a teacozy is a sometimes

Street-Po

2012-01-18T11:40:00.003-05:00

Six Words

2012-01-18T11:26:00.001-05:00

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.
-Ernest Hemingway

Hey Girl... Library

2011-12-07T00:12:00.003-05:00

Just learned about "Hey girl. I like the library too," which is kind of super awesome. Here's my take on it :P

LetraSwing

2011-11-13T23:39:00.003-05:00

unfortunately the photos i took were all a tad blurry,
so i don't recommend enlarging the video.
otherwise... enjoy!

8th Ave

2011-11-12T12:40:00.000-05:00

A History of Button Collecting

2011-11-10T22:56:00.004-05:00

Poem available in standard typesetting in the short collection A History of Button Collecting from above/ground press.

Printed and bound versions of photographed poem available upon request. Message @helenhajnoczky, @obscuralucida, or comment here for details.

intTwitterview with G'morning Poetry

2011-11-09T15:21:00.004-05:00

G'morning Poetry asked me a few questions via twitter...

Q1: 2D vs 3D poetry?

a nether world of two-dimensional heroes and villains. Solid, concrete, sculptural, perspectival, stereoscopic, stereographic, stereo, pop-up, vivid, realistic, rounded, concrete.

Q2: Eating a poem sounds like ____?

On top of spaghetti, All covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball, When somebody sneezed.

Q3: Wint?

Winthrop waits, wades winterbournes waist-high, wet with wintry mix, winces when wintersweet, when winter jasmines wilt, whittles wintergreen whistles, wolfs winter melons with winter savoury, wastes when wintertide wanes.

Q4: If you could kill any poem...?

Then I would be a palimpsest.

Magyarazni: A

2011-11-06T01:15:00.004-04:00

I made the 'A' visual poem for Magyarazni this evening, which will go with a poem about the English and Hungarian lullabies my parents would sing to me when I was little (the Hungarian ones involved dancing peppers and a vengeful monkey pooping in the eyes of a chicken, hence the bird motif. Seriously.) I like the front, but am actually kind of fond of the bleed-through on the back of the poem too. Hmm.

derek beaulieu's Seen of the Crime

2011-11-02T17:14:00.005-04:00

As November rolls in and the days become shorter and cooler, cafés and pubs around town are packing up their lawn furniture. This is precisely why you should grab yourself a copy of derek beaulieu’s seen of the crime post-haste. The slim volume of essays on conceptual and experimental poetics is the perfect book to read on a patio, the short chapters punctuated by people watching and sips of your favourite beverage, or to debate over a pint or two with your best poet pals. Rather than being heavy with citations or hemmed in by monomaniacal scholarly literary analysis, beaulieu’s text allows each chapter to breathe, looking at each individual poet discussed, from Goldsmith to Bisset to Bergvall, on their own terms. The lack of oppressive theme makes seen an excellent book to push against. Since the chapters are not shackled to each other, as a reader, you feel as though you are entering a discussion with beaulieu. By writing in an open, episodic way, beaulieu has created a text that invites us in. Should a certain section leave you skeptical, you need not abandon the book, but continue reading to discover what other subject matter will be covered. This open, episodic construction also make seen an ideal prompt for discussions and debates about the literature that the text covers. The book is a pleasure to read because it infuses contemporary poetry with life. In the second chapter of the book, beaulieu discusses his own obsession with bookstores and building his book collection, framing seen as an exposé of one writer’s individual tastes and inspirations. Though beaulieu discusses literature that is conceptual, impersonal, and non-expressive, this framing of seen seems to emphasize the role of the reader as thinker, critic, and creator. This is a poet’s book about poetry. Again, the episodic chapters convey how individual writers build their creative practice in response to texts they admire and writers who inspire them. seen of the crime is a wonderful example of how exciting and inspiring debating and discussing poetry can be, and is sure to leave you ready to write. In a world of closed scholarly texts debating the minutiae of worn out canonical texts, seen is a lively and varied exploration of contemporary poets and their practice. I’m a friend of derek’s, and reading seen of the crime is uncannily like sitting down for a coffee or pint with him. Every time I see him, he inevitably produces at least four or five chapbooks or books by authors I’ve never heard of, each as exciting as the last, and all readily applicable to my own writing practice. beaulieu not only loves reading and writing, but also sharing the books that energize him. Sit down with seen of the crime over a coffee or pint, and I guarantee beaulieu’s enthusiasm will leave you pumped about reading and writing. The first piece in the book may beg, Please, no more poetry, but the book leaves me thinking, Please, more books about poetry like this one.

Nanton, AB

2011-11-01T12:11:00.001-04:00

The Readymade and the Female Gaze

2011-11-01T09:10:00.003-04:00

Duchamp is famous for taking typical objects from everyday life and changing their meaning by putting them in the gallery space. The first, and by far the most famous, was the urinal, “Fountain.” However, for most women, there is nothing everyday about a urinal. There are a number of instances where a woman might see a urinal… you could be cleaning the bathroom at work, have accidentally walked into the men’s washroom in search of the women’s washroom, have darted in to bypass a long line for the ladies’ room, or have snuck in to engage in some elicit act.* In each case, there is something forbidden about the experience of seeing the urinal. Women only see urinals when they have accidentally stumbled somewhere they are not supposed to go, when we are flouting convention, or when they are working and, I wager, meant to be invisible (this could also include any women who work at urinal factories). This is a significant facet of “Fountain,” since it means that men and women are likely to view the piece in radically different ways. After all, Duchamp could have chosen a toilet, which westerners of both genders use, but he didn’t. While men may find a urinal banal and everyday, for women the object has a certain aura of the unusual and unfamiliar, the elicit and forbidden. For women, the mechanical reproduction of urinals has not made them ubiquitous or bland, because urinals are still displayed in a space where we are forbidden to go. The urinal in the gallery then becomes a commentary on the different relationships of men and women to art. Do women, formerly excluded from the world of high-art, find art more curious, appealing, or thrilling than men do, since men are allowed to participate? Is modern art just a male pissing contest that women are supposed to be impressed by since they themselves piss differently? There are many possible interpretations, but in any case, the gendering of objects is significant when considering the implications of the readymade.

* There are also a few other conditions worth mentioning… Today, there are gender neutral bathrooms available in certain buildings and bars, though these are still relatively rare, and I’m not sure how many have urinals or not. To this list we might also add those who are passing as men and prefer to use the men’s washroom, though this may not be an appropriate assessment since these individuals may not wish to identify as women. Finally there are doohickeys designed to let women pee standing up, but as far as I can tell, these aren’t terribly popular.

Albertaaaaaahhh

2011-10-09T21:00:00.000-04:00

Copy Cataloguing

2011-10-04T21:00:00.003-04:00

Hey! There's my book... oh, nope, this one's by Helen Hajnozcky. Looks like a pretty good read, though.

?! Calgary Chapbook Call for Submissions

2011-10-01T19:07:00.000-04:00

Calgary has a great poetry scene, and ?! Press would like to celebrate it with a poetry chapbook! If you write in/about/around Calgary, or if you used to, or will be doing so in the near future, send a submission of no more than 5 pages with contact info and a short bio to magyarazni@gmail.com by December 1, 2011. Chapbook will either be print or online, depending on how things shake out and what kind of submissions are received, and will appear by March 2012. Previously published material and simultaneous submissions are welcome, so long as it's okay with your other publisher. Interpret 'poetry' as loosely as you like. Submissions don't have to be about Calgary, so long as you've had some connection to the city in some way at some point, or the work can be about Calgary if you aren't connected to the city. Tell your friends/enemies/students/random people you meet on the C-Train, and happy poeting! :)

Magyarazni: Call for Hungarian-Canadian Participants

2011-09-24T22:06:00.004-04:00

New Project! Magyarazni

2011-09-21T15:09:00.009-04:00

I'm gearing up to start my next book, a project called 'Magyarazni,' and today I hit research pay dirt with this book of Hungarian Folk Art, as well as a few others I scooped up at the library. I'm going to be making 44 visual poems, one for each letter of the Hungarian alphabet, all of which will be based on Hungarian folk patterns used in embroidery, painting, carving, etc. Though I originally proposed to draw the poems in my funding application (oh yeah, I got funding! zomg!), I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't just embroider them, though I'll probably just stick to designing them for now and start stitching when I'm sure I can complete everything on time and within budget.

Speaking of budget, I am mulling over the issue of colour. While certain Hungarian embroidery is all red or red and black, other styles use a rainbow of bright colours. Though I originally planned on doing all black and red, I've begun to think it might make the book more visually interesting if I also did pieces in the brighter style. My one worry is that it might be more pricey to print books in full colour rather than just the black and red, and that the colour might somehow hurt my chances of publishing the finished product. And yes, it has to be formatted as a book rather than an art show because the visual poems are to be accompanied by written poems and interviews. Anyway, I'll probably just start messing around, see which designs work best, and maybe sketch them all out with a black outline and copy these sketched to do one set multi-coloured, one set black and red.

I also picked up this long canvas and some red, white, and black paint. I plan on doing one big design including the entire alphabet, maybe with a border of rovasiras. I'm not entirely sure how I'll use this piece in the book, maybe for the cover page, maybe at the end of the poetry section before the interviews, but in any case I'm pretty excited to get started.

Highway 9

2011-08-28T01:47:00.003-04:00

i shot a hard-drive worth of stuff in alberta on trips to banff, head smashed in, and drumheller, and am finally starting to think about what to use it for. hurtin' driving songs for Highway 9 seem like a good place to start. there's no sky like alberta sky.

Hopeless

2011-08-28T01:37:00.005-04:00

was thinking about repeating footage the way chords are repeated in a song. cinema and music? repetition and progression? matthew good band or matthew good?

The Black Hole

2011-08-22T20:23:00.003-04:00

(I don't normally complain into the blog-void, and won't be making a habit of it but... this one is lit-centric. Back to your regularly scheduled poems next week.)

If you’re feeling depressed, getting caught in a torrential downpour on a bike, wearing bell-bottoms, and being forced to wait for 45 minutes in a 24h Tims in the middle of the night, sopping wet, with no book or other distraction is not exactly the best way to cheer yourself up. As I watched the rain hammer the pavement yesterday, the showers eclipsing the university across the street--the university through which I just completed my MA in English--I had nothing to do but wallow. I’ve wanted to attend this university since my first year of undergrad. I’ve been dreaming of getting a graduate degree for years. I should feel the same elation I felt when I got my acceptance letter. Instead I feel like I’ve been kicked in the gut.

At first I thought this was the result of no one deeply connected to either me or the project being around. My family isn’t here, my partner is out of town, my supervisor was out of town, and all my old friends are far away. But that wasn’t it. Many classmates were around to wish me well—new friends made me dinner or bought me beer or shots of jäger. Though turning my paper in to a mail slot rather than my supervisor was a tad anticlimactic, this vacuum in my chest was more than anticlimax. Complaining via inebriated text message to an old friend, and fellow newly-minted English Master, I whined that I felt like I was having a post-degree identity crisis. He replied, “I know the feeling… like a black hole where the project used to be.”

Where once every moment could potentially have been dedicated to your research, you now have nothing urgent to complete. No one force swallowing all your intellectual energy. It’s more relaxing, but it’s also arresting. What do I do with my time? Who am I without my work? I try to keep my hand in the creative writing community, so I have that to fall back on, but for the past seven years, I’ve either been an English major, or I’ve been saving my pennies to continue being an English major. Two summers in undergrad I spent taking classes or doing research projects. During my year off last year, I still took an English grad class. For the first time in my adult life, I am not planning on any more English classes. For the first time, my work has not been a step towards something else, it has been an end.

This sterility is to some degree self-imposed. I didn’t apply for any PhD programs. I did not enjoy working alone for days on end, not speaking to anyone for days at a time when friends were busy. I found doing nothing but research lonely, and thought signing up for four years of solo research wouldn’t be a good choice for me. I was also unable to face down the poor job prospects for English PhDs, and though I know a few young doctors and even MAs who’ve secured tenure track positions, I couldn’t convince myself that I’d be as fortunate, or that I would be able to work hard enough to make myself an attractive candidate. I didn’t know if I wanted to teach, I didn’t want to have to move wherever I got a job. I didn’t want to feel lonely, but now that’s how I feel. I’m not sure if I’d be happier if I was starting a PhD. I do know it’s been in the back of my mind since my first week of undergrad, and even as I realized that it probably wasn’t right for me (at least not right now), it’s been a hard idea to shelve. About half the conversations I have with other English MAs devolve into me explaining why I don’t think I’ll do a PhD. Doth I protest too much? Maybe, maybe not.

In the end, I think the loss I’m feeling comes from expecting too much of the experience. I am now as educated as many of the writers and thinkers I’ve looked up to for years, but, as was the case with other educational experiences, it’s hard for me to note exactly how I’ve changed. I had a great year with challenging classes and I learned a lot about my specific research topic as well as a range of other genres and eras of literature, but I don’t feel like I'm all that much smarter than I used to be. I’m not confident that I am now on par with those MAs I’ve been looking up to. Though I was not naïve enough to think that this degree would somehow change my whole life, I thought the world would feel a little different at the end of grad school. It doesn’t feel that different. I worked hard for years to get into grad school, to get a grant to pay for it. Where do I direct that energy now? More importantly what new goals do I set myself? What do I hope for or look forward to now? If being an English major defined me, how do I define myself now?

English lit has been the great love of my life, and even though I ended it, it still isn’t easy to say goodbye. While I hope we’ll get back together some day, for the time-being I’ll be rebounding with library sciences. I didn’t choose an MLIS out of fear, but because while I was unsure that I wanted to be a prof, I was certain I wanted to be a librarian. So while I’ve chosen something more practical, and in many ways, better suited to me than a PhD in English, it’s impossible for me not to think about what me and English could have been. In a few years I might come back to it, but for now, I just have to wait for that black hole to close up. And, you know, whine into the internet.

Cartoon Insights

2011-08-11T10:30:00.003-04:00

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends. -Ego, from Ratatouille

Glenmore Benches

2011-07-21T13:03:00.003-04:00

Glenmore Park in Calgary, Alberta, is more than just a tract of land through which to run a highway. Many Calgarians love this park, and there is no better evidence of this love than the benches that dot the cliff overlooking the reservoir.

saveglenmorepark.com

Set to music by Brahms. My apologies if I have mispronounced your name or one that you recognize.

Dedicated to my mom and sister.

(Update: Ha--sorry I just figured out how to make this not autoplay. You could watch it anyway, though ;) )

Like a Needle into Paper

2011-07-19T01:08:00.005-04:00

"You Fit into Me" by Margaret Atwood. White thread on red construction paper.

Today...

2011-07-14T22:47:00.002-04:00

...was an awesome poetry day. Also, I saw this meme, which is so awesome it reinforced the awesomeness of the day :) Seal of Approval!

In Their Own Hand

2011-07-08T16:45:00.003-04:00

I'm working on my major research project for my MA, which is partly about our assumptions about the textual lives of women living in England in the late middle ages. I printed out a couple pages of my essay, but running out of ink, my printer gave me this. Fitting since I'm writing about how history has obscured the agency of women writers. My printer is either agreeing with me, or messing with me.

A Prick and a Stitch

2011-07-06T00:59:00.005-04:00

Indeed a sample is not a sample... I can't quite seem to snap a photo of this that makes the colour look right--the pink should be brighter and the paper more cream-coloured, but no combination of scanner, flash, or lighting seems to capture this. Oh well. Anyway, it's embroidery thread on a sheet of beige construction paper. Poem 'A Handkerchief' by Gertrude Stein, from Tender Buttons.

Eat Your Words

2011-06-26T14:33:00.003-04:00

Sandwich sugar-cookies with raspberry jam.

Movie for a Rainy Day

2011-06-24T18:20:00.002-04:00

My latest movie, "A Broom in a Room." Shot in Calgary, AB.

It represents like, childhood or something

2011-06-18T12:28:00.004-04:00

Stencils and crayons. Had to use the crayons before they melt in the Montreal heat :P My mom is an elementary school sub and worked in a Calgary school once where it was so hot in June that the crayons melted. It's a fact.

Corset Teapot!

2011-06-11T11:33:00.002-04:00

As seen at Heritage Park.

Oh Henry?

2011-06-07T11:55:00.002-04:00

Oh Henry's Laundromat in Calgary, AB.

Pooka Press Readings

2011-05-30T17:01:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, derek beaulieu and I were among the poets who read at the Pooka Press Pub Crawl reading, hosted by fillingStation in Calgary's Riley Park. Here are some videos of the reading... enjoy!

I, An Opera Singer... I, An Actress?

2011-05-30T13:29:00.006-04:00

On Friday I went with my family to check out the Early Music Voices performance of Pergolesi’s comedy La Serva Padrona, "where an ambitious maid sets her sights on her master’s affections." The maid attempts to trick her master into marrying her with the help of another servant, played by a well-dressed mannequin.
Both the maid and the master sang to the mannequin, conversing and scheming with him, reporting his comments to the audience. After the piece was done and the group was preparing to sing a piece by Handel, the mannequin was picked up and moved behind a screen, though his hat poked up from behind it, reminding us of his presence for the rest of the performance.

This performance tactic immediately reminded me of George Kuchar's I, An Actress.

Both pieces develop a clear, coherent narrative despite only having one character speak, exploiting the mannequins not only for comedic effect, but also allowing the audience to actively participate in the construction of the story. The performance of La Serva Padrona also shows how fun and utterly bizarre older works of art can be.

ACAD Grad Show

2011-05-28T11:28:00.004-04:00

If you're in Calgary, today is your last chance to check out the ACAD Grad Show. I went a few days ago and it is definitely worth a visit. The show includes everything from jewelry to film instillation, photography to crocheted sculpture, and the wide variety of mediums and approaches makes it a really engaging and surprising experience.

I forgot to jot down the artist who made this piece. If you know the artist's name, let me know!

Ink Melts

2011-05-14T13:24:00.003-04:00

I've done so many of these coloured-in visual poems in the past week that I'm starting to lose feeling in the tip of my thumb where the pencil rests. The visual poetry for this project is almost done, though, so it's worth it... and I'm sure by tomorrow my thumb will be ok :P I now have the 26 large Alpha-Seltzer letters, the Kaleidoscope poem, and 8 pieces using the whole alphabet in the font you see above. I still want to make two more poems to go with the Kaleidoscope one, three more of these ink splatter ones, one more in this small font, and three for the medium and large fonts I used in the project. So, 35 down, 12 to go. Whew! Luckily it's gloomy and rainy in Montreal today, so it shouldn't be hard to stay indoors and work. And by work, I mean colouring. While watching tv. Ha.

Kaleidoscope

2011-05-10T14:33:00.002-04:00

felt pen and watercolour, 9x12"

Alpha-seltzer

2011-05-07T12:36:00.003-04:00

Terrible visual poetry humour:
Me, choosing a letter to put on this blog, "I like U."
My boyfriend, "Aw, I like you too!"

Does Size Matter?

2011-05-05T15:30:00.028-04:00

For poetry month, Christian Bök wrote a three part discussion of the Text Festival, currently underway in the UK. In his last post, Bök tell us that the curator of the Text Festival:

Tony Trehy observes that, because many practitioners of visual poetry compose their work on computers for publication online, many poets have not considered the aesthetic procedure for display of such work offline, especially when presented within the context of a gallery—and in fact, many contributors have simply submitted their work to him in the form of electronic files for output without stipulating the media for production or the scale for exhibition (as if any page, at any size, might do). I find this fact surprising, given that practitioners of visual poetry often take pride in their concerted attention to the “materiality” of language itself (but then again, such digitization of language may have caused these artists to think that such “materiality” has simply become an afterthought, taking whatever forms or media might be demanded by occasion, once the work leaves the ethereality of the Internet).

This observation caught me a little off guard because I haven’t really spent much time considering the physical size of my visual poetry. Unconsciously, however, I have been operating under a few constraints or assumptions that I think help me respond to the issues that Bök’s post raises.

At first I wondered if this inattention to the size of vispo pieces might have something to do with the relationship of visual poetry to written poetry and traditional books. I think of my own visual work as poetry, and often imagine it presented in book-form rather than in a gallery space. As a result, I assume a sort of rectangular, average book-sized presentation, ordered with one page after another. This is the case for the largest project I’ve undertaken, Tight-Lacing (I swear I’m finishing it this summer, I don’t want to talk about it, anyway…) which is produced on the computer.

An example of a poem from the project. See more online in Matrix, or in Speechless on UBU.

The visual poems are based on Victorian corset advertisements originally published in magazines and newspapers, which in their original form were fairly small. The visual work is also accompanied with written constraint-based poetry, however, which has allowed my to give several public readings of the project. For these readings we projected the poems on large power-point screens, so that the audience could take them in while I read the constraint-based poetry aloud.

Photos taken at fillingStation's 2009 Calgary Blow Out Festival, and at the 2010 August Flywheel Reading Series.

The work has also been presented in a gallery as part of the Edmonton poetry festival, and for this show the poems were printed on a 9 and 1/2X12” sheets and then framed, though I must admit I let the organizers choose the size of the presentation.
I think all three types of presentation work well for this project, the book, the screen, and the framed prints. While I hope to have the final project published in a book, I think creating the images on the computer gives them a certain malleability that makes them more dynamic. They can go from the page to the screen to the gallery without much effort, and allow me to present the work in the most engaging possible way depending on the event. Personally I spend most of my time looking at the project on my computer screen, but I really don’t intend it to be viewed that way, just as I’m sure many artists don’t intend for their work to be shown in the chaos of the studio or workshop where they made it.
Despite not intending Tight-Lacing to be viewed on a computer, some of my current work is intended for the computer screen. Lately I’ve been experimenting with making visual poetry films.

This too is a kind of response to visual poetry as it relates to written poetry and books. Cinema, like traditional writing, moves the audience through time as they experience the piece, something I find books of visual poetry, even though they are in book form, don’t necessarily do. Some visual poets are interested in stripping the characters of their meaning, and the temporality of writing seems to be stripped along with it, sometimes intentionally and sometimes not. I’m interested in how stripping meaning away can become an event or an action that the audience participates in, rather than a finished product that they are presented with, hence the movies. While the material I’m filming is fairly small, then exists on my small camera screen, I intend it to be viewed full-screen on a computer, or at least the size of an embedded Vimeo movie.

I think messing with scale in this way works with the project of stripping the meaning away. I have to admit it would be thrilling to see the films on a large screen, but until I produce a substantial, coherent work I probably won’t be pursuing public screenings.

Finally, I also draw, stamp, crochet, or otherwise make visual poems. The size of the crocheted poems was based on the material I was working with—the weight of the yarn and the size of the hook.I intend to make a few more projects like this, using mediums that have been traditionally used in women’s handicrafts, and the size will be determined by what was typically employed by women… an embroidered handkerchief, an average sized cookie, etc. In a vaguely related plug, these are interests I also explore in the following stop-motion movie:
That nebulous project aside, I make most of my visual poetry on 81/2X11 paper, sometimes cut to a 81/2X81/2 square.

This finger-print piece was made on a sheet of printer paper using a pen and my pinkie finger dipped in an ink pad. The scale was therefore determined by the size of my finger.

This is a reflection of the financial constraints that I work under. While now and then I’ll treat myself to some more upscale art supplies, these can be expensive, and, like a lot of students, I don’t have a lot of spare cash.

These poems were each made on better quality 9X12" watercolour paper and drawn using watercolour pencils, but the pencils were actually a gift from my wonderful art-student sister. You can follow her and her photos on twitter.

Poetry lends itself to brokenness, in a lot of ways, which is one of the beautiful things about it (this position is sort of stolen from Audre Lorde’s essay “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Social Difference”). Even if you’re broke and worn to the bone working several jobs, you can still write a haiku on a scrap of receipt paper from the till you operate—you can still find time on your break to pen a short free-verse poem. This is the lovely thing about poetry—while it’s often considered a bourgeois art form, it’s really the most available form of artistic expression. All you need is some sort of writing implement and a surface to scribble on. This holds true for visual poetry as well. While you can make it using lots of time and expensive computer programs or materials, you can also grab a pencil, a sheet of paper, and you’re ready to go.

This piece was made from a piece of paper I already had and a sheet of Letraset I found in my parents' basement.

I’d like to think that working with readily available materials is not a mark of laziness or lack of forethought, but evidence of the democratic availability of visual poetry. So, I think size does matter when it comes to visual poetry. It can matter in terms of making an engaging presentation, or in terms of reflecting the content of the visual poem. Finally, the size of visual poetry can even be a political statement in itself—a refusal to let poverty or the pressures of work and life silence you.

This is from my ongoing project of Hungarian folk-art visual poems.

Just in case...

2011-05-04T22:00:00.005-04:00

I'm working on a vispo project that includes this alphabet--each sheet is actually 9X12" and done in watercolour pencil. I'm about to spray them all with water so they melt, but after spending days colouring the letters in, I thought I'd post a picture of all my work before I wreck 'em... though they should look even better afterward.

[?&!]

2011-05-03T03:06:00.001-04:00

"Democracy teaches hard lessons, and we must learn them all," Micheal Ignatieff.

Melt the Meaning Away

2011-04-28T03:18:00.002-04:00

Latest film of an ongoing bigger project I'm working on.

Russell Smith on Canadian Arts and the Harper Government

2011-04-26T10:15:00.002-04:00

Novelist Russell Smith's succinct discussion of Harper's position on arts funding.

I'm "in the arts," and I'm an ordinary Canadian. I don't appreciate my Prime Minister insinuating that I'm not part of my country, and I don't appreciate my Prime Minister insinuating that "ordinary working people" don't have the capacity to enjoy art. It's insulting to all Canadians, and it's worth considering the impact this attitude towards "artists" and "working people" may have on you as an individual, and us as a country.

Printer Poem

2011-04-25T11:20:00.000-04:00

The printer is a minimalist visual poet.

H. Wright Photographer: Stop-Motion Film

2011-04-19T15:15:00.000-04:00

My final film project for school. The box of photograph are from an album that belonged to my great=grandmother, yet no one can remember who these people are.

Alphabet Shelf

2011-04-19T07:15:00.000-04:00

Inspired by Hollis Frampton's Zorn's Lemma--photos of books on my shelf.

Stop Motion Embroidery

2011-04-11T23:07:00.001-04:00

i've made an embroidery stop motion movie, and this is the finished product. three days of embroidering and i only stabbed myself three times :P on a weird note, my camera has face recognition and registers the stitched figures as people. i'm not sure if that's cool or creepy.

Study Music

2011-04-06T22:01:00.000-04:00

I've had three presentations this week (!), totaling about 30 pages of writing in the last five days, and Sur Sudha's Images of Nepal is keeping me glued to the computer. It's upbeat and soothing, cheerful and calm, and will keep you happy while typing.

Also, this mix:
Digable Planets -- Rebirth of Slick
Amy Winehouse -- You Know I'm No Good
Joe Strummer -- Mondo Bongo
The Breeders -- No Aloha
Bow Wow Wow -- Fools Rush In
The Pixies -- Where is My Mind?
Massive Attack -- Inertia Creeps
Muse -- Time is Running Out
The Distillers -- Drain the Blood
Tegan and Sara -- Knife Going In
Rocky Fortune -- Pack a Day
Matthew Good Band -- Symbolistic White Walls
Kathleen Edwards -- Back to Me
Remote Kid -- Fucking for the National Team
Martha and the Muffins -- Swimming
Cake -- Never There
Lily Allen -- Smile
Ariane Moffatt -- Montréal
Ani Difranco -- Swim
Kings of Leon -- Milk
Feist -- Gatekeeper

Fail safe study music.
Happy Academic April! :S

Nyelv: Digital Flicker

2011-03-18T00:30:00.000-04:00

Response to Paul Sharits' T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G.

More thoughts on structural film and creating digital flicker over at my class blog.

Mannequins

2011-03-17T11:10:00.001-04:00

Mannequins from Helen Hajnoczky on Vimeo.

A response to Constance Beeson's film "Women," which is unfortunately not available online.

Musings on Women, Experimental Poetry, and Science

2011-03-08T23:50:00.000-05:00

UW is a male dominated campus, I wonder why… oh, let's see, UW is in the top for Engineering, Math, and CS, given that most girls doesn't want to give the effort and sacrifice needed to go through the Engineering or Math program at UW, you are going to bitch and cry that the university is male dominated? Really? So if you want a female dominated campus, try "Bryn Mawr College".

I keep getting two calls for submissions sent to me, the first from dANDelion’s upcoming performance/MACHINE issue, the second from The Incongruous Quarterly’s upcoming Science issue. This highlights two things for me. One, I’ve got nice writer friends who keep me in the loop, and two, it’s assumed by many that if you’re into experimental poetry, you are surely geared up to write about computers, math, and science. This assumption interests me, and I am becoming increasingly curious about the gender implications of the increasing popularity of computer, math, and science as subject matter in experimental writing (before exploring this topic it might be good to note that both these magazines are edited by women at the moment, and only one of the guest editors for TIQ’s special issue is male). There are two reasons I think the seemingly neutral subject matter actually carries a lot of gender baggage. The first reason has to do with the place of women in computer sciences, engineering, sciences, and math, and the second reason has to do with women’s alienation from their bodies.

At 25, I am old enough to be of a generation that was told, or at least encouraged to think, that men and boys are better at math and science than women and girls are. This kind of thinking was promoted by teachers and students alike, and continues to have a lot of purchase in lay conversations about the topic. Of course studies demonstrate that this is not actually true, but still, that’s the climate I have always lived in, one where science and math are male spheres. Women continue to be under represented in these areas of study in universities and to earn less when working in related industries. A woman friend and gamer recently posted this link on facebook, which is a good example of the abuse, sexism, and misogyny women face when trying to participate in a wide variety of non-academic, non-professional online communities surrounding computers, gaming, and programming, etc. Despite the talent and passion that many women have for science, math, engineering, and programming, they are still excluded or berated in academia, the workforce, and online. I’m not really going to unpack this, or even begin to speculate about the social forces that contribute to this climate. It sucks, and since I am not a woman working in any of these areas I have no idea what it’s like nor any suggestions about what women working in these areas need.

I am, however, an experimental poet. As someone who has never been all that good at math or science, I resent being told, and yes I have been explicitly told, that as a writer, I must be interested in these things. The subtext of this is that if you aren’t interested in these things other people will not be interested in you and your work. I especially resent this, however, because I don’t think we all started from the same place. Allowing for individual exceptions, of course, boys were told they’re good at math, girls were told they aren’t, and now I’m being told I can’t be a good poet unless I start writing about stoichiometry. Combine all these silly stereotypes together and you’ve got men being predisposed to be better poets.

Of course the calls for submissions don’t suggest this at all, and I don’t suggest that they do. If they had a special issue on quilting or oyster harvesting or mountain climbing it wouldn’t mean that these are the most ideal topics for poetry and that any other subject is inferior. But as math, science, and computer science are increasingly valued in the avant-garde, other things are pushed aside. I don’t think it’s inconsequential that traditionally and currently male-dominated areas of study are being promoted as the most innovative and interesting subject matter for poetry. And of course, there could be/probably are many women interested in writing experimental poetry about math and science. But I do think it’s a noteworthy tension. Would a poetics of knitting stand to have the same success? Can we imagine male poets telling each other that they really must be interested in textiles, nursing, or social work, or some other woman-dominated sphere or activity, to be good poets? I have an extremely difficult time imagining that conversation.

The second tension with the increased poetic interest in science, math, and computers has to do with historical and contemporary perceptions of women’s bodies and their control over them. In her provocative and important essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” Helene Cixous asserts that women should write the body, bringing their physical experience of the world and their lives into their work, since women are always being alienated from their physical experience, and by extension, from themselves. With the Canadian government refusing to include reproductive care as part of its aid in it’s foreign maternal health plan, with many public assertions from lawmakers and enforcers that Canadian women are at fault when they are raped, and with our neighbours to the south debating whether or not to consider miscarriage a crime, I hardly think this is a dead issue. Advertising continues to hack up photos of women’s bodies, anatomizing them for ads for products for men, or smoothing, shrinking, and altering them to sell everything from washing detergent to botox to women. Women all over the world continue to struggle to gain legal autonomy over their own bodies and sexuality, a fight trivialized by news media and ignored by advertising. I think Cixous’ assertions are therefore still incredibly relevant. Women still don’t really get to own their bodies, and we should be able to use our writing to explore this struggle if that’s what we want to write about. The increased popularity of a poetics of alienation in the internet age rubs up against this problem. Being alienated from your body is not particularly new for women. A poetics of math, science, and computers can risk a level of abstraction and alienation from the physical world that rejects women’s continued struggle to appropriate their bodies. I say risks, of course, not that it necessarily does, and can imagine women writers manipulating these topics to suit their needs and to address these issues. I haven’t read anything like that yet, but if someone hasn’t already written it, I'm sure someone will.

There’s no reason that anyone, no matter what their gender identity is, shouldn’t write poetry about math, science, or computers if that’s what they want to write about. However, the recent controversy about the gender inequity in the world of publishing and reviewing makes it clear that we are not all equal players in this game. So if male writers and reviewers think a certain kind of writing is the best, it looks like that’s what’s going to fly. And if a certain genre of writing has a certain amount of built in tensions for women, those problems are only going to be exacerbated in the publishing world.

So, what is the connection between women, science, math, and computers as subject matter, and the poetic avant-garde? What do women who write about these topics think? What do men who write about these topics think? Do male writers and reviewers invested in these topics give credence to writers exploring different topics, especially if those topics have been chosen because of gender politics? Like I said, all this does not HAVE to be a problem. But because of the role of women in math, science, and computer science outside of writing and because of the continued male dominance of the publishing industry, it COULD be a problem.

Is there something to be made of all this, and where do we go from here? I look forward to reading the upcoming issues of dANDelion and The Incongruous Quarterly, and seeing what all the contributors do with the topic.

Snowflakes

2011-03-06T01:38:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Jane Conger Belson Shimane's Odds & Ends.

Partial Evil with Chearfullest Resignation: A List for Miss Beverley

2011-03-01T21:11:00.000-05:00

Partial Evil with Chearfullest Resignation
Or, A List for Miss Beverley

1.
A journey, an argument, an arrival, a sketch of high life,
an assembly, a breakfast, a project, an opera rehearsal,
a supplication, a provocation, a narration.

2.
A man of wealth, a man of family, a masquerade, an affray,
a fashionable friend, a family party, an examination,
a têtê à têtê.

3.
An application, a perplexity, an admonition, an evasion,
an adventure, a man of genius, an expedient, a remonstrance,
a victory.

4.
A complaint, a sympathy, a conflict, an expectation,
an agitation, a man of the ton, a reproof, a mistake,
an explanation, a murmuring.

5.
A rout, a broad hint, an accommodation, a detection,
a sarcasm, a surmise, a bold stroke, a miser’s mansion,
a declaration, a gamester’s conscience, a persecution,
a man of business, a solution.

6.
A debate, a railing, an antique mansion, a rattle, a storm,
a mystery, an anecdote, a conference, an attack, a retreat,
a worry.

7.
A renovation, a visit, an incident, a proposition, a letter,
a discussion, a retrospection, an embarrassment, a torment.

8.
An interruption, an event, a consternation, a perturbation,
a cottage, a contest, a message, a parting, a tale, a shock.

9.
A cogitation, a surprize, a confabulation, a wrangling,
a suspicion, a disturbance, a calm, an alarm, a suspense,
a relation, an enterprise.

10.
A discovery, an interview, a summons, a deliberation,
a decision, a prating, a pursuit, an encounter, a tribute,
a termination.

A list of the chapter titles from Frances Burney's "Cecilia or Memoirs of an Heiress."

Priscilla Uppal's "Winter Sport: Poems"

2011-02-23T14:34:00.000-05:00

Last week was the one year anniversary of the beginning of Vancouver’s Olympic Games, and amid the CTV retrospective montages and renewed media commentary about the tragic death of luger Nodar Kumaritashvili, there seemed to be no better time to finish Priscilla Uppal’s Winter Sport: Poems. During the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Games, Uppal was the first ever writer in residence of Canadian Athletes Now, and Winter Sport: Poems explores that experience through a collection of poems written from numerous perspectives and in a range of styles. The book also includes three essays; an introduction entitled “Dreaming Other People’s Dreams,” and two concluding pieces, “Play Like a Paralympian,” and “The Arctic Games Experience.”

During the Vancouver Olympics, the literary blogs I read were jammed with Canadian writers denouncing the games. The complaints ranged from well-informed critiques to vitriolic rants. Though some artists disagreed with the games because of their negative impact on Vancouver’s large homeless population and because of VANOC’s efforts at censorship, others attacked athletes as shallow and stupid, and denounced the Canadian patriotism that the games inspired, sometimes because it was prompted by sports, and sometimes because people are proud of Canada at all.

In light of this overwhelmingly negative reaction to the games from the Canadian writing community (or at least, those whose blogs I read) I was surprised when several writers recommended that I read Winter Sport: Poems. It seemed peculiar that a community that so disliked the games and sports as a concept would be interested in a book of poetry celebrating those same games and sports, but Uppal’s poems are as lean and masterful as the athletes who inspired them. The book is a fast-paced journey over haikus, around love poems, past abecedarians, through free verse, and off of lists. Uppal approaches her topic from the perspective of the athletes, the spectators, or uses sports as a metaphor for some other unrelated topic. The poems are clean and sharp, and markedly different from anything I’ve read recently. This could be because Uppal’s topic is different. Rather than another book of poetry narrated by a disembodied, contemplative, and passive voice, Winter Sport: Poems is anchored in the material world yet lithe and light, weaving from page to page, topic to topic, with the ease and grace of a skier navigating between moguls. Uppal’s subject is active, and so is her language, making Winter Sport: Poems an engaging and breathtaking read. Though poetry about sports is hardly new, Winter Sport: Poems approaches it from a fresh perspective. The book is devoid of syrupy or masculinized romanticization—it takes risks, it experiments. Winter Sport: Poems made me remember for the first time in a long time the thrill of being in better touch with my body when I had a more balanced and active lifestyle, a physical reaction few books that purport to write the body elicit. Winter Sport: Poems is moving. Its poems move, and it will move you, emotionally, physically, mentally, or in all of these ways.

Uppal’s essays are also challenging. Her introduction highlights the similarities that amateur Olympic athletes and artists share, such as a dedication to a money-sucking career that is only sustainable through ever-dwindling government funding and public support. “Dreaming Other People’s Dreams” challenges the stereotypical boundaries we draw in high school, the jock kids vs the art kids, and points to ways that each group can better understand the other, as well as the benefits that come from that understanding. Halfway through a one-year English MA, I wish there was more discussion of physical health in academia. Academic institutions neglect not only the physical benefits of balancing school with an active lifestyle, but also the ways in which being more active can improve our emotional lives and academic performance. Have a chat with any honours, MA, or PhD student, and you’re not unlikely to find someone who is sleep deprived, living off junk from the cafeteria, who doesn’t have time to plan or cook healthy meals, who is plagued by stress and stress related physical problems, who is frequently ill, and who has no time to exercise or who has to sacrifice study time to do it, causing them to worry. I resent that academic success often means neglecting your health. These issues are rarely discussed and I have only had two professors who ever explicitly addressed them in class (one was also a yoga teacher and the other used to be a nurse), and I’m in year six of my academic adventure. But to wind back into bounds on my topic, Winter Sport: Poems also explores how athletes benefit from getting in touch with their artistic, expressive side. This introduction challenges readers who may be inclined to dismiss athletes or organized sports, asking an audience who considers themselves open-minded to reconsider their attitude towards sports, towards athletes, and towards what they think qualifies as passion and creativity.

Unfortunately, “Dreaming Other People’s Dreams” does not address the negative effects of the games on the B.C. arts community, such as VANOC’s efforts to censor artists before and during the games, or the massive funding cuts to the arts in B.C. that coincided with the Olympics. While these things are not necessarily related to the relationship between artists and athletes, they certainly drive a wedge between us, and it would have been interesting to hear how Olympic athletes interpreted these events. If athletes and artists are similar, then how might we address these issues together? If artists should be open minded and accept athletes as making a contribution to culture, then what responsibility do athletes have when their largest competition railroads the artistic community? Uppal, a creative writing instructor, also asserts that creative writing students who are also athletes bring better stamina and dedication to the difficulties of writing. I think this argument unfortunately perpetuates and us vs. them attitude. Many writers who are not athletes have enormous dedication to their craft, and many of us have non-sport related difficulties in our lives that motivate us and that have taught us how to endure suffering and overcome obstacles. I’m sure athletes make fine creative writing students, but to assert that they’re more motivated or have better perspective than those of us whose main interest is in the literary arts is a bit suspect. It might also be alienating for the many writers who have never been engaged in sports, and who have spent their lives being told, either by our culture or explicitly by individuals, that being athletic is good while being artistic is bad. Asserting that athletes make better writing students seems to strip writers of the one environment where they can expect their contribution to be valued over the normative ideal of competitive athleticism.

Despite the outpouring of aggression towards the Olympics that I mentioned above, when the Paralympics began there was either radio silence, or people posting videos and encouraging messages about the games. While people feel comfortable criticizing able-bodied athletes, they seemed less willing to lambaste hockey players with no legs, or skiers who are blind. Uppal’s essay “Play Like a Paralympian” also asks us to reflect on what we consider to be a tolerant attitude towards individuals with physical disabilities. Uppal, through her own experience of her father’s disability, articulates how paralympians do not wish to be considered charity cases or to be congratulated for making a good effort. These are elite athletes with remarkable physical skills and dedication to their sport, and reading Uppal’s essay it suddenly seemed patronizing that so many denounced the Olympics but applauded the Paralympics. “Play Like a Paralympian” was touching and thought provoking, like the rest of Uppal’s muscular book. The final piece, “The Arctic Games Experience,” summarizes the competitions and atmosphere of these games, which I had never even heard of before.

Priscilla Uppal’s Winter Sport: Poems is a compelling and provocative look at the Olympics that challenges us to rethink the relationship between sports and the arts. Since Uppal hopes to be the writer in residence at the upcoming summer 2012 Olympics in London, I look forward to seeing how her next book on the subject of sports will continue to push literary boundaries.

Castle

2011-02-22T11:27:00.000-05:00

screenshot of episode of castle, played before it stopped downloading.

Film Class! :)

2011-02-17T01:13:00.000-05:00

Not much time to write about poemy things lately, but school has given me a chance to make these movies, each one a response to an avant-garde film from the 60s/70s that we watched in class. For more details about the movies that inspires these ones, visit my class blog.

UofC It Gets Better

2011-01-23T12:22:00.000-05:00

I'm proud that my alma mater is participating in It Gets Better, is proclaiming it on their homepage, is committed to making the University of Calgary campus a safe and accepting place, and that they are encouraging research accordingly. If you attend the UofC and want to get involved, check out Queers on Campus.

New Year's Day

2011-01-02T23:24:00.000-05:00

everyone wants a picture of the angels. happy 2011!

Silver Car Interview

2011-01-02T00:36:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-24T04:25:00.000-05:00

Experience Mobile Mobile from James Théophane Jnr on Vimeo.

Still a Vowellable Form

2010-12-22T03:29:00.001-05:00

Constraint-based literature is often discussed in terms of exemplars. After a form has been elegantly and expertly executed, it is often set aside and treated as though it has been completely exhausted. While Oulipian Georges Perec’s La disparition takes the lipogrammatic cake in French, in English it is Christian Bök’s Eunoia that owns the form. It’s almost impossible to imagine a more complete univocal lipogram than Eunoia, to the point that the text constitutes a kind of encyclopaedia or dictionary of lipogramatic words and phrasal tricks for any future writers of lipograms. In this way, Eunoia impresses itself upon all later lipograms, making it impossible to read such poems without recalling this exemplary text. However, JonArno Lawson’s A Voweller’s Bestiary from aardvark to guineafowl (and H) suggests that in constraint-based writing an exemplar, no matter how complete, can still be expanded and enhanced.

Sold as a book for children of all ages, A Voweller’s Bestiary is a collection of entertaining poems about animals, each with a different rule taming the poem’s vowels. The book begins with univocal lipograms, such as “Ants and Aardvarks,” where we read how, “An ant’s bad karma/ has blatant drawbacks:/ An ant’s bad karma/ attracts aardvarks” (8). The book then moves on to a variety of other lipogrammatic forms, where the vowels in the title are reproduced in the same order in the text of the poem, for example, in “Opossum,” where, “Opossum’s monotonous stupor/ clouds opossum’s thoughts (36). While the univocal lipograms take on a kind of eunoian tone, especially the U poem, “Stuck-up Gulls Must Trust Dumb Ducks,” A Voweller’s Bestiary still manages to infuse the lipogram with a unique sense of play. The book is full of personalities, events, and adventures that never appear in Eunoia, allowing us to explore another very different world that the lipogram can create.

A Voweller’s Bestiary demonstrates that even if a form seems to have been thoroughly explored, employing it can still lead to new discoveries, and in this case, new lipogrammatic species never before documented. Eunoia shows us how language, no matter how abused and constrained, still strives to communicate, while A Voweller’s Bestiary shows us that language can achieve this in a number of ways. Lipograms that lean too heavily on Eunoia risk being repetitive and redundant, but A Voweller’s Bestiary builds on the exemplary text, constructing a new and engaging world on the foundation Eunoia has laid. This fun book not only introduces us to a menagerie of lipogrammatic creatures, but it also encourages us to release forms back into the wild. Even if a form has been carefully observed and studied in one setting, it could behave entirely differently in a new habitat.

Have Yourself a Very Bookish Christmas

2010-12-14T19:51:00.001-05:00

http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2010/12/book_christmas_tree.html

Processed Exhaustion

2010-12-11T03:11:00.000-05:00

I’ve mentioned this before, but the whole NaNoWriMo thing really intrigues me. I just can’t believe that 30,000 people each managed to write a 50,000 page novel in a month. I am typing this after writing just a 5,200 word essay in 24h, and the thought of continuing to type coherent and persuasive academic prose may be enough to make my eyes bleed. So, I’m curious about the idea just for the sake of the experiment—I want to know how literally tens of thousands of people could manage this.

Contemplating NaNoWriMo has brought me to a question, however. It’s sort of an unproductive question, since the answer is yes, no, or maybe. My question is: Does NaNoWriMo pose a serious problem for any writing that emphasizes the process rather than the product? I’m thinking Allen Ginsberg… I’m thinking Jack Kerouac. Does the whole “first thought best thought” theory hold when it comes up against an army of 30,000 one month novelists? Is sitting down at your typewriter and pounding out a novel in a few days enough to make something like On the Road?

I have a suspicion that the answer is no—the process isn’t enough to make the work a work of genius. If the answer was yes, after all, the NaNoWriMo competition last year would have produced 30,000 works of new, completely important, utterly literary material that we would all be scampering to read and study and dissect and analyse and understand. But that hasn’t happened. Of course, I have had my head stuck in the medieval sand for the last few months studying for my MA, but to the best of my knowledge, the NaNoWriMo-ers have not overrun the literary landscape of English speaking North America yet.

So, why not? If process is everything, this is a pretty extreme process. Like I said, my hunch is that process isn’t enough… that everyone’s first thought is not a literary best thought. I don’t mean to suggest that successful free-writing experiments are only possible through some innate genius. In fact, I’m not really suggesting anything. It really is a question… how important is process, and if process is important, why aren’t NaNoWriMo novels, produced under extreme conditions similar to those of other literary novels, a wild and valid literary success phenomenon? Is it a lack of training? Foresight? Does this writing rely on personal genius for its quality? I don’t know. But it’s weird.

Seriously. 30,000 50,000 word novels in a month. That’s bananas.

writhe more!

2010-12-06T14:03:00.000-05:00

http://www.marriedtothesea.com/archives/2010/Jan/

NaNoWriMo Caveat

2010-12-01T22:06:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago I proclaimed December would be NaNoWriMo month for me... but with about 45 more pages of essay to write by the 10th, I won't be starting my novel until the 11th or 12th... from my parents couch, while eating christmas cookies.

A Word From Our Sponsors

2010-12-01T01:45:00.000-05:00

It's late November--and if you are in any way associated with academia, you too may be living off shawarmas and directing all of your energy into resisting the urge to hide under your desk until your papers either write or grade themselves. If this is the case, you probably remain chained to your computer out of guilt and panic, even if you aren't doing anything productive, just to feel like you're accomplishing something. If that's the case, you may welcome this distraction. Oh did I say shawarmas? I meant yoghurt.

If you need more distracting, you can find more Target Women here.

Calgary Launch!

2010-11-25T01:43:00.000-05:00

I'm super excited to be launching my book at Pages Books in Calgary on December 10th... which accounts for why I'm putting this up three weeks before the event. Yay Calgary! and Pages!

The Short Haul: NaNoWriMo

2010-11-17T11:00:00.000-05:00

Two weeks ago I wrote about my problems tying up my manuscript in a timely fashion. While I’ve been pushing my poetry around with my fork, however, thousands upon thousands of people are participating in NaNoWriMo—or National Novel Writing Month—where participants have to write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I heard about NaNoWriMo too late to consider participating, and besides, as a grad student I am now lacking time to do basic things like laundry and sleeping, so cramming novel writing into my schedule is simply not possible. However, I did have time to pick up Chris Baty’s NaNoWriMo instructional book No Plot? No Problem! A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days, and even read about half of it.

Though I haven’t written fiction since my first year of university, NaNoWriMo intrigues me. Focusing on poetry has paralyzed me when it comes to other genres—I assume I can’t write anything but poetry, and feel almost arrogant delving into fiction without making a serious effort to learn about writing techniques first. I’m also just afraid I can’t do it. I have a hard time dreaming up plots, and I can’t write dialogue to save my life. However, I have two ideas for short fiction projects that I would really like to work on that I have shamefully shelved in some back corner of my brain. Well, no more. In December, I am going to attempt this NaNoWriMo thing.

While I can imagine a number of literary objections to NaNoWriMo, there are a lot of things about the idea that I find exciting, if not genuinely helpful. No Plot emphasizes that the book you will write in a month will probably be doomed to mediocrity, but that it will provide you with a complete first draft you can work on afterwards. A fellow writer who has participated in speed novel writing contests suggested to me that this may be less straight forward than it seems, since once written, changing the direction of the book can prove difficult. Because my project idea is a series of interconnected short stories, however, I’m hoping that I may be able to avoid this pitfall and have an easier time making changes to sections without having to rip up the whole book. Even so, I have accepted that my book will not be great… but I do think working on it will make me a better writer.

Since I heard about the contest and resolved to attempt it, I’ve been excited to work on the stories, and have started to sketch out some details about characters and events I’d like to write about. I feel enthusiastic about the prospect of working on the book. As No Plot suggests, casting off expectations of competence and literary merit have allowed me to stop feeling afraid of fiction, and to approach actually writing it. Overcoming this inhibition is the first step for me to actually learning how to write fiction, and even though this first effort may not turn out well, at least I will have tried. Most importantly, however, I am convinced that writing 1,667 words a day every day in December will improve my writing skills. If practice makes perfect, then NaNoWriMo seems like a valid strategy for a beginning fiction writer.

Finally, No Plot emphasizes that NaNoWriMo will help you finish your book by sending legions of guilt monkeys to harass you should you falter or try to give up after committing to the plan. The book also encourages you to brag widely about your novel writing plans so that shame will force you to write, and that’s why I have written this post. Whether I will produce anything of merit is uncertain, but if nothing else, I hope to join the 30,000 people last year who succeeded in their NaNoWriMo efforts.

Alphamaze

2010-11-16T21:23:00.000-05:00

can you make it through your abcs? :P sorry the pen leaked a bit so... if it looks like it's probably not a solid wall, it probably isn't.
happy mazing!

The Long Haul

2010-11-03T01:00:00.000-04:00

When you first start out, it’s all you think about. It’s so exciting, and you spend every waking moment you can doing it. After a little while, things are still going great. You’ve become more familiar, so it’s not quite exciting as it once was, but it’s nice… comfortable. Everything just clicks naturally. A little more time passes and though you still see why you fell in love, you’re getting a bit tired of the same old problems, the same chores. Even the good times are getting a little predictable. You’re not planning on ending it—you have far too much invested, and after all, you still love it deep down. But you have to find something to get you through the grind. You’re in a long-term relationship… with your poetry manuscript.

I am about two years and six months into a book-length project that is nowhere near finished. I love the project, though, and have every intention of completing it. I’ve invested one and a bit years of school-driven hard-work on the book, and one and a bit years of full-time working and slacking off on the project (though in my defense, I did get other poetry things accomplished over the year). Though I am dedicated to the project, it’s slowly becoming a burden. I feel like I can’t in good conscience start another big, research-based project until I finish this one, but I have a long list of new ideas that I want to dive into. If I start something else, I’m afraid I’ll never return to the book. And like I said, I do love the project, and I really, really want to finish it. Breaking up is not an option.

So how do I make it through? First, a little perspective is helpful. Compared to other authors, 2 ½ years is nothing. Many of my favourite writers have spent 10 or more years on their books. If I want to finish the project and do it well, it may take several more years, a fact I will just have to accept. It’s difficult not to feel slightly discouraged, though, if not impatient, which brings me to my second strategy… time management. I’m beginning to think that setting aside 30 minutes every single day, sick or well, rain or shine, busy or bored to work on my book will mean that in another year when I look back on the project, I’ll be able to see the progress I’ve made. Furthermore, I’ve discovered that working on other little side projects reinvigorates me. Instead of sitting down to work on my book and thinking, “oh, this again,” working on other mini-projects gets me excited about writing, and excited about my book.

The one problem I haven’t entirely overcome yet, however, is the loneliness of working on long project outside of school. Finishing the book means many, many more hours of sitting alone in my office, carving and whittling, sanding and polishing, forming and reforming bits over and over again. Having gotten used to a creative writing program where I spent hours every week discussing my work with my classmates or professors, adjusting to the isolation of writing outside of school has been difficult. Of course I still have writer friends to discuss poetry with, but my lifestyle as a writer has changed forever. I’m not quite sure what to do about this problem. If I’m working on a visual piece I listed to CBC podcasts or put on familiar movies to fill the air, but the written components of my work require less background chatter. I think, ultimately, this is one part of being a post-university writer that I will just have to get used to. Though I love giving readings and chatting up friends about what they’re working on and sharing what I’m writing, and though I love writing itself, I will have to get used to spending more time alone with the book. In most relationships, if your partner required that you abandon your social life in order to stay home alone with them all the time, you would probably consider them controlling and obsessive. If it’s your book that requires this, however, I guess you just have to accept it.

So—how do you keep motivated after years of working on a project? What snags have you hit, and how did you overcome them?

The Medieval Woman: The 80s Margenalia

2010-11-02T10:20:00.000-04:00

My mum picked up a used day book at the thrift store for me because it was full of medieval images of women, which I'm studying in school. It also has writing in it from the original owner up until February of that year. Here's what she left behind.

To Cathy
—I hope 1986 is
your best year yet
—L

101 Dalmations
School Started. Art with Mart.
Laurie left
Grandma Velestuk died. *this entry is crossed out
Staff XmasParty moved to 17th.
Jim left
Grandma died
Xmas Party
left with Mart
Lunch with Dave & Linda
Dinner at the A&W with DRW
Lunch with L&D
Elbow Room with Carole & Dan
to observe drinking behavior.
Scott moved in.
Hockey Game with Mart
Went to the Holy Cross to
visit Vicky Graham. Had Lunch & went
shopping with Dave. Saw Sexual
Perversity in Chicago with Mart.
Little Place for Lunch with
D & L
Ash Wednesday
Visited Vicky
Pancake Thursday
Genie Nominations—no luck.
Laurie came home.
Went out for drinks with
Mart & Carol Hawkwood.
Flowers from Dave.
Vicky at the Sound of Music.
Went to Mart’s. —Carol M,
Simon, John, Nob & Me. 5:30 a.m.
Dave’s interview.
Lunch with Dave, Linda, &
Simon. Shopping with Dave at
Deerfoot Mall.
Lunch with Dave. Shopping at
Chinook. Coldest day on record
for this date. -40ish. Brrr.
Lors I went to Chinook.
Earl’s after work with
Scott
Coffee with Dave, everything is
off until April. hmmm…. we’ll
see what happens here.

Print Font

2010-10-28T23:54:00.000-04:00

this one has my finger prints all over it :P

Cottage Industrial Art- Crocheted Alphabet

2010-10-28T00:26:00.000-04:00

a warmer, cozier visual poetry...

Wrist Splints

2010-10-24T22:37:00.000-04:00

Considering how common illness is, how tremendous the spiritual change that it brings, how astonishing when the lights of health go down, the undiscovered countries that are then disclosed, what wastes and deserts of the soul a slight attack of influenza brings to view, what precipices and lawns sprinkled with bright flowers a little rise of temperature reveals, what ancient and obdurate oaks are uprooted in us by the act of sickness, how we go down into the pit of death and feel the waters of annihilation close above our heads and wake thinking to find ourselves in the presence of the angels and the harpers; when we have a tooth out and come to the surface in the dentist's armchair and confuse his ‘rinse the mouth—rinse the mouth’ with the greeting of the Deity, stooping from the floor of Heaven to welcome us—when we think of this as we are so frequently forced to think of it, it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love and battle and jealousy among the prime themes of literature. Novels, one would have thought, would have been devoted to influenza, epic poems to typhoid: odes to pneumonia; lyrics to toothache.

-Virginia Woolf, On Being Ill

Wrist Splints

ink sting, I flick my pen
nib singed strokes
that flare in icy glyphs
wake frozen phrases
tingling paragraphs
that burn the frigid page
and consume
my frost-bitten wrist

stiff brittle pen
a crumble of words
collapsed nerves
a bundle of ash
I plunge my hand
wrist deep in the wreckage
the eroded sand
that blasts against my skin

broken reservoir
a wash of black silt
bashes letters against
the ragged bed
of ravaged nerves
outcroppings of words
scrape the pen’s flood
of broiling ink

Book Launch!

2010-10-22T00:51:00.001-04:00

Last Letter, Last Word

2010-10-20T10:54:00.001-04:00

On October 11th the New Statesman printed a previously unpublished poem by Ted Hughes which discusses the last time he saw his then estranged wife Sylvia Plath alive. While poking around on the internet trying to track down the full text of the poem, I read the comments following a news article which discussed the discovery. The angry author of the post snidely commented that the publication of this new poem should prove once and for all that Hughes was a good guy and vindicate him from the soap-box feminists who condemn Hughes for driving Plath to her suicide.

The Hughes poem, entitled “Last Letter,” describes Hughes running to save Plath after receiving a letter from her implying that she might kill herself. On that day she is still alive, and he leaves relieved. The poem then goes on to describe how Hughes feels torn between Plath and his mistress, then explores what Plath’s last hours might have been like. The poem concludes with a description of Ted Hughes sitting down to work before receiving a call that Plath has died.

Though the poem is heartfelt and mournful, it doesn’t excuses Hughes from whatever role he played in Plath’s death. While Plath suffered from depression before meeting Hughes, I don’t think most people would be cheered if their philandering husbands left them to live with their mistress. However, that’s not really the point. What bothers me more about Hughes and the publication of this poem is the degree to which Plath’s life and work are mediated to us through Hughes and his work.

Though it is not chic to say so, I am a fan of Plath’s poetry. As a confessional poet, it makes sense that Plath’s work often gets conflated with her biography. However, I think her work has a lot more to offer than just a morbid, voyeuristic look into her life with Hughes and her suicide. This new Hughes poem again frames Plath as Hughes’ troubled wife, from Hughes’ point of view. Whatever harm Hughes may have done Plath in life, her oeuvre is done a disservice when she is repeatedly cast not as a dedicated writer, but as someone’s suicidal wife. That is not to say that “Last Letter” is not an interesting discovery for Hughes fans and scholars, but once again, it seems like he gets the last word.

Mushrooms
by Sylvia Plath

Overnight, very
Whitely, discreetly,
Very quietly

Our toes, our noses
Take hold on the loam,
Acquire the air.

Nobody sees us,
Stops us, betrays us;
The small grains make room.

Soft fists insist on
Heaving the needles,
The leafy bedding,

Even the paving.
Our hammers, our rams,
Earless and eyeless,

Perfectly voiceless,
Widen the crannies,
Shoulder through holes. We

Diet on water,
On crumbs of shadow,
Bland-mannered, asking

Little or nothing.
So many of us!
So many of us!

We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible,

Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies:

We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

Rewriting History: Radical Medievalism

2010-10-07T02:00:00.000-04:00

Conceptual writers spend a lot of time defending writing that is done through a recontextualization or recombination of source texts. Lyric, neo-Romantic, free-verse poetry has become so prevalent that writers who look to other texts rather than their own internal emotional experiences for inspiration or subject matter often face a barrage of criticism as though they were ruining poetry or cheapening human expression. However, there is nothing certain about the way we write, nor is there any style that is more natural than any other. Contemporary lyric poetry is as constructed as any other form, and there is nothing innate about it. In fact, writing by recombining a series of external source texts is nothing new—it is actually a very, very old strategy of writing, though many readers have difficulty accepting this type of writing no matter when it was composed. Medieval writers such as Chaucer borrowed heavily from a variety of texts in order to complete their own works. John Mandeville probably didn’t even exist, and whoever did write The Book of John Mandeville probably didn’t venture much farther than a bookshelf to write this famous travel narrative. Were the authors of these texts cheating the reader and getting away with spectacular acts of plagiarism, or is there something more to this way of writing? When we read, what is it that we most want to get out of the experience? If the point of reading is to learn about individual emotional experience, than lyric, free-verse, neo-Romanticism might be the answer, but I think we can look for something different in other texts. By cutting, pasting, and recombining texts, writers have the opportunity to express something broader and more inclusive than their own personal perception. This type of writing gives us a different, more panoramic view of the world and of writing itself. By reading more, we can learn more…. so why not bring this process to the page and expand existing texts into new ones? If nothing else, the historical precedent is there. My favourite evidence of the intersection of contemporary experimental poetics and medieval writing is Caroline Bergvall’s Shorter Chaucer Tales, particularly Banned in Poland: ‘The Summer Tale.’ Bergvall also draws our attention to the variations between translations and copies of a text in her poem Via, where she lists the first line of various translations of Dante’s Inferno, followed by the names of the translators and year of publication of each of these texts. In Via we see the slippery nature of reading and translation, not dissimilar from the role medieval scribes played when they made minute or drastic changes to texts as they copied them out by hand. Bergvall’s pieces show, among other things, that a readership is always in the process of reinterpreting and reshaping texts, and that nothing about writing is solid… not even old books.

Old Montreal Fall

2010-09-29T09:37:00.001-04:00

Budapest, Szeretlek

2010-09-25T11:43:00.000-04:00

derek beaulieu on How to Write

2010-09-22T11:09:00.000-04:00

In my last post I shared a video of derek beaulieu reading from his book of conceptual fiction How to Write. Using the power of the interwebs, I was also able to ask beaulieu some questions about his new book...

Helen: You’ve called How to Write a work of conceptual fiction. Why do you think of this book as a book of fiction and not poetry? When it comes to conceptual writing, where do you think the line is between the two forms? Does the line even matter?

derek: I considered How to Write a collection of short fiction because—for the most part—the source texts were fiction. I wanted to know how much I could remove from a piece of “fiction” and have it remain “fiction.” I do try and categorize the book as a collection of prose pieces, suggesting that most of the hallmarks of “fiction” (traditionally) are absent from How to Write, and yet I don’t think its poetry.
I don’t know the blurring of the lines between poetry and prose is an issue unique to conceptual writing, I think its endemic to poetry as a whole. That said, Conceptual Writing as a genre I think is more concerned with issues around ‘writing’ than issues around ‘poetry’. Poetry has little to offer outside of poetry itself, writing—on the other hand—is a much more dynamic space. Poetry tends to know its poetry, while writing doesn’t always know its writing.

Helen: Your piece “I Can See the Whole Room… and There’s Nobody in It!” is a collection of all the text from Roy Lichtenstein’s comic book paintings. In your introduction to the piece here in Montreal, you discussed how the estate of Lichtenstein not only sues people who plunder Lichtenstein’s work, but also those who cite the work Lichtenstein cites, saying that no one would use this work had Lichtenstein not introduced them to it. Like many pieces of conceptual writing, your book subverts stringent copyright laws and intellectual property rights. Why do you think this is important? Should writers hoard their content and guard it jealously, or let others steal from their work? What’s at stake? How does this issue in writing comment on our everyday lived experiences in a culture governed by these laws?

derek: I think that in the age of the internet, copyright laws as they currently exist are becoming increasingly obsolete. In fact, as Kenneth Goldsmith argues, if a text does not exist online, it does not exist at all. Our culture is one of constant appropriation and recontextualization. Writers in ostrich-like ignorance of the potential of sharing—as opposed to hoarding—their texts, are ignoring potentially the most important artistic innovation of the 20th century: collage.
What’s at stake? Nothing but your own obsolescence. If you don’t share you don’t exist.

Helen: When you read from your book you explain the strategy you used to write each piece, and in the last pages of How to Write we find a list briefly explaining how each piece was composed. Do you think the work is more meaningful if the audience is given this way in? Is there anything to gain from withholding your sources or compositional strategy in a text like this? Does letting your audience know where you stole your content contribute to the radical political message of the book? Is your artistic theft more meaningful if people know where you stole your lines? Why list the writing methods at the back of the book, and not at the beginning of each poem?

derek: I think that allowing the audience access to the texts through support material, notes and bibliographical references fosters what Goldsmith again refers to as a “thinkership” instead of a “readership.” Knowing that the entirety of the text in How to Write was stolen undermines the idea of artistic genius, and suggests what Perloff now refers to as “Unoriginal Genius.” I included my sources as a nod to my own bibliographical impulses and interest in literary archaeology. Including the citations allows the original texts to slide more readily into an uncanny space of familiar yet not. Craig Dworkin argues that “the test of poetry [is] no longer whether it could have been done better (the question of the workshop), but whether it could conceivably have been done otherwise.” Authors are now judged not by the quality of their writing but of the infallibility of their choices.

Helen: The title piece of your book is, to quote your summary of the piece, “an exhaustive record of every incidence of the words “write” or “writes” in 40 different English-language texts. These texts were picked aesthetically and to represent a disparate number of genres.” Do you see conceptual writing as an organic movement that has grown naturally out of the long and complicated history and interaction of English-language writers through the centuries, or is conceptual writing a sharp and conscious break from literary history? In compiling lines from disparate genres, are you demonstrating that all writers and writing are in it together, or are you subsuming other genres to fuel conceptualism?

derek: I think that Conceptual Writing is the application of theories from the visual arts which have been ignored (or at least under-represented) in the literary arts. Brion Gysin’s dictum that “writing is 50 years behind art” Is accurate in as much as it is sadly underestimating the length of time that writing has ignored the innovations occurring in other art forms. I think that collage and sampling texts is nothing new—even in writing—and I recommend Letham’s article “The Ecstacy of Influence” (here: http://harpers.org/archive/2007/02/0081387 ) for a discussion of the historical precedents for appropriation in writing (Davis Sheilds’ Reality Hunger: a manifesto is another strong argument).
The thing is, when I discuss these issues with my high school students they look at me like I’m a simpleton. For them this is reality; the internet is not something that challenges who we are or how we write it IS who we are and how write.
Writers—being writers—are simply the last to realize the fact.

Helen: Your piece “Cross It over It,” “is a series of pornographic instructions pertaining both to tying a tie and to composing poetry” and gets laughs every time I’ve seen you read it. Is getting dressed in the morning and putting on a tie a type of classist masturbation? Is writing poetry like jerking off? Is writing conceptual poetry a white collar activity? Why is tying a tie or writing a poem so absurdly funny? Is your book jerking off on the reader? Finally, almost no women wear ties, and as instructions for masturbation, this piece could only be useful for those with penises. What does this say about male authorship and the role of women in conceptual writing?

derek: Writing poetry is very much a classist activity, and has been so for a very long time. Poetry is a completely disposable form as it has not remained contemporary. It is the domain of academics and specialists. Is this a bad thing though? If we require nuclear physicists and oncologists and mechanical engineers to have specialized dictions and stay contemporary with the most cutting edge of research and practices, why would we not require that of poetry?
I don’t know that is my place to comment on the role of women in conceptual poetry, though I would point to the work of Sarah Cullen, Emma Kay, M. NourbeSe Philip, Rachel Zolf, Alison Turnbull, Elisabeth Tonnard, Marjorie Perloff, Kate Eichorn (and others) as potential places to begin that exploration.
And lastly: If writing a poem is inherently funny it is because its hard to believe that the author had nothing better to do. It is inherently funny because we still chose an outdated form as a medium for argumentation. If we had something to say would we chose the poem—with its sliver of audience and lack of cultural cache—as the arena to announce that opinion?

How to Write: Reading by derek beaulieu

2010-08-26T15:02:00.000-04:00

On August 21st derek beaulieu gave a reading from his new work of conceptual fiction How to Write at Monastiraki in Montreal. I apologize in advance for the wobbly video... I have a lot of things going for me, but a steady hand is apparently not one of them. If you can get past the trembling screen, though, you'll get to enjoy beaulieu's reading of the first piece from How to Write entitled "Nothing Odd Can Last," a collection of plundered questions about the famous novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. I'll also be interviewing beaulieu about his book, so if you have any questions for beaulieu about this piece or about any other section of How to Write, let me know.

Librarian's Curse

2010-08-22T21:20:00.000-04:00

Hullo—I've just moved to Montreal and haven't had much time to think, much less write something coherent, but in an effort to stave off homesickness I did just watch a documentary about medieval thinking that contained this super-duper librarian curse quote:

"For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying out for mercy, & let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails [. . .] when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever." —Basbanes

I am so totally becoming a librarian after this degree.
Bye! Montreal updates to follow :)

Hungarian Folk Art VisPo

2010-08-05T03:34:00.001-04:00

The Proof is in the Proof

2010-08-04T13:55:00.001-04:00

Ok, admit it. You feel a sense of smug self-satisfaction every time you find a spelling error in a published novel, you laugh until you cry mocking newspaper headlines that say things like, “Thai Ministers Flea in Wake of Violence,” and you question the intelligence of any poet whose book has a really ridiculous spelling error in it. Now, I like ridiculing the ‘fleaing’ ministers as much as the next snob, but I have a deep, dark, terrible secret that you may have already figured out if you’ve been reading my posts regularly… I can’t spell. After I publish a post, my sister will almost always email me to tell me she enjoyed my post, and with a list of the spelling errors I need to go back and fix. Now, not only can I not spell, I’m also in the process of proofing my first book. I cannot go back and hit edit on the book... cue cold sweat. Of course, other eyes have seen the proof and picked out mistakes too, so I’m not the only English major responsible for making sure there are no grievous errors within the pages of Poets and Killers, and I am eternally grateful to my editor and copyeditor for this (not to mention my sister). However, if a few really obvious errors slip through all the proofs and into the book, I’m pretty sure I’m the one everyone is going to think can’t spell—and they would be right. Not only will people think I can’t spell, though, but I’m pretty sure everyone will think this is evidence that I am really, really dumb. When a lot of people spot a spelling error in a classmate’s power point presentation, or in the seminar paper of a fellow student, they immediately assume the person has done a half-hearted job, or that the person is sufficiently mentally stunted that even if they did put a lot of effort in, the material isn’t going to be worth considering. I've hear employers simply toss out c.v.s that contain spelling mistakes. But honestly—some of us just can’t spell. I don’t know why I can’t spell. I was read to and read a lot as a child, and my mother is a primary school teacher. I’ve always been bookworm-ish, and I’ve been writing copiously and constantly since I learned how to write at all. Furthermore, I’m old enough that I didn’t learn how to write on a computer with spell-check, so don’t go blaming Microsoft Word and technology for my problem. It’s not as though I’m lacking experience in the reading and writing department… I just can’t remember what words are supposed to look like. Words I’ve read and written a thousand times I will often have to look up because I cannot visualize words. Despite this fact, and with a lot of careful proofing, I’ve managed to get an honours degree in the language I can’t spell in, and am beginning an English MA in the fall. So, I’m not dumb, and despite my questionable choice of letters when writing words like seperately and indipendance, I do invest both time and effort in thinking through my essays and poems. I’m not saying that correct spelling shouldn’t be expected, incorrect spelling is distracting and jarring to the reader, but I do wonder if correct spelling is a reliable litmus test for the intelligence of the writer, or the literary merit of a book. Does my questionable spelling undermine my credibility as a writer or a critic? How harshly will you judge me if I let a spelling mistake get printed in my book?

It Came from the Basement

2010-07-22T19:24:00.001-04:00

Wordsworth said that poetry is, “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” Well, around here it’s mostly been the cascading overflow of random closets and not very much tranquility. As a result, much of my reading has been restricted to horrifying internet articles about terrible moving companies, and trolling kijiji for apartments. However, while cleaning up we have uncovered some odd and poetic things that were squirreled away in the basement. One of the things I’ll miss about no longer living in my childhood home are finds like these… no more poking through stacks of old postcards and photographs, no more typewriters and reel-to-reels, no more basement full of emotionally charged clutter. So before I enter the brave new world of apartment living, here are the books I found in my basement.

Oh, and if you can recommend a good, cheap moving company that won’t destroy these books when I move, please let me know.

Macmeh

2010-07-16T01:57:00.001-04:00

Macbeth has always been my favourite Shakespeare play, so I was excited to take home three comic-book versions of the tragedy from the public library. I don’t think any of the three versions I read really warrant purchasing, but they were a fun way to kill and afternoon.

The least exciting version was “Picture This! Shakespeare: Macbeth,” published by Barron’s. The book is meant as an educational text for older children or young adults, and includes glosses at the bottom of pages for words such as hurlyburly and ere, as well as, “Think About It,” boxes every few pages with basic study questions. The comic is periodically interrupted by pages of text from the play, which become longer and more copious towards the end of the book. These sections also include boxes that identify and define literary tropes used in the excerpted lines of the play. The artwork of the comic is decent, but not terribly exciting. While the children’s education angle of the book could be blamed for preventing this comic from being interesting, I think the large, un-illustrated swathes of text are more to blame. This is because the second version of the comic, “Comic Book Shakespeare: Macbeth,” is also an educational version of the play, and yet is much more appealing.

“Comic Book Shakespeare: Macbeth,” has better drawings, which make the witches look more creepy and otherworldly, and make the rest of the book generally more attractive and interesting that the Picture This! version of the text. Instead of including distracting glosses, each frame includes the text written in the original language, and then in contemporary, simplified English. The different versions are assigned different colours, so in each frame the reader can immediately pick out the version of the text they wish to read. Rather than sliding large selections of text into the comic, the book is illustrated the entire way through. Despite not including the entire original text, the characters all emerge very well developed (especially Lady Mac beth), and all major elements of the play are evoked with ease. This approach is much more successful than including large chunks of text that are difficult to illustrate, with the book unfolding effortlessly instead of jarring you out of comic-mode. Including the texts separately also ensures that both older and younger audiences can enjoy the book, rather than only students who are at a reading level where they half understand the original play. Of the three comic versions of Macbeth that I read, I would most strongly recommend this one.

The final comic book version of Macbeth that I read was, “Graphic Shakespeare Library: Macbeth.” This is the only comic book version which includes the entire text of the original play, without glosses, footnotes, or simplified text, making the book perhaps more appealing to an older audience. The book is also the only one in full colour, rather than black and white. However, the art work is a bit 80s cheesy to say the least, and doesn’t really recommend the text, with its flat shading and bland colours. I also found that including the entire original text defeats the purpose of having the comic book. The appeal of a comic book version of the play, for me, is that you can review the play more quickly than you would be able to read the entire play. If all the comic book does simply reproduce the entire play verbatim, the illustrations had better be good—so good that they warrant reading the comic instead of watching the play, or reading the play and using your own imagination to produce the sets, characters, and various magical shenanigans of Macbeth. “Graphic Shakespeare Library: Macbeth” fails to achieve this. So, if you’re looking for a quick and fun recap of Macbeth, I’d recommend “Comic Book Shakespeare: Macbeth.” Not only is it the most fun for adults, but also the best version for kids. Tragedy… fun for the whole family!

Do you have a favourite comic book version of Shakespeare? Some other favourite contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays?

Illustrated Lives: Franz Kafka

2010-07-09T20:11:00.001-04:00

When I began to read Illustrated Lives: Franz Kafka, I couldn’t bear to leave the book face-up on my desk. Kafka’s sepia face glowers intently from the cover, his piercing gaze disconcerting enough that I would flip the book over before going to bed. Associating Kafka strongly with his dark, heavy texts, his photo too seemed unbearable and threatening. After reading the biography, however, the portrait staring up from my desk has taken on a more human tone. This isn’t just the face of a dark, tormented, and isolated writer, but the face of a torn and fragile man, one who struggled to adapt and perfect his writing and relationships, even as his life was cut short by his struggle with tuberculosis.

While many biographies of Kafka focus on his potential anorexia, his tense relationship with his father, or his difficulty negotiating romantic or sexual relationships, “Illustrated Lives: Franz Kafka” by Jeremy Adler gives a more balanced view of the writer’s life. Rather than just a tortured genius, eaten from the inside out by his neurosis, we find a man who maintained meaningful relationships with family and friends, who went on vacation, and whose writing was, if not heavily influenced, then at the least heavily inspired by his surroundings, his circle of friends, and the active and lively art world of early 20th century Prague.

As the title implies, the shtick of biography is the images. Almost every page of the book features photos of Kafka, his writer friends, his family, and his main love interests. The book is also full of photos of Prague, of Kafka’s original manuscripts, and of postcards Kafka wrote to his writing cohorts and family members. Particularly interesting are his sketches, which have a relaxed and flowing line that I would not have expected from his hand. The images establish atmosphere for Kafka’s life story, as well as context for the texts discussed. However, as a book based entirely around the premise of including images, the design of the book leaves something to be desired. Images are captioned, rather than discussed in the main body of the text, yet the images are not positioned in such a way that creates natural pauses or breaks for you read the captions. As a result, you have to wait until you finish a sentence, pause to read the captions, then return to the text. Additionally, some pages have small columns of text that blend in with the captions, so that when you flip a page to read the end of a sentence, you end up reading the wrong one. Despite these problems, the images are provide great insight into Kafka’s life, and we get to see Kafka not only in his usual suit, glaring at us from a formal portrait, but also at the beach or sanatorium with friends, smiling and wearing more relaxed clothing. The images of Prague are also gorgeous, especially if you’re still pinning after the city from your recent trip there.

The book chronicles Kafka’s entire life, from birth to death, thought the early childhood section feels a bit strained. There is less known and less to say about Kafka as a small child than about Kafka the writer, and so the early childhood section is largely filled up with comments about Prague and it’s social climate. The section dealing with Kafka’s young adulthood provides an interesting background for his later developments as a writer, particularly in it’s discussion of the circle of writer friends who provided the intellectual and creative community out of which Kafka’s literary career would grow. Illustrated Lives: Franz Kafka picks up speed with it’s analysis of Kafka’s first published texts, and maintains this pace until the end. The story of Kafka’s death is particularly poignant, including passages from his diaries about his final illness, and accounts of his last words from the friends who nursed him in his final days. The book concludes with a paragraph on the fate of Kafka’s family—his parents dying of old age, while his three sisters and their children were killed in the Holocaust. Kafka’s friend Max Brod, however, gathered Kafka’s papers and manuscripts and fled to Palestine, an act which allowed for the posthumous publication and popularization of Kafka’s work.

Illustrated Lives: Franz Kafka gives a human spin to the already popular biography of Prague’s most famous modernist, through the photos, facsimiles, and journal quotes. By the end of the book Kafka is seen not only as a tortured neurotic, but as a more complicated writer, striving to perfect both his writing as well as his life. Though his writing career was brought to an abrupt stop by his tuberculosis, Illustrated Lives: Franz Kafka paints a picture of a writer who was dedicated to constantly improving his voice and style, right to the very end.

A Picture's Worth a Thousand Questions

2010-07-01T02:46:00.000-04:00

On one of the nicest, sunniest days we had in Europe, my sister, brother-in-law, and I picked through Vienna’s Naschmarkt, a large outdoor market where people sell antiques, books, clothes, and other random things (such as a large stuffed and lacquered former sea turtle). We were most interested in the antiques, and spent a long time searching through old brooches, tin boxes, doll’s clothes and cooking utensils, buttons, and opera glasses, even spotting a few odder and more chilling items such as old passports carrying swastikas from Austria’s period as part of the Third Reich.

While shopping around, my sister and I wandered on without her husband, who went back to look at a stall we’d already passed. My sister and I came to a stall where the owner was selling old photo albums will all the photos still inside. I love old photographs, and am particularly interested in old snapshots that no one has bothered to keep. I think there’s something poetic about pictures of family vacations that someone wanted to remember, but that have been cast off, all the people in the photo forgotten. I also love puppies, and never having been allowed to own one as a kid, this repressed affection usually manifests itself in over-the-top squeals when I see a little dog or a cute picture of one. So, when my sister found a small album with snapshots of a girl, her dog, and her husband, my sister decided to get it for me. “She’s just like you!” my sister commented as we flipped through the photographs of the girl teaching her dog tricks and the portraits the girl took of her fuzzy companion.

My sister bargained the stall owner from 15 Euro down to 10, and we strolled away with our adorable find. Upon finding my brother-in-law, we showed him the album of the young couple playing with their dog, taking him for walks, or posing next to what we guessed to be their new radio, which was sitting on their shelf below a framed wedding photo. My brother-in-law took one look at the album and pointed out, “He’s a Nazi.”

Indeed, my sister and I had been so taken with the sweet silliness of the album, and the slightly sad tone of such a cute book having been disowned and sold at a market, that we didn’t notice the young man’s uniform. While there is little written in the book, captions give the dates January and February 1944. The book suddenly seemed less innocent, and instead, a source of questions. Was this guy really a Nazi? We searched for his uniform online, and think he may have been in the air force. Was he conscripted, or a strong believer in the party’s ideals? Where did this young couple manage to get a new radio in 1944? Was it someone’s confiscated property, or did the couple buy the radio? What were they listening to on it, anyway? Why is the book only half filled with photos, and why was it on sale in the market? Could it be that the young man went back to war and was killed? There was now something strange about their happy smiles and almost nervous affectionate manner with each other in the pictures, something strange about the silly photos of the young family and their puppy. They still look out from the photos with candid and innocent grins, but who knows what this young man had done, and who knows how he or his wife felt about it.

My little album has been complicated by the man’s uniform, but this is hardly a watershed find. In 2007 the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received a donation of the Höcker photo album, showing many of the top officers of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp at their nearby resort in 1944, enjoying blueberries and relaxing with a group of lady typists at, “the period during which the gas chambers were operating at maximum efficiency—as the Hungarian Jews arrived and during the last months before the evacuation of the camp” (USHMM Website). The Höcker album stands in sharp contrast to the Auschwitz Album of the same period, which shows the arrival of a large group of Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz, as well as the selection process where individuals were chosen for slave labour or sent to the gas chambers. You can watch a short documentary about the Höcker album, where Judy Cohen tells us, “We all know that monsters do monstrous things. But when you see people who look like they’re nice guys, in a fairly benign setting, and we know for a fact that they were doing monstrous things, then it raises all sorts of questions about what’s man’s capacity for evil. In a different setting would they still be monsters?” (USHMM Website).

Like my sister said, the girl in my album is just like me. A girl who likes small dogs and hanging out with her loved ones. A girl who likes to listen to the radio. Her husband also looks like a nice guy—but was he? The photos in my album don’t show enough to absolve or condemn the couple—just a uniform that could mean a number of different things. Aside from the fact that they like dogs, radios, and each other, not much else about this pair is evident from the book. However, my album could be a slice of one of the many disturbing truths about the Nazis—as Joseph White puts it, “they were all too frighteningly human” (USHMM Website).

All There Is To Know About Adolph Eichmann
from Flowers for Hitler by Leonard Cohen

EYES:............................................................................Medium
HAIR:............................................................................Medium
WEIGHT:.....................................................................Medium
HEIGHT:......................................................................Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES:.................................None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:..................................................Ten
NUMBER OF TOES:..........................................................Ten
INTELLIGENCE:.......................................................Medium

What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green saliva?

Madness?

You can't take it with you... at least not without a U-Haul

2010-06-25T00:31:00.001-04:00

For the first time since I was four years old, I’m moving. I’ll be starting school in September in a city on the other side of the country, which means that instead of shoving unused items into the nether regions of our basement, I actually have to go through my stuff and decide what to pack up and ship, and what to get rid of. While I can part with skirts that haven’t fit in years, or a bouquet of dried roses from some forgotten occasion, I am dreading the prospect of trimming my bookshelf. From history textbooks to photography manuals, poetry books to dictionaries, the letters of T.S. Eliot to travel guides, I want to keep them all.

So why this covetous relationship with books? I’m pretty sure I can find a copy of the complete works of John Milton at a library in Montreal, and considering I’ve never once read through the library discard, why do I want to keep it so much? I think it’s hard to overemphasize the relationship we develop with books. While I may not read The Inheritance of Loss or A Humument on a regular basis, it’s comforting to see them there on the shelf. Each title reminds me of a different experience—either the class where I read the text, the person who gave me the book, or the effect the contents of the book had on my life. They stand in a row almost like a series of family snapshots, each a reminder of an important moment in my life.

I am certainly not the first person to fetishize my book collection. The World of the Book by Des Cowley and Clare Williamson is a well researched and fantastically well designed chronicle of our long and varied obsession with books. The World of the Book is arranged thematically, covering everything from illuminated manuscripts to comic books, addressing everything from the relationship of books and imagination to modernist experimentation. Every page of the book is decorated with vivid, striking images of the texts being discussed. In this way, The World of the Book gives a spectacular tour of the world’s library, letting you paw at a first edition of Ulysses, and then flip through a collection of books from 17th century Japan. The World of the Book is equally well written, with summaries of historical eras and events that are interesting and full of surprises, even if you are familiar with the era or subject being discussed. While I am still only half way through the 247 page volume, I am looking forward to reading this one through to the other cover. This is a problem since the book is on loan from the university library, so if I don’t finish it before I move, I may have to buy a copy and cart it along with all the other books on my shelf. If there’s anything The World of the Book has taught me, it’s that that’s okay.

Ye Olde Couch Potato

2010-06-17T13:35:00.000-04:00

Most people don’t get super excited at the mention of Medieval English literature. I am among the few people who do, however, and in an effort to proselytize a bit, here are a few fun things that make Middle English Lit a bit more accessible and entertaining. The main ingredient? Television. While using TV to entice audiences to care about medieval literature is, perhaps, a little shameless, medieval lit actually translates quite well to the screen (when in the hands of a good adapter). As for tracking down the two television shows mentioned, some episodes are available on YouTube, some from the public library, and some through sneaky internet means which I, of course, know nothing about.

The first show is the Canterbury Tales series from BBC. This series presents six stories from the Canterbury Tales, each rewritten in a contemporary setting. Popular tales, such as The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and The Knight’s Tale, are included, as well as some of the less frequently studied stories, such as The Sea Captain’s Tale and The Man of Law’s Tale. Each tale is adapted by a different director, giving each episode a very different feel and atmosphere. The two most daring and successful reinterpretations are The Knight’s Tale and The Pardoner’s Tale. In the original Canterbury Tales, The Knight’s Tale is one of the least interesting, sticking to a medieval romance form, and with little of Chaucer’s bawdy humour. In the BBC series, however, the tale’s two imprisoned knights are replaced with prison inmates, and the princess whom they both love and fight over is replaced with the prison’s literacy instructor. Rather than a stiff and dull romance, this tale is transformed into a moving piece about friendship, love, jealousy, and redemption in the contemporary world. The Pardoner’s Tale, on the other hand, recasts the greedy clan of buffoons on their way to kill Death with three disturbed and violent thieves and rapists. The ring leader, the most despicable of the three, crosses the moral line of even his band of criminals, setting in motion a chain of events that leads to the downfall of all three characters. Because Chaucer’s original allegorical tale casts Death as a main, yet absent, character, and because the wild goose chase to find Death would be particularly unbelievable to a contemporary audience, this tale presents significant problems when it comes to adapting the story to a contemporary setting. For this reason, the re-telling of The Pardoner’s Tale is the most impressive, while also the saddest and most disturbing.

The second show is Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives. Most people are familiar with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but may not know that one of the sources of the movie’s indisputable awesomeness was co-director Terry Jones’ background as a medievalist. In Medieval Lives, Jones combines his wit and knowledge of the medieval period to produce an engaging and funny look at medieval history, including frequent references to medieval texts. The episodes each focus on a well-known and stereotyped type of medieval person, such as king, minstrel, knight, or damsel, and then proceed to dismantle the stereotype to reveal a more accurate image of each medieval life. The episode about the medieval damsel is one of the best installments, with its nods to the Paston women’s letters, and its neat summary of The Book of Margery Kempe. The episode about kings is also entertaining, with Jones retelling the stories of three King Richards.

In addition to these two shows, BBC also has frequent specials about subjects such as manuscript illuminations or old maps, and the library (in Calgary, at least) has a wealth of other shows and movies about the period. While it may seem a little frivolous to pursue an education in medieval literature by sitting in front of the TV, I think the medium is actually quite fitting. Story tellers, visual representations in texts, and reading out loud to a group were all much more popular in the middle ages, so reproducing early texts and histories for television is actually quite appropriate. So, grab a bottle of mead, pull up a chair, and start watching.

Bye-Bye Bookstores

2010-06-09T20:52:00.001-04:00

As I’ve gushed before, Budapest is full of great bookstores. Calgary is not. There are a few really good bookstores holding out, like the ever popular Pages, but the variety and mix of bookshops that I remember from the Calgary of my childhood has now been replaced with one monolithic big-box chain. Little shops went first (Sandpiper Books was my personal childhood favourite), and then medium sized stores like McNally Robinson began to close their doors. A Winners now stands ironically where McNally used to be.

There are many problems that come with the homogenous rule of Chindigo. A family trip to the bookstore today found one person griping about the craft section being faddish and geared towards an unskilled and general audience, another complaining about the unavailability of "The Writings of David Thompson," which they believe to be indispensable to a knowledge of Canadian history, and me debating ordering a book through the company’s website instead of just buying the copy I had in my hand, since the online price is about $20 cheaper for the sake of competing with Amazon. Trips to Chindigo almost always result in these kinds of annoyances and disappointments—despite the enormous size of the stores, they never seem to have anything. Worst of all, slowly but surely, we are losing the ability to choose to go elsewhere.

One of the many drawbacks of Chindigo’s dominance only became apparent to me after poking through the bookstores of Budapest. Because I only read Hungarian at about a sixth-grade level, and because what I know of Hungarian literature I have pieced together from random, broad, and flailing Internet searches, I often didn’t know what I was looking for when I arrived at a bookshop. Despite my vague ideas of what I was searching for, I left all the bookstores we visited satisfied, and with a bag full of books. The wide variety of small privately owned stores in the city not only meant that there was a wider choice of books available, but that the people working in these stores actually knew their holdings, and were adept at helping you find a book you didn’t even know you were looking for.

photo source

At the spectacular Irok Boltja, the clerk helped me choose some books that were appropriate for my reading level that she thought would also give me a sense of what literature most Hungarian students would have to be familiar with. Additionally, the bookstore carried books of Hungarian visual poetry, books of fairytales told exclusively through illustrations with no text, and a series of little books focusing on odd little subjects, such as peepholes or pen nibs.

Our visit to a used bookstore was similarly awesome. The bookseller was able to find the exact poem by Radnoti Miklos I was looking for, digging the book out from behind two layers of tomes, based on my vague description, “The poem they found in his pocket.” I also got a bunch of itty-bitty books, on everything from the history of the printing press in Hungary to the 60th anniversary of communism in Hungary, all of which were sitting temptingly by the cash register.

The great thing about these little bookstores was not just that they each carried interesting and unique books, but also that the employees were knowledgeable about what they were selling. The staff has shaped the store’s selection, and is there to help you navigate it. More than punching a time clock for a big company, the people working in these little bookshops have at least a minimal expertise in the genre or subject of the texts they are selling, and can take an active role in helping readers find material. Here in Calgary, we’ve relegated this role to the inaccessible and distant people who choose what Chindigo carries. This is not only bad because it limits our browsing to the things that company thinks will sell, but also because we are losing access to knowledgeable booksellers who can give customers access to a world of books beyond that set out by one big company. Do we really want just one company choosing what books we can buy? The issues that small bookstores in Canada face are large and complex—I don’t pretend to know all the facets of these issues, and I certainly don’t presume to suggest a solution. All I can say is that I miss browsing though our little bookstores, and that with their disappearance, we are losing something important.

Comic Book Bard

2010-06-05T10:29:00.000-04:00

If you’re in the mood for something fun but literary, check out Comic Book Shakespeare. The series uses quotes from the original plays, paired with contemporary English translations, to tell each story in about 60 pages. I read MacBeth, and found the use of quotes very effective—the comic book preserves the play’s most potent sections and all the characters emerge well developed, particularly Lady MacBeth. The series is meant for students, with the contemporary translations making the play accessible to younger children, while the pairing of the contemporary translations with the original text and graphic images could prove useful to older student struggling to understand or to enjoy Shakespeare’s plays.

Book Vending Machine

2010-06-03T23:51:00.000-04:00

we found this vending machine, each compartment containing a book, outside the contemporary art museum in vienna. is it real, or some sort of installation piece? we couldn't read the instruction sticker at the top of the machine, so there's only one way to find out...

here go my two euros...

success! the door opened and here's my very own copy of strudl of fame.

hmm.... can't read german, but it's mostly pictures anyway.

Home Again

2010-06-03T23:49:00.001-04:00

I don’t normally write poetry while travelling, with the exception of a few random lines here and there. On this trip, however, I did fill one-hundred-and-six pages of a travel journal. But as a writer, you can get more out of travelling than copious notes on the appearance of local junk shops and unfortunate spelling mistakes on menus. If you travel to a country where you speak the language, you have the opportunity to learn endless oddities you’ve never heard about before—for instance, while in Budapest I learned that the Hungarian word for paradise is the same as the word for tomato, and managed to find a copy of Milton’s Tomato Lost in a used bookstore. If you travel somewhere where you can’t speak to others, you have the chance to see everything you miss when you get caught up in text and easy communication. Everything you do suddenly becomes an adventure, as you muddle through the simplest of tasks. You also get to see how people react to you when you can no longer speak to them—suddenly, you have to really communicate with them, paying close attention to their body language and facial expressions. You also have a chance to see how other people live, even if their culture is in many ways similar to your own. Everything from only having coffee to stay, to closing all the shops on Sunday pushes you just a little to rethink your automatic actions and reactions to the world around you. This defamiliarization of mundane details makes everything stand out more sharply, making the world more poetic. Most of all, travelling changes the way you see home. Returning from a long trip always makes Calgary seem new and a little strange to me. The streets seem wider or more narrow, the buildings are taller or shorter, the people or more friendly or suddenly distant, depending on where I have returned from. No matter where you go, or how close or far away it is, travelling refreshes the world around you—a quality travelling shares with poetry. Even you don’t want to write about your trip, it’s hard to not be inspired to write upon returning home… suddenly, everything is new again.

Canadian Exports Update

2010-06-01T18:05:00.000-04:00

Somehow, complaining about Nickelback seems to have opened a flood gate. The next day we saw (and heard) the above pictured oddly dressed group of youths on a tram platform singing Rockstar at the top of their lungs...
Also on the radio, Shania Twain and Bryan Adams.

Canadian Exports

2010-05-30T19:16:00.000-04:00

Three weeks in central Europe and we’ve heard lots of Canadian music on the radio- Feist, Avril Lavigne, Celine Dion, Sarah McLachlan, Nelly Furtado- but one popular, omnipresent, grating band has been notably absent. That is, until we got into a cab today and Chad Kroeger’s voice began whining from the car stereo… argh! Nickleback finally found us!

Ironic Spam is Ironic

2010-05-27T13:30:00.000-04:00

Considering the mild to overt feminist bent of this blog, it's great that the only comments I get are spam links like this one.
Fancy may kill or cure. ....................................................

English? Français? Magyarul?

2010-05-26T18:53:00.001-04:00

Linguistically, Hungary posed very few problems. I could read signs, menus, and descriptions of items in museums. Communicating with others was also fairly simple—either I could conduct a conversation on my own, or my sister would cover the more complicated stuff, like figuring out how to retrieve our delayed luggage after we arrived from Frankfurt. About a week ago, however, we left Budapest to spend four days in Vienna, and I am now writing from Prague.

Vienna posed some definite language problems. However, knowing both English and French we were sometimes able to extract a key word or two from many texts. German menus were sometimes more comprehensible than their English translations—for example, a menu that listed Wiener-schnitzel in German offered Anglophones Viennese Shred in its place. A local also told us that Austrian students have to take either English or French as a second language, which may explain why so many of the Austrians we interacted with spoke excellent English. Those who didn’t, however, were willing to play along with our apologetic sign language, with special props going to the pharmacist who sold me the highly effective decongestants. Prague, however, is different. Czech is almost completely unrecognizable, with the exception of contemporary words derived directly from English, such as ‘notebooky,’ meaning a notebook computer. This leaves us much more helpless than in Austria, and people here are a bit less patient when it comes to breaking through the language barrier.

When thrown into situations where you can no longer count on your linguistic skills, it’s interesting to see how far you can get. Airports and train stations are particularly easy, with big, pictorial signs pointing you in the right direction. Shopping, too, can often be done by pointing or with hand signals, or you can wander around the store until you find what you’re looking for. Eating at places with pictures of food is also helpful, allowing you to just point at the item you want. The potency of graphic design also becomes evident—despite the label that reads, “Lentilky,” it’s immediately evident that a certain candy package contains Smarties. Obsessed with the value and weight of the written word, it’s strange to live without it and still get by, for a short while, anyway. Having no common language with someone can either be a hopeful experience, with both people patiently working towards understanding each other, or an alienating experience, with one person either rejecting or exploiting the person with limited language skills. Knowledge of any language is a powerful thing—and we don’t lose much by sharing our expertise.

Pick a Book, Any Book

2010-05-20T13:28:00.001-04:00

("Books and Wine" bookstore in Budapest)

Budapest is full of amazing bookstores, many the kind with floor to ceiling hardwood bookshelves with rolling ladders attached. While there are many new bookstores including Libri, a Chindigo-type chain store, there are also countless Antiquariums that trade used and antique books. There are bookstores everywhere—I’ve heard that television dubbing in Hungarian is terrible, so maybe more people turn to books for entertainment, but whatever the reason, Hungarians appear to be voracious readers. They are also active writers—the shelves of these stores are crammed full of books written by Hungarians in every genre and style. This presents a problem for me—my Hungarian is decent, but not perfect, and as a result many of the books that line Budapest’s bookstore shelves are not readily accessible to me. Staring at huge shelves full of books that I can almost read, and knowing that I won’t be able to return anytime soon to choose more books as my reading skills improve, gives me an odd feeling of urgency and desperation (furthermore, I can only bring so many books home in my suitcase without exceeding my weight limit). It’s not just that the books look interesting, it’s that these texts offer the chance to gain a better understanding of the history and culture of a country where I am a citizen, but where I have never been a resident.

(Front of the Terror Haza museum)

Nowhere was this feeling more pronounced than at the museum bookstore at the Terror Haza (House of Terror) museum. This museum chronicles the reign of the Nazi Arrow Cross Party, and then the subsequent Soviet occupation of Hungary, in the building that both parties used to interrogate, jail, and execute their victims.

(Mural made of portraits of Hungarians who died under the Nazi Arrow Cross and then Soviet regimes)

In 1956 the Hungarian people unsuccessfully rebelled against the Soviets, with many of the revolutionaries meeting their end on gallows in the basement of this building.

(Reads "Those who died for you")

The revolution is of particular interest to me, since my father and his family escaped communist Hungary after the disorder of the failed revolution left the border to Austria open. The museum bookstore at the Terror Haza has so many books about the revolution that choosing was a difficult task, but I walked away from the store with a novella, a history book that follows the events of the revolution hour by hour, and an anthology of poetry entitled Piros a Ver a Pesti Utcan, or, The Blood Runs Red in the Streets of Pest. This sizable anthology contains nothing but poems written in 1956 about the revolution in Budapest. Though I haven’t yet had a chance to read through the whole book, the poems I’ve skimmed have all been great. Hungarian poetry has a clean, concrete, an onomatopoeic quality that sharply conveys the desperation and passion that started the revolution, and the tragedy of the revolution’s failure, which only led to further death, devastation, and oppression. I’m sorry that I can’t bring home cases and cases of books, but since I can only have a few, I’m glad to have this book. More than any other, this book captures a moment when an entire city came together for the sake of one common goal. More than any other book I could have picked, Piros a Ver a Pesti Utcan offers a condensed slice of what it has historically meant to be Hungarian.

(Reads "We live quietly")

Airport Poetry

2010-05-12T18:15:00.000-04:00

I've learned not to bring poetry books along with me when I travel. Not only do I burn through them in the first hour of the flight, but I also find that planes and airports don't lend themselves to a slow, deliberate, and contemplative consideration of poetry. This doesn't mean, however, that there isn't something poetic or literary about the experience of travelling. There's the peaceful experience of turning back to see the rows of people of all ethnicities and ages dozing under the flickering lights of their televisions in the middle of the night on a transatlantic flight. However, catching a moment like this means that you aren't sleeping. On the way to Budapest, we went about 35 hours without sleeping. The whole thing takes on a Kafka-esque, theater of the absurd feeling. The moving sidewalks turn over on themselves endlessly, carrying no one, you stand in lines 3 people long for an hour and a half, and you run from gate to gate, repeatedly promised spots on planes that all leave without you. Once you find an airline employee capable of getting you to the correct country, the experience is much less alienating. Reading is suddenly brought into sharp focus - correctly reading and understanding a sign becomes a thrilling experience. It's also surreal to me, on my first visit the country where my father was born, to find that all the stuff that we do that seems unique to Hungarians in Canada is the norm here. You can buy pogàcsa in every grocery store, and everyone speaks Hungarian (not surprising, I know, but strange to finally experience). My favourite poety thing so far, though, has to be the Hungarian Scrabble game in the coffee shop where we had breakfast this morning.

Goodbye Time Card!

2010-05-05T00:59:00.000-04:00

Carpal tunnel and all I'll keep this short but... after exactly one year at my job, there'll be no more time card for me! Between now and school in September, I'll only have to travel and write. Of course, sometimes art is a punch clock. But not my art, anyway. :)

St Catherine's

2010-04-30T02:16:00.000-04:00

It's hard not to write poems about Montreal