Support Writers
Hello folks,
I hope your wintery days are as relaxing or as productive as you need. Thanls for your interest in keeping up with my news.
Hopefully I'll be able to connect easier. Fibre optic internet is supposed to be coming here between June and December. It's a bit of a challenge at times to be get a stable signal and enough bandwidth. Unlike past years I've spent most time not online by choice. I've been deep diving into reading and writing.
Supporting Writers. As you may have seen on twitter or instagram, AngelHousePress Presents The Caring Imagination: Help us provide support to our contributors, especially artists & writers worldwide systematically excluded from the canon. It is part of an effort to give monetary value for creative work . "A typical artist has a household income of $57,800, 33% lower than all workers. Read more or give more. There are perks remaining for donations towards the stretch goals, including publications from Anstruther, Wolsak &Wynn, Room and one donated by me:
Writing Sparks (phafours press), Mammals of Hoarfrost by me (Corrupt press, France), Mudflaps for Short Dogs by me (Trainwreck Press), Evacuate: poems by Mohamad Kebbewar (phafours press), Today’s Woods by me (above/ground), Whack of Clouds by Earl, McCann, Lea, Provost & me (AngelHouse), and Cough of a Sloth by Claudia Coutu Radmore (phafours press)
Writing.
I also have other manuscripts near completion, two books and one chapbook off for consideration.
I'm also trying to do a hospital suite of poems of my mom and a local history book of poems. I may have mentioned I applied for a research grant for that. It involves going to archives in Shawville, Smiths Falls and possibly Pembroke. It's a lot of information to parse to find the nuggets but that's the kind of work I enjoy.
Patrons.
If you have employment and would like to send me a dollar or few a month there's a way to do that at Patreon. There you can get more frequent updates and works in progress. Recently that money was used when I put my back out and could get a therapeutic massage (and the physio advice.).
Help?
If you'd like to be an early reader for my manuscripts, contact me. I could use more feedback. One manuscript sits at 110 pages of love poems. Too long I think, but I'd like to get it tightened and sent off this year.
Life.
I've thought I might like to go back to school in history, or biology, or as a librarian, or an archivist or for an MA in Linguistics. A richness of enticing possibilities.
Meanwhile I'm editing a broadside for my local haiku group, administering a national haiku competition which will soon need layout and artist located, I'm a reader/selector for Arc magazine, and have membership portfolio assessments to do for the membership committee at League of Canadian Poets. I volunteer at the local thrift store a few hours a week and as a librarian a few hours a month. I seem to have found myself as Chair of the Friends of Wakefield Library and am rounding up volunteers for a shelf-resorting activity.
As delightful as the library is, and as much unanticipated wonder Little Free Libraries bring, I seem to have bought a whack of new books that I want in particular.
Among other pressing concerns are a need for dental work, and for a new eyeglass prescription. (Headaches and blur make everything more tiring.) Apparently I am anemic again. And due for more medical tests. Presumably to ensure there's "nothing".
So many balls in the air within the freezing rain.
I used to end with book recommendations. Here are some gems:
The Streets, Like Flowers, Come Alive in the Rain by Steve Deneham (Potter’s Grove Press, 2021)
The Samurai’s Garden by Gail Tsukiyama (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994)
Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty by Bahar Orang *Book*hug, 2020)
Trans-galactic Bike Ride: Feminist Bicycle science fiction stories of transgender and non binary adventures, edited by Lydia Rose (Elly Blue, 2020)
When God is Gone, Everything is Holy: The Making of a Religious Naturalist by Chet Raymo (Sorin Books, 2005) and
ghosthawk by Matt Rader (Nightwood, 2021)
Until next time, keep reading, keep breathing, keep masking, and keep writing,
Pearl