~ Love Ms. Julie ~

The Writing Room

2009-11-11T08:50:00.002-05:00

Brian Campbell

Here is my favourite creation space, where I’ve drafted a great many poems: the kitchen table in my Mile End apartment. Warm and inviting, with lots of natural light, it’s arguably the best spot to write in the house. We have a shelf of plants under the window; on the table, a pot of flowers. Pretty well every week we buy a bouquet; this was not contrived for the photo.

Like most writers nowadays, I work on a laptop, which I find far more comfortable than handwriting. It’s opened to a blank page of Word, which I face many a morning.

The poetry in my latest collection, Passenger Flight, came after I decided to kick start myself by doing automatic handwriting (rather, laptop writing). My idea was to extract the strongest imagery – raw patches of psychic landscape – and create poems out of it. But to my surprise, whole prose poems came quite fully formed, although of course a lot of drafts and fine tunings followed.

After I’ve worked on them in the kitchen, I transfer my poems to a floppy disk (this laptop is old; it doesn’t take memory sticks), then to a PC in my cluttered home office. There I print out and refine further, do submissions, blog, assemble manuscripts, etc.

By the way, this kitchen also features prominently in a reading from Passenger Flight in this video.

My next collection, which I’m working on now, is tentatively titled, You Told Me to Write a Love Poem.

Montreal-based poet, singer-songwriter, editor and translator BRIAN CAMPBELL is the author of Passenger Flight (Signature Editions), Guatemala and Other Poems and Undressing the Night, a translation of the selected poems of Nicaraguan-Canadian poet Francisco Santos. Published widely, his poetry was shortlisted for the 2006 CBC Literary Awards.

www.briancampbell.org

LAUNCHED!

2009-11-11T08:45:00.001-05:00

Here’s a look at recent poetry books by Quebec authors:

----

Pause for Breath

“So assured and musical is the hand that shaped them that these poems tend to memorize themselves, as though they had always formed part of our experience.” Eric Ormsby

---

Look beyond the everyday meaning of the title phrase, and hear a summing-up of life itself: one day we come into the world, one day we leave it again – and what is the time between, what is our whole span on earth, if not a pause for “breath”?

Diverse in subject, style and mood and rich in contrasts – from the public and collective to the personal and private, from the lyrical to the rhetorical – the poems in this collection are a meditation on time, aging, and mortality, sounding the human condition at a moment of world-change.

ROBYN SARAH’s poetry collections include The Touchstone: Poems New and Selected, Questions About The Stars and A Day’s Grace and she is one of 17 poets newly included in the Norton Anthology of Poetry (5th Edition). She is also the author of two short story collections, A Nice Gazebo and Promise of Shelter, and Little Eurekas, a collection of essays on poetry.

Biblioasis

2009-11-11T08:40:00.002-05:00

Fish Bones
---
Nominated for the McAuslan First Book Prize
---

In her debut collection, Gillian Sze takes a random walk through the art museum and finds the drama of life framed in a series of powerful and precise artefact poems. Sze’s verse is unrelenting in its commitment to action. Each poem follows its own impetus, the origin of which is always a deeply felt encounter, whether aesthetic, familial, erotic, or exotic. Vacillating deftly between the suspended space-time of a museum exhibit and the charged urgency of the lives she imagines, Fish Bones is a collection at once stirring and arresting, tender and coolly true.

GILLIAN SZE was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her poetry has appeared in CV2, Prairie Fire, pax americana, Crannóg and Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. She is the author of two chapbooks, This is the Colour I Love You Best and A Tender Invention. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Concordia University and lives in Toronto.

DC Books

2009-11-11T08:35:00.001-05:00

Expeditions of a Chimæra
---
“Expeditions expedites you into a circus: there is disguise, an acrobatic puff of smoke, a clown’s painted face, a human cannonball and, down below its tightrope, an arena full of pawprints, with no net to catch your fall.” Otilia Acacia

---Expeditions, taken up by the explorers we all are, ultimately cannot be read. Only experienced. On venturing into it, you’ll find your ticket is no good, expired, or valid only on Tuesday. Your fellow travellers will tell you you are wearing the wrong shoes. If you force your way past the gate, you will stub your toe, scrape your shins, lose your suitcase, throw the book across the room in a fit of outrage or fall under its spell and suddenly find it half-submerged in your bathwater. At times, you will even laugh aloud. Expeditions of a Chimæra is dialogic. Four pairs of hands try their luck at a game of cards. Nearby, questions sit, waiting to be asked. These expeditions are not progressions but digressions; they are translational in their effort to pull the author, kicking and screaming, out of the hat of authorial impossibilities.

OANA AVASILICHIOAEI is a poet and translator who transformed the landscape of Vancouver’s Hastings Park into an acclaimed book of poems, feria: a poempark. She has translated Nichita Stănescu from Romanian, Louise Cotnoir and Geneviève Desrosiers from French, created visual textworks for galleries in Montreal and Vancouver, and has performed her work in Canada, the US, Mexico and Europe.

ERÍN MOURE has written a dozen books of poetry, most recently O Cadoiro. Her 2005 Little Theatres was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the GGs; it won the AJM Klein Prize, made the Globe 100 and was translated into Galician as Teatriños. A book of essays, My Beloved Wager, will appear in September from NeWest Press.

BookThug

2009-11-11T08:30:00.001-05:00

The Rose Concordance
---

---
In The Rose Concordance, Angela Carr sets up the rules for a game and then breaks them. The poems trace a constellation of fountains, whose waters lap from an erotic medieval poem. Luxury rushes headlong into Felony, Love hears Irony in Ecstasy. Like fountains, these poems resist any one enduring shape or reading. For in Carr’s voice, water is dappled, and wind catches the fountain and moves it sideways at night when no one is looking. In the mist of words, complicity is vilified and the precious is tenderly chided. The Rose Concordance is a fountain garden that invites the reader to tarry, and drink.

ANGELA CARR is a writer and translator based in Montreal. Her first book of poetry, Ropewalk, was published in 2006. Recent writings have appeared in The Capilano Review, Dandelion, Jacket, Matrix, Open Letter and in the collective publication Translating Translating Montreal.

BookThug

2009-11-11T08:25:00.001-05:00

Jack
---
Nominated for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry
“…the makings of classic Canadiana.” Vallum Magazine
---

Jack is a collection about loss, and how its various speakers deal with loss through addiction. Whether that addiction is alcohol, drugs, sex, love, or an inability to deny the past, these are narrative poems that reconsider the method in which the desperate periphery manage the minutiae of existence. Set against the backdrop of a distilled urban landscape, the speakers in Jack find themselves lost in the bars, bottles and back alleys of their narratives. The result is a dark, acerbic, honest, and humorous collection that challenges the way we read poetry.

MIKE SPRY, originally from Ottawa, is now a Montreal-based writer and editor. He is the Managing Editor of Matrix magazine, the coordinator of The Pilot Reading Series and the Programs Coordinator for Summer Literary Seminars.

Snare Books

2009-11-11T08:15:00.001-05:00

This Way Out

---

Nominated for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry

---Carmine Starnino’s latest collection of poems is full of lyrical escapes, exits and embarkations that set out to measure degrees of belonging and proximity to being at home. With his close attention to sound and ease of comparison, Starnino tries on voices and costumes for size, revisiting his childhood stomping grounds and current neighbourhood bars, reliving teenage haircuts and marvelling at the skill of the local butcher. Counterbalancing his own search for place, Starnino delights in locating in other people and favourite objects their aptitude for simply being themselves.

CARMINE STARNINO is a poet, essayist, critic and editor of Signal Editions (an imprint of Véhicule Press). His first poetry collection, The New World, was nominated for the QSPELL A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. His second collection, Credo, won the Canadian Authors' Association Prize for Poetry and the David McKeen Award for Poetry. His recent publications include With English Subtitles and Lover's Quarrel. He lives in Montreal.

Gaspereau Press

LAUNCHED!

2009-11-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

Here’s a look at recent Children’s and Young Adult books by Quebec authors:

Proud as a Peacock, Brave as a Lion

Nominated for the QWF Prize for Children's & YA Literature

Much has been written about war and remembrance, but very little of it has been for young children. As questions come from a young grandchild, his grandpa talks about how, as a very young man, he was as proud as a peacock in uniform, busy as a beaver on his Atlantic crossing, and brave as a lion charging into battle. Soon, the old man’s room is filled with an imaginary menagerie as the child thinks about different aspects of wartime. But as he pins medals on his grandpa’s blazer and receives his own red poppy in return, the mood becomes more somber.

Outside, the crowd gathered for the veterans’ parade grows as quiet as a mouse, while men and women – old and young – march past in the rain. A trumpet plays and Grandpa lays a wreath in memory of his lost friend. Just then, the child imagines an elephant in the mist. “Elephants never forget,” he whispers to his grandpa. “Then let’s be elephants,” says the old man, as he wipes water from his eyes and takes his grandson’s hand.

Proud as a Peacock, Brave as a Lion has relevance to a growing number of families, as new waves of soldiers leave home.

JANE BARCLAY is a tea-drinking, dog-walking, house-cleaning, lawn-cutting, short-order cook and award-winning children’s author and freelance writer. Jane lives with her husband in Pointe Claire, Quebec. Their three sons occasionally drop in to pat the dog and visit the fridge.

Tundra Books

2009-11-09T08:50:00.001-05:00

Camp Fossil Eyes:
Digging for the Origin of Words

See into the past and discover how English evolved from more than 350 languages.

15-year-old Jill Boswell and her 13-year-old brother, Alex, are sent to summer camp in a bizarre badlands region – the only place in the world where words are fossilized in rock. Armed with water bottles, spades and backpacks, the campers hike from ridge to ridge in search of their ancient quarry. While Alex loves the thrill of the hunt, Jill is sulky and bored. The budding word hounds soon realize they are on an amazing journey of discovery.

Traveling through the mountains of fossilized words, from ancient Greece (television, demon, gorilla, catastrophe) to Spain (mosquito, ten-gallon, burrito), from the language of the Goths (heathen, home, haunt) to Dutch (booze, dock, pickle, cookie), they find that even current words like “podcast” and “gossip” originated hundreds of years ago!

This is MARK ABLEY’s second book for children and his third book about words.

www.markabley.com

Annick Press

2009-11-09T08:40:00.001-05:00

---

---

Nominated for the

QWF Prize for Children & Young Adult Literature

Monique Polak has published two new books this fall:

In the Middle of Everywhere
---

Noah Thorpe is spending the school term in George River, in Quebec's far north, where his dad is an English teacher in the Inuit community. Even though Noah is not too keen about living in the middle of nowhere, getting away from Montreal has one big advantage: he gets a break from the bully at his old school.

But Noah learns that problems have a way of following you – no matter how far you travel. To the Inuit kids, Noah is a qallunaaq – a southerner, someone ignorant of the customs of the North. Noah thinks the Inuit have a strange way of looking at the world, plus they eat raw meat and seal blubber. Most have never left George River – a town that doesn't even have its own doctor, let alone a McDonald's.

Noah's views change when he goes winter camping and realizes he will have to learn a few lessons from his Inuit buddies if he wants to make it home.

Junkyard Dog

Justin makes an unlikely friend: the guard dog at the convenience store. When Justin gets an after-school job helping out on the truck that delivers guard dogs to car lots and junkyards, he learns some unpleasant truths about the guard dog business. Justin needs his earnings to help out at home, but can he keep working for a company that doesn’t treat dogs right?

MONIQUE POLAK is the popular author of many books for juveniles and teens, including Finding Elmo, 121 Express in the Orca Currents series and What World is Left, a novel about the Holocaust. She teaches at Marianopolis College in Montreal.

Orcabooks

2009-11-09T08:30:00.000-05:00

When STELLA Was Very,

Very Small

Nominated for the QWF Prize for Children's & YA Literature

“Young readers will wish they could be just like Stella, or at least have a big sister like her. Stella is both wonderful and full of wonder – purely glorious." Kirkus Reviews

When Stella was very, very small, she thought she was a turtle . . . Stella also thought that trees could talk, and that words were like ants running off the pages of her books. When Stella was small she couldn't tie her shoes, but she could survive a wild sandstorm.

Marie-Louise Gay has gone back in time to answer the questions often asked by the children who read and love her Stella books. Where does Stella get her wild ideas? How big is Stella's imagination? What did Stella look like when she was small? How did Stella come to be the big sister to Sam that we all know and love?

MARY-LOUISE GAY is a world-renowned author and illustrator of children’s books, best known for her Stella books, which have been published in more than 15 languages. She has won two Governor General’s awards, the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Award, the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award, and has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award.

Groundwood Books

2009-11-09T08:20:00.001-05:00

If You Live Like Me

“... an absorbing book – full of teen angst, changing times, natural beauty, the heart of an exquisite province, family struggles and closeness and the choices that lead to love. Lori Weber's biggest accomplishments in this novel are the well-crafted characters and the superb sense of place on every page.” Canadian Children's Book News

Before her plane even touches down in Newfoundland, Cheryl is already plotting her escape. She knows life on “the rock” will be no better than it was in the other places she’s been forced to live ever since her parents launched their cross-Canada tour. The unwilling spectator of her father’s morbid fascination with “dying cultures,” Cheryl has seen more than her fair share of towns so depressing they could haunt your dreams. His need to study the defunct fishing industry in St. John’s is Cheryl’s breaking point – this city girl is more determined than ever to get back to the concrete, the buzz, and the bright lights of Montreal.

Will Cheryl’s cold, goth exterior and her refusal to embrace a new life cut her off from those who love her? Lori Weber once again proves herself to be a masterful storyteller, this time challenging the idea of home, and what holds families and communities together. If You Live Like Me explores the bonds that form in strange and unexpected ways, and shows how letting go can lead to the strongest connections of all.

LORI WEBER, a native of Montreal, has also lived and taught in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Her first young adult novel, Klepto, was selected by the American Library Association for the “Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults” list. Her other works include the Formac “SideStreets” novels Strange Beauty, Tattoo Heaven and Split. Lori teaches English at John Abbott College in Ste. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec.

Lobster Press

2009-11-09T08:10:00.000-05:00

Scaredy Squirrel at Night

---

Scaredy never sleeps – sleep might mean bad dreams about dragons, ghosts, vampire bats and polka-dot monsters. Our wide-eyed hero has a plan: stay awake all night, every night. Between counting stars, playing cymbals and making scrapbooks, he does a good job of avoiding dreamland.

With exhaustion taking its toll, Scaredy comes face-to-face with an alarming horoscope prediction: All his dreams are about to come true!

He must prepare for the worst and his Bad Dream Action Plan includes a fire extinguisher to snuff out dragons and a fan to blast away ghosts. But when disaster strikes, will Scaredy survive this ordeal? Will he thank his lucky stars? Will he find sweet dreams?

Scaredy Squirrel at Night tackles a fear everyone – and especially the young – can relate to. It’s a bedtime story to make light of kids’ fear of the dark and a fable for our sleep-deprived society.

MÉLANIE WATT’s children’s books include Leon the Chameleon, the Learning with Animals collection, Augustine, Where Does a Tiger-Heron Spend the Night? and Bearcub and Mama. Her best known book, Scaredy Squirrel, won the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children’s Book Award for Children’s Picture Boo, as well as the Amelia Frances Howard-Gibbon Illustrator’s Award. Mélanie lives near Montreal.

melaniewatt.com

Scaredy Squirrel stickers can be downloaded from Kids Can Press

The Writing Room

2009-11-04T18:06:00.016-05:00

Ever wonder where writers write, how they write and why, if their physical writing space is private – or if it’s mobile, the neighbourhood internet café or university library?

In THE WRITING ROOM, QWF members talk about their writing space and writing process.
gggggggggggggggggggg

~~~
8787

Alice Zorn

Nominated for the 2009 McAuslan QWF First Book Prize
Congratulations Alice!

My writing room looks onto a Montreal street of brick row houses, flat roofs, wooden cornices, the sky. I love the light and sense of space.

I wake between seven and eight, make tea, and go to my room. I work at an oak boardroom table a friend left behind when he left Montreal. Two filing cabinets take the place of desk drawers. The structure of shelves on the back of the table helps me organize projects. Just now I'm beginning to write a new novel, so the shelves are still mostly bare, though I've labelled them with the characters' names. I'm short and have to hike my chair high, so I need a footrest. I'm using an illustrated edition of Pilgrim's Progress which I've covered in brown packing paper.

I sometimes work on the computer, sometimes on paper. The computer is faster, since everything eventually has to be typed, but I like the flow of ink on paper.

Around ten I have toast and more tea – herbal. No caffeine because it triggers migraines. If I'm lucky, I have no errands and can work until one when I have to shower and dress, and head across the city to the job that pays the bills.

The notes on the table are reminders, interesting names, possible titles, words I like, lines I've overheard. You flexin' de chest at me?

The photos on the wall are of friends, family and places I've visited. Behind me are bookshelves and a green corduroy sofa.

ALICE ZORN has published short fiction in Canada and the UK. In 2006 she won first prize in Prairie Fire's Fiction Contest. Her book of short fiction, Ruins & Relics (NeWest Press) is nominated for the 2009 McAuslan QWF First Book Prize. She lives in Montreal.

On My Bookshelf

2009-11-04T13:12:00.022-05:00

ON MY BOOKSHELF asks QWF authors what they're reading, perusing, consulting, reconsidering.
jkjk
.........................................................
JON PAUL FIORENTINO

lklk

Nominated for the 2009 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction -- Congratulations Jon!

lklk

"I am currently re-reading George Saunders' Pastoralia following his visit to Montreal in October.

Also, I am reading Demons in the Spring by Joe Meno, a collection of short stories in collaboration with amazing visual artists; McPoems by Billeh Nickerson, a very funny and clever collection of work poems by one of Canada's most underrated poets; Essays by Wallace Shawn -- I was lucky enough to meet him at the Brooklyn Book Festival; and I was about to read Joy Is so Exhausting by Susan Holbrook, but Karis Shearer, our Matrix Reviews Editor, stole it from me!"

JON PAUL FIORENTINO’s first novel, Stripmalling (ECW Press), is nominated for the 2009 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. He is also the author of two poetry collections, The Theory of the Loser Class and Hello Serotonin, and the humour book, Asthmatica. He lives in Montreal where he teaches writing at Concordia University and is the editor of Matrix magazine.

On My Bookshelf

2009-10-28T07:44:00.003-04:00

ON MY BOOKSHELF asks QWF authors what they're reading, perusing, consulting, reconsidering.
jkjk
............................................................
CAROLYN MARIE SOUAID
hjhj

"Aside from th e b ooks I read for review or editing, poetry has been on the back burner these days. It seems t he books I've had my nose in lately have chosen me rather than the other way around. While I was in Winnipeg last month for the International Writers' Festival, I found a used copy of The L over by Marguerite Duras in a second-hand book shop and devoured it on the plane ride back to Montreal. Others are books I read in my youth, books that didn’t really register on a profound level at the time. Siddhartha, for instance, which was on a high school reading list for English class. It came up again, after a car accident with my son this summer – I read it in one sitting and found myself weeping by the end. This led me back to Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau, which has been on my bedside table for the past couple of years. I pick it up now and then when I have a hard time getting to sleep.

Today, I finished re-reading (for about the fifth time) Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and I was astonished at the simil arities between Rilke and Hesse regarding the importance of being “solitary and attentive when one is sad.” (Rilke) He also says: “We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true… But how much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this realization.”

To write from that place.

It makes me want to roll up my sleeves, grab a pencil, and go at it again."
jhjh

Montreal based poe t CAROLYN MARIE SOUAID is the co-producer of Circus of Words / Cirque des mots and co-founder/editor of the online literary magazine PQ (Poetry Quebec), dedicated to the English language poetry of Quebec. She currently serves as poetry editor for Signature Editions. Her fifth collection, Paper Oranges , appeared in 2008.

www.souaid.co m

www.poetry-quebec.com

Author photo: Michael Towe

The Writing Room

2009-10-21T12:37:00.015-04:00

kjkj
Ever wonder where writers write, how they write and why, if their physical writing space is private – or if it’s mobile, the neighbourhood internet café or university library?

In THE WRITING ROOM, QWF members talk about their writing space and writing process.
gggggggggggggggggggg

~~~
8787

LAURA FABIANI

ghgh

Laura's office in the den

When I first started writing seriously, I wrote wherever I happened to be. At the park, at the pool, even at Fundomondo, while my kids climbed and hollered from the jungle gym. The best place was always in my bedroom, late afternoon sunshine streaming in, cocooning me in its warmth as I sat at a tiny desk and wrote to my heart’s content.

Things quickly changed as I began writing more extensively and launched my NouveauWriter Web site. The mounting books, paperwork, and reference material threatened to take over our sleeping sanctuary, prompting my husband to give up his space in the basement den in exchange for my writing space in the bedroom. I whooped with joy at the prospect of having a large, well-organized writing corner all to myself. But I lost Mr. Sunshine. The den’s north facing window barely let in enough light to satisfy a mole.

So I battled with my need for the nourishing light of the sun versus my obsession to be well set up with everything at my fingertips. I finally opted for the office in the den. However, not all my writing is done there. As I work on my second novel, The Red Cloak, a YA time-travel story of a young woman’s legacy to secretly protect sacred ancient writings, my family has become accustomed to seeing me with a pencil and notebook in hand. I sit wherever the comforting rays of sunshine soothe my soul as it journeys through the imaginary worlds I create solely with my words.

LAURA FABIANI is the author of Daughter of Mine, and the founder of NouveauWriter.com, an online resource for new and aspiring writers. She currently teaches creative writing workshops in both English and French at the Saul Bellow Library, and blogs about books at Library of Clean Reads.

lkl
www.laurafabiani.com

www.nouveauwriter.com

libraryofcleanreads.blogspot.com

ON MY BOOKSHELF – the iPod EDITION!

2009-10-13T09:07:00.011-04:00

ON MY
ON MY BOOKSHELF asks QWF authors what they're reading, perusing, consulting, reconsidering.

In this special edition, Eric Siblin, the author of The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, talks about what he’s currently listening to (instead of what he’s reading).

Here’s a peek at his iPod – including Eric’s Exercise Mix!

...................................................
ERIC SIBLIN
As soon

As soon as I finished writing a book about Bach’s Cello Suites, my ears felt suddenly free. After immersing myself in so much classical music, from Alkan to Zelenka, and Bach, Bach, Bach, I figured I would remove the powdered wig, let down my hair and rock out. Having force-fed myself all this serious fare, there was the slightly bitter aftertaste of sonic spinach, as if the highbrow harmonies were in my system only because they were good for me.

But I came to like the classical taste a great deal. It is now part of me. At the same time, I’ve regained the freedom to listen to whatever turns my crank, bending genres with rhythmic abandon. “Music is music,” the serious classical composer Alban Berg reassured George Gershwin in a scene from Alex Ross’s terrific book, The Rest is Noise.

Music is also mood-centric. What works at one time may not cut it at another point. J.S. Bach produces a certain thrill and James Brown another. There are times when “The St. Matthew Passion” cannot hold a candle to “I Got You (I Feel Good)” and other times when J.S Bach blows the Godfather of Soul out of the water.

So here’s some of what’s jockeying for position on my iPod, with music for many moods, ranging from Lisa Gerrard for a trance-like state to Sufjan Stevens for a frothy pop feeling to Wilco for alt-country road trips; Tricky, The Tragically Hip and Mick Harvey to increase the beats-per-minute for exercise; and Bach for, well, Bach.

On my iPod:

JENNY LEWIS & THE WATSON TWINS – Rabbit Fur Coat

OLIVE – Extra Virgin

J. S. BACH – Cello Sonatas (Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky)

WILCO – Wilco (The Album)

AMADOU & MARIAME – Dimanche à Bamako

SIBELIUS – Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5

MEDESKI, MARTIN & WOOD – Last Chance to Dance Trance

J. S. BACH – 6 Suites per violoncello solo senza basso (Pieter Wispelwey)

MARC RIBOT – Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos

MESSIAEN – Quartet for the End of Time

LISA GERARD & PIETER BOURKE – Duality

J. S. BACH – Cantatas with violoncello piccolo, BWV 180, 49, 115 (Christophe Coin)

Extracts from my Exercise Mix:
mmm
mmm TRICKY, Black Steel
mmm MICK HARVEY, Requiem
mmm TRAGICALLY HIP, Fireworks
mmm HIS NAME IS ALIVE, Everything Takes Forever
mmm RADIOHEAD, Pearly

ERIC SIBLIN is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker and former pop music critic at the Montreal Gazette. His documentary, Word Slingers, which explores the wacky subculture of competitive Scrabble tournaments, won a Jury Award at the Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival. He also co-directed the documentary In Search of Sleep: An Insomniac’s Journey. The Cello Suites, his first book, has been nominated for the Pearson Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize.

http://www.ericsiblin.com/
http://www.anansi.ca/

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

2009-10-12T19:44:00.015-04:00

Because I Have Loved and Hidden It
by Elise Moser

kjkj
"The heart is a strange fruit ... Elise Moser is an expert at peeling back its thick rind of sorrow, fear, and guilt to expose the love concealed beneath. Because I Have Loved and Hidden It

is a sophisticated and graceful debut."

Neil Smith, Bang Crunch

mm Julia is in limbo. Her mother has just died and her married lover, Nicholas, has gone missing in Morocco. Thirsting for love, for sex, for connection, she grasps at the trailing threads of those who have left her behind: a birth certificate, issued two years before she was born and kept secret from her; and memories of Nicholas, his touch, his scent, his every action consuming her waking moments and filling her lonely nights.
mm Her need to fill the void is so great that when Deepa, Nicholas's wife, walks through her door, they begin a passionate affair, carried along by desire and desperation. This — along with the mysterious birth certificate — leads Julia to question where she fits in other peoples’ lives, and where she has fallen through the cracks.
lkj
Elise Moser’s short stories have won the CBC/QWF Short Story Competition in 2004 and 2006 and been published and broadcast in Canada, the U.S., and across the Commonwealth. She is the literary editor of The Rover, an electronic independent review of arts and culture. Elise lives in Montreal.
lkj
Cormorant Books
http://www.cormorantbooks.com/

The Writing Room

2009-07-16T12:25:00.021-04:00

Ever wonder where writers write, how they write and why, if their physical writing space is private – or if it’s mobile, the neighbourhood internet café or university library?

Here's the return of THE WRITING ROOM, a regular Blog feature profiling a QWF member’s writing space and writing process.
gggggggggggggggggggg~~~

8787

CLAIRE HOLDEN ROTHMAN

Where Claire Writes

I am not particularly sensitive to space and my work room is functional rather than beautiful, with a shelf of books on one side and a window overlooking the garden on the other. It’s just off the kitchen, so I can stir soups for my sons on breaks.

I don’t need much to write, just a flat surface for my laptop. When my children were small I learned to concentrate, and I can now work just about anywhere, with all kinds of noise and activity around me. I usually use paper in the planning stages of a book or short story. You can see my fiction notebooks and most recent journals piled on the bookshelf. Dictionaries and style books fill the lower shelves because of my day job as a translator.

Two reproductions hang on the walls: a forest of back-lit trees by Emily Carr (which you can’t see) and the sleeping body of a girl with an upturned face (which you can). The sleeping girl is Marie-Thérèse Walter, who fell in love with Pablo Picasso when she was seventeen and inspired him to fill his canvasses with love and light. It’s a voluptuous, dreamy painting that I stare at when the words won’t come.

CLAIRE HOLDEN ROTHMAN is a Montreal fiction writer and translator whose novel, The Heart Specialist, was published this past spring and has been on the bestseller list for 18 weeks as of this posting:

As a young girl living in the late nineteenth century, Agnes White is drawn to the “wrong” things. Growing up, she finds herself fascinated by microscopes, dissections, and anatomy – hobbies that deem her unladylike. Yet despite the criticism of those around her, and the obstacles set in place preventing women from assuming traditional male roles, Agnes chooses to pursue her calling to become a doctor, even if it means taking on the illustrious medical establishment at McGill University. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Inspired by the life of Dr. Maude Abbott, The Heart Specialist is a testament to the power of will and perseverance. Agnes White is proof that in a world on the brink of change anything is possible.

For an excerpt, visit www.claireholdenrothman.com

Cormorant Books
www.cormorantbooks.com

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

2009-07-07T13:53:00.007-04:00

lklk

Idiocy: A Cultural History

by Patrick McDonagh

lklk

“At times, Idiocy reads like the history of a natural disaster or the build-up to war: we know the story will lead somehow from the fool as a happy innocent to the segregation, sterilisation and demonisation of generations of people with cognitive disabilities, but McDonagh makes that process fascinating and complex. Far from being a niche history of limited interest, McDonagh's careful and eclectic scholarship makes the case for idiocy as a crucial subject for readers interested in literature, medicine, psychology, gender, family, property, inheritance, romanticism, rationality, sensation fiction, technology, institution-building, religion, crime and civil society.” THE (Times Higher Education)

fgf

Liverpool University Press

www.liverpool-unipress.co.uk

Seeing as Patrick is such an expert on the subject, he was kind enough (or just plain foolish?) to put together an idiot’s guide to…idiocy!

8 Things You Didn’t Know About Idiocy
by Patrick McDonagh

1. You’re an idiot? Then you’re a private person, and not a public one who got to run the polis and all – at least, that’s what it meant in Greek. When the word came into English in the 12th or 13th century, it was used to single out knights who held land as “tenants” of the king but who didn’t seem up to managing their land and responsibilities. So they were declared idiots, and all their land and money was taken away from them. But you needed something to lose to be formally found an idiot. If you were a peasant (and who wasn’t?!?) you were pretty much an idiot anyway.

2. “Imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms,” at least as far as most men were concerned, said Jane Austen. If male “idiot” characters in novels and plays have no money, the women have no discretion. They’re always getting themselves in trouble with guys….

3. Maybe women are not as smart as men for bodily reasons – maybe their physiology itself was imbecilic! That was Bernard de Mandeville’s theory. Thanks to the “imbecility of the Contexture of Spirits in Women,” he wrote in 1711, “One Hours intense Thinking wastes the Spirits more in a Woman, than six in a Man.”

4. So what caused “idiocy”? American physician and activist Samuel Gridley Howe, who wrote On the Causes of Idiocy in the 1840s, figured he knew: “Where there was so much suffering there must have been sin.” And one of the big sins was – gasp! – masturbation. It was a “monster so hideous in mien, so disgusting in feature, altogether so beastly and loathsome, that, in very shame and cowardice, it hides its ugly head by day, and, vampyre-like, sucks the very life-blood from its victims by night.” Golly! His peers in the UK weren’t so convinced by the masturbation theory – at least, they didn’t talk about it much…

5. Fancy a drink? Oops – that’s another sin. Studying 359 “idiots,” Howe identified 99 as the children of confirmed drunkards – and, he notes, the parents of most of the others were probably boozers too. So, he figured, “directly and indirectly, alcohol is productive of a great proportion of the idiocy which now burdens the commonwealth.” Again, the Brits weren’t as convinced – but then they did like their pints.

6. All this worry about sin would eventually catch up to those Brits, too. The 1913 Mental Deficiency Act included ‘moral imbecility,’ the “drugs and sex and rock and roll” category. Too much drugs & sex & music-hall entertainment and you could find yourself being carted off to the asylum.

7. Whatever you do, don’t look! The ‘maternal impressions theory’ said that if a pregnant woman were frightened by something unusual, she might eventually give birth to another unusual something. As late as 1904, the American physician Martin Barr described a boy “born … with a thick growth of reddish hair on back and chest,” whose “mother, during pregnancy, was chased by a cow.” He had another example from his practice, too: “A woman three months pregnant attending a circus was much frightened by a ‘freak’ exhibited under the name of ‘What is it?’ Her child – an idiot girl – born at full term, presented a most extraordinary Calibanish appearance,” he wrote. Of course, being a modern scientist, Barr didn’t call these maternal impressions so much as a “latent neurosis” just waiting for a chance to show off.

8. When John Langdon Down was coming up with a name for a condition he had discovered in the early 1860s, he didn’t call it Down’s Syndrome. That name appeared in the 1960s. Down called it Mongolism because he thought that folks with this condition really were exhibiting an evolutionary regression to a lower-than-Anglo-Saxon form of human, the Mongol. Of course, he also identified Negroid, Malay, and Caucasoid idiots, but they didn’t catch on like the Mongols. Down used this finding to claim that all humans came from the same branch of primate ancestor, and thus it was wrong to enslave others – this was the monogenist argument, as opposed to the polygenist position that said, “Hmmm, these people seem to have evolved from different kinds of apes than those we came from. Maybe it’s OK to make them our slaves.” In reality, the condition, also known as Trisomy 21, is caused by an extra 21st chromosome.

lklk

http://www.patrickmcdonagh.net/

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

2009-06-23T11:06:00.000-04:00

jkl

Kolkata Dreams
K. Gandhar Chakravarty

"There's something wistful in the pages, sometimes approaching a metaphorical diaspora of the spirit, and then suddenly there's a sharp magic that bends the light." Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry

This collection of travel poetry explores the idealization of India against the realities of its westernization from the eyes of a Canadian-born Indo-North American discovering his heritage for the first time. Through his Kolkata dreams, the poet seeks the balance between tradition and modernity, particularly in the context of globalization and twenty-first century culture clashes.

K. Gandhar Chakravarty at the First International Festival of Poetry of Resistance.

With Cuba's Poet Laureate Nancy Morejon.

K. Gandhar Chakravarty is a Montreal poet, musician and scholar. His poems have been published throughout the world and several have been translated into Bengali, his mother tongue. Gandhar’s band, Far From Shore (FFS), released their first first album, Wazo, in 2006. FFS’s music video for the bilingual love song, “Amané,” was nominated for a 2007 CraveFest music video award.

jkl
8th House Publishing
www.8thhousepublishing.com

A taste of Montreal in Toronto

2009-06-22T10:58:00.000-04:00

Two of my favorite Montreal authors will be reading in Toronto on Friday. So if you happen to be in Hogtown...

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

2009-06-12T14:27:00.007-04:00

ghg

In Batting on the Bosphorus, a hilarious and eccentric traveler’s tale, Scotsman Angus Bell leaves Montreal and sets off in his Škoda to discover a hidden cricketing world across central and Eastern Europe. From Estonia to Crimea, Bell learns that Slavs are playing the Englishman’s game.

Between games, Bell is pursued by the KGB, becomes embroiled in a drug bust on the Midnight Express and seeks emergency treatment from a Romanian dentist. His travel companions include a Guatemalan anarchist, a Ukrainian chicken and a tobacco farmer who played cricket and rugby for Rhodesia.

I recently had a chat with Angus where I wasn’t the only skirt!

A Ukranian chicken is among your travel companions in Batting on the Bosphorus. What was her name? Did she travel light? What was the nature of your relationship -- did she provide you with breakfast?
mmm I think her name was Nadya, which means 'hope.' I don't know the names of her twenty chicks. Nadya travelled inside a Hugo Boss bag, with her children in a shoe box. Our relationship was strictly professional. She was a chick in need of a ride; I had a Skoda.
lklk
What's so surprising about Slavs playing the Englishman's game?
mmm Like syphilis, cricket spread around the world thanks to British soldiers, but Eastern Europe wasn't one of their hot spots. It's like finding hockey in Congo.
mmm
What is a "beer-drinking, armchair wannabe?" Name names, please!
mmm Sounds like my old man.
mmm
Canadian Club? (One-word response, please.)
mmm Ginger ale.
mmm
Sortilege?
mmm Criminal.
mmmm
You said that back in Montreal you are "continuing to build the life of a MEDIA SLUT (without the cocaine)." Is chocolate the new cocaine?
mmm I think chocolate is older than cocaine. Cricket is the new crack – it is all consuming, tears families apart, makes it near impossible to hold a job and is financially ruinous.
mmm
What does your Romanian dentist think about the chocolate addiction?
mmm She recommends a box before bed.

~~~

The following is reprinted from Angus's fabulous website: www.angusjjbell.com
mmm
A Scotsman in Quebec
by Angus Bell
lll
As a 23-year-old Scotsman, I can’t imagine there were many like me who migrated to Quebec at the start of winter with their cricket bat. I'm here because, while gardening in Romania last summer, I met Candy, a Quebecoise whose family owns a chocolate factory. After securing a one-year work visa at great expense, I pursued this dangerous woman to begin a new life in Montreal.
mmm
The move has demanded adjustments on all sides. Two weeks ago, I noticed Candy’s mum reading the romance novel, Taming the Scotsman. Meanwhile, I've had to forsake wearing my kilt, for fear of losing a limb. In Scotland, it never dips below minus sixteen. Here, it takes me twenty minutes to dress up like a tartan ninja just to check the mailbox in the lobby. I see people going to the shop – sorry, store – on skis. In Canada, I walk down something called a sidewalk, not a pavement. When two inches of snow fall in Britain, the motorways become car parks and the headlines scream, “Country In Crisis!” In Montreal, people can lose their cars and cats until spring melt. When it began to thaw I found myself sweating at four degrees.
llll
When I say I’m going on a two-hour drive in the UK, people normally respond with, “Wow! Will you be stopping overnight? Do you need me to feed the cat?” But in this big continent, people drive an hour for cheaper petrol. I mean gas.
mmm
When I think of the buildings in Europe, it seems they were fashioned in an era of dwarves. Till I came to Canada, I’d never seen anything the size of the CN Tower, let alone our refrigerator. It’s like the gateway to Narnia. And restaurant portions are calorific. I’m used to leaving restaurants in Scotland with hunger, not doggy bags.
kkk
Candy and I have undergone transition in the home, too. She recently purchased an apartment on the Plateau, which smelled like old lady and 20 years' cigarettes. We spent a fortnight washing cat hair from the walls and painting over the pink. The next task was finding a flatmate. After turning down a family of four from Mexico, an illegal immigrant from Burundi, and being abandoned by a seven-foot German exiled from the US, we settled with Eriko, a Japanese student; female, non-smoker. Always safe.
hhh
So, all in all, the transition has been a success, and as soon as Candy gets Taming the Scotsman off her mum, life might settle down a little bit.
hhh
Batting on the Bosphorus:
A Liquor-Fueled Cricket Tour through Eastern Europe
by Angus Bell

Greystone Books

www.angusjjbell.com

Bloody, bloody words

2009-06-12T11:07:00.008-04:00

Michael Blair and Louise Penny were among the QWF authors attending Bloody Words, the annual Canadian Mystery Conference held in Ottawa last week.

In addition to bloody matters, the conference explored other weighty issues. For example, the Ink vs Electron panel (above), moderated by our own Michael Blair, was about the very future of THE BOOK as we know it: Is the e-book the inevitable future? If so, what form will it take? Is the Kindle the equivalent of the clay tablet? What are the implications for writers, publishers, libraries, book stores, readers, collectors? How do authors sign an e-book? How will the industry deal with piracy?

From left to right: Michael Blair (writer), Rick Blechta (writer), Alex Brett (writer), Michael Murphy (librarian), Linda Wiken (writer and bookseller).

Several (mostly) Quebec English-language writers took a break at a local pub during the conference, pictured in the photo below. All are also members of Crime Writers of Canada, Quebec and Atlantic chapters. From left to right: Michael Whitehead, Louise Penny, NAT (Nancy) Grant, Patricia Flewwelling, Michael Blair, Pamela Callow, Kathy-Diane Leveille, and Anne Emery.

Michael Blair is one busy sleuth! In addition to trying to save the book industry, his fifth mystery was just published.

popo

Depth of Field, a Granville Island Mystery
Michael Blair

http://www.michaelblair.ca

“Blair is a polished storyteller, poised to take his place among the best in Canada today.” The Hamilton Spectator

Photographer Tom McCall’s only regret about accepting an assignment from the beautiful Anna Waverley to photograph her boat for a potential buyer is that he has double-booked himself and needs to hand the assignment over to his partner and best friend, Bobbi. En route to the assignment, Bobbi is brutally beaten and left for dead. As Bobbi lies in a coma, McCall searches for an explanation for the attack. Learning that Anna Waverley doesn’t actually own the boat she was supposedly interested in selling, and that the woman claiming to be Anna Waverley may have been an imposter, McCall believes he knows where to start his investigation.

lklk

Depth of Field is the third in Michael's Granville Island Mysteries series. The first, If Looks Could Kill, was a finalist for the Chapters/Robertson Davies Prize and was shortlisted for the QWF First Book Prize.

Dundurn Press
dundurn.com