And now from the book’s site, you can buy the collection directly with paypal.
Why read it?

In been shed bore (Chaudiere Books, 2010), Pearl Pirie shows herself to be a keen listener and observer of people: their speech patterns, their conversations, tones, gestures, and language. She samples from life and from the written and spoken word.
[…] I’ve only touched upon a few brief examples here, but been shed bore is packed densely with poetry, with sound gymnastics, brilliant wordplay, with stories, recurring themes such as the difficulty of communicating, loneliness, and awkwardness caused by dealing with prejudice and societal convention. There is tenderness here, eroticism, joy of language and life, sadness and compassion. It’s a book to pick up again and again and find something different to ponder and to enjoy.
~ Amanda Earl.

This year’s governor general literary award winner in the English poetry category is Richard Greene, Cobourg (Ontario), for Boxing the Compass., (Signal Editions, an imprint of Véhicule Press). The jury’s comment included, “We follow him in his offbeat but strangely familiar travels.” Here’s a sample poem about a grandfather.
You can get your books signed in one shot if you’re collecting the whole set of ggs.

These 14 acclaimed writers include novelists, non-fiction writers, poets, playwrights, illustrators and translators from across Canada. They will gather in Ottawa for one night to sign books and meet the public on Wednesday, November 24 from 6-8 pm
Nicholas Hoare Books, 419 Sussex Drive
(English-language winners)
Librairie du Soleil, 33 George Street
(French-language winners)
Free admission. Hors d’ouvres will be served.

It makes sense, a small indie English bookstore and a small indie French bookstore, and the audiences potentially not fully overlapping, but isn’t it also curious that they should gather according to language?

Robert Peake considers his own biases in What I look for in a poem

There are certain ways that a poem can signal to me that, out of respect for so many others awaiting my attention, it is now time to move on.

What a nice way to put that. And poets “pressing antique language and elevated diction back into service.” (I personally blame online dictionaries in part that list words marked obsolete in the 1913 Websters. ;))
Good to consider what puts up one’s guard, makes one distrust the poem, the experience. What will put you off? What are you a sucker for? What is a useful stretch? What is a stretch of habit for what you like which is no longer a stretch but a rut?
He remarks on liking a poet who can “come alive to one’s senses in the telling of the tale, setting of the scene, or painting of the impression” instead of doing “conceptual shorthand”.
If a poem draws you in or if you feel shut out with not enough to go on, the reader is still the one responsible for exiting the poem or extending self into it, despite warning bells or because of siren calls.
It makes sense to read what nourishes, a mix of what is fast and slow to digest, slipping in things that you haven’t developed a taste for along with things you know you love.
Knowing what you are responding to and why is good practice as reader, editor or writer.
On another note, my favorite of the the first 3 weeks of Rosemary Nissen-Wade’s Poem a Day challenge of her revisiting her memories of Bali, Crossing Points, Pro, Looking for Us, Homeward, Differences.

The room was packed, standing room only and oops faces coming in the door as the hour went on.

Rob Winger was launching The Chimney Stone (Nightwood Editions, 2010) at the Manx, Ottawa last night. A reliably great reader, love how his poems don’t take the conventional path. I can’t project and then wait for the predictable payoff of being told what I already knew. I’ve heard him read some excerpts over the last couple years. They are solidly enjoyable. Look forward to reading it cover to cover.
A polished reader, he’s having fun up there. He has an irrepressible enthusiasm for the ghazal and for life that comes out. (Realize he looks sombre here but both readers have flashes of smiles that are far faster than my camera hand.)

Adam Sol was reading from Jeremiah, Ohio (Anansi, 2008) as the other reader at Plan 99, Ottawa Nov 20.
I should know his name by now but hadn’t heard him in person nor seen the books. Clearly I’d been missing a boat.
Sol, a great reader, has spun an interesting set of constraints for a story. A drifter who believes he is the biblical Jeremiah, and a man who says, why not just travel with him and see where this goes. The characters are distinct. The language playing off contemporary and bedded into raiding the bible for perspective and language. It’s tilted. The journey curious. I look forward to reading this one too.
Both readers have a playful curiosity with the world and a tight way of writing, not tending to blather on. Too much interesting to get on with to dawdle in a line.

Off the wall reflections on the haiku-music performance.

After the introductions by Ambassador Ishikawa, on November 19th there was a haiku and music performance at the Japanese embassy put on with KaDo Ottawa. Musicians who did ekphrastic responses to the poems with many instruments from rattles and windchimes to blues guitar and harmonica. The poems were read in sequence in 3 acts, one for each chapter or chapbook with music reacting to or setting the mood for the next sequence.

On each ends are TA Carter and Guy Simser with music unfolding between poems.
It made an interplay and interconnections among poems by 15 different haikuists: Terry Ann Carter, Grant D Savage, Philomene Kocher, Claudia Coutu Radmore, Elena Calvo, Patrick Campbell, Sheila M Ross, Lana Holmes, Margot Gallant, Guy Simser, Pearl Pirie, Heather A MacDonald, Mike Montreuil, Melanie Noll and Betty Warrington Kearsley.

On either end are Heather MacDonald and Mike Montreuil as Debbie Danbrook and Catriona Sturton perform. Sturton looked as much at home with electric guitar and accordion as a traditional 3-string Japanese guitar singing bits of 1920s Japanese folk tunes.

Danbrook has over a dozen CDs of music, much with the Shakuhachi. She also played drum and other instruments.

The collection of haiku came in 2 shapes (or 4 depending on how you count). One was a stapled 8 1/2 x 11 with all the poems for $5, and the other in a hand-sewn artisan, hand made, (hand breathed upon) set of 3 chapbooks by themes for $20.


Sample of inside.
It was a relaxing night, much like the performance for Haiku North America interweaving poems and music, and well-attended with I’d guess somewhere around 110 people present.

The book table was active. The sheets at the end note that there will be a free exhibit on “The Way of the Brush: An exhibition of Sumi-e Painting and Calligraphy” Nov 25-28 at the Ottawa School of Art.
Coming December 7 at 7 p.m. at the Japanese embassy will be a lecture and film on Koji Yamamura: master of the form. RSVP thru the embassy at 241-8541.