I've been working on a couple of different "poetic statements" for the past few weeks, a form I'm not very familiar with. I seem to be going through some kind of academic backlash phase where I don't want to write about theory at all. I'm trying to make really honest statements about what I think about poetry without reference to academic jargon, and I'm finding it fairly difficult. Sometimes I think I've written interesting and complex observations, other times I think I'm just stating the obvious. The worst is when my attempts to state things honestly devolve into confessional, emotive psychobabbling. It's really disturbing how closely my concept of my poetics is linked to my concept of self. I'm not sure if that's a strength, in terms of writing, or if it's simply an inability to transcend the familiarity of the lyric. I think it's useful to put some effort into examining all this, why I write, what I expect from writing, etc. But there is an element of avoidance in it: I haven't actually written any poetry in quite some time. Oh well, stringing words together in some fashion is never really a waste of time, right?

Lovely. Why do you believe in poetry?

Why do I believe in poetry? Solipsistic reasons, I'm afraid. I use I too much, anyway. The mark of self-absorption (awkward word: it sounds like the self is a sponge absorbing itself. self-absorbed-ness isn't much better. the state of being self-absorbed). I believe in poetry because I feel like it's the only way I can communicate. I'm obsessed with the way words work in my head. I'm obsessed with the feel of language in my mouth. I'm obsessed with the rhythm of my speech. I'm obsessed with myself.

Then again, reading and writing poetry is a good way to meet people. I believe in that part too.

Mystery solved: LINEbooks books are now distributed through New Star Books, which is a member of the Literary Press Group, which gets books in stores. Nice. Look for accrete or crumble in a store somewhere sometime.

I have a new chapbook all ready to print, text laid out, cover designed, but I can't find any red cover stock. Granted, the only place I've really looked is Staples, but there's nowhere else in walking distance, except for Reid's, which I might check out today. I looked online, and found that the world of paper is infinite and complex and I'll back away slowly, thanks. There are a few brands of red cover stock available online, but at American sites with high shipping costs, and really, I just want to make some chapbooks so that I can hand them out, so I should keep the cost I invest in this (and time, and sanity) to a minimum. I really hope I find some red cover stock soon, this chapbook is going to look awesome....

Oh my god, my book is on amazon.ca! As are the other LINEbooks! My little book is part of the corporate machinery. I feel so validated. Also a little dirty. But I like it. Of course, if you're going to buy a copy, you should go through an independent, like Apollinaire's Bookshoppe or McNally Robinson. Unless you want the sweet savings (27%!) only a mass distributor can offer. Not sure why I find this so exciting...

Just got back from mailing my Alberta Foundation for the Arts writing project grant application, in itself a huge accomplishment for me. I've been thinking about applying for writing grants for years (or at least for the few years in the past many years that I haven't been disqualified by attending university full-time), but I've never been able to conceive and describe a coherent writing project. I tend to write without any preconceptions, and then look back at what I've written to see if any themes/similarities/ convergences can be teased out through editing. So I've found it difficult to propose a project before writing and even more difficult to explain why a project should be funded.

The project I applied for is probably a long shot. I think most funding organizations evaluate applications with a certain mindset that includes certain buzzwords, and I have no idea what the AFA's buzzwords are. I tried to focus on themes that are very particular to Alberta, and even moreso to Calgary - hell, I even mentioned the prairies a couple of times - but I'm not really sure if that's what they want. Oh well, I'm just glad I actually tried, for once.

Here's one of the poems my application depends on:

Is this Desire?

Claw’s manic retraction means a long fall, tumbling and rafting, borne aloft and lilt. The chump weighs heft, tittles a thrust, a glisten of spittle signals excitable sheen. Chump pockets knives, rusted bolts, flat cans – roadside ravages glimmer sure salvages the chump thumbs hungrily.

I have a new chapbook from above/ground press: Dirty Work. It's not entirely new, because the same text was published in 2005 by No Press in an edition of 26 copies, but it may be new to you. I think it's free with a subscription to above/ground press, or $6 plus postage. rob mclennan tells me that it'll also be available as a PDF sometime in May, but surely you don't want to wait that long.

Also, nypoesi.net is featuring some excerpts from accrete or crumble ("Chump" and "sudden"), as well as another poem of mine called "Sentencing", and an Introduction that I feel kind of iffy about; I really, really need more practice putting my ideas about poetry into prose. nypoesi is a great resource for poetry and poetics from Norway, Sweden, Canada, and various other northern countries. Pretty cool (ha? eh).

My vanity googling has revealed this odd review of Shift & Switch on its Amazon page (scroll down to the Product Description section). I'm not sure I get the threadworm/lobster analogy, although I generally agree that poetry focussed too much on theory will end up flat and lifeless. Overall, I think the review is too dismissive of the book, which is an invigorating collection of current writing by younger poets in Canada. But I'm happy for the compliment (partial compliment? I'm not really sure) of recognizing Gertrude Stein and her sentences in my writing:

But shouldn’t a poet be able to write strong sentences before he begins his attack on the conventionality of the sentence, or know something about scansion and phrasing before he scoffs at prosody? Gertrude Stein was able to write the sense-transcending sentences she did because she could also write them charged with meaning. A few of the contributors do inspire confidence. Natalie Simpson, in “Vallarta”, pulls off a fine threadwormish homage to Stein:

If a sentence streams a sea of thought, then can it end.
At the breakers or their force the beach in a straight
line. If a sentence has streaming, is streamlined, if a
sentence is lined it lies. Thinks of a grid and this is a
grid. Rid of a buzzing or old structures carapace.

INTERVIEWED!

Garry Morse has kind words for my writing in his recent 12 or 20 questions interview:

A list of contemporaryish poets would be hella long, and although this is a plug for LINEbooks, I have felt very honoured to have my work appear alongside the poetry of Natalie Simpson and Kim Minkus. I find there is an unapologetic love affair with language and an exquisite craftiness to be disclosed within each of their works. Their books are bright refreshing gems in a damp city full of overpriced gewgaws, where there is often a self-imposed hyperconsciousness about having to write for a particular audience, group, or community. I feel that these innovative books celebrate the relationship between language and the individual, and this is also a credit to the good taste of the editors at LINEbooks for including these two poets.

Thanks, Garry!

Back when this blog was an anonymous experiment in posting snippets of execrably bad automatic writing, I wrote these lines, which I've subsequently tried to fit into a couple of different manuscripts as a sort of free-floating quotation or footnote or something that's not quite up to a poem, but which don't seem to fit anywhere:

Climates facilitate ennui.

Here and here and herer.

Which is a shame, because I really like these lines. My writing is often referred to as Steinian, and that's not always true, but I think these lines are definitely Steinian. There's some fascinating grammatical thing going on, that I don't want to explicate because that would be a step down the sad road of being one's own literary critic, and that can't lead anywhere comforting. But I wanted to at least re-post them, if only to validate the time I've spent staring at something I wrote four years ago as somehow productive.

Check out my new(ish) work in the latest issue of The Capilano Review. It's an excerpt from a longer piece called "camp set up done," and it's part of my series of oil and gas industry found language poems, which also include "making hole", published in West Coast Line #39 and "NEWS(and yet)", published in dANDelion a couple of years ago.

Happiness is browsing your own records on the Library and Archives Canada website. I don't what my book will look like, or when it will be out, but I do know its Dewey Decimal number! So, so exciting. I'm such a dork.

If you happen to be a subscriber to the Calgary Herald, you can read this. If you happen not to be a subscriber, well, they don't want your sort reading about me and my poetry adventures. And you thought the internet was a democracy, or at least an anarchy. Ha.

You can take my word for it that it was pretty cool: I got a CanWest-owned newspaper to print random lines of Stein, Kroetsch, Mullen et al., including "Lapwing is, improbably, the name of a bird. Titmouse. Goatsucker." from Robert Kroetsch's Excerpts from the Real World. Unfortunately I discovered that speaking intelligently off the cuff about why I like particular books of poetry is not my forte. Oh well, at least I take a half decent picture on very little sleep, no breakfast, no time to prepare and not necessarily having even brushed my hair (pictures in print version only).

!!Optimism!!

A manuscript must be really good if it takes over two years just to reject it!

check it out check it out check it out

West Coast Line kindly published some of my CHUMP poems in their brand new issue #46. It's not up on the website yet, so you'll have to go find it and look at it because the cover art is A-mazing!

Thanks, West Coast Line!

I have two new chapbooks out:

Dirty Work from the mysterious NO Press. I haven't seen this one yet, but I'm very excited about it. You can be too.

and

The writing that should enter into conversation from rob mclennan's above/ground press.

Thanks rob and mysterious NO Press person!

Slightly shocked today to see the Post-Prairie anthology all spiffy on display at the university book store. I've had the experience a few times of seeing a publication I'm part of in a bookstore before receiving my contributor copy in the mail, and I always have the same reaction. Curiosity, pride, etc. but also a horrible cringing regret, a desperate desire to take the poem back, rewrite it, erase it, burn it. There's such a crushing finality to words on paper. I tend to have to acclimate myself to publication -- leave it around the house for a while, flip through it a bit, read some of the other contributions -- before I can stand to look at my poems in print.

It's an interesting and absurd neurosis: I hate not being published, but whenever I am published, I feel like I've misrepresented myself.

Anyway, the anthology looks amazing, I can't wait to read it, and I am thrilled to be part of it. Go buy.

It's bad enough I haven't been able to get a book published; now I have to turn down invitations to read in Canada Council sponsored reading series because I'm not a "professional author." Whatever. My earnings this year alone from writing poetry will amount to well over $500. That's almost a month's rent! Come on.

Why does the Canada Council draw such arbitrary lines? Like it matters if some publisher puts out 700 copies of my manuscript and a few Chapters in urban areas store a couple copies for a year or so before they're remaindered. My readings would not attract any more or less people. Arts communities are not marketplaces. There's no more value in a professional than in an amateur poet; the distinction is absurd.

I'd like to completely reject the Canada Council's bourgeois value system that valorizes capitalist production. But I'm steeped in the same value system. Publication is the only measure of success. Awards confer worth. Reading series are sullied by unpublished amateurs. The suburbs are a great place to grow up.