News, news, go go radish
Hello folks,
Hope your summer is floating along well, merrily merrily, even if the U.S. is exploding in parts. Trying to fix systemic racism and sexism is the job of each person in society, to call out boundary-crossing when it occurs to build a new compassionate society.
News.
so much new. I didn't think I'd have a think to say until at least late August but life keeps happening. Beyond retraining myself to paddle using a wind/unwind of the torso instead of shoulders while canoeing, there's all the book stuff. Literary Landscape is puttering away. The last episode up looks poised to break the top 5 of playbacks at the CKCU station overall. Why? Because the guest is scintillating and the cause is good. The new Sawdust board member Natalie Hanna put together an anthology of poems about sexual assault and it has pretty much sold out in the packed room it first entered. Sales have brought in over $700 in donation for the Ottawa Rape Crisis Centre. Listen to it here with a couple sample poems. Also in that episode you can preview a song by Jennifer Pederson and buy it to download and donate as well. Tree is on summer hiatus but we'll be back the second weekend of September. I can say we more than usual because I join Colin Morton as c0-director this year.
Veggie power! Go, radish, go.
the pet radish, shrunken has been shortlisted for the Lampman Award.
copies are still available from me or BookThug. If 1/3 people following me on twitter would buy on ($12 for pdf version), it would be a Canadian poetry best seller.
Also shortlisted is N.W. Lea's Understander (Chaudiere, 2015) and one other to be announced by Arc Poetry Magazine momentarily. But like a kid in gelato store, can't wait.
The Studio Nouveau Workshops, session 4 will be over in just over a week. Each week jumps to a new track of type of poetry, from Tang poetry to sound poetry. It's inspiring to see people wrestle out idea, latch onto new ideas. One student put it "if there isn't a stretch, it isn't doing any good."
What else? After it seemed impossible to get past 250 followers on twitter the account has gone past 1030. pesbo seems securely in the 4-digits. I give shout outs to a lot about nature, books, and words.
I'm still reading at the 95 book challenge but this year I'm including chapbooks. Some chapbooks take and give as much or more per page than thicker things. Which may account for my being at book 83 halfway through the year. (Although chapbooks account for only 15%).
My most enjoyed reads? Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (Greywolf, 2015), illiterature, issue six (Puddles of Sky Press, 2016), and Chewing Water by Nelson Ball (A Stuart Ross Book, 2016). If you're looking for a podcast to listen, I've been following Invisibilia on autism and magnetic therapy for it, and mental health in Belgium, and immigrant frame of perspective, and 99% Invisible on unpleasant design and photographing flying food.
Until next time, keep reading and keep writing,
Pearl