What Are They Currently Reading: Rona Maynard

A Husband and Wife, at Grant Park food court, on their way to Rona Maynard, on What They Are Currently Reading:

Husband: We've both been studying a lot about Sweden, because right after Rona Maynard we're moving there tonight.

Me: Tonight? This is a momentous occasion. What are you reading about Sweden?

Wife: Mostly we're reading about the language, counting, simple phrases, cities and towns. Actually kind of boring stuff.

Me: Are you reading other stuff, too?

Wife: Oh yeah, some here and there. Of course I'm reading Miriam Toews, in a certain way she's the best in Canada. Also because I'm of French Metis heritage I still always turn to Gabrielle Roy and lots of historical information on Louis Riel. I read some late French Symbolist poets, like Paul Valery.

Me: Valery, don't you think he was sort of ruined from over-canonization by T.S Eliot?

Wife: No. And I like going to the Manitoba Archives and checking out the trading records of the Northwest and Hudson Bay Companies.

Me. Pretty impressive. Nice selection. And you, good Sir?

Husband: Well currently reading alot about Sweden. Also, because I've got the travel bug, I've been reading alot of Alvaro Mutis, the friend of Marquez, who has that fascinating character named Maqroll.

Me: Whoa, slow-up, I'm trying to write!

Husband:I'm actually halfway through a Scandanavian saga - I'm trying to get the feel for northern Baltic culture - The Saga of the People of Eyri. I guess for the same reasons I've been reading up on Ibsen, just the less famous ones, like The Master Builder. Oh, and lots of Knut Hamsun, from whereever he's from somewhere up in the cold there.

Me: Knut Hamsun, the Nazi sympathizer?

Husband: I would debate you on that, Sir.

Me: I would likely concur to your side of the debate; still, it does hang over his body of work.

Husband: Well, no use debating now, we have to finish our Pad Thai, then getting packing after Rona Maynard.

Me: True. I wish you the best of luck on your journey and I can only hope you bring your spark of erudition to learned people of Europe.

Husband: Please leave.

* * *

J.S. is a propagandist and pamphleteer for over sixty-six Crown and Association publications. He has been both staff and contributing writer for weekly newspapers such as the Selkirk Journal, the Gimli Spectator, and the Midnight Sun, in Dawson City, Yukon. His poems and prose have appeared in the Golden Buzz (now the Force Gazette), Tart Magazine, and as low, low, low-run chapbooks. He is also founding member of the now defunct rap-futurist collective, Xenophane Six.

Lecture Review: Brian Henderson

There was no Power-Point presentation or laser pointer. There was no popcorn or confectionery candy. Rather Ballsy, in our over-scripted-lecture-era, that Henderson didn’t have even a pine podium from which to read his latest collection of poems, Nerve Language.

Not often will a lecturer rouse me (for probably a decade I’ve listened to mundane-talkers while quietly lusting more hyperized stimuli like video games, reality programming, and gonzo-blogging) so when the packed lecture hall at the University of Winnipeg finally settled, and Henderson was set to begin, I questioned whether I’d stay engaged.

Henderson was pique and handsome, dressed in a fantastic black sweater with matching black slacks, and he possessed an angular intensity from the very outset of his talk that couldn’t help but keep the most pixelated of attentions engaged.

Henderson explained that the subject of Nerve Language was Daniel Paul Schreber, a late 19th century German judge, who was institutionalized for lunacy at time predating any conceptions of the unconscious.

“I was reading Shreber’s memoirs,” Said Henderson, “and I was taken by the poetry of the language, the German phraseology.”

Henderson explained it was first time he had got into a relationship with a dead writer, and he wanted to make a body of poems less forensic than the memoirs left to history and its multitude of psychoanalysts.

Henderson talked in that brilliant circuitous manner that is impossible to summarize; he is no stodgy tweedsmuir variety of Prof. When it came time for the audience to ask questions, Henderson considered each answer thoughtfully and answered with never too much authority, with just the perfect modulation of mirth to let the audience enjoy his answers for what are all answers, in Art, but speculation?


* * *

J.S. is a propagandist and pamphleteer for over sixty-six Crown and Association publications. He has been both staff and contributing writer for weekly newspapers such as the Selkirk Journal, the Gimli Spectator, and the Midnight Sun, in Dawson City, Yukon. His poems and prose have appeared in the Golden Buzz (now the Force Gazette), Tart Magazine, and as low, low, low-run chapbooks. He is also founding member of the now defunct rap-futurist collective, Xenophane Six.

Nine or so Questions with Derek Dawda

How come there's no bio for you in the program?

There's not? (Giggling and grinning) Organizers probably forgot with how hectic it is.

You of course have an accent. Where are you from?

Poland. I speak Polish.

How long have you been writing in English?

Since 2000, the Millennium exactly. Maybe I wrote my first poem in English on New Years Eve. (We're both giggling and grinning now)

Can you see a connection with Canadian and Polish literatures?

(We both slap our knees with the hilarity of such a heavy question.)

Lots. But maybe not so much. I'd have to really think about it.

Now for typical Paris Review Questions: What's your advice for a young writer?

I like the Paris Review. My advice (I gotta admit we can barely look into one anothers' eyes for the cliche of my question) is probably read, read, read. And be open, engaged with the world.

I'm asinine for asking that question, sorry Derek. What are you reading right now?

Brendan McLeod.

The novel he wrote in three days or something like that?

Did he? It's really good.

What got you into SLAM poetry?

I was in Vancouver and they have a really strong spoken-word scene there. I just learned how to write for performance.

What made you perform a surrealist cut-up for your opening night at the WIWF?

I was at a festival in Brandon, and we started trying these cut-ups and really amazing work came out of that.

Is your name, Dawda, pronounced like the movement itself, Dada?

Yep, same way, but my stage name is Drek Daa, the organizers didn't put that on the handouts.

* * *

J.S. is a propagandist and pamphleteer for over sixty-six Crown and Association publications. He has been both staff and contributing writer for weekly newspapers such as the Selkirk Journal, the Gimli Spectator, and the Midnight Sun, in Dawson City, Yukon. His poems and prose have appeared in the Golden Buzz (now the Force Gazette), Tart Magazine, and as low, low, low-run chapbooks. He is also founding member of the now defunct rap-futurist collective, Xenophane Six.

Opening Night

In a taxi on the way to this year's WIWF I engaged my driver in some litterati chit-chat.

"What's your favorite book? All time. Or your favorite author?"

I hoped to hear a multi-syllabled East Indian word or name connected with some cyclic-tome on love and war and rebirth.

"Why, Sir?"

"I'm a blogger, writing for a writing festival."

"At The Forks? This is where all the people are going."

He scrunched his spectacled face. "I like Donald Trump books, you know, on getting rich, these things."

"Awesome. Ever read Tony Robbins?"

It was the only name I could recall that shared the genre.

"Anthony Robbins. Of course."

"You should check out this guy tomorrow talking at the University of Winnipeg, Brian Henderson, he's a writer."

"Does he speak about the power of positive thinking?"

"I think so. He's a poet. He's very positively received."

"Maybe I'll go then. Monday is my day off."

* * *

J.S. is a propagandist and pamphleteer for over sixty-six Crown and Association publications. He has been both staff and contributing writer for weekly newspapers such as the Selkirk Journal, the Gimli Spectator, and the Midnight Sun, in Dawson City, Yukon. His poems and prose have appeared in the Golden Buzz (now the Force Gazette), Tart Magazine, and as low, low, low-run chapbooks. He is also founding member of the now defunct rap-futurist collective, Xenophane Six.

Intro: Jason Stefanik

Landing on the Tarmac - Touched down seconds ago from far northwestward of here.

In Prince George thousands reveled, raged, and paraded since the most Honourable Gordon Campbell, apparent Premier-superstar for B.C, gave a gazillion dollars to the UNBC for building the Northern Sports Centre.

An eco-spec university set amid autumnal pines on the side of a mountain, with green banners waved by gorgeous Aboriginal athletes to usher in the 2010 Winter Olympics, and enough lumpfish and ice-wine to sink a yacht of Monte Carlo's most affluent; Holy frick, I thought, how unlike gritty ole Winnipeg...

Yet how different we are here is why I love here - what trite vodka-maxims from a red-eye flight. For if we are anything in Winnipeg we are a community of artists and our venues.

I was reminded of this fact when seeing none other than the esteemed David Bergen sharing passage homeward in economy class (likely even a Giller can't take the bargainer out of a Winnipegger!)

And it's not just the writers at this year's festival that have me so horny, but the venues: the metal ribs of the Millennium Library for freaky sci-fi guy William Gibson: the narrow alleys with boarded-up warehouses in the Exchange for writing workshops: plus enough midnight slam poetry for the peeps and gangsta-girlz in the hood to keep amped....

How relevant internationally our festival has grown in a sense overwhelms; while waiting for my luggage to clunk down the airport shoot I've a good mind to walk over to David Bergen and ask him if he's attending this year's Thin Hair Festival.

* * *

J.S. is a propagandist and pamphleteer for over sixty-six Crown and Association publications. He has been both staff and contributing writer for weekly newspapers such as the Selkirk Journal, the Gimli Spectator, and the Midnight Sun, in Dawson City, Yukon. His poems and prose have appeared in the Golden Buzz (now the Force Gazette), Tart Magazine, and as low, low, low-run chapbooks. He is also founding member of the now defunct rap-futurist collective, Xenophane Six.