is also a formal master (and the two aren't mutually exclusive). McGimpsey writes "chubby" sonnets, or sixteen line poems. I like McGimpsey's ability to write hilarious lines and often very sad ones, and often in the same poem. I like how he writes about twitter, and facebook, and Taylor Swift, and fast food, and television shows. I like how the more of these "chubby" sonnets I read, the more I notice how relaxed his lines are and how well they flow. There's also a shift towards the end, similar to a regular sonnet, that gets back to ideas expressed in the title and initial lines but at the same time gestures forward.

Here is a great interview by McGimpsey in Maisonneuve magazine.

Here is an interview in Event Magazine.

I'd like to type up a poem to share, but it seemed like a lot of pressure to choose just one poem.. one stanza to define the collection.. I couldn't do it. I think you should just buy the book. Or at least borrow it from the library. It's seriously funny. I'll have to swing by Chapters to see if the new Matrix is in!

A Head's Up!

2011-10-05T09:29:00.000-07:00

A new issue of the Wascana Review is up online! This issue includes the proceedings from the Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs conference 2010. There's 290 pages of material, viewable in pdf.
There's a couple pieces I'm looking forward to reading. I'll probably start with the pieces by Catherine Bush, "Looking at the Kinetic as a Reading Strategy", Stephen Henighan's "The Writer in University: Chronicle as a Death Foretold", and Kilby Smith-McGregor on "Reading and Writing as Students."

It's so amazing this is being made available to the public, and all online.

U of R Homecoming

2011-10-02T11:03:00.000-07:00

Friday night I went to the U of R English department's Homecoming event at the University Club. Four creative writers and alumni spoke about how the U of R had influenced their writing. The four writers were the very acclaimed Angie Adbou, Connie Gault, Joan Givner, and Diane Warren.

Read about how amazing this night was after the jump!

It was so inspiring hearing these four women speak about their experiences at U of R. Abdou talked about how taking Milton classes from Jeanne Shami, Medieval classes from Cameron Louis, and other classes taught her how to be a good reader. Literary allusions from both Milton and the Canterbury tales have since found their way into her work! She said she never took a creative writing class at the U of R, but that her time was so important in teaching her how to be a close reader, and a lover of books, something she commits herself to today. Remembering that she loves books before anything else helps protect her from negative feelings sometimes experienced in the business world of writing, she said.

It was interesting that Joan Givner was on the panel, because one thing the other three writers shared was a sense of how much Givner had influenced them. Connie Gault talked about how Givner had been the first person to recognize her as a writer. Givner had said one day, "Well you're a writer, aren't you?" and for the first time to anyone in her whole entire life, Gault responded that she was. Gault shared many insightful and funny lines from Givner's classes at the U of R. Gault talked about the literary lunches that Givner held with two other classmates and writers, and how that friendship has lasted over the years. I really got a sense of how important a writing community can be to an emerging writer, and how frightening it is to say those first words out loud, and proclaim that you are a writer.

Diane Warren, who was not an English major, talked about how her background in visual art has influenced her writing. She talked about how she had signed up to major in art for her BFA even though she had never made a piece of art before. She commented on the gall and tenacity of her younger self in doing such a thing (I wish I could remember the specific words she used!). She also talked about the literary lunches with Joan Givner and how that group of women has remained her harshest critics and closest friends throughout the years. I found Warren's link to visual art, and how she always knew she would make art and be a writer (even if she didn't recognize the link between school and writing at the time) to be very inspiring.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to hear Joan Givner speak. She talked with such grace, and humour. She was so hilarious and at the same time very honest about her time at the University of Regina. She talked about the changes at U of R in each decade in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. She talked about the little office she had in the Adhum building, and how if she closed the door she had a quiet place where she could work for hours. But if she opened the door she had instant access to experts in fields of Philosophy and Biology and History who were passionate about their work and excited to share it. She talked about how in her early days at U of R women writers were not taught or talked about in many classes. I think she played a role in changing that, and in nurturing the other three women writers on the panel.

Seeing four amazing and successful women writers on the same panel really showed how much has changed, even in Givner's lifetime. Now we study women writers in every class we take, there are additional classes focusing on women in various literary periods, and my creative writing classes are full of women writers. I am so inspired by this panel, so amazed at these four women, and so excited to be part of the same U of R writing lineage. Sometimes I forget about how hostile and dismissive university used to be towards women. I am now thinking of my own teachers and mentors... many of them women... many who have encouraged and pushed me to be a hardworking student and writer.

Inspiration

2011-09-30T15:19:00.000-07:00

Something I have to learn is that inspiration doesn't always come when I want it to. I grow frustrated with myself when I want to establish a good work ethic by waking up in the morning and working on a story or poem. Some days it's just not happening no matter how long I stare at the computer. I have to learn to be patient, and trust myself, and have faith that I'll get a good idea the next day, or the day after that, or eventually.

Yesterday I started working on my story for the "frozen time" assignment and wasn't happy with the first two pages I'd written. I was getting all hung up on the details and logistics of what I was writing. I felt like Del in "Lives of Girls and Women" when she's constructs her daydreams of seducing or being seduced by Mr. Chamberlain.

She says: "beyond the moment of revelation my dream did not go. In fact it often did not get that far, but lingered among the preliminary details, solidifying them. The moment of being seen naked cold not be solidified, it was a stab of light. I never pictured Mr. Chamberlain's reaction, I never very clearly pictured him. His presence was essential but blurred; in the corner of my daydream he was featureless but powerful, humming away electrically like a blue fluorescent light" (145).

The story I want to write remains a blurry fluorescent light. I'm lingering on the preliminary details. And I've noticed I do this a lot. Recently, I took another look at a twenty-page story I wrote last summer. I realized that fifteen pages should be thrown away. What I really wanted to say was at the end. But I don't think it was a waste of time to throw away the bulk of the story. I needed to get through those first fifteen pages to figure out what the story was really about.

So yesterday I left the two pages I had written and took out two books from the library instead. Reading never feels like a waste. I decided I'm starting over with the "frozen time" assignment, but I now have a better idea of what I want the story to be about. And today, my inspiration returned, and I worked on two new riddles.

fair feathered friends

2011-09-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping to get out to Fort Qu'Appelle this weekend to do some research for what I hope will become my portfolio piece for fiction class.

In the mean time, here's about a million pictures of some ducks/geese/swan I took yesterday (after the jump!):

The Business of Art

2011-09-26T20:34:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been feeling totally unenthused about sending out any writing to any journals whatsoever. I know there's a few that I wanted to send to as soon as September hit. But I just can't bring myself to write up the cover letters, choose poems, write out the envelopes... only to get them back a few months later.

I think a part of it is that whenever I get a rejection, usually the pieces I had sent out are so old that I don't know why I sent them out in the first place. I've noticed that for a lot of younger writers, our writing improves at an incredibly quick pace. With each workshop, retreat, or mentorship, our understanding of form and language improves so drastically that it can be hard to keep up. On the one hand, this makes things quite exciting. But on the other hand, it means I often hate everything I've written up to last week (or so).

I imagine things will mellow out as I get older and find my "voice," but right now my ideas about what makes a good story seems to change every week. And the poems I've written even last semester are no longer what I consider my finest work. So I guess it just feels pointless to send something out when I know I'm going to dislike it in a month anyway. It can be nice to let things sit in a drawer (or your computer's harddrive) for a while...

The other reason I haven't been sending things out is simply that I've been writing way too much, thinking of ideas for future stories, and working on a 15-pg story that I'm hoping will become my portfolio piece. I want each 5-page assignment to become a strong story that I can eventually send out to journals, as well. I'm actually so pleased with the page limits for the assignments. For the first time in my life, I'm forcing myself to write SHORT stories, and I think it's helping me discover what's truly necessary. (Now let's see if I can sustain this for 15 pages!)

When I went to Sage Hill a few years ago, I had only taken a few writing workshops and was full of doubt and uncertainty. I had the best talks with my instructor who not only believed I was a writer but had faith that I would be published one day. Since then, I've written with the belief that it's not a matter of "if" I become a writer, but simply "when" it happens for me: when I become published, and so on. This was the best advice and support I had ever received.

I had another good friend tell me that she believes there's a market out there for everything she's written, it's just a matter of finding the right fit. I think this is such good advice, because we so often forget how much luck is involved in publishing. I think that if you work hard, take workshops, revise your work, and are constantly reading and learning, it will only be a matter of time (and luck) before you get published. I try to keep this in mind, and it helps to take the pressure off.

(and sometimes you can feel grateful when you receive a rejection, thinking to yourself 'what possessed me to send this garbage out in the first place?!' ...just kidding. But I hope I can maintain this sense of "when, not if" even when things get tough)

literary eclectic & riddles

2011-09-25T12:09:00.000-07:00

(Warning: this is another piece not about fiction. sorry.)

Nathan and I drove up to Saskatoon Friday night to attend Literary Eclectic, an English studies student conference that alternates between Regina and Saskatoon each year.

On the way, we stopped at Safeway to get Starbucks for the road.

Then we stopped in Lumsden at the cornfield maze and pumpkin patch for Nathan's sister's birthday.

A corn maze cat

An old wagon

It was my first time exploring the corn maze. For many years I've driven past the signs advertising it... I'm glad I finally got a chance to see it!

Next, we drove onward to Saskatoon. We stayed in the Hotel Senator, which had a great pub beneath it. The conference itself was really fun. A lot of the U of S students gave papers on works I had never heard before, so I definitely have a list of books I need to read. The other students from U of R did a fantastic job, including Sarah and Courtney from creative writing class. Their presentations sounded professional, prepared, and they answered questions with precision!

The keynote speaker, Dave Carpenter gave a presentation of a two-volume History of Saskatchewan Literature that he's been working on for some time. I'm very excited to read this work when it comes out! Instead of writing the whole thing himself, he found 23 writers and scholars to contribute essays to the project.

Then I had to give my paper... I was really nervous beforehand, more nervous than I've been in a while. I felt my stomach churning all morning. I usually dread public speaking, having struggled with stuttering for my whole life.

But it went really well! I presented a shortened combination of my Masters proposal for my riddle project, and an essay I've just written on Patrick J. Murphy's idea of the metaphorical focus of a riddle. His notion of metaphorical focus suggests that each riddle is composed of a literal solution (or tenor), a proposition (its vehicle), and a metaphorical focus that informs each riddle, and grounds the clues in extended metaphor, mythology, a theme or feeling. I talked about my riddles consciously exploring metaphor in this way.

The most exciting part for me was the questions I received, which made me consider some aspects of my riddle project that I haven't thought about before. On the car ride home, I was able to discuss these things with Nathan. I've been feeling a bit like I've hit a brick wall with my riddle project, but giving this paper and considering the questions it created has helped me to think of the riddle in a new way.

Here's some of the questions I had to answer:

-What do you want readers to get out of reading your riddles?
-What's the relationship between the sacred and profane in riddles?
-Is the gap between language and experience really a gap?

I was also asked about taking something born out of an oral folk tradition, read drunkenly in the meadhall for a popular audience, and now making it academic. My response was that I didn't know I was making it academic. I suppose by the very nature of writing an academic introduction to my work I need to put it in these categories and think about it in this way. But I've always imagined writing a book of riddles for a popular audience. I would hope if it's ever published, that it would be the type of thing anyone would want to read! But I know this is something I have struggled with, and will probably continue to struggle with. I am very conscious of the reality that whatever my academic "introduction" looks like, it is something that will be available for anyone to read. The thought is mildly frightening.

Then on the ride home Nathan and I had a long talk about some of these issues and more. I've started to reconsider the Latin riddles, which Craig Williamson writes off as "parad[ing] without play." Though I've quoted this line in everything I've written on the riddles thus far, I'm not so sure anymore. On the contrary, the Latin riddles, in giving "the answer" in their title, may be the most playful of all. In giving away the solution off the cuff, the Latin riddles are able to estrange the reader from our notions of whatever subject they explore. If I were to give the answer away, and proceed to ask "Say what I am called," or "Say what I mean," (in the fashion of the Exeter Book riddles) one could imagine I would then be leaving the solution "in question" and leading the reader to hesitate in giving their answer. That is, by defamiliarizing the reader from everyday objects and things, and then asking them to tell me what I mean (though I've already given them the answer!) I may be engaging in an existential sort of riddling that investigates what we think we know about the world versus the impossibility of ever truly knowing.

And like I've suggested the riddles explore some gap between language and experience, more and more I think all poetry explores this gap. I'm so inspired by Courtney's talk and her discussion of Don McKay and Anne Simpson and otherness, and tawny language. Perhaps now I should look at McKay's notions of otherness as they appear in Vis-A-Vis. Perhaps it is time to look at Heidegger and get to the root of what I'm really try to talk about here. I'm thinking about the strangeness of the world versus human subjectivity, perhaps this is what my riddles are really trying to explore.

In some recent riddles, I've felt the impulse to "name" the object in the title of the piece. This naming does not seem to take away from the game of riddling, but rather to add to it. By naming the object, I am self-consciously recognizing its ontological category. But by then engaging in metaphorical riddling, I estrange these categories, perhaps leaving the "solution" in question.

Here's some photographs of Saskatoon to reward your humouring of my ramblings:

Next in a series of poems reworking cliches

2011-09-22T12:19:00.000-07:00

After Jeramy Dodds and Paul Muldoon is Zachariah Well's really funny new poem called "The Parkinsonian Reflexilogist" which you'll find at the Winnipeg Review (bottom of the page)

Are there any cliches left to reconstruct? Who will write the next addition? Will it rework any old sayings and/or venture into absurdity? The only thing I know... is that Wells' new poem is really fun to read out loud.

I really enjoy the other 5 poems, as well, and admire Wells' ability to use expletives meaningfully, as in "The Savanna Hypothesis."

Maybe that should be my goal for the year: learning how to swear in poems.

"Drive"

2011-09-21T09:59:00.000-07:00

Last night I saw the movie "Drive" starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn. It was so amazing! I loved the imagery and the feel. I loved the soundtrack. I went home and bought it off itunes which I never do. I liked that it was conscious about playing with the genre, but not to the detriment of the story. What I mean is sometimes characters in movies say lines that they would never really say, but say them because they are self-reflective about the fact they're playing a role in a particularly genre of movies. In "Drive," Gosling's character had some lines that carried this weight, but I think they worked because the character was someone who had watched too many films. It was also very subtle. There were existential elements and stuff I could talk about, but what I liked the most was that the movie told a good story.

This is something I want to strive for in my fiction. I want to tell a good story. I want the form to help me tell a good story. I don't want the form to overwhelm the story. Though it did make me think... it is too bad books can't have soundtracks or come to life in the same way movies can. They do stuff in different ways... but I just really want to make a car chase happen, you know?

I've always been interesting in writing in different genres. I'd like to write a series of fantasy books, or a really good western book. I want to write sci-fi and children's literature. I want to tell good stories.

I found "Drive" very inspirational.

postcard stories

2011-09-19T13:33:00.000-07:00

I could never write SHORT short stories. The 5-page limit on my current creative writing class is helping me with brevity, but I'm still not close to a postcard story. For my friends and classmates who do have this talent, you should think about entering Geist's postcard story contest. Deadline is January 15th so you have some time!

http://www.geist.com/articles/8th-annual-literal-literary-postcard-story-contest

Fallen

2011-09-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

Last night, Nathan and I drove out to Craik's Eco-Centre to see Kelly Anne Riess' production of Fallen, with dramatical performances by Leon Willey and KJ Konkin.

In the first third of the evening, the trio gave a live reading of a long poem Kelly has written. As I understand it, they performed a version of the poem that had been edited for the stage; Some of Kelly's description was shifted into dialogue, and narrative. Some of the themes of the poem that I found really interesting were allusions to Adam and Eve's fall from Eden, gardening motifs, and the nuances of a relationship, including elements of humour, sadness, and the mundane. After the performance, an audience member asked Kelly the significance of the title, and she suggested that "fallen" represents both the Adam and Eve metaphor as well as falling in love and falling out of love.

I've never seen a poem adapted for the stage in such a manner, and I thought it was a really smart move to find actors to perform the parts of "man" and "woman." There's something really powerful about having a poem come to life in front of you! I was also thinking of the Paradise Lost reading at U of R last fall, and how hearing Eve's lines spoken aloud changed the way I had heard them in my head. I'm definitely looking forward to reading Kelly's poem on the page, but this was a nice introduction.

The other parts of the evening included a multimedia production showing how they'd interviewed residents of Craik for material for the third half, which was a partly improvised play that Kelly had written in the past 48 hours, focusing on the history of Craik's Eco-Centre. I've never been to the Eco-Centre before. It's apparently quite self sufficient... and made out of hay bales. The thing that stood out the most for me was the composting toilets---they use NO water whatsoever! And are sort of frightening.

If you're free next weekend, you can still drive out to Mortlach to check out the final performance of the Fallen tour.

MORTLACH, SK @ The Mortlach Hall Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Tickets are $8 in advance at Hollyhock Market or $10 at the door

Performance Time: 7:30pm

Craik:

Eco-Centre:

Some robots... I assume they are enviro-robots of some rendering.

This robot was reading a shakespeare sonnet...

more chicago inspiration

2011-09-17T10:38:00.000-07:00

The view from inside the bean:

grass & glass

"the poets garden"

ancient.

cameo:

goya:

twisting:

improv and writing

2011-09-14T12:22:00.000-07:00

Last year, I began taking workshops to get me back into performing improv. With that workshop ensemble, I performed the occasional show with Combat Improv in Regina. Tonight, I am performing my first show as part of Combat's regular ensemble, and I am incredibly excited!

One of the reasons I wanted to get back into improvised theatre is that I've found it really helps me with my writing. Many improv games emphasize structure, which is an important element to my fiction and poetry. Whether short form games, or longer formats, watching and performing improv helps me think about stories in a different way. Some of the best improv I've seen in Regina performed by the General Fools and other groups utilize a narrator who performs monologues that inspire shorter scenes. The monologue can illuminate scenes that occur in the past or future, which add to the development of a story as a whole.

Other improv shows I've seen utilize a fragmented structure wherein meaning is derived from the juxtaposition between scenes, character's interactions, and exploration of themes. Watching an improv show where this structure of fragmentation and juxtaposition works well can be incredibly inspiring to my writing. At the same time, I know these performers are mainly interested in telling a good story, making interesting connections, and interacting with one another as complex characters. So while it can be difficult to think of these larger structures while performing an individual scene myself, I've found that improv helps me to live in the moment, listen carefully to what others are saying to me, and respond as honestly as I can.

Mostly though, I just seem to giggle through every scene I am in... I get to work with some really funny people!

Combat improv is a monthly show at the Exchange in Regina. It starts at 9 PM and costs 5 dollars, if anyone wants to check it out.

a possible epigraph

2011-09-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

From Volume IV of Prout's In Search of Lost Time (Random House: 2003):

"They never read anything not even a newspaper. One day, however, they found a book lying on my bed. It was a volume of the admirable but obscure poems of Saint-Leger Leger. Celeste read a few pages and said to me: 'But are you quite sure that it's poetry? Mightn't it just be riddles?'"

(thanks to the careful eye of mike trussler!)

The walk from my door...

2011-09-10T11:10:00.000-07:00

A while back I moved out of my parent's house and into a new neighbourhood... Here are some pictures from my new space, which I realized that I haven't actually explored very much yet. I also just got a new camera that I'm not the best at using yet. All the pics I took looked really "blah" when I uploaded them, so I just pressed "equalize" on photoshop for each of them, which seemed to bring out their colours... (if anyone has any tips on editing, though, I would be super grateful!)

As always, you can click on each photo to make them BIGGER!

i. lawn

After digging up the lawn (for some reason), our landlord tried planting some turf... It was this pale when he placed it down, and despite frequent waterings it has retained its anemic pigment. You can see the green weeds poking through

ii. yard

A bunch of these tags appeared overnight on trash bins and garages all along the alley.

iii. wall nuts

i just think this sign is hilarious. There used to be a bigger sign with "WALL NUTS" clearly displayed. I've never been inside but I have to wonder what Wall nuts exactly are. At first I thought it was a construction store? (they are nuts for walls?)

iv. giant squirrel

this is one of the biggest squirrels I've ever seen. I thought it was a taxidermied at first, stapled to the tree, because it was frozen as I walked towards it. Finally it moved, startling me a lot...

v. fire hydrant

I was drawn to the red pigment of this fire hydrant, wondering if it's the remnants of a spilled slurpee or something more nefarious..

vi. decorated tree

this tree has been quite anthropomorphized, as you can see. There's a lot of tree stumps in this neighbourhood that many residents have decorated or found other used for. I like his creepy face!

vii. can you spot the cat?

this neighbourhood is filled with wildlife. I didn't get a picture today, but I've spotted numerous hares in my backyard and alleyway on previous walks.

viii. splash pad

I liked the simplicity of this splash pad, the reflection of the trees in the water. I'm not sure how fun it'd be to play in, though. The only child I've spotted in it simply sat on one of those blue cylinders..

ix. local klein's

this convenience store has served me well. in the winter, it was usually the only outing i made, if i left the house at all.

x. accident outside klein's

apparently, someone left their four-year-old inside their vehicle, which they left running with the keys inside. this is the aftermath. luckily no one was hurt (not even the dvd rack on the other side of the wall)

Full Disclosure

2011-09-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a creative writing class on fiction writing this semester, the last of my course requirements for my MA in Creative Writing and English (...Don't worry; I still have a thesis to write). As part of the course, each student is required to keep a writing blog throughout the semester. I briefly considered making a NEW blog for this component of my class, but then I realized: a) it would be too much work, and b) the two blogs would probably overlap anyway.

So, until mid December or so, all my readers should be aware I am now being FORCED to blog in exchange for marks. Just kidding... The only thing that will change is that I'll probably make more posts (a good thing?), link to some of my classmates blogs, and be aware of a larger audience than previously... (and I guess I can't make any posts complaining about my classmates).

Overall, I feel this is a good thing. More writing blogs will give me more to think about!

(...and apologies to all the people who found this blog searching for Jay Z lyrics. It's all nerd from here on out.)

rilke, heaney, and art

2011-09-08T18:51:00.000-07:00

In a class on Poetics last fall,we read Rilke's Duino Elegies. We also read Rilke's"Archaic Torso of Apollo" in the context of ekphrasis, ethics, thetask of the poet.

Here is Stephen Mitchell's translation:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head

with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet historso

is still suffused with brilliance frominside,

like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turnedto low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise

the curved breast could not dazzle you so,nor could

a smile run through the placid hips andthighs

to that dark center where procreationflared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced

beneath the translucent cascade of theshoulders

and would not glisten like a wild beast’sfur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,

burst like a star: for here there is noplace

that does not see you. You must change yourlife.

When first reading this poem, the image ofthe artwork staring back at the viewer, and consequently at me, the reader, waschilling. The notion that the artwork could judge the reader made issues of thepoet's responsibility feel more urgent. I thought of these lines in generalterms: you can not escape the gaze of the art object; you can not escape yourresponsibility in responding to the suffering of the past. I read the last lineas a call for the poet to write with an ethical responsibility...

I recently went with Nathan on a tripacross Ottawa, to Montreal to visit my sister-in-law, to White River Junctionin Vermont to visit my brother, and back home, passing through Chicago on theway.

On one of our days of long driving, welistened to podcasts of the Poetry foundation's "In Conversation"series. In the Seamus Heaney interview,Michael Laskey phrases Rilke's question in the context of the poet's life, acontext I hadn't thought of before.

Laskey says: "Alright so, the life ofthe poet. Rilke says, 'You must change your life.' Have you changed your life?" (... I like how casually he phrases it!)

Heaney comments, "Well once,certainly." Heaney recalls that at 33, he had published three books andthey had been well-received. But he says, "I didn't feel, however, that I had become a poet, whatever thatmeant. I had written poems. And I had put together collections [...] But Ithink to say you are a poet, you have to earn it in some sort of way. That wasmy feeling anyway. It came to a moment when I thought you should commityourself."

Heaney resigned from his university job andmoved to a cottage to work on his writing full-time and literally"earn" his income as a writer. In this sense, Heaney illuminates adifferent urgency to Rilke's words and the image of the statue of Apollo... It resonatedwith something I've been feeling for some time.. The feeling that there havebeen many distractions in my life, and wondering how many more distractions Ican let inside... wondering how much I can dedicate myself to writing, and whatI want to pursue. University was so meaningful and important for me.. but it wasalso a distraction from other ways of thinking, other ways of imagining theworld. And now, as I stand at the crossroads of whether to pursue a phd ornot... I am forced to confront Rilke's words in a way I have not so far.

"You must change your life."

***

We got into Vermont late at night aftercrossing the border outside Montreal... White River Junction, where my brotherDakota is pursuing an MFA at the Centre for Cartoon Studies is a tiny town thatstands at the junction of many highways and rivers. The town was so tiny thatwe drove past his apartment, the first on the street, not realizing the giantyellow building was the one we were looking for. Inside, he greeted us and wetalked for hours before camping on the floor of his spare bedroom. The next fewdays were spent sitting around the campfire of our campground, hiking up MountAscutney and taking in the panoramic view of the valley below, visiting theRobert Frost museum and gravesite in Shaftsbury, touring the Centre for Cartoonstudies, and lazing around the small New England town.

Throughout our time in Vermont, I was constantly surprised by how hard Dakotaworks on his comics, and his art. It’s not that I imagined he wasn’t working hard; it just helped tosee his workspace first hand, to view the cartoon studios, and his desk, theplaces where he spends working from the early evening until late at night.Driving away from Vermont, I felt inspired to work as hard at my writing as heworks on his art. I want to dedicate myself to pushing myself harder than Iever have before. I want to develop a strong work ethic, the discipline, andpassion that I saw in my brother.

After leaving Vermont, we headed to Chicago. Neither of us had been to Chicagobefore but we really wanted to take in at least one art gallery on our trip. InOttawa, the art gallery was closing just as we walked in the front doors, andin Montreal we were short on time. So, we left our belongings in the hotel andheaded down to the Art Institute of Chicago.

We were completely ignorant of the museum’s contents, which I think ending upbeing a good thing… I’ve never experienced such an emotional response to art. Partof it definitely had to do with “knowing” the paintings by Van Gogh, Picasso,Monet since childhood and then finally encountering them firsthand. It feltlike my knowledge of these paintings had always been immaterial, or abstract,and I was suddenly confronted with them in a way I had not expected.

It was aphysical confrontation. It was a feeling of the universal suddenly becoming sospecific, individual, and immediate. Everything was so huge, vibrant, andinescapable. When viewing the ancient Greek artwork, it was almost impossibleto make sense of just how old these items were… much of my undergrad was spentreading Greek philosophers. How could I make sense of the reality that I wasseeing these sculptures in front of me? I felt confronted by my position inhistory, in a way that felt inescapable. My own life is finite, but thesesculptures were imbued with a sense of the infinite.

I know that the torso that Rilke modelled his poem after is in the Louvre, butI experienced a similar confrontation viewing the Greek and Roman sculptures,and a lot of the artwork in the museum. It was something about being able to SEEthe brushstrokes on a Van Gogh painting, or SEE the detail on pottery anddrinking cups that men and women actually used more than two thousand yearsago… it was my encounter with artwork, with Monet’s bridges or fog of London,with the ancient frescoes and famous works we have all seen since childhood andhave been imprinted in our minds as abstract things—it was encountering thesethings first hand that made Rilke’s words not a suggestion, but a demand. I canno longer distract myself. I must work harder. I must change.

Robert Frost Museum

2011-09-07T17:56:00.000-07:00

While in Shaftsbury Vermont, I visited the Robert Frost museum and gravesite. The museum is located in the stone house he lived in while writing his book New Hampshire. There were three main rooms to the museum, all located on the main floor.

One room gave a general biography of his life, and showcased some of the stuff he owned (like a couch!)

The next room displayed the artwork of J. J. Lankes, who made woodcut illustrations for Frost's books.

The third room was dedicated to "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." This room offered different readings of the poem, detailed perspective on the rhythm and metre of the poem, contemporary parodies of the poem, and Frost's own (contradictory) quotes on the poem.

The coolest part, though, was walking a bit in the woods behind the Stone House. There was a path that led to a collection of trees behind the property. Frost was also an avid apple tree grower, but I didn't see any apples to pick...

Robert Frost's Grave:

I took way too many pictures on this trip! More posts soon...

edit: and you can click on the pictures to make them bigger!

Persona

2011-08-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

I've been wondering about the use of persona in literature... Lately, I've been using persona frequently in my poetry. I think of persona as when the "I" of the poem does not reflect the "I" of the real-life writer... but by broad this definition ANY poem could be perceived as persona. So maybe I mean an intentional masking or intentional use of voice or character to create a desired effect (I'm not sure).

Anyway-- sometimes it's not a huge risk to write in persona. Most times, I find it easier than writing in a voice that is closer to being really me and might fall into the category of the confessional.

But sometimes writing in persona can be a HUGE risk. The last section of Susan Musgrave's new book, Origami Dove, is called "Heroines" and depicts the lives of Vancouver women. These poems are written in the first person and Musgrave adopts their voices to tell their stories. Of the project, Musgrave writes: "The poems in the sequence Heroines were drawn from the life stories of six women, heroin-addicted prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside[...] My job was to find a voice in which to speak of these women's lives, from the inside out--the wrecked childhoods, addictions, the loss of their own children, their bad dates, and their dreams" (116-117).

I found it very difficult to read these poems, but they are incredibly powerful. Musgrave succeeds in giving insight into the lives of women that the reader may not otherwise think about. Through these poems, the reader hears these women's voices. The poems are incredibly moving but they are also risky. It is a huge risk for the poet to take the voice of someone else and attempt to tell their story. Musgrave does it with tact, honesty, and I think, empathy.

There's been some controversy over Stockett's The Help which is not only about a white woman telling the stories of black women during the 60s, but is also literally written by a white woman and thus depicts the voices of black women. There's a fine line between giving a voice to those who may not otherwise have one.... and appropriating the voices of others for your own artistic purposes. I can't comment on this book because I haven't read it (which seems to be the common thread of most articles I've read ABOUT this controversy). But I think it is important to think about this. An author of any text might wish to give voices to oppressed individuals but in the process they may further oppress those they wish to aid... this is one of the risks of writing in persona (or even third-person narration).

I'm not sure I would feel comfortable writing a story about residential schools (for instance) told from the perspective of a First Nations person who had experienced it. But is it okay for me to write about my experiences growing up in North Central Regina and attending schools where I was the only white girl in my class? Is it okay to write about some of the things I saw (poverty, addiction, racism), and some things I experienced (alienation at times, and belonging and friendship at others)? Maybe it's impossible to speak in these general terms...

To take another approach-- what about the use of persona when depicting the ugliness of the world? I wonder about the effects of writing about rape from the perspective of the rapist, or writing about racism by speaking from the perspective of a person who hates. What are the effects of taking that ugliness and putting those words into the speaker's mouth? Will the reader identify with that hatred? Will they feel uneasy? Will they misinterpret the work and simply wish to censor it? Will these words unconsciously become normalized or even perceived as logical and right?

Many balk from reading that depicts disturbing imagery. I have difficulty reading depictions of violence... but I know sometimes it is necessary. I know that by writing about violence I am not condoning it... but what if the reader now appropriates the hateful words of the personified voice in order to fuel their real-life violence? I am thinking now of those who commit acts of atrocity based on misinterpretation of literary texts (Salinger).. To be fair, the texts don't even need to depict hatred in order for certain individuals to appropriate them for their own purposes.

Maybe what I'm really concerned about are the purposes of art and the ethical responsibilities of the writer... hopefully anything I read is complicated enough to render black-and-white interpretations impossible!

So I can remember this later...

2011-08-22T12:02:00.001-07:00

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world."

-Jack Layton

how do you write a story?

2011-08-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

something i'm trying to figure out. haven't written fiction in a year. i think if i sat down and quit procrastinating i would get more done. last summer, i wrote a story almost every day, and they were all horrible. how do i get out of that? i want to try something different, something real. i want to write more out of real life experiences than imaginary things i know very little about (not that they are mutually exclusive... but for me right now i'm finding this is the case)

thinking of something my friend coby said, (paraphrasing) that ideas in poetry are concentrated, but an idea in a short story can be expanded. explored in a different way, i think, maybe, this will help me have fun with it and stop stressing.

!!!

Tennis Glory!

2011-08-14T09:07:00.000-07:00

Priscilla Uppal held a poetry contest as part of her position as poet-in-residence for the Rogers cup (a first time thing I believe). I know very little about tennis but I decided to write a tennis riddle, which won honourable mention and can be viewed here:

http://www.rogerscup.com/women/english/poetsCorner.php

Fellow Sask poet Dan Tysdal won the 1st place tennis glory! Does this mean Dan Tysdal and I have a tennis-like poetry rivalry now? Is he the Serena Williams of Poetry? I've always thought so...

How is it mid-August?

2011-08-12T12:10:00.000-07:00

While I've been making strides in my conception of the riddle and what I want to do with it, I've realized that I sort of forgot to blog about it. And now it is mid-August and I am heading on a computerless camping trip in a week or so. Oh well. Here's some thoughts:

***

I think it's funny that starting a blog has made me think about audience, readership, and in the process pushed me to return to a paper journal. I found a nice, heavy notebook at Chapters for ten bucks (it saddens me that they increasingly specialize in stationary and candy rather than actual books but I'm as much a part of the problem as anyone), and started writing my thoughts on paper rather than online. One reason I prefer a paper version is that it's more personal (obviously) and I can write things I wouldn't feel comfortable putting online. At the same time, that's the same reason I dislike paper journals and shredded the journals I kept from age 12-18 a few years back... I think my favourite blogs are the REALLY personal ones, so it's a bit of a contradiction that I don't want to open up in that way myself. It's similar in poetry: I like reading confessional poetry but not writing it myself.

***

My understanding of the riddle has undergone a huge shift. This came from reading Patrick J. Murphy's new book (just came out!) called Unriddling the Exeter Book Riddles. It's the most important book on the riddles since Williamson's 1977 Feast of Creatures and influenced me in such a powerful, immediate manner that I didn't feel comfortable even discussing it in my thesis proposal (though I discussed aspects verbally). It needed time to brew. Or sit. Or whatever ideas do when I'm not writing them.

Anyway, Murphy's main idea is that riddles aren't composed of just a question and an answer. Rather, they include a question, solution, and a metaphorical focus that may be related to the solution, but not necessarily. To give an example, Riddle 26, which describes a creature being made into a bible is guided by the metaphorical focus of Christ's crucifixion. I say "guided" because I think the focus helps provide a framework for the clues, though I'm not exactly sure in what way yet. In Riddle 26, the relation between metaphorical focus and solution is evident, but in other riddles it's not so clear. Murphy, for instance, talks about the Ten Chickens riddle, which has a metaphorical focus on Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden. No obvious connection there, but he convincingly argues the focus allows the speaker to highlight certain clues that lead to the solution.

This is a really confusing way of saying that the riddles are more complicated than just question and answer (I hate this defensive tone I'm taking but it's sort of how I've been operating lately). They contain detailed and complicated metaphors that often allude to scripture, mythology, and many varied themes. In my own riddles, I've been exploring themes of the bodily vs immaterial, desire vs spiritual ruling for some time. I now wish to experiment with creating allusive metaphorical frameworks in my riddles. Not just from scripture, or mythology, but also allusions to other writers and works. We'll see!

***

Yesterday was my final class of my directed reading in Old English. We discussed a few of the riddles and then my professor asked some questions about the progression of my thesis. He really pushed me to make the riddles my own and not simply replicate the exeter book. He suggested that since the exeter book forwards a sort of Christian view of the world, that my own poetry should offer my own view of the world. I think this ties in to my desire to want to "write a good poem." I don't want to rely on just form. I want to say something about the world, experience, my experiences in the world, language, art. Maybe this doesn't even need saying. I guess I'm just afraid when this is all done, that my poems won't actually be any good. (wow that was personal...)

***

In other news, I'm thinking of buying a beginner's dslr camera. Something entry level, not too fancy, just better than my four-year-old point and shoot. Just as a hobby! So maybe I'll start posting more photos on this blog! Talk to you guys soon! (why has this suddenly become a letter?)

Cassidy

poetry and community

2011-08-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

“But lets say that we respond to the other, not out of duty, not out of obedience, but out of a sense of solicitude, a sense of empathy—a different way from that shown by Levinas. If we accept that experiencing others is necessary to experiencing oneself, we also accept that some aspect of oneself can be shared (how to do the J-stroke while canoeing, or how to blow smoke rings), while some can’t be shared (how it felt when you broke your ankle). No one can feel my pain; no one can die for me. I can’t share either pain or death with anyone. But because I share other aspects of myself, I can share a sense of humanity. By way of solicitude, or care, or empathy, I can hope to participate in the life of someone else" (7)

-Anne Simpson, "Poetry and Community," (Prairie Fire 31.4).

onward

2011-07-26T18:21:00.000-07:00

So everyone was right and the defence wasn't nearly as terrifying as it sounded in my head. Everyone was really interested in my project, asked some thought-provoking questions, and gave suggestions on further reading. I almost wish I had a committee at my disposal anytime I reach a roadblock and need an outside perspective. (wouldn't that be useful!)

I've been working on writing a critical proposal to my work for about a month now and I feel relieved to have it behind me. Initially, the meeting was going to be postponed until early September. I was okay with this, as I would have kept working in the interim. Now that it's over, though, I feel really glad we squeezed it in this week as it seems to have had a focusing effect on me: it feels good to be able to focus my energy (more or less) on writing for the next little while...

Something I've been thinking about is casting everything aside and just focusing on writing good poems. Every time I write a poem I want it to feel like the first poem I've ever written. Today someone suggested the riddles are about defamiliarizing myself from the world (and I think they are right). I don't want to get too comfortable. There's a trap of writing in a single form that perhaps anyone who has attempted to write a collection of ghazals or sonnets or haikus might have experienced. There's a risk in writing a book of riddles, and composing all these theoretical thoughts and criticism, that I might begin to feel too comfortable. I don't want to get lazy.

So my new goal: Focus on writing every riddle like it's the first riddle I've ever written.

(and more specifically): Focus on writing every poem like it's the first poem I've ever written.
Every line. Every metaphor. Make each poem matter independent of all the others.

(and over everything else): Just try to write a good poem.

(...looks easy enough on paper... right?)

defending

2011-07-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm defending the proposal for my masters thesis, AKA the riddle project.

I'm a bit nervous mainly because I've never done one of these proposal defenses before. And since writing the proposal I've focused the project a bit more. So what I wrote on paper might not necessarily completely reflect what I feel now (But is that ever the case?)

Patrick J. Murphy released a new book called Unriddling the Exeter Book Riddles. It is probably the most important book on the riddles since Williamson's 1977 Feast of Creatures (And the blurb on the back says something to this effect).

Most critics define the riddle as composed of a question and solution, (or metaphorical vehicle and text-absent tenor in the word's of Don Paterson). Indeed, this definition works well for most riddles. But many riddles contain an additional component that Murphy defines as the metaphorical focus. It's an underlying metaphorical framework that allows the themes of the poem to operate. In some riddles, for example, there's an underlining allusion to Adam and Eve's exile from the garden of Eden. In others, there's allusions to Samson's lion. The sex riddles most obviously demonstrate the metaphorical focus, and some critics mistake the metaphorical double entendre for an additional solution. No riddle has two solutions, but the metaphorical backdrop of the poem helps to highlight the (often literal) solution.

I find Murphy's ideas important because they help to affirm the riddle as more than just a question and solution. With this idea of metaphorical focus, the literary riddle does not end when the reader guesses the solution. It offers further meaning, I think.

In my own riddles, I was aware of themes of desire, materiality, spiritual transcendence, etc. since writing the first batch of riddles. But now I want to experiment with consciously creating a metaphorical focus in my riddles. I've even tried writing my own Adam/Eve riddle (with mixed success).

***

In other news, I've been putting together batches of poems to send out to journals. I got a somewhat positive rejection from one journal so I want to send them more stuff and hopefully they will like it! I still haven't heard back from 3 or 4 journals from stuff I sent out this past spring. Now I'm wondering how long I should wait before sending to the journal that previously published my work. On the one hand, if they published me once it suggests they may be receptive to these newer poems. On the other hand, if they rejected my newer submission I would probably be more upset than if another journal rejected me. I feel kind of silly submitting to them again when I haven't been published anywhere else yet. Maybe I should wait until I get published somewhere else so it doesn't look like I've been sitting around doing nothing for a year. I want to have something to show for myself.

Yes, I've thought about this way too much and it probably doesn't matter in any case. But I don't want to jinx it!!!

Sage Hill

2011-07-23T22:17:00.000-07:00

Tonight I went down to Sage Hill to see AF Moritz read some poems and hear John Lent give the keynote address, in honour of Robert Kroetsch.

I didn't realize until tonight how much John's words have influenced my writing. Two summers ago, when I took the intro course taught by John and Susan Stenson, I first heard the words "spatial form." Hearing John talk about the transition from modernism to postmodernism in Canadian literature--seeing his passion for literature-- it felt like somebody understood me and what I wanted to say. It felt like I understood for the first time exactly what I could do with language.

I didn't realize until now just how much of the past two years since Sage Hill has been influenced by spatial form, ideas of fragmentation and juxtaposition. I presented a paper on spatial form for a graduate conference here in Regina. My honours project explored juxtaposition and fragmentation in the short story. I experimented in a long poem with ideas of simultanaety. Notions of multiplicity have influenced the way I read, and I honestly didn't realize how much until hearing John speak about them again. This whole time it's been an unconscious influence, an invisible guide helping me discover what kind of writer I want to be, what books I am drawn to read, what type of things I want to say.

I felt a sense of home as I listened to John speak tonight. I felt rejuvenated tonight, as though I'm back on track, back remembering what I love about literature. There is so much love and warmth at Sage Hill. It was great to see old friends and meet new ones. Generosity is a word that kept coming up. It's unbelievable how generous so many writers are to emerging writers. I wouldn't feel able to even think of myself as a writer without the encouragement of so many teachers and friends.

John talked a lot about Robert Kroetsch tonight. I never met him but I'm glad to read have one conversation John shared with Robert, and recorded in the book Abundance.

Here is a quote from Robert Kroetsch found on page 56 of that book:

"In the great journey stories you need a guide. You can't do it on your own. Even in The Divine Comedy, Dante has to meet Virgil. All of these stories are about meeting a guide who will take you to where you can make the discovery. You can't do it on your own. We are guided by somebody and we in turn become guides."

St. Victor's Petroglyphs

2011-07-20T10:48:00.000-07:00

I visited St. Victor's Petroglyphs earlier this week, and got thinking about a lecture Don McKay gave at the SWG conference last fall. He'd talked about deep time, or geological time, which is inconceivable to fleeting human minds except through the use of metaphor. McKay used the metaphor of outstretched arms, where shaving the very edge of a human hand's fingernail represents all human existence. The petroglyphs were carved between c. 500-1750 but in deep time, we seem to exist almost at the same time as whoever created these ancient stone carvings. This juxtaposition seemed heightened by the prevalence of graffiti surrounding the petroglyphs. While no one had defaced the petroglyphs themselves, hundreds of visitors had left their mark in the stone surrounding the area, as if responding to the images of deer hooves and bear claws with the initials of names.

100 days of solitude

2011-07-11T13:02:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember, minus a year here or there, I've gone away in the summertime to write. Usually, I've gone to BC--penticton and revelstoke--and spent weeks living with my family in a trailer or motorhome hundreds of kilometres away from friends, the internet, and distractions. Distance and solitude have almost become integral to my writing process to the point where I began to find it difficult to write during the school year at all. Fortunately, creative writing workshops have forced me out of that habit, but I still feel a longing for distance, space, and even loneliness. This year, I've been in the city, but I've been staying inside at my desk more and more. I'm planning on going away at the end of the summer, for a few weeks at least.....

notebooks

2011-07-08T10:06:00.000-07:00

I printed some chapbooks for the first True Knit Art Fair this past April.

The event went great, and I got to meet and talk to a lot of people.

There's another craft fair this Saturday July 9th at St. Paul's Cathedral from 11am- 5 pm. This time, I wanted to do something a little different.

I loved Jonah's images from the first printing. So I designed miniature notebooks using the eight characters he'd created. I got lm publications to print the covers and spent Wednesday afternoon putting them together. Here's the final result:

I also made some using all the characters:

And then I modelled the books!

Come out Saturday if you want mini-notebooks to create some riddles of your own...

Heaney on Anglo-Saxon

2011-07-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

He's talking about the difficulties of translating Beowulf, from the Introduction to his translation of the poem:

"An understanding I had worked out for myself concerning my own linguistic and literary origins made me reluctant to abandon the task. I had noticed, for example, that without any conscious intent on my part certain lines in the first poem in my first book conformed to the requirements of Anglo-Saxon metrics. These lines were made up of two balancing halves, each half containing two stressed syllables-- 'the spade sinks into gravelly ground: / My father, digging. I look down'--and in the case of the second line, there was alliteration linking "digging" and "down" across the caesura. Part of me, in other words, had been writing Anglo-Saxon from the start" (xxiii).

Then he goes onto talk about the influence of Gerard Manley Hopkins on his work, and the Anglo-Saxon elements of Hopkins' verse.

Really amazing that alliterative verse is subconsciously present in his poem, "Digging."

Heaney's translation of "Deor" is one of my favourites. You can listen to him reading it here:

http://poemsoutloud.net/audio/archive/heaney_reads_deor/

Reading List

2011-07-04T14:45:00.000-07:00

Currently Reading:

You can't actually click to look inside. I wish you could. In the first book, you would find my translation of The Dream of the Rood from Old English to Broken English.

(Also purchased this weekend: Simon Armitage's translation of The Green Knight!)

of inkhorns and quill pens

2011-07-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

I've mentioned some interest in the "metafictional" riddles, or those riddles that describe books and the tools of writing, and seem to reflect on the nature of writing itself.

In Dieter Bitterli's Say What I am Called, I've stumbled across a note of interest, in reference to the two inkhorn riddles:

"Perhaps the most remarkable element of the riddle’s rhetoric is its consistent use of object personification, which works on all narrative levels and includes not only the enigmatic subject itself (the inkhorn) but also the personae of the “brother” (second horn), the aggressive “kinsmen” or “younger brothers” (the new horns), and the cruel “monsters” (the quill pens)" (155).

Bitterli's explication of the inkhorn riddles combine my interest in the self-reflective riddles as well as my interest in the animal riddles. Many riddles personify their objects, but the inkhorn riddles seem to be different from riddles about the sun, or other tools in that the object described is literally derived from a living creature. Because the inkhorn and drinking horn are made out of the horns of oxen or stags, they offer an eerie perspective into the lives of these animals. The quillpen and book riddles also fall into this category of granting animals, who have been hitherto silent, the capacity to speak, and tell their (often brutal and violent) stories.

In the inkhorn riddle described by Bitterli, then, the reader is given the impression of two brothers separated and pitted against the cruel quillpen. I think these riddles are particularly unsettling due to their roots in the literal. Most riddles, even those that anthropomorphize their subjects, have little basis in reality. But in the inkhorn riddles, the inkhorn at one time belonged to a stag. The creature is not simply a metaphor in this case... the creature represents the inkhorn's literal origin as well as its metaphorical end.

Of course, I must remember the riddles does not describe the stag as the brother, but rather the other horn, as though the horns exist autonomously from the animal. Perhaps this places the inkhorn riddles in the same category as the others afterall.

proposing!

2011-06-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't been writing any riddles lately because I've been trying to formulate a proposal for my thesis so the Honours/Grad committee can approve it and I can continue writing riddles.

I know how backwards writing proposals can be. In order to write a "good" proposal you usually have to have all the research completed first... which kind of defeats the purpose of proposing a project in the first place. For my sshrc, I proposed the project I did for my honours. And now I'm doing something different. But as much as I've begrudged the process of proposing I can recognize a) there's more leeway with a creative project and b) forcing myself to think critically about what I'm doing is probably a good thing.

I have a love/hate with academia right now. Probably doesn't help that I tend to paint it in broad brushstrokes (even using the word "academia" says it all). Every few days I change my mind between never wanting to write an essay again on the one hand and wanting to go on and do my phd and never leave the library on the other hand (and mfa on the third hand).

I'm not sure what I'll do this fall when it comes time to write MORE proposals for MORE funding and MORE degrees. Right now researching for a professor, I keep getting distracted by all the interesting dissertations I find. I found one about Emily Dickinson's fascicle books she bound and how in the last stages of her life when she ceased binding the loose pages it was related to the unravelling of her life (or something).

And another one about women and portraiture in the renaissance. And face painting and masques.

Lately I'm realizing that I'd much rather read other people's essays than write my own. I like learning and I like researching and thinking and that's all I really want to do right now. Unless my thesis statement for every essay can be something like: "umm well I'm not really sure but I'm going to think about these things out loud and you, dear reader, can follow along and meet me perhaps someplace different at the end but probably at the same place."

A note on the animal riddles

2011-06-12T12:45:00.000-07:00

Many exeter book riddles describe animals. They include: Riddle 5 (whistling swan), Riddle 6 (nightingale), riddle 7 (cuckoo), riddle 8 (barnacle goose), riddle 10 (ox), riddle 11 (ten chickens), riddle 13 (fox), riddle 22 (magpie), riddle 36 (ox), riddle 40 (cock and hen), riddle 55 (swallows), riddle 70 (ox), riddle 74 (oyster), riddle 75 (lamprey), and riddle 81 (fish and river). As always, the above are taken from Williamson's Feast of Creatures.

The presence of birds is intriguing. As is the multitude of oxen.

But the most interesting thing is that of these 15 riddles, only 4 (ten chickens, the ox of riddle 36, cock and hen, and swallows) are written in the third person. All the rest are spoken from the voice of the creature itself. It could also be argued that in the case of the ten chickens, cock and hen, and swallows, a first person voice is perhaps impossible since the riddle describes multiple animals rather than just one. The ox of riddle 36 is then the sole creature described from a third person perspective.

Kathleen Wall's post at Blue Duets addresses writing about animals. Wall writes, "The animals on our planet remain an 'other' that we will never thoroughly understand. It's useful, for all kinds of ethical reasons, to experience and acknowledge that fact. Among other things, it takes the human and human knowledge out of the centre of the universe for a few minutes. Also, if we use our imaginations to understand the dog or cat who lives with us, that imagination might, because it's getting some exercise, grow stronger."

In speaking from the perspective of the "other," the exeter riddles retain a sense of wonder at this unknown. Some of the animal riddles describe the pain suffered at the hands of man. Others anthropomorphize the animals as beautiful singers and women. There are two exeter riddles describing inkhorns (84 and 89), and in each the inkhorn speaks in the first person, describing his life as an oxen before being viciously taken from his twin brother and made to serve his master.

Do these riddles give a voice to the other, or do they appropriate their images? Perhaps both? (Neither?)

The exeter riddles' use of persona, concealment, and masking are interesting in their own right. But I find the abundance of animals--creatures typically regarded as the other who in these poems speak directly to the reader and implore him to guess their name-- eerie and wonderful, and worth further exploration.

I should note that I personally have not written any riddles about animals. After this, the notion may be impossible to ignore.

For further reading: Bitterli, Dieter. Say What I am Called: The Old English Riddles of the Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition. Toronto: U of T press, 2009. Bitterli writes at length on the animal riddles!

Old English Poetry

2011-06-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

One thing I've been up to this summer is taking a class in Old English literature. So far, I've been learning the basics of the language, grammar, pronunciation, sentence structure, and so on. The textbook we've been using is Peter S. Baker's Introduction to Old English, the majority of which is available online here. I'm enjoying the class immensely, especially the translation exercises which I've completed with help of grammar cheat-sheets, and the glossary at the back of the book. While it's unlikely I'll master the finer points of Anglo-Saxon grammar, I am excited by this week's lesson focusing on the elements of Old English Poetry. I've jotted down some points I've found particularly interesting. Readers should be aware I'm no expert. All of the following are taken from Baker's book:

-Some words are found exclusively in Old English poetry and do not appear in prose writings of the period. They include mearh, the word for horse. And awa, the word for always. I wonder if there's any modern English words that seem to pop up a lot more often in poetry than prose?

-There's also dozens of words for warrior, many of which are compound words combining two concepts. The word "rinc" means warrior, and its compounds include beadorinc (battle-warrior), gumrinc (man warrior), hilderinc (war-warrior), and hererinc (army-warrior). Many of these terms seem redundant but there's actually a quite clever reason for forming compounds:

-Anglo-Saxon poetry is written in alliterative verse. Poems are generally composed of half-lines that employ alliteration rather than rhyme or rhythm such as iambic pentameter found in modern poetry today. So, if a poet wanted to describe a warrior but the other stressed words in the line began with a different sound, he might simply combine two words together to communicate the meaning of the word while retaining the alliteration. I like the idea that sound drives the composition of poetic lines. This constraint seems to force innovation.

-Old English poetry is also full of kennings, or miniature riddles that combine two notions to form a new conept. These include bancofa (bone-chamber, which Baker interprets as "the body"), the famous hronrad (whale-road from Beowulf), and wordhord (word-hord, which Baker suggests refers to one's capacity for speech). Some poets utilize kennings in modern English, and this is an idea I would definitely like to play around with a bit more.

-There's a great deal of variation in Old English poetry, wherein the poet might describe the same thing two or three different ways. This is something you do see a lot in modern poetry and I think it has a beautiful, musical effect. Here is Baker's example, translated, from The Seafarer: "My feet were / Oppressed by cold, bound with frost, / with cold fetters, where cares sighed, / heat around my heart."

-Old English poetry is very formulaic as well. The example that Baker uses and that is certainly reminiscent of texts like Lord of the Rings is: "Hrothgar, helmet of the Scyldings spoke, Unferth, the son of Ecglaf, spoke" etc. Some argue that these formulas are evidence that certain texts were composed orally, which would make them easier to remember. I think that such formulas also speak perhaps to the poet's awareness that they work within tradition. As Baker notes, despite these formulaic lines or concepts, the Anglo-Saxon poets achieved a great deal of ingenuity and inventiveness. Indeed much modern literature follows generic guidelines, which might be considered a type of formula, but this does not take away from the unique accomplishments of each individual text.

-One of the most difficult things to get used to about OE poetry is that a lot of lines leave out grammatical elements such as prepositions and pronouns. It can be a bit difficult trying to fill in the blanks when translating texts, but it also makes for a great variety of interpretations. Old English poetry seems to give the reader a greater role in interpreting the text.

writer's block

2011-06-05T21:44:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling a bit of "writer's block" lately. Not with poetry, but with short stories (and with essays... but I think everyone feels that!)

I haven't written a short story since last summer. And looking back at what I wrote then, I do not consider them very good. Usually I can salvage characters or plots or scraps of text from stories that don't work, but I've had no desire to retain anything from the last batch of attempts. So I've been trying to write some new stories. I have a bunch of ideas in my head, floating around, but I've been so indecisive about my fiction. I can't decide on first person or third person. I can't decide where to begin, what course the plot will take, characters names. I think I've forgotten how to write a story. (and I'm not sure I ever knew how).

But reading is inspiring. Alexander MacLeod's Light Lifting made me want to write all the stories I had ever dreamt of. And I did manage to get a few beginnings down. Now I'm feeling the same about Clark Blaise's The Meagre Tarmac. I'm about halfway through and blown away. And again, I want to write all the stories, every character.

I hope this next week pans out better for my fiction...
Sometimes I think "writer's block" is really just laziness. Maybe a bit of fear.

Arts & Craft Fair 2.0

2011-05-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I set up a table at the inaugural True Knit Art Show and sold some chapbooks that me and my brother made for the occasion. The event was lots of fun and the part I enjoyed the most was talking to all the different people that passed the table. I was blown away by the sheer variety of visitors and the opportunity to talk to real people about poetry. People of different ages and backgrounds. People outside of academia. People with different hobbies. It was refreshing.

The ladies at True Knit are holding another event in early July that I'm excited to take part in again. At first I felt a bit uncertain about selling the same ol' poems. If it's the same group of people coming to this second event then I wasn't sure I'd have anything new to offer. But then I had an idea-- My brother's amazing colourful artwork is a big part of what attracted people to my table and I love little notebooks and journals. So I decided to make some little notebooks using his illustrations as a cover image and featuring a chunk of blank paper. This way people who aren't so interested in reading my poems can have the opportunity to perhaps make some of their own!!

I'm excited for this project and brainstorming other potential creations and collaborations... I used to do a lot of sewing and personalizing of my clothing back in highschool. I'd spend hours working on projects like sewing cool patches onto all my hoodies and skirts. Unfortunately these past few years of University have been kind of hectic and I haven't done too much sewing. But I have some ideas for some easy projects and I'm thinking of perhaps making a trip to fabricland in the next few weeks... Doing things like sewing, painting, and drawing help me get out of the headspace that tends to drives me crazy (especially in the winter months).

I just remembered that last summer I was attempting to make my own shoes from scratch. I think I gave up before I made plaster casts of my feet. Maybe if I get bored I'll make some headway on that project!

A list of questions I cannot answer,

2011-05-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

Or, in which the pesky graduate student is pitifully unprepared for proposing project theses and thoroughly wastes the time of her dutiful professor:

1. Why riddles?
2. Are riddles different from other poems?
3. Are riddles similar to any other art form?
4. What is the relationship between the writer and reader in riddles?
5. Why imitate the form of the anglo-saxon riddle?
6. Why use accentual verse when modern english uses metre?
7. How are the oral folk roots of the riddle tradition related to this project?
8. How are riddles related to our perception of the world?
9. Why do people write poetry?
10. Why do people read poetry?

...So I have some reading to do.

Luckily, when it became evident I had been struck dumb by the prospect that I would actually have to form coherent notions about my little pastime in order to fulfill the requirements of my graduate degree (you mean I can't just write poems?), I received the following insight:

A riddle is a trick, but it is a trick that does not lie. It tells the truth in a way that is different from the way you ordinarily perceive truth. It seems untrue, but is revealed as true. Something familiar, but not in a way you've looked at it before.

Right. Something like that.
(good thing I was taking notes, if nothing else!)

Arts Fest!

2011-05-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

This week is the Cathedral Village Arts Fest! I hadn't given it much thought until last night when my brother suggested that we should check out some of the events. I guess this year is chock full of literary events in addition to the usual music, theatre, and dance performances.

There's a list of the literary events on the SWG website: http://www.skwriter.com/?s=home&id=224

Tomorrow night there's a Queen Victoria costume contest... I'm excited what approach people are going to take. Young Queen Victoria? Old Queen Victoria? Nondescript princess? I MAY put something together if I have the time (read: guts).

edit: there's also a performance by the regina mandolin orchestra at this same time.. hmm it'll be a tough call!

Confession...

2011-05-19T17:33:00.000-07:00

I have a bit of a confession to make.. I've never really liked solving riddles and I've never been that great at it! As a child, I would flip to the back of my activity books almost immediately, without even attempting to perform the mind tricks necessary to solve the puzzles seemingly designed to aggravate me. Even in "Choose Your Own Adventure" books I would read the end conclusions of each narrative path before deciding whether to take door one or door two.

It's perhaps not surprising that for most of my adolescents I was one of those individuals who believed poetry to be "difficult," a code one had to crack. There's something satisfying in an allegory wherein a=z, b=y, and so on. It took some time before I realized that poetry did not operate in this fashion. Even allegories do not operate in this manner, and rather hold the literal and symbolic meanings simultaneously, like the magician's juggling balls suspended in air. Poetry is full of paradoxes, two opposites things held simultaneously and at once. Perhaps this, despite my initial frustration at solving puzzles, is what drew me to poetry, and to the genre of riddles.

Riddles, like all metaphor, allows you to hold two things in your mind simultaneously, and retain their differences. Metaphor "is" and "is not" at the same time, a distancing and pulling closer. Riddles are an act of simultaneity that engages in an appreciation of language, and for this reason I feel like the wool that's been pulled over the reader's eyes is swept away. By highlighting the act of solving riddles, as though poetry is a code that the reader must crack, I feel that I am exposing the magician's secrets. By placing so much emphasis on the act of solving, I feel (perhaps somewhat paradoxically) that the reader is freed from the language of means and of ends, and can appreciate the poem's language, its purely literal interpretations, or nothing of this sort.

I don't believe that poetry is meant to be "solved." I need to mull this over a bit, to bring some clarity to my thoughts, but I don't think that riddles are really meant to be solved either, in any concrete way. I think that the real game is beneath this pretense; it is the act of concealing and revealing through language.

(maybe)

spring

2011-05-13T13:13:00.000-07:00

I've been getting settled into the spring semester and my new job as a research assistant for a professor writing on women and sermons in the 17th century. I've been dedicating most of my time to this project to make up for the two weeks I was away in BC. So far I've only been adding to a bibliography of primary sources but I've already learned so much. It's incredible how many women writers were creating such interesting and original texts that so few have been studied. The social and historical contexts of these women's lives are also beyond heartbreaking. The sheer majority of women I've read about either died in childbirth, were left widowed and were denied inheritances and property that were rightfully theirs, or were imprisoned (and often beaten and killed) for preaching in public. This excerpt fromA Biographical Dictionary of English Women Writers, 1580-1720 was especially heart wrenching:

"Margaret Blagge married Godolphin secretly in 1675, after a nine year engagement: she was nervous about marrying because she thought she would die in childbirth, as she did."

... As for my own writing: I've been working on a few riddles but I'm hoping to establish a better schedule in the coming weeks. I also have my thesis proposal to think about... I wanted to have it finished by the end of the summer so I'm slowly making my way through articles and books on the subject!

stolen goods

2011-05-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

While in Vancouver a bunch of stuff was stolen out of our car. I know you should never leave valuables in your car, but we were starving, couldn't find a hotel, and weren't thinking logically. The car was a mess with all our luggage dumped on the floor so it was difficult to tell what had been taken. Both of my bags were missing including my passport, all my clothes, all my chargers for computer, phone, etc. A couple hours after speaking with the security guards and driving around aimlessly trying to take inventory of what I would have to replace, I received a phone call from an employee at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. I learned that one of the bags had been apparently found in front of the theatre. We rushed down to find the duffel bag containing my clothes had been returned. But the culprits had also included things from the other bag that they hadn't wanted: my passport (thankfully!), contact lenses, and the last five copies of my chapbook. I was happy to get these items returned to me, and I wondered what was going through the minds of these men or women as they rifled through my belongings. Perhaps they flipped through the passport and noticed that they had taken my clothes and makeup on April 30, my birthday. Maybe they imagined some poor girl wandering around Vancouver without her contact lenses. Or maybe they were overwhelmed with frustration in trying to figure out the answers to my riddles.....

In any case, I think it's hilarious they returned the books!!

shop til you drop

2011-04-24T20:43:00.000-07:00

I'm in Victoria all this week. Today I visited Munro's Books and spend quite some time browsing the poetry section, which seemed to stock everything I've ever wanted to read. They had a really great assortment of lit journals as well! The used book store Russell's Books was also really amazing. I wish I could spend all day in there.... We picked up some volumes by Ashbery, Hass, Starnino, Muldoon, and a collection of poetry by Grace Paley, who I mainly know through her short fiction. I'm excited to read these collections though I started reading Infinite Jest on the way over... haven't been doing too much writing, however!

Riddle & Bind by Nick Montfort

2011-04-18T14:42:00.000-07:00

I was excited to finally get a copy of Riddle & Bind by Nick Montfort published by Spineless Books (Urbana, Illinois: 2010). I had first heard about this through Christian Bok's twitter account (haha) and had to wait over a month since Amazon lost the first copy in the mail (if it ever shows up I'll be sure to pass it onto another riddle fan).

The book is divided into three parts: "Riddle" (literary riddles), "Bind" (poems written in formal constraints) and "&" (poems that are both riddles and bound in some matter).

I was delighted to find both riddles and constrained forms in this collection. I was also really impressed and inspired by the way that Nick Montfort structured the collection. He begins with an introduction, "Solving Poems," which lays out his notion of riddles, and more or less informs the reader that he's working in the riddle form. He also identifies two other riddlers (besides the Greek, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon): May Swenson and Emily Dickinson. I'm very grateful for these tips (and any others that readers may wish to send in my direction!). I'd been mulling over the notion of Dickinson as a riddler for some time but I hadn't had a chance to immerse myself in her work (yet). Montfort's comments on her poems are really illuminating and argued quite succinctly.

Another note on structure: Montfort includes an answer key, both to the riddles, and to the constrained poems, wherein he identifies the form or game he is playing in each instance. In the case of the riddles, however, Montfort does not simply supply the answers. Rather, he first makes a point of stating that his "answers" are only as he envisioned them, thus allowing for alternative interpretations the reader might supply (as in all poetry!). Further, the answers themselves are additionally veiled through what appears to be hieroglyphics. The reader must, in other words, solve an additional riddle to access the answers to the riddles of the book. Ingenius! Montfort is not so callous towards his readers, however; he includes a pangram on the first page to assist in the decoding of the hieroglyphics.

I haven't yet had a chance to read the entire book, but I was interested that Montfort's riddles do not mimic the anglo-saxon hemistichs as other practitioners of mock anglo-saxon verse (Earle Birney). Rather (and I'm still not great at poetry vocabulary) they appear to be written in free verse with one series of poems written in tercets and iambic pentameter.

I really love how the book plays with concealing and revealing. Montfort lays out his mission in the introduction, and includes very thorough notes at the end of the book including the forms and allusions of each piece, which might suggest he is working in utter transparency. At the same time, however, he is writing poems in the form of riddles, arguably the most concealed of all poetic forms. This tension between the impersonal form and personal gesture towards the reader is incredibly compelling.

I'm thinking of the image of a veil which reappears throughout Spenser's Faerie Queene: the veil is a metaphor for how metaphor operates in that it simultaneously reveals the truth and yet also hides it. Don McKay's thoughts on metaphor in his essay, "From Here to Infinity or So" also springs to mind: it is only through metaphor that we are able to gain access to what is otherwise impossible to conceive, like notions of geologically time. Or, as in Spenser, the trace of "pressed gras" that remains the only evidence of Gloriana and the divine...

In his introduction, Montfort states: "My own sense is that solving a riddle should align and open the poem resoundingly, revealing new ways of seeing and other fields of questions that lie beyond the first question and answer" (xiii). Indeed! In this sense I sincerely believe, (similar, perhaps, to Northrop Frye's notion in his essay "Charms and Riddles") that riddles are the basis of all poetry, the foundation of all metaphor.

I'm incredibly excited to read this book and hear about other collections of riddles!

futures

2011-04-15T16:46:00.000-07:00

I've always known I want to write, but over the past few months I've been plagued with indecision over the right path to take. I'm uncertain what I should do once I'm finished by MA at the U of R next summer.

Should I take a year off and travel? Get a job? Write a PhD research proposal for sshrc funding and apply to schools? Apply for MFA programs? Which genre--poetry or fiction? In Canada or the States?

I change my mind at least once a day... I'm getting sick of it, and so is my family.

In an attempt to reach some sort of steady footing, I've been trying to get back to what made me want to write in the first place. I try to sift through all the distractions that may have entered my life since then. I want to get back to that initial, excited feeling, and maybe then things will be clearer, and I will feel more certain.

A week ago I bought Alice Munro's Selected Stories at the RSO book sale and today Nathan asked me which story he should read next. He'd just finished "Vandals," a story that's been a favourite of mine ever since hearing a professor speak about it. I scanned the table of contents and started flipping through the book, rediscovering the stories that had excited me so much when I first started taking writing workshops. Flipping through the book, I immediately felt reunited with the many characters and plots. I couldn't just recommend one story. I wanted to read them all over again. You could spend a lifetime reading Munro's stories. So maybe I'll do just that. Something like that. Reading, thinking.

art fair

2011-04-10T14:19:00.000-07:00

So the art fair went really incredible. It was amazing to have the opportunity to actually talk face-to-face with real people about my writing. So often I feel isolated from other writers/readers when I'm working on a poem in my basement apartment. I tend to forget that actual human beings might be reading the poems eventually.

I learned a lot too. I learned that most people don't know what a "chapbook" but are curious and willing to ask. I learned that you can't anticipate what sort of crowd will be interested in mock anglo-saxon verse; I talked to teenagers, university students, mothers, university professors, grandmothers. Such a supportive assortment! I learned that talking to people about your writing can be highly rewarding and this grass-roots sort of "bring the poetry to the people" is probably the way to go. A lot of us lament the lack of poetry sales in Canada. But the average person isn't going to go to a poetry reading or buy a book out of the blue if they've never heard of the author before. Maybe if poets go to these kind of art fairs and spread the word, the next time they do a reading, people might remember the writer and their work. I think blogs/facebook/twitter can probably work in a similar way.

I also learned that the illustration/poetry combination is a good one. Without Jonah's drawings, I don't think as many people would have been as inclined to stop by the table and check out my work. I know for a fact that a number of people bought the book based on the drawings alone (I would have too!) I'm excited that Jonah was willing to collaborate with me, and that he's going illustrate future volumes of Riddlehoard once I complete more poems.

Overall, I sold 35/55 copies of the chapbook this weekend and I'm sending a few through the mail after Shelley Banks wrote a lovely piece about it. When I started the blog I didn't expect this much attention in the form of comments and blog poets. I feel very welcomed, which is a testament to the Saskatchewan Writing community--something that came up again and again at Talking Fresh.

So email me or msg me on facebook if you want me to mail you a copy. We're going to do another printing soon since Jonah's going to a zine fest in the fall.

chapbook

2011-04-07T10:58:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to make a chapbook for some time. I heard about the True Knit craft fair a couple weeks back and thought it would be a great opportunity in addition to giving me a tangible deadline. I already had the poems near-ready, as they're part of my riddle project, but I thought it'd be cool to get my brother Jonah to do some illustrations for it. Here is a sneak preview at the end product, printed by my boyfriend and his dad:

I'm pretty excited about the end result; it looks great!

So come down to St. Peter's Cathedral this Saturday April 9th from noon-6 pm. I'll be selling the chapbooks for 5 bucks!

My first published poem!!

2011-04-04T10:43:00.000-07:00

I am so excited!!!

I've been lurking the Chapters these last few days to no avail.. Here is my first published poem ever:

http://www.contemporaryverse2.ca/index.php/current-issue/464-cassidy-mcfadzean-and-trembling

I wrote this for a creative writing class a year ago exactly. CV2 is a magazine I've read for some time and really respect. It's incredible to see my little poem there!!! I will remember this moment and this feeling.

short stories

2011-04-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've worked on a story. Lately I've felt like I don't even know how to begin. Watching movies like Blue Valentine, Hard Grit, and The Fighter has been hugely inspiration. I get this excited feeling in my gut like I want to forget everything else and just focus on telling a good story.

This past summer I read a lot of short stories I read the collected work of Grace Paley and felt a similar excitement in her strong characterization, the women who speak so honestly. I read the stories of Alice Munro, Alistair MacLeod, Bharati Mukherjee, Mavis Gallant--some of the best storytellers of our time. And again and again it was the strong characters and plot that made me excited to write. I want to get back to the basics that made me fall in love with words in the first place.. characters I could relate to.. stories that moved me.

Lately I've been focusing so much on poetry, which is a good thing because it's changed the way I think about language. But I haven't been reading too much fiction. Tonight, I bought Alexander Macleod's Light Lifting. I've read all but two stories and I feel that excitement in the pit of my stomach... I'm marvelling at some of his decisions on form and point of view. But above all, it's the details that stand out, and that make the stories so strong. I've been reading a few stories by a young and amazing short fiction writer, Eliza Robertson who was nominated for the Journey Prize this past year. In her story, "Ship's Log," her use of details is so incredible. Reading her stories has made me want to create these worlds again, these three dimensional spaces Munro speaks of as rooms in a house. Places one can spend a little time walking around within.

I do see writing stories different from writing poems. I'm not exactly sure yet in what ways. But I do feel like I'm building something when I write a story. Fleshing it out almost as though I'm sculpting, refining. It does feel three dimensional. Poems are more like painting. Not that they're flat or impressionistic but that their language can communicate immediately and directly. Sharply like colours. Not slowly, like a sculpture one can explore. I will have to think about this more!

reading last nite

2011-03-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

So last night I went to the Dennis Cooley and Fred Wah reading at Campion College. There were about 20ish people in attendance, mostly younger folk/university students and some profs. I'd never seen either of the poets read before so I wasn't sure what to expect.

Fred Wah read first and he had a television set up to display images. A lot of his poems respond to photography, which is something I am very interested in. He had taken some of the photos himself, but others were in collaboration with other artists. I especially liked the long lines of some of Wah's panoramic poems, the interaction between language and image, and the personas that he adopted in certain poems. His Is a Door poems were especially playful and hypnotic to listen to, and the photographs of broken doors really worked well.

Dennis Cooley read next, from various books. Similar to Wah, many of his poems adopted a persona. It was great to see them live. Cooley seemed somewhat disappointed in the audiences quietness. We did not laugh at the right moments and he really seemed to emphasize the humour in his poems. In his persona poems he simply spoke through these characters' voices, in their own words, and did not commentate or otherwise frame their experiences. Sometimes I have issues with character poems that are written from a third-person perspective that almost seem to judge the character as an object and are not self-conscious about this lens of viewing the "other." Cooley's poems totally avoided this, I think. He also had a lot of found poems which were taken from various sources.

I talked to Dennis Cooley afterwards so he could sign a book for my dad.. he said he's written some mock anglo saxon verse so I'll have to check it out!

There should be more readings like this in Regina! Talking fresh was so amazing and I try to go to the vertigo when I can.. maybe I'm just getting greedy.

blogging about writing

2011-03-29T09:39:00.000-07:00

So I decided to start a blog to document the literary related things in my life.
I've had some blogs before but never any under my real name. This will probably still feel like a persona.
I was going to just go with a simple background to reflect my boring personality, but then this really pretty coral-themed hummingbird template popped up and I had to choose it!

I'm really awful at writing creative non-fiction (or even uncreative non-fiction) so I think I'm going to start off in point form:

-Throughout March I've been trying to write a short 800 word article about Talking Fresh 9 which was amazing, occurred march 4-5 and featured incredible poets Dan Tysdal, Brenda Schmidt, Karen Solie, Michael Trussler. I also did an email interview with Karen Solie and she was incredibly generous in answering my really dumb questions that took me hours of agony to make seem not quite so dumb. In the midst of trying to write an article that captured the hilariousness of Dan Tysdal or the inspiring seminar by Brenda Schmidt, an article that wouldn't merely summarize Solie's thoughts on nostalgia or Trussler's anecdotes about Mandel, I stumbled upon a really lovely and perfect piece by Kathleen Wall on blueduets.blogspot.com. So instead of trying to cover the same ground that she did, I referred my hypothetical reader to her summary of the panel discussion and hacked my way through writing the rest of my article.

One day I would like to be able to write creative non-fiction better. But I think I have issues with the self-reflexiveness of it all. The New Quarterly is holding a personal essay contest and on their blog The Literary Type, they describe their criteria:

"i) I want to learn something new, but
ii) I want the author to take me there through his or her personal connection with the subject matter, and iii) I want to fall in love with the words you use to bring both halves of the equation together"

In regards to 1) I feel that I have nothing to teach (yet), 2) I feel uncomfortable in forcing the reader to experience things through the lens of my experiences... 3) I like the part about words but I feel weird about teaching the reader while simultaneously making the piece about ME. I realize this is really paradoxical considering I am currently writing a personal blog about myself.... but I think in my creative work I want to maintain a sense of impersonality.

I'm in a creative writing class and all semester we've been looking at poets who are either really personal and confessional in their writing (like some of P.K. Page and Starnino's poems), and those who are really impersonal and often use personas (Cohen or Bok). The other day after workshopping my portfolio my prof mentioned that my work is among the most impersonal in the class. I was really surprised to hear this since I feel my work is really self indulgent a lot of the time but then I realized she is absolutely right, at least in regards to current projects. I'm writing a book of riddles, in which the speaker is almost completely obscured by persona, and other poems that are really far removed from the speaker's perspective. I think my discomfort with the personal is probably due to (incorrectly) equating the confessional with a sort of stream of consciousness unrefined or theraupeutic outpouring of emotion. I feel like no one will care if I just write poems about myself and boys or whatever. If I write poems about ideas, then I feel like (probably people still won't care) but the poems will be based on ideas or form, and will be stronger. I realize this is ridiculous because a lot of the poems I really love are incredibly confessional and based on personal experiences. I do feel like when I start to gain more confidence with my writing, I'll be able to approach more personal topics. Just right now I feel better maintaining a distance... almost a guise of objectivity which I know is false and ridiculous and even more self-indulgent than in the first place.

Yet when I write academic essays, I always place myself and my perspective at the forefront. Usually my essays are more about me figuring out what I'm arguing rather than just arguing the point. I think that in "academic" essays I'm more comfortable with this because I'm trying to resist the overwhelming wall of impersonality that academia sometimes feels like.

-I also recently got contacts and I feel like this is related to my writing perspective... Without the frames of my glasses, I feel like I can't hide as well from the world around me. I'm forced to take it all in at once and my perspective is at the forefront instead of obscured. I'll have to think about this a bit more for sure. Thinking how optics are so important to Page, ideas of the scop.

There's a reading at Campion College tonight--Dennis Cooley and Fred Wah. Pretty exciting. I will write about it tomorrow.