I’m going to try to share a few things again of interest to other writers. It’s my week-anniversary of feeling lousy and another headache is rising, but I’ll post while I can.

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The schedule for VerseFest, spring 2025, running March 25-29th is now up. It’s at venues around the city.

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An informal writing group open to newcomers of fiction, memoir or poetry, Write Night, is Tuesday, March 11, 7 – 8:30 PM at Biblio Wakefield Library as on the second Tuesday of each month from October to May. Linda Vanderlee moderates and does a zoom version monthly as well.

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On March 12th is the Montreal Review of Books issue launch which they are putting to youtube. It’s through Blue Metropolis which starts online April 14.

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This seems as true as at time of writing:

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years –
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres –
Trying to learn to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.
And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion.
And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate – but there is no competition –
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious.
But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying.
The rest is not our business.”

Y.B. Yeats, Four Quartets

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Zinesters, I’m passing this along…the poetry collective RODAISUN, has been distributing their poetry monthly in Montreal since July 2021. The group is three multidisciplinary female artists, Iva Čelebić, Emma Cosgrove and Catherine Machado. They’ll next do 6 issues annually by subscription, thicker, slicker double issues, sent out every two months, for a total of $12. Link to sign up for mailing service: https://www.grapeseedbooks.com/product-page/rodaisun-in-the-mail

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The Haiku Canada Weekend schedule is now posted at the Haiku Canada website along with registration info. It will be Friday, May 16th to Sunday May 18th, at Bishop’s University, Lennoxville, Québec, Canada. 

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I’m probably forgetting something.

Correction, I’m certainly forgetting most things. That is how I remember one thing.

Pinhole Press spring series chapbooks! Each title is also available for preorder now on the website. 

‘Chroma,’ by Gary Barwin & Elee Kraljii Gardiner (cover design by the poets themselves). 

‘Love’s Little Dojo,’ by Jordan Williamson.

‘we astronauts,’ by Pearl Pirie.

‘DTES Watching,’ by Pari Mokradi  (cover photograph by the poet).

A resumé of Émile Nelligan in 10 minute video. He made his opus, then was institutionalized mad for decades. At this time dementia and convenience of family put people in such asylums and it was guarded by former guards and policemen more than by nurses, at least in Ireland’s equivalent. So many gaps in knowledge and history.

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Doing data entry in French which the computer tries to spellcheck all to English words. It’s enough to make handwritten text more attractive, almost.

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Are you on Bluesky? There are Canadian poets starter packs and haiku and tanka and waka starter packs

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“I seized the day, but I didn’t lift with my knees, so I seized my back too.” Dzintra Sullivan on the dead bird site.

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I have a structural problem, with books. So far my digital storage isn’t jammed but there is no way in sweet purgatory that these stacks are all going into those shelves. They have overrun the box capacity and heaven help but 4 more at least are coming by mail this month. Not to mention the wish list and the inevitable caving in at least some cases.

I have to make some hard calls. No, no, not purge. Probably. Boxing up anthologies and magazines so there is room for novels, history books and single author poetry collections. Even that mitigates little. I could actually box up some to sell that I expect I won’t read again. I believe I have a box or two that I meant to drop off at a book fair but mislaid when the time came. Or I unconsciously wanted to keep them.

Two walls are covered floor to ceiling in shelves. There’s a lot of windows and few options with quilting supplies also overflowing containment. And now more canvasses, and more embroidery gear. This is getting a little out of hand. But to be surrounded by possibility and options is rather delightful.

I do need more order in the office to function tho.

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Book mail out of the blue is so heartening. And a genuine personal letter. Letters are not dead as presumed.

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It’s disheartening how little fun many seem to have while writing poetry. Play and nonsense isn’t fun, nor letting loose some cynical remark? Poets, are you well?

Where is the art I suppose is the question, (she grumps). And in high-art-device poetry, where is the heart and body? Hard to please, I know.

Why can a novel be unput-downable and even written well poetry, off-putting? It must be me that’s shifting, yes? Or randomness of finding worse poetry and better fiction? Or narrative being the medicine I need, over intensity of impressions? Some books are such wonderful rides that all else pales besides and it seems despair alone that anything else could be written so sweetly.

I have a resources page where I share stuff. Just added is a checklist for what to bring when you table at a book fair. There are also tips for authors photos, how to run a reading series, templates for chapbooks, a spreadsheet template for logging your reading.

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In the further framing commercial scarcity model vs. abundance model, people who share haiku online, knowing it will make those poems ineligible for contests and magazines, win my admiration. Like, Charlotte. What does hoarding a poem until a reward with publication do? A publication is laminating a marginalia jotting on a newspaper clipping. Poems if shared are broadcast, exchanged, but pinning to a submission window of small paywalled patrons limits the ideas, corrals them when they could be free to bounce against other ideas.

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From Peer Gynt “We are songs;/You should have sung us! /Thousands of times/You have stifled us./We have been waiting/Under your heart,/But were never sent for./Death to your voice!” Peer: And death to you, you ludicrous jingle! What time did I have for versifying”

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Movies, shows, writing with hooks all can exacerbate the priority of crisis, the one inevitable outcome, awfulized emoting instead of creative various directions of solutions and de-escalations. Like anything so long as we remember it is silliness and play but we train the brain by every act, yes? Filtering in a reductionist way is funny unless you believe it’s getting at the underlying binary real vs. lie.

an emotion
is a thought the body has—
branch broken by wind

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Being present isn’t monitoring reaction/reactivity, body but unsticking, and seeing inward and outward, not judging, assessing, but seeing. As in how to survive.

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Not poetry but flipping perspective of defaults for cars.

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“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most” said a meme, echoing Dolly Parton in interview once, saying something like, a want is just a wish if you don’t back it up with action.