Tree: May 10 and John Lavery

Shane Rhodes read from Err. His drinking poems are always popular among drinkers. His book has 3 sections, each quite distinct in feel. One plunders stories of HIV from an online patient Q&A discussion board. One gives a nod to constraint-based, controlling for combinations of letters, not surprisingly evoking memories of Eunoia.

Cameron Anstee did a tribute set to Artie Gold, a poet with large gaps in his writing that got published. Hundreds of pages of uncollected poems might be floating around among his friends, and among his papers. cityflowers (1974, Delta Can), even yr photograph looks afraid of me (1975, Talonbooks), some of the cat poems (1978, CrossCountry Press). Talon put out a collected books of Artie Gold post-humously which included a poem of his mourning of an impossible passing that Cameron dedicated to Artie and John. get up. do it all again.
[picture from July 2010 Dusty Owl]
Rod performed Death Shall Have No Dominion.
On Sunday afternoon, for those of you who don’t know, John was to perform at Dusty Owl and release his CD. On Sunday morning, John died of cancer.
A Memorial Celebration of Words and Music will be organized and held, probably sometime this September in the Gatineau-Ottawa area. The celebration will include readings in English, French and Spanish as well as songs and music.
Some pictures of him are here, a video of him playing classical guitar here, a tribute to him here, a tribute to his writing, a poem by John, an interview excerpt text and an audio interview of Sept 2010 on Lit Landscapes…

Jeramy Dodds and David O’Meara in break time. Dodds was guest reader and in conversation with Shane Rhodes in the poet-poet discussion session.
Unfortunately I was too beat to hang on longer. His discussion at the writers festival in 2009 was fascinating, talking of his meticulous process for composition. I hear this talk was equally interesting.
The next Pre-Tree session will be 6:45 pm as usual. Brenda Leifso is the next Pre-Tree workshop facilitator on May 24th and for the two sessions following that.
The homework, which is optional, is to do a “concepted” sonnet in the form of ABBA ABBA CDCD EE except using “thought rhymes” rather than ear-rhymes, such as George Murray did in The Rush to Here. For example, if line A ends with the word dark, the next line A would use a closely associated word like black or night, or the opposite, such as light or pale. If B ends in mother then the other B-lines would be parent or caregiver, or child.