Pearl Pirie’s lists, reviews, interviews, etc. since 2005

Upcoming poets in Wakefield

Evenings of sharing poetry/soirées de partages poétiques.

This month is the theme of/ ce mois, le thème du : reckoning

hosted by/ avec hôtes : Gillie Griffin, Julie Le Gal

With guest reader /avec poète invitée: Anita Lahey

Thursday, February 6th, 7pm at the Wakefield library. Accessible with level entry.

Poetea series at the Biblio Wakefield Library at 7pm, first Thursday of the month.

February 6th……Anita Lahey

March 6th……….Nina Jane Drystek

April 3rd………….Jamal Amir Akbari

May 1st……………Colin Morton.

Reader’s Log, Supplemental

In 2024, I managed a title per day, averaging 118 pages a day. I aimed to review 10% of the number of titles I read, but managed to rview 5% of titles, about 20 reviews in the year, which is almost two a month. Not outrageously terrible.

Two dozen were re-reads, a title per week were read aloud, or were audio books, which was more than i expected even if more or less the same as every year since 2020 when I began tracking it. 

136 titles, that is 37%, were digital, and the remainder, paper.  As I mentioned before, 60% are poetry, but specifically, 5% total were haiku or tanka. A little less than I thought but I did miss the conference so picked up no new titles. It’s harder than find in the wilds. 

I flagged 28 titles as memorable. 68 I rated as 5/5 and only half a dozen I pursued to the bitter end despite feeling it as 1/5. If it’s not for me, better to quit, but stretch reads are building hooks for the future. I have qualms about rating as the cases where one poem or line or scene sent me but the rest okay or blasé. How do I even indicate that except for in my comment field?

Okay, that’s it for now. My instagram post as usual, lists particulars of titles. 

Self-audit and Best of 2024 List

Before I enter year 14 of this recording, I’ll compare some aims, (to read older material and diversely, and equally for gender parity,) against what I actually did.

I’ll elaborate on trends of books I have finished reading. (There are a few on the table that I may still finish but in rough shapes this will hold up.)

Overall I read about 41,000 pages. That’s about 110 pages a day on average. It’s a ballpark because some were facing pages translations, some had no page numbers so I didn’t count or made a guess. I only counted up to appendices if I didn’t read those. Assist points go to my back and sciatica and energy crashes which left me capable of doing little more than reading.

I am always adding new questions to track. This year I added a couple new columns to the spreadsheet: re-reads (28 titles) and cost of title.

  • 66% were free to me: downloads, contributor copies, review copies, gifts, jury copies, library, or little free libraries
  • 19% were bought at full price, from the author directly, at small press fairs, by subscription, or else came from indie bookstores
  • 8% from Amazon (sorry)
  • 7% came from thrift stores or used bookstores (so 50 cents to $10)

This time, rather than list all titles, which I’ve done on Instagram all year, and rather than what I rated highest as in a recent post, I went back through my list.

Here are 30 titles that live rent-free in my head or rearranged my mental furniture . (About 8% of those completed.)

An unordered list under each category:

Essays/Memoirs/biographies

  • Letters to Lost Souls by Kai Cheng Thom (Penguin, 2023)
  • Notes to Myself: My struggle to become a person by Hugh Prather (Real People Press, 1970)
  • James Wright: a Life in Poetry by Jonathan Blunk  (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2017)
  • Some Silences: Notes on Small Press by Cameron Anstee (Apt 9, 2024)

Novels

  • Looking for Her by Carolyn Marie Souid (Baraka Books, 2024)
  • Dear Elsa by Marco Fraticelli (Red Deer Press, 2023)
  • Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 2012)
  • The Jasmine Goats by Georgia Katz-Rosene (self-published, 2024)

Fantasy 

  • Buffalo is the New Buffalo by Chelsea Vowel (Arsenal, 2022)
  • The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Viking, 2020)
  • The Wee Free Men: Discworld Novel 30 by Terry Pratchett (RandomHouse, 2003)
  • Once Upon a Death (Days of Death Series, Part 1) by Dzintra Sullivan (self-pub, 2019)
  • Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch  by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (Corgi Books, 1990)

Fan Fiction

  • Demonology and the Triphasic Model of Trauma: An Integrative Approach by Nnm (Archive of Our Own, 2019)
  • Bleating Hearts by HK Black (Archive of Our Own, 2023)
  • Golden Handcuffs by seekwill (Archive of Our Own, 2020)
  • By My Side series by DemonicPutto (Archive of Our Own, 2020-2023)
  • Bonds of Blood by Dee_Morris (AO3, 2024)
  • Artist in Residence by Caedmon (AO3, 2024)

Plays

  • Faith Healer by Brian Friel (Faber & Faber, 1980)
  • Pink Mist by Owen Sheers (faber & faber, 2013)
  • Green River Killer by Michael Sheen (2015)

Poetry

  • Vallejo’s Marrow by Phil Hall (Beautiful Outlaw Press, 2024)
  • A Pandemic Inventory: Spring-Summer 2020 Brooklyn NY by Zane Koss (above/ground, 2023)
  • between the lakes by Ben Robinson (above/ground, 2023)
  • Frontenac: Autumnal Hymns by Michael e. Casteels (Puddles of Sky, 2022)
  • The Last Song of the World by Joseph Fasano (Copper Canyon, 2024)
  • The Unfolding: poems by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer, (Wildhouse, 2024)
  • The flesh is not a prison by Graham Cwinn (Things in my Chest, 2023)
  • Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World, edited by Pádraig Ó Tuama (Canongate, 2022)

If, in the next week, I read something that blows my mind, I’ll bump it to next year’s list, or maybe I’ll append.

I see impact in novels, short stories, non-fiction, plays, but, curiously, not as much poetry as I expect, considering percentage-read. (Curious. Am I not reading challenging, transformative poetry? Not attending deeply enough? Or is the work that poetry does not my medicine now?)

Maybe some sci-fi will shake out as memorable later and stick with me. Some I ranked highly then forgot entirely. Some I ranked lower but stays with me. Everything is an estimate.

This year I read 46% each, male and female with no disparity of ranking by gendered or non-binary or multiple genders.

47% Canadian, 53% other nations. My Indigenous reads, including First Nations, Inuit and Metis, was a measly 2% and roll into 9% total who were BIPOC. 

Queer reads, so far I know the authors who are 2SLGBTQ+, comprised only 7%. (For science reads, no data.) Most fan fiction are by people with pen names which don’t  display gender, nation, queerness, or melanin, but many stories feature gay, ace, art, bi, or queer characters and those novels, and novellas comprise 20% of titles read. So maybe queer reads are over a quarter?

Poetry comprised 60%. Most of the rest are novels or novellas. Chapbooks rang in around 20%. The next biggest categories were memoir or essays, then history or science. 

55% were published in 2023-2024, Only 6% were earlier than mid 20th century. (In subjective time however, the Jane Austin books were may more than 6%, especially Sense and Sensibility. A dubious success to finish that one. I tended to bail rather than persist under the principle of you read more if you read what you like and quit more that you don’t like.)

What work is it that I want written word to do?

To expand me. To teach me how to be a better human. To understand angles of human nature. To conceive of a supportive world. To enter play and silliness, and to enter scary experiences completely unlike my own. To live more lives and to live a life I’m better equipped to understand.