Saturday, February 4th at 7PM – 9PM
W2 Media Cafe [downstairs]
111 West Hastings Street, DTES
*** FREE EVENT ***

Featuring LIVE READINGS by:
Evelyn Lau, Marita Dachsel, Rob Taylor, Onjana Yawnghwe, Warren Dean Fulton, Daniela Elza, Timothy Shay.
Presented by Books on the Radio Projects, Pandora’s Collective and Tightrope Books.

Cover photo by fellow poet, photographer, and mathematician Robin Susanto.
Introduction by Aislinn Hunter.
And here is the back cover with blurbs by Tim Lilburn and Cathy Ford.

Hope to see you there.

It has been a very busy year and I have raced through quite a bit of it. Ok, that is a lot of its, but, hey, I have a special relationship with it now. It means a lot more than a little pronoun.

With my graduation this year, I want to thank all the people who accompanied me. It is not a journey without its challenges, obstacles and deep inner searching, questioning. Which, of course, gives me a headache on some days. That is what I do now, by default.

I would like to thank Mother Tongue Publishing for being in care of the weight of dew, my debut full length collection of poetry coming out in the Spring next year. They make such beautiful books and I trust my baby is in good hands there. (You can tell It is not going to get less busy anytime soon.)
Here is the cover of the book so far. Thank to Robin Susanto for taking that shot.

I want to thank all those journals out there who tirelessly put out new voices. One of which was and is mine. (This will be a long post. Can you feel it. Looking for short cuts now.)

Still every day the challenge remains: to carve spaces and places, and times to be quiet, to be thankful, to “sing along ourselves.” (This idea came from an email exchange with a friend who, when I asked who was singing alongside him in his video, said I am singing in the background with me).

Today I wish that to you (and me) both literally and metaphorically, and, ok, lets add philosophically, why not?
I thank my friends and family for allowing these spaces to exist and for time to be stolen out of busy days.

And remember to receive thanks as well. Thanks giving is even more complete when there is someone to receive the thanks…no matter how far or immaterial the recipient. (Don’t you love that word immaterial. So tricky.)

Remember to share and… do not overeat. (Oh, well, if you have to.)
I keep forgetting to bring my Thanksgiving poem to readings. Should, one of these days.

• Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology by David Abram
  Wednesday, August 31, 2011, 7:30pm. @ Canadian Memorial Center for Peace, 1825 W, 16th. Tickets: $10 (call 604-737-8858 to get your ticket).

I heard of him first through his book The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. I am still working my way through it. Not because it is hard to read, but because it is so full. Here is what The Spirited Review writes of the book.

And here are some quotes form the book:

“The life-world is the world of our immediately lived experience, as we live it, prior to all our thoughts about it. … reality as it engages us before being analysed by our theories and our science.”

“Our spontaneous experiences of the world, charged with subjective, emotional, and intuitive content, remains the vital and dark ground of all our objectivity.”

“Language is not a fixed or ideal form, but an evolving medium we collectively inhabit, a vast topological matrix in which the speaking bodies are generative sites, vortices where the matrix itself is continually being spun out of the silence of sensorial experience.”

“To touch the coarse skin of a tree is thus, at the same time, to experience one’s own tactility, to feel oneself touched by the tree. And to see the world is also, at the same time, to experience oneself as visible, to feel oneself seen.”

“From the magician’s, or phenomenologist’s, perspective, that which we call imagination is from the first an attribute of the senses themselves; imagination is not a separate mental faculty (as we so often assume) but is rather the way the senses themselves have of throwing themselves beyond what is immediately given, in order to make tentative contact with the other side of things that we do not sense directly, with the hidden or invisible aspects of the sensible.”

—from The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World, by David Abram (1996)

So I have been thinking, catching thoughts buzzing in my head lately: something about our attention, something about awareness, where we places it, something about consciousness, something about who has more of it, who has less, about being and not.

I am also currently reading The Philosophical Baby: What children’s minds tell us about Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life by Alison Gopnik.

Much of what scientist are showing/proving/ investigating now around children and their minds works for me. It is always pleasant to find what I observe and intuit in my poetic investigations on the topic is getting its scientific underlining, hems, and buttons.

The other day in a small group of enthusiastic writers/readers I admitted that I do not read too many novels (hence I did not feel adequate in the novel discussions afoot). One person turned to me and asked “You don’t read much…?” That could have been a question, or an unfinished sentence, since in fast conversations among numbers of people threads get dropped and picked up with the speed of lightning, which can also be quite refreshing…
but I was stumped, do not remember answering….

So perhaps this could be the answer. But I cannot define all the directions in which I read. Sometimes we guide our reading. Make choices perhaps imposed from outside. At my best, with my reading, I do not follow too many outside guidelines. Maybe, I have the psychology of a bee, following lines that I cannot always explain why I am drawn or compelled to read this or that book. Or what dance got me here. But I know I am on the right track when honey is made.

Sometime we have to read by stepping barefoot on the grass. Digging our toes in the earth. Sitting by a tree in the deep shade of the wood where the last sunbeam reminds you to worship the light. Or sometimes we read by growing things. So there are many many ways to read. And there is so much to read and so little time.
Back to pollination and cross-pollination.

Mother Tongue Publishing has done it again. In this latest contribution to The Unheralded Artists of BC Series we are introduced to Mildred Valley Thornton: a painter, a poet, an advocate for first nations, for women and art.

What we love startles us awake (says Aislinn Hunter in her latest book A Peep-show with views of the interior: Paratexts). And it is here that I find the source of Mildred’s strength and passion. She loved big and she loved a lot. This passion transfers to her art, and wakes us to the existence and the possibilities of dwelling in the world, of our interconnections with it and with each other. Art “as an essential and guiding component of life” (p. 15). Art as a place to “enter into quiet communion with the aesthetic elements that exalt and elevate the race” (p. 15).

I wondered if Mildred’s journey would have been different had she not left Saskatchewan?
I wondered if her art would have been more appreciated by the establishments of the time had she not been so outspoken? Such questions tugged on me as I read.

Author Sheryl Salloum takes us on the colourful and multifaceted journey that was Mildred’s life. (I allow myself to be on a first name basis here with Mildred, since I found myself so close in sensibility, passion and love, in such kindred spirit company that using Mildred’s second name to refer to her will just introduce an unjustified and artificial distance.)

Mildred’s activism, her involvement and contribution to local and provincial art, to cultural, literary and social groups is admirable. She encouraged and helped other artists express and make a living through art. She was fascinated with first nations people, which launched her into hundreds of portrait canvases documenting faces and activities of First Nations as historic documents.
“She painted people in such places as fields, barns, and in their beds. Instead of working in a comfortable studio over a series of sittings, Mildred usually had one opportunity and a limited time to capture the likeness and character of her subjects” (p. 40). Author Sheryl Salloum highlights that by working that way Mildred broke from the portraiture tradition of studio sittings.

I was saddened to find out that our Vancouver Art Gallery has only one canvas of hers and has only displayed it about three times. Just when I was considering renewing my family membership there. I might have to ask them some questions first.

Hoping to leave a historic legacy with her art Mildred tried to keep the collection together in the hope that the government will purchase it and keep it in the province. She was so distressed by the lack of a reasonable outcome that she wrote a codicil to her will where she wanted her paintings of First Nations people to be destroyed. Thank goodness the work remained in tact.

Sheryl Salloum says in an interview: “Readers will find the art of Mildred Valley Thornton fascinating because they will discover that Emily Carr is not the only intriguing early female BC artist. Thornton was accomplished with both watercolours and oils and portraits and landscapes. The book has 100 beautifully reproduced images of her paintings as well as 18 rare and significant photographs.
Readers will also be astonished by the adventurous, confident, and passionate nature of a Canadian woman who, in the early part of the twentieth century, was ahead of her times.” I know I was taken by Mildred’s passion and unceasing struggle to build bridges and better understanding of First nations people through her art.

Hope you can pick up a copy of this or any of the other three books which cover the life and art of sculptor David Marshall, painter George Fertig, as well as The Life and Art of Frank Molnar, Jack Hardman & LeRoy Jensen.

This week at the Gala Night on Friday August 12 Mother Tongue Publishing will receive Pandora’s Collective Publishers Award for their contribution to Canadian books, for their brave and courageous undertaking to bring new and forgotten voices into the literary and art conversation.

WOWEEEE. It is like the Tao Te Ching but more colourful. I love that part about sitting by the campfire with Plato, melting the Forms into marshmallows. The playfulness of the book dabs from a palette of delight onto the grey matter of the adult mind. I love how you get really in between things, like a child fitting between a wall and the refrigerator. So original! So refreshing! I am also really impressed by how you create a mood and an aura with so few words. Quite masterful…

Thank you, Alex, for engaging with It. Your words too are poetic and refreshing. The child fitting between the wall and the refrigerator…love it.

It is always nice to hear back. Whether it is right away, or later when I stumble upon a write up. Immediate or not it is like a little echo coming back to you. Thanks Laurie Neale.

Arlene, that makes four, out of the seven poems we have written together, published. Three of which came out this year. I think we should raise a glass of something to mark the occasion. The rest are under consideration. We can raise a glass of something to them as well. In general when in doubt, raise a glass.

The entries for the challenge issue will be going up a couple at a time. So be sure to check back. Thanks Dorothee for the work on this issue. There is no shortage of challenges in the world today.

While on the topic of collaborations I will also be moderating a panel on collaborations at the Summer Dream Literary Arts Festival.
Saturday August 13th, 2011
Lumberman’s Arch, Stanley Park (11-8 pm)
The panel is from 5:05 – 5:30 pm at the Granville Stage. (Yes, still at Lumberman’s Arch). Stop by and join the conversation. Also check out the schedule for all that you would like to take in at the three stages of the festival.

Tomorrow for the first time I will read at the Poetic Justice Reading Series. There has been a lot of activity in New Westminster around poetry, and finally will get to meet the folk who are behind it.

So if you can, and are so inclined (especially if the angle of inclination is within the vicinity) come over and bring something to share at the Open Mic portion of the afternoon.

I will be dedicating this reading to my mom. It is her birthday tomorrow (or today, already) depending on your angle of daylight. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Mom. I have a feeling this is a round decade one.

Remember how I would find the tiniest, minutest flowers to make you a bouquet?

Can you find the four leaf clovers, I found for you, here? There are two, if not more. I found them at the source where the Harrison Hot Springs come out of the ground. I do not pick them anymore. Too many to store in my books. So decided to leave them there for others to find.

Wishing you lots of health and many moments of beauty and laughter in the coming year.

My essay is titled It’s Like Telling People You Have Rats and Forgetting to Qualify Them as Pets: A Poet’s Journey and you will find it on page 187.

ABSTRACT
How do I take my place as a learner, parent, educator in the fractal, multifaceted, kaleidoscopic process of being and becoming? How to negotiate the forces that pull us and push us in different directions? Or, how I discovered I am a poet, and survived to tell of it.

You can read it electronically in a PDF version or you can also have a print copy if you wish.
I thank the editors Mary Stewart and Lynn Butler-Kisber for including this essay in their journal. Also thank you to the peer-reviewers for their kind comments.

Hope you enjoy it. Feel free to let me know what it stirs.