Reprint: Humpday

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McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg posted this yesterday, which for the record was a Wednesday.

And it was just what I needed to get over that PARTICULAR hump.

Reprint: Canadian Poetries

From the Micro-Reviews section of Canadian Poetries:

By nature, I’m drawn to mother narratives that aren’t sentimental. Those that don’t claim that people like me who don’t have children are somehow less than those who do. Parenthood has always had this rarified quality about it: witness the fuss over the new Royal Ball of Fat. The screaming headlines would have us believe that Princess Kate is the first woman on earth to ever give birth. On soap operas, children are born after seven minutes of labour, perfectly clean and with no umbilical cords to cut.

It becomes maddening, overwhelming. Enter Ariel Gordon and her largely unromantic text about pregnancy and motherhood. Normally, books on this topic don’t appeal to me but Gordon’s book is rooted in the earth, in the day-to-day discomfort (and yes joy) of pregnancy and early motherhood. There is fungus here (Gordon is an avid mushroom-hunter), frogs “busy with wet/dreams”, and the decidedly unglorious moments of housing a growing belly: “How I’ve started to grunt/when I lever myself out of the bath.”

Given her defamiliarization of pregnancy, I’m constantly struck dumb and joyous by the way poetry creeps in to elevate the grunting, the fungus, the frogs:

“My belly button has become a third eye winking
from beneath shirts riding up, pants slung low
my belly button is my keeled-over canary
my abandoned mine shaft, while you sputter
turn over several times daily
like any old engine.”

Gordon’s metaphors are often raw, yet exactly right. “You squawk, a plucked thing on a spit”: that plucked thing having come from “the bruised pear between [her] legs”.

“The miracle of birth? Ha!”

The beauty of this collection is the love of the mother for her child, that relationship that the childfree will never experience. But the beauty is hidden slyly in the gorgeous lines that free themselves when needed from the details of the grime, the blood, the leaking breasts, and the mundane sleeplessness of parenting—turned poetry."

— review by Kimmy Beach

* * *

Many thanks to Canadian Poetry, Shawna Lemay and Kimmy for this review!

Which is to say: Yay! Hump's third review!

next big thing-y

What is the working title of your book?
How to Pack Without Overpacking, though that really does feel like a working title. I'm looking forward to elaborating the final title...
 
Where did the idea for the book come from?
This manuscript is more-or-less conceited. More by virtue of being mostly how-to poems, less by not being the manuscript I was supposed to publish next. I wrote these poems as palate cleansers when not working on my 'main' manuscript, which eventually stopped cooperating. Eventually, I realized that I had a manuscript's worth of palate cleansers and that, reading them together, they were all very closely linked, thematically speaking.

I started writing how-to poems - that is, poems that give step by step instructions on how to do something - while I was finishing my debut, Hump. That book was primarily pregnancy and mothering poems and I think the how-to poem appealed because it's incredibly open-ended and yet suggests a particular structure. A beginning-middle-end.

Also, I think I was mocking the "Mommy voice" that I found myself using with my daughter...

As I kept working on the manuscript, of course, I allowed myself to use whatever form the individual poem seemed to require.

Which is to say that sometimes the title is just a hanger for the poem and that sometimes it's the rickety spine...

What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
Hugh Jackman and Tilda Swinton. For obvious reasons.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
 Hmm. I don't have one yet, but I DO have this description of the chapbook of poems I published in 2011 with Saskatoon's JackPine Press:

"How to Prepare for Flooding is a collection of poems modeled on the how-to manuals and survival guides that rattle around your toolbox and clog up your glove compartment. Chock-a-block with illustrations and useful tips, these poems will prepare readers for a raft of natural and personal disasters such as "How to Survive a Plane Crash" and "How to Sew a Button." But more than that, How to Prepare for Flooding asks, over and over, what's the difference between wild and tame? Natural and unnatural? Also, is this REALLY where we find ourselves?"

(The poems from this chapbook will likely find themselves in How to Pack Without Overpacking, as will the poems in my upcoming Kalamalka Press chapbook, How to Make a Collage.)

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I've just signed a contract to publish How to Pack Without Overpacking with Palimpsest Press in spring 2014. They published my first book, Hump, back in 2010.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Some of these poems date back to 2007 but the great majority were written over the past year...

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Poems that work with humour. Poems that incorporate myth and fable in contemporary settings. Poems with faintly apocalyptic inklings: there are poems here about plane crashes, being lost in the woods, and surviving floods as well as how you'd go about ailments like boils and leprosy.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The idea of being a working writer. The idea that I'd always be working on a piece of writing, that I'd always be pushing at the edges of what I was capable of.

Beyond that, I was interested in what was a worthy subject for a poem. Can you write a poem about anything? What would that poem look like?

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
That I'm hoping to convince my publisher to use artworks by Darryl Joel Berger for the cover and maybe also the interiors. Mostly because he's hatefully talented but also because some of the poems came out of an image/text collaboration with him.

* * *

Rules of the Next Big Thing

• Use this format for your post
• Answer the ten questions about your current WIP (work in progress)
• Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them. 

Ten Interview Questions for the Next Big Thing:

1. What is the working title of your book?
2. Where did the idea for the book come from?
3. What genre does your book fall under?
4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

* * *

I'm not usually super interested in blog memes, which are just tricked-up chain letters, but when I was tagged by Pearl Pirie / pesbo, I decided I'd stop being such a poop.

And use the opportunity to tag in my turn people whose work I was interested in hearing about.

Which is to say, people I don't know exceptionally well but whose work I find interesting...which includes Saleema Nawaz / Metaphysical Conceit, David Jon Fuller / As You Were, Darryl Joel Berger / red-handed.

UPDATE: Poems for the trees

From the McLellan Park Blog:

"You are cordially invited to visit a site specific installation of tree poems on Saturday, December 8 from 1-3 pm. This is one of a series of arts initiatives to raise awareness of the McLellan Forest East, on 257A Street just north of 84 Avenue.

Poets across Canada, including quite a few Governor General’s Award winners, responded to a call from Langley poet Susan McCaslin to submit poems celebrating trees in an effort to protect a unique forest just outside the heritage community of Fort Langley, British Columbia.

More than one hundred and fifty poems were submitted over a five day period from established and emerging poets of all ages, and are now suspended from the trees in the hope that the voices of poets will be considered when Langley council decides the fate of the forest on December 17, 2012.

The installation was inspired by Han Shan, a Chinese hermit poet from the Tang Dynasty era over 1,000 years ago, who wrote poems on trees and rocks, living respectfully with nature.

The forest display includes poems by Governor General’s Award winners E. D. Blodgett, David Zieroth, Don Domanski, Stephanie Bolster, Don McKay, Joy Kogawa (The Order of Canada), Anne Simpson (Griffin Poetry Prize), and a diversity of established, emerging, and beginning writers. Poems have been received from Oregon, California, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Australia, the UK, and Turkey and continue to flood in.

The land in question, known locally as McLellan Park Forest East, is publicly owned by Langley township but is slated to be sold off to partially fund a recreation centre and pool if a small group of residents called WOLF (Watchers of Langley Forests) cannot come up with 3 million dollars by December 17. It has been difficult for WOLF to raise the funds because supporters feel the forest is already owned by the public and that Langley should just reconsider selling it. The total cost of the recreation centre is estimated at $35 million.

McCaslin says, “These poems express how poets respond to the creative outpouring of nature that encompasses and sustains us. It’s about putting human language beside the larger language of nature and the planet. They have been offered specifically for the protection of this remarkable, biologically diverse forest.”

The name Han Shan translates as 'Cold Mountain,' which is also the area in the district of T'ien-t'ai in China where the poet lived. Han Shan was the inspiration for the Cold Mountain School of west coast beatnik writers, such as Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac.

McLellan Forest is a small fragment of what once existed throughout the Fraser Valley before over a century of settlement. Very little of this ecosystem has been protected in its natural state.

A provincial biologist has notified Langley council that the property in question is 'ecologically unique,' features 'high biodiversity value' and has exceptional value as habitat for species at risk, such as the Pacific water shrew and Oregon spotted frog."

* * *

I'm told McCaslin will take pictures of the installation. I'm selfishly hoping to catch glimpse of my poem among the hundreds but...mostly I like the idea of winter trees hung with poems. Leaves/sheaves of poems.

It makes me want to attach poems to the new linden tree on the boulevard - which the girl has named Matilda - if only because the only other trees near our house are a hundred feet tall.

I've such fondness for those hundred-year-old hundred-foot trees.

And so, even though the call for submissions asked for region-appropriate species such as fir, hemlock, cedar, hemlock, spruce, bigleaf maple, and black cottonwood, I HAD to send an elm poem.

Which makes me sound faintly dotty. But oh well...

Xmas (poetry) Sale!

* * *

I hate the reams of flyers that come in this time of year. But if you're going to take advantage of a Black Friday/Cyber Monday/Xmas Sale, this is the one to take advantage of!

I ordered Peepshow-Hummingbird-Hard Ass though I also like Dawn's suggested order: Hump-Peepshow-Hardness.

Because they're good books. But ALSO because that's a slightly naughty combination...

Poems for the trees

* * *

The Han Shan Project: An Urgent Call for Poems about Trees from Poets who Love Them

Han Shan was an ancient Chinese poet who posted his poems on the trees and rocks of Cold Mountain.  In the spirit of Han Shan…. 

• Join our effort to speak for the trees of McLellan Forest East, an endangered rainforest in Glen Valley, Langley, BC.  It could be sold for private development and logged after Dec. 17th.
• Send us a tree poem and we’ll post it on a tree in the forest.  One poem per poet.  Keep it to one page with your name at the bottom. Small photo of you is okay.
• This is the west coast, so poems about species such as fir, hemlock, cedar, hemlock, spruce, bigleaf maple, black cottonwoods are especially relevant.
• Send your poem immediately to Susan McCaslin (smccaslin@shaw.ca) who can provide more information about the forest and the issue.

Background: This remarkable and ecologically important forest will be sold by the Township of Langley for private development after Dec. 17 of this year if something radical is not done immediately to keep Council from proceeding.

For further information, see http://mclellanpark.blogspot.ca/.

* * *

I knew my contribution to this project was going to be either this excerpt from "Infestation Lulluby" or "Spring in Assiniboine Forest," which is the opening poem in Hump. 

For me,  it had to be an elm tree. (Elms elms elms.)

But as was noted in the call for submissions, West Coast folk might not be familiar with them, so I included of a branch that showed both leaf and seed...

Now, I'm no graphic designer, but it was fun to muck around in InDesign, to move elements around. The process is more frustrating than moving words around in a poem, but in the end, you have something. A blank page changed.

And I don't know about you, but I REALLY really want to see a winter tree full of poems.

Vallum! Interview!

A few months back, I saw that Montreal lit mag Vallum had this rather fascinating call for submissions:

"VALLUM 9:2 - INVISIBLE 'CITYSCAPE' (HIDDEN URBAN LANDSCAPES)
The 'Cityscape' has fascinated people since the flâneurs of Paris and beyond. But what is unseen, underground or hidden eludes us. What are some of these hidden aspects of the 'cityscape,' the hidden urban landscape?"

As you might have noticed, what with all my burbling of late about creative non-fiction, about writing on the intersection of the urban/nature writer and the naturalist, I've been trying to actively articulate my ideas about the invisible cityscape...

Where I fit in. Where nature fits in. Because more and more, I realize I am most comfortable in spaces that neither completely urban nor completely natural.

Winnipeg's elm canopy makes me intensely happy, right? But so does the Korean resto down the street. 

Looking back, I've been writing poetry to the invisible city, specifically this faded grandiose city, for years.

First in my poetry/photography project with Jon Schledewitz on Winnipeg's derelict buildings, where we focused, literally and figuratively, on the softened edges of abandoned commercial and residential spaces.

But then later in Hump, where there's has a pile of what I called urban/nature/love poems, specifically poems set in Spence neighbourhood. A smaller clutch of poems were set in other Winnipeg parks / parking lots / brownfields. And my beloved forest, of course.

And my as-yet-untitled ms. will also likely contain a HEAP of urban/nature poems.

So it was a pleasure to cook up an interview on the subject with canny Winnipeg poet/publisher Sharon Caseburg.

My thanks to Sharon and to Vallum's editors for their work with me on this. I'm looking forward to having a good gnaw on the work in this issue!

Yay! Fun!

Lives of Girls and Women

I attended most of last weekend's Symposium on Manitoba Writing.

I enjoyed the Symposium's mix of readings and seminars, keynotes and panel discussions...and when I got too full of talking, which happened after about six hours of symposium-ing, I would decamp to the nearby forest.


So three walks in three days. And a pile of interesting old books from the MWG used book sale. And as much thinking-through of MB fiction, poetry, and non-fiction as I could handle.

Though I wasn't participating in the Symposium, per se, I will admit that I was most looking forward to the Saturday afternoon session entitled Lives of Girls and Women.

That was because it included a paper on Hump, written by U of M Ph D student Luann Hiebert.

On Thursday afternoon, one of the sessions I attended included papers on the work of Patrick Friesen and Dennis Cooley as well as Patrick Friesen and Dennis Cooley. A few of the presenters made noises about how nervous-making this was for them, so I joked over the next few days about how I was going to sit in the very front row and stare at Luann. And cry/protest noisily: "That's not quite right, actually..."

But when it came to Saturday afternoon, me full of Mother's Day dim sum and kid-gifts and tea (best-case scenario, actually...), I kept my eyes on my notebook in front of me and listened.

I couldn't quite bring myself to look up. Which isn't to say that it was bad or that I was nervous, but that I wanted both Luann and I to have some room in that moment.

I thought I was being very subtle in my making-space, but writer/prof Aretha Van Herk later commented that she was sitting behind me during the session and that I visibly twitched at various points.

Twitching notwithstanding, it was very interesting to hear snippets of my poems in someone else's mouth, to hear Luann's thoughts on aspects of the poems and of the relationships at work there.

Part of the reason I was so pleased to have her presenting on Hump was that publishing, for me, is about having a conversation with readers and writers and critics.

And her taking Hump on as a subject was another part of that conversation being enacted in front of me. Which was very very nice.

* * *

Session 10: Lives of Girls and Women

Tanis MacDonald, Wilfrid Laurier University
GirlWould: Wiseman, Medved, Hunter, and Still on Growing Up Girl in Winnipeg

Jason Wiens, University of Calgary
In Search of Catherine Wiens: Genealogy, Biography, and the Structure of Frederick Philip Grove’s Over Prairie Trails and In Search of Myself

Luann Hiebert, Providence University College
Great Expectations: Ariel Gordon’s Hump & Reader/Writer Conceptions
Every reader/writer approaches a poem with particular expectations. In this reciprocal relationship, it takes both partners to consummate the text. In the context of Ariel Gordon's poetry collection Hump, my presentation will explore the expectant reader as lover/parent intimately engaged in the labour of text-making.

Reprint: Contemporary Verse 2

From the Winter/Hiver 2012 issue of Contemporary Verse 2, written by Fiona Timwei Lam:

"Ariel Gordon's Hump is replete with poems that evoke the intricate textures, sounds and colours of nature.

In the opening poem, "Spring in Assiniboine Forest," the narrator clambers through the moss, roots, mushrooms, spores, roots and mud to the sound of the bullfrogs' "balloon-rub chorus." The other poems in the section continue delving into the fecundity of the natural world, exploring the shifting seasons and the borders between city and countryside. The book then moves into the intimate realm with poems flecked with humour. "Tit Poem" portrays a sister's feistiness before and after a mastectomy. "Somniliquy" and "Pre-conception" depict the narrator's tender exasperation at her husband's vocalizations and snoring that wake her at night.

Hump's second section is devoted to the gestational countdown before giving birth, from two months of pregnancy to nine. The sense of abundance in this section mirrors that of the first, as Gordon carefully layers image after evocative image to vividly convey the sensations of a body irrevocably transitioning into the maternal. For example, in one poem the narrator's body is described in terms of "loamy curves of battered clay," and in another poem, it is a "dip & dunk tank, the basin overflowing." The title of one of my favourite poems in the book, "Eight months: what to expect when you're expecting," plays on the title of a popular textbook for expectant mothers. Gordon cleverly arranges and transforms the usual barrage of unsolicited advice received by most pregnant women into deft, wry couplets. Expectant mothers might want to make multiple photocopies of the poem to hand it out each time they receive another "helpful" suggestion.

The third section is devoted to the experience of new motherhood, containing richly sensual poems that depict the sleeplessness, lack of of personal space and endless cycles of breastfeeding. In one poem, the narrator laments, "there is no poetry in sour two-day-old laundry/ & greasy crumbs in the seams of my days." However, the book comes full circle with poems that return to nature, with the narrator now accompanied by her toddler as they witness and experience the natural world together - from being assailed by cankerworms rappelling from an infested ancient elm, to tiptoeing over worms and snails during a walk in the park.

Gordon has already received accolades for this book, including the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry in 2011. Brimming with finely crafted poems that thrum with life and love, Hump is indeed a very promising debut."

* * *

My first lit review! Excelsior!

Words Aloud vids!

So Words Aloud, the nifty little poetry and spoken word festival in Durham, ON, takes/posts videos from the performances.

In addition to the introduction by comedian/MC Steve Morel, there are three videos of me performing poems from Hump and How to Prepare for Flooding.



And it should go without saying, but it was really REALLY really the most fun I've ever had on stage.

And I can't wait to get up on a stage again somewhere else, though I suspect Words Aloud has ruined me forever...

So lemme know what you think, hmm?

Reprint: Poetic Edits

Vancouver-based writer Kevin Spenst is doing a series of interviews with poets focused on the editing process. He calls them Poetic Edits.

I was tickled, after receiving his interview request, to see that Bren Simmers, Sandra Ridley, and Linda Besner were all there, saying smart but also heartfelt things about editing.

Here's an excerpt from my interview, posted today:

Any pet peeves when it comes to editing your own work or someone else’s?

Ariel Gordon: I’m no one’s wife but I OFTEN find myself married to the original idea/image/sound in a particular work.

Convincing myself to radically change a piece – throwing out most if not all of it, dramatically re-writing the rest – is hard mental work, especially if I’ve got something that sort-of-kind-of-but-doesn’t-quite-FUCKING-work.

The problem is that you have to be committed to changing the piece for the changes to be any good.

And if you’re not convinced that it needs changing, well…it feels baby/bathwater-y.

The absolute worst is when I’m having a stupid day and somehow decide, in the midst of my stupidity, that maybe I should edit my poems.

Thank gods I keep all the different e-versions of my poems...

I have two thoughts, late on a Sunday night the day before school starts. The first is: Thanks Kevin! The second is: Oh what fun...

Reprint: "Spoken Word Needs YOU!"

About Spoken Word: "Spoken Word Needs YOU!"
August issue of Mosaic Newspaper

by Terry Burns

No, this isn’t Words Aloud Spoken Word and Storytelling Festival’s version of a recruiting poster, but now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk poetry...and I mean literally.

Because that is what spoken word is all about, poetry and stories coming to you not just by the printed page, but via the bodies and voices of their creators, onstage and in person, immediate, visceral, and fresh. Before the printed word became ubiquitous, this is the way it had always been, a dynamic, embodied relationship between bard and listener.

To give you an idea of this dynamism and embodiment, we need to get a little audience participation going, and this is where the talking comes in. Several of the remarkable spoken word artists who will be joining Words Aloud in November have provided us with some choice pieces of work as festival “spoilers”, and that makes a great opportunity to begin to get some idea of the vitality of spoken word. As we take a look at the pieces, you need to do only one thing: read them aloud. Roll the words around on your tongue, listen for the rhymes, feel the rhythms and syllabic stresses like tides surging and ebbing, experience the way your lips and tongue navigate their way around consonant repetitions. Read the work to others, by all means, or read them when you are alone, with only your dog sitting at your feet thinking you’re talking to her.

* * *

Humour is a key ingredient in Ariel Gordon’s poetry, especially in her first book of poems, Hump (Palimpsest Press), which details her unsentimental experiences with pregnancy. This poem is called “Seven Months: ultrasound introductions”.

I am the fork-scarred sink, the water table
you are the warming goldfish
your father is the big eye anxious on your domestic bulge
the wet magnification of dorsal flicker
ventral thrum.

I am the dip & dunk tank, the basin overflowing
but they should have known better –
you might circle my drain
fin & bony ripple on every grainy pass
but I’m the only one likely to go belly up.

Again, it is in the saying it aloud that certain things about this poem become apparent. The insistent first beat of many of sentences and the repetition of the words “I” and “you(r)” lend the poem a solemn incantatory quality. And yet, this gravity is belied by the playful use of water/plumbing/fish imagery which works so well in the context of bodily pregnancy fluids. The solemnity and the wit then merge seamlessly in the last line, where the first strongly stressed beat is again the word “I”, and the rest of the sentence is a humorous reference to the birthing position, with a touch of menace thrown in by other connotations of the term “belly up”.

This short little piece, in its content and its structure, gives us a glimpse of the simultaneous seriousness and silliness inherent in pregnancy and birth. We see again that reading a poem aloud reveals not just semantic meaning, but can also offer a sensory counterpoint to the content which deepens our understanding of the work.

* * *

This article was written in advance of my appearance at the WordsAloud Festival this coming November, where I'll be reading with dub poet Lillian Allen and Iraqi journalist/writer-in-exile Ayub Nuri.

I know it's my traditional response but this time I REALLY mean it: Yay! Fun!

(Long) longlisted!

So Hump was longlisted today in the poetry category of the The ReLit Awards, whose slogan is "Ideas, Not Money."

There are 69 other poets on the longlist, so it's a LONG longlist, but being nommed for the ReLit was one of the small dreams I had before publishing a book...so I'm sort of blissed out.

Did I mention the prize is a ring? And that I enter the only OTHER lit prize that awards a ring (Prairie Fire's Bliss Carman Prize every GODDAMN year?)

The shortlist - typically seven books per category - comes out at the end of August.

Reprint: The Mother 'Hood

So Canadian Bookshelf is a new lit website. It's brand new, so new as to be beta. (Is 'beta' the new 'site under construction' or 'store open during renovations'?)

But they're already doing recommended reading lists. And having guest list-ers and people coming up with themed lists.

And this week, Hump was included in a list called The Mother 'Hood, which is "Canadian books that explore the mothering experience - the good and the bad."



My thoughts, fleeting and sparse after a busy Monday day/night are: "What a good list!" and "I can't wait to see what the list-er thinks of Hump!" and "I MUST FINALLY read Pathologies..."

I've reviewed a fair number of 'mothering' anthologies over the last few years (see my review for Great Expectations here) and in addition to the ones listed here, I'd also add a recommendation for Double Lives: Writing and Motherhood.

Yay! (Mothering) fun!

Happy goddamn birthday!

So I launched Hump a year ago today.

And I'm convinced that the reason that THAT reading went well - and that the 18 other readings I did from this book this year mostly went well - was because of my "system."

Which mostly involves a stack of bookmarks for Tracy Hamon's Interruptions in Glass, advertising the tour we went on last spring...and a quiet half-hour before each reading.

I would find somewhere quiet to sit and think about the reading that night: who the audience would be, how long I was slated to read...and which poems I had a hankering to read.

And I would write the names of the poems I wanted to read and their page number and sometimes even how long each poem was on the back of the bookmark. And then I tucked it in the book.

Somehow, knowing that I had Tracy close to me helped. Knowing I had a plan, even if I deviated from the plan during the reading itself, helped.

So it became my little superstition.

I keep all the bookmarks in a drawer of my desk, the blank ones and the used ones. And it has been very satisfying, over the course of this year, to see them accumulate.

(I still have an impressive stack of blank ones, though I imagine that I will be doing fewer readings now that Hump is sort of...long in the tooth.)

Thanks to everyone who supported me this year. And thanks, specifically, to Tracy. And to Coteau, for providing me with the means for my strange little ritual.

Manitoba Book Awards

So last night was the Manitoba Book Awards gala...and I was all frocked up.

It was such an honour to be nominated for two prizes, especially when there were so many books eligible this year, that I hadn't thought through the idea that I might win one/both/neither of them.

So when I sat myself down in the auditorium for my ritualized read-thru of the programme, I was mostly looking forward to the learning the judges' identities and reading their comments on each of the short-listed books.

Here's what the judges for the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry / Le Prix Lansdowne du poesie - Michael Harris, Kenneth Meadwell, and Serge Patrice Thibodeau - had to say about Hump:

"Hump is Ariel Gordon's first book, coming on the heels of a variety of magazine publications and two chapbooks. The focus of Hump is the rich experience of motherhood and marriage on the one hand, and of city life in the integrated context of the natural world, which is everywhere engaging, fierce, beautiful, and unstoppable. This is capable, exuberant writing, at once passionate and meticulous. Hump is a worthy first book indeed."

I read the comments about Hump, I thrilled a little...and then I realized that the Lansdowne was the first prize to be awarded.

Urk!

And so it was only a few minutes later that I heard my name, spoken by bookstore owner Kelly Hughes. (!)(!!!)

A day later, I'm still full to the brim with gratitude. For the support this community has given me in the year since Hump came out. For all the times M came home from work and said, "Have a good reading/workshop/signing," as I walked out the door...

I was also up for the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book, three awards later. And Sheila McClarty was so so gracious as she accepted the award...in addition to being deserving.

But I walked away from that adjudication with something of definite value: the judges' comments, specifically from Sharon Butala, Claire Holden Rothman, and Andris Taskans.

"Hump is a sensual song celebrating the love that fuels all of life. In this strong debut collection, Winnipeg writer Ariel Gordon vividly evokes springtime in the forests and wetlands of Manitoba. Frogs "hump spring's wet backside in the ultimate catch-and-release slip-slide," and "moss gross so silently / it can be heard." Gordon also explores her own pregnancy and motherhood, revealing the wonder and devilment of bringing new life into the world."

Thanks all! (But especially Dawn and Sarah at Palimpsest and my beloved M!)

Reprint: CBC's Manitoba Scene

The CBC's new local arts website, Manitoba Scene, is doing coverage of some of this year's Manitoba Book Award nominees.

(As you'll recall, I was interviewed for CBC's Weekend Morning Show just before the MBA nominee lists were announced. The radio interviews and the web coverage is part of the same CBC whole...)

Here's what I contributed to the site:

When CBC producers suggested that I write something, anything about poetry for Manitoba Scene, for the first time in a long time I was stuck.

I can write poems on subjects as diverse as breasts and light bulbs, but ask me to write 300 words on anything-at-all and I've got...nothing.

So I checked the website. Fellow Manitoba Book Awards nominee Dora Dueck wrote on the topic Some Reasons Why I Write. And I cursed her, not because of her nominations or her book, but because I coveted her subject.

I could have written about that, I thought mournfully. And rubbed my tired eyes.

And then I craftily submitted a poem called How to Write a Poem. It's a prose poem and so I thought would fool the copy-hungry producers.

And it's even funny, I thought bleakly. Funny is good.

Except I forgot that it's ALSO chock full of swearing, oral sex, and uses the word 'porn' prominently.

When they wrote back suggesting that I excise the naked bits or, you know, actually write something, I agreed that was probably best.

And returned to muttering and mashing my eyes, which by now felt like they might start weeping blood.

My last contact with the CBC included the suggestion that I write about the first poem I ever wrote.

Oooh! I squealed. I like that.

And I did, except that when I sat down to write about 'my very first poem,' I couldn't remember what my very first poem was.

Partly, that's because I started writing 'seriously' at 13, which is a quarter century ago now.

It's also because my first attempts at writing were image-dense, clause-heavy fictions that ran about a page. Teachers and, later, editors weren't sure if they were fiction or poetry. I just knew they were what I was driven to write....

So here I am, arrived at my 300 words. And I've mostly just complained.

Sadly, that's completely typical of my life and my writing life.

Oh! I almost forgot: I deeply and desperately love poetry. And I think you should too.

Manitoba Scene's MBA coverage also includes posts by Charlene Diehl, Di Brandt, and Joan Thomas, which are smart and feeling takes on their writing practices (i.e. the polar opposite of my post).

Yay slight answers to serious questions! Fun!

Reprint: Goodreads

This is what the Goodreads website says about itself:

"Goodreads is the largest social network for readers in the world. We have more than 4,500,000 members who have added more than 120,000,000 books to their shelves. A place for casual readers and bona-fide bookworms alike, Goodreads members recommend books, compare what they are reading, keep track of what they've read and would like to read, form book clubs and much more. Goodreads was launched in December 2006."

This is what Goodreads member Holley, from Alcoa, TN, said this about Hump on the Goodreads site:

"Although I'm not a mother yet, I will one day be one. This collection of poems enlightens me in the way of emotions I have yet to feel but can't wait to experience. So real and raw, I loved the journey of this book."

(My very first Goodreads review! Squee!)

Holley won one of two copies of Hump I gave away on the Goodreads back in September.

So it's not a completely random review. But I'm VERY tickled that she read and reviewed it.

Because that's how poetry gets out. One copy and one reader at a time.

Eileen McTavish Sykes

Th Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book nominees (l-r): Craig Russell, Ariel Gordon, Keith Cadieux, Sheila McClarty.

The final nominee, Theodore Fontaine, couldn't make it to the reading...

* * *

The Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book is awarded annually to a Manitoba author whose first professionally published English language book is deemed the best written.

The award will be handed out April 17 the Manitoba Book Awards gala, which will be held at the Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain.

* * *

When I asked the nominees to assemble at the back of the room for a picture, I was sort of shocked to see half the room wheel around and start taking pictures. It was like having lit paparazzi.

Of course, half of the pictures on my camera feature me instructing the volunteer photographer on which button to push. Because I'm bossy...but also because it's a semi-complicated camera.

Reprint: Getting over her hump

Wolseley writer Ariel Gordon talks poetry, parenthood, and Winnipeg’s growing literary community

The Metro
Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION

By: Matt Preprost
Posted: 04/6/2011 4:06 AM

It took Ariel Gordon nearly 20 years before she was finally able to have a tangible, 95-page paperback in her hands to prove she was, in fact, a writer.

And since the 38-year-old Wolseley resident’s debut book of poetry titled Hump was released last May, it keeps on giving.

Gordon was recently shortlisted for two Manitoba Book Awards: the Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry and the Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book.

The nominations follow on the heels of her being named Manitoba’s most promising writer last year by the Manitoba Writer’s Guild.

"When you publish a book, you hope certain things will happen to you," said Gordon, a freelance writer and events co-ordinator for Aqua Books.

"I didn’t expect, after being in this community for so long, that they would all happen to me. People have been kinder than I probably deserve and all of the small dreams I’ve had about publishing a book have come true.

"I’ve been saying I was a writer since I was 19 with no proof. Anyone can say they’re writer, but until you have a book, there’s no real qualitative proof."

The 43 poems that comprise Hump illustrate Gordon’s love of nature, her relationship with her partner, and her transition into motherhood.

"My life was hijacked by getting pregnant and having a child, and my writing life was hijacked, too, because all of a sudden it was all I wanted to write about," said Gordon, whose daughter is now four years old. "It was almost like a compulsion, I didn’t have much choice of what I was writing about. I was really trying to explain pregnancy and mothering to myself."

Also nominated for one of the guild’s 12 awards are Wolseley-based writers David Bergen and Kerry Ryan.

Bergen’s book The Matter With Morris is shortlisted for The Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction, which carries a $3,500 award, and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award. Ryan was nominated for the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer.

Gordon called the awards a "celebration" of the province’s growing literary community.

"When I was 19 and first started going to events in this community, there were only four awards," she said. "The awards have grown at the same time the community has grown and look at how many international writers are from Winnipeg.

"I can’t say that I’m one of them, but one day I’d like to think I might take my place, if I’m lucky and I don’t die or turn into a terrible writer."

Award recipients will be announced on April 17 at the Manitoba Book Awards gala, held at the Centre culturel franco-manitobain in St. Boniface. The event is free and open to the public.

matt.preprost@canstarnews.com