Dempster was the reader at Tree (vid clip) last October and if you missed him (or are missing him), he’s back in town this month as the next feature at Plan 99 this Saturday at the Manx.
He’ll be teaching at Banff School of writing this fall and tomorrow is the drumroll…

Press Release – Tuesday May 18, 2010
YORK REGION AUTHOR FINALIST FOR PREMIER’S ARTS AWARD
York Region author and poet Barry Dempster has been selected as one of six finalists for the Premier’s Award of Excellence in the Arts. The Premier’s Award recognizes outstanding achievement and contribution to arts and culture in Ontario during a significant period of time.
Six finalists are chosen from various arts disciplines and each is given $2,000 with one finalist selected who will receive $35,000 and will name an emerging artist in their field to receive a prize of $15,000.
Barry Dempster was born in Toronto and educated in child psychology. He is the author of a novel, a children’s book, two volumes of short stories and eleven collections of poetry. He has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award for literature twice, for his first book, Fables for Isolated Men (Guernica) and for The Burning Alphabet (Brick Books) which won the Canadian Authors Association Chalmers Award for poetry.
From 1990 to 1997, he was Poetry and Reviews Editor for Poetry Canada Review which quickly became one of Canada’s most esteemed literary magazines. During this time, Dempster became known for his helpful, supportive rejection letters, his astute book reviews and his “New Voice” discoveries of some of Canada’s finest poets.
He is currently the senior acquisitions editor with Brick Books where he has discovered and edited many of Canada’s best emerging poets. He has been on the faculty at The Banff Centre as mentor for the Writing Studio twice, the Wired Writing program and the Writing with Style program in fall 2010.
He has read across Canada and Ontario many times, in England and the U.S. and is in constant demand at author reading series and festivals.
Dempster lives in York Region where he runs a very popular film series “Southlake Cinemania” which has raised over $100,000 to support literacy in the community. He presents an annual Poetry Gala to packed house for National Poetry Month where he presents 5 important new and established writers. He served on the East Gwillimbury Library Board for 10 years and was the chair for 5 during which time a new library was built in Mount Albert. He has been the Writer-in-Residence at the Richmond Hill Public Library twice where he has met with over 150 budding writers and attracted large attendance in his inspiring writing workshops.
He runs two book discussion groups and regularly conducts 10 week writing courses in short fiction and poetry. In 2009, the Barry Dempster Young Writers Award was created to acknowledge his role in inspiring young students to value their writing ability and recognize the power of words. He has presented writing workshops in many schools and universities in Ontario where he engages the students with his love of words.
The award ceremony will be given by the Ontario Government and will take place Thursday June 10, 2010 in Toronto and will be hosted by CBC’s Jian Ghomeshi.

Jane Holland’s has a workshop on editing, posted in relation to the Mxlexia Women’s Poetry competition which closes July 26.
Her 2nd workshop suggests messing with text mechanically to see what turns up under the leaf duff of intent.
So to rummage the tool box… that cento again, machine-translated to Japanese to English to Greek to French to Portuguese back to English.

OR the limitless d’ friends I nail of the word n’ to it
no tuna exists that is understood leaving piece contact
d’ entrances of l’ air. To the numerous reputation such order.
Thus, as for numerous habitual people this it [traylizei] floraison
that they had turned, [aimoforo] to the silt éclectique
and [kokkalo] of the hammer.
This appreciates commisération where the perfume
is good savageness – or considers me that AM.
with respect to with all the women
as for this spouse who delivers the fear and the arm
that seems to the window that agitates it what
[kalosorizetai], l’ explosion that is the door that nobody s’ we open due:
It s’ he extends with its point toe, innocently.
Seguidamente nobody that the bomb must be surprised
nervosité that [etraylise] as nobody as [little ekeino] [descending yours]
where return, does not rub its note that great headings.
It is the new accident of method knowing is the unknown collection.
However, l’ [I] the central way that if finds only.

It is a sort of telephone game that manufactures some entirely new data. The result has a certain charm of oddity and the new rhythm of penultimate language scrapes out the unevenness of registers.
And once more to continue the spins from there thru French to German to English to Japanese to Spanish to English. What is to be found in translation?

Or d’ There is no border;
Nail n’ of the friend; I; Word; ;
That. n’ It is not; thunfisch;
As far as that part d’ One
is based on contact; It is including; ;
l’ Entrance; ; Air. That class of indication
of many call. Therefore, it is related
to much people, generally the one
that [traylizeiblühen] qu’ That s’ l’
In relation to, [aimoforo] was given return;
Mud and [kokkalo] Eklektiker of the hammer.
This like commisération, savageneßbon
or qu’ of I; of the perfume of the real point;
It is conceited; . It is related to all the women,
he is related to this partner of the union,
the fear and the source of the weapon of window
of the thing and l’ It seems the way so;
It vibrates, [kalosorizetai], l’ ; Explosion
and s’ which is the door; Person; ;
We abrimos due: That s’ ; That extends innocent
with the toe of the point.
The tension of the pump is due to surprise,
like the person of the thing the person of Next
[etraylise] the way [weniges d’ In the point
where the return does not observe
does not rub ekeino] [the pen rises],
the one of the great title. C’ As far as new accident
of the method of it must know, is a unknown collection
that is. At least l’ ; [I] As soon as it types the discovery in center.

Love how the second one ends. It doesn’t need to be all right or all sensible or all nonsense or all flow but is there a grain there that’s fresh?
There’s a pleasingness to: “where the return does not observe /does not rub ekeino] [the pen rises],//” & in the inversion of “with the toe of the point.”
There’s a pleasure for my ear and tongue, a something in “they had turned, [aimoforo] to the silt éclectique/ and [kokkalo] of the hammer.”
Some new things to chew on and see what digests how.
All life’s a gamble and we are each more addicted gamblers on speculative runs than we’d probably like to admit. I want not so much a whole entire flawless day, but the occasional relenting, an ease, a flutter or gut-full-yes of one good moment to carry me over to the next win.

Join us on June 8th at Umi Cafe to experience the glorious and internationally adored Amal El-Mohtar!
Winner of the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry, editor of Goblin Fruit magazine, and recently-published author of The Honey Month, she’ll grace us with myth-laced and sensual poetry and, I hear through the grape vine, might just give us a rendition of Song for an Ancient City in ARABIC!
Truely, a night you don’t want to miss!
~ Amazon Syren

And in other Ottawa performance new, the Kymeras now have a site. Their next performance of storytelling and poetry? June 25: Earthborn.

One can look at a poem as movements, quick-paced phrases and headlong rush of plot or imagist slow whirlpool. One can plot summaries in the margins of gist. Repeated objects can be circled like eyelets or lily pads. Themes act to lace a common thread thru. Or sounds can. One can read by going thru and looking at how phonemes is used. Prevailing vowels and voice or unvoiced consonants, shifts with the mood of the text.
Any kind of filter can crack the poem open more. What tools in the box were used? Did one seem over-favoured?
It’s gratifying when a poem actually is worked and polished so that such things are there and the more you look, the more you find. Other, less crafted pieces, tend to just fall into fragments the way prose is likely to. The words and pacing are instrumentally chosen. And on with the show. It doesn’t matter. Each is playing a different game for different results. It’s like photographers who insist on not a hair out of place and everyone gets a flattering image, or “real” pictures where people are “as is” and are mid-facial expression.

Looking at what a poem does in a selective reading of syntax and line breaks. How is it chunked up? Not each line with a caesura, not each line to its own. (Is it obvious in my shorthand that the diagonal lines are a sentence continued?) It’s tempting to diagram it as a grammar tree as well but that would be another exercise.
Suffice to scan and see the poet mixed the grammar around. No loops of only subject verb object of expected phrases.

Adv. phrase, null subject, object. adj noun, adj noun, adv phrase, noun, adj phrase. […] pronoun noun
prepositional phrase, noun phrase. verb, preposition phrase, (ambiguous) noun or verb, noun phrase

The sentence structure avoids monotony which keeps the interest up the way varied intonation would in sound.
[The source doesn’t matter I suppose but it’s from Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada, an anthology by Anne Compton, Laurence Hutchman, Ross Leckie and Robin McGrath.]
What does it do to a poem and a reading when each line stands end-stopped?
In the absence of variation — nothing to see here — attention goes away from form into content. What does it do to momentum to tie stanzas together by breaking a sentence across them? Depending on what you expect, you might find it distracting or distressing, or a relief from the baldness of statements, a kind of decorative but functional element if done well.
Reshuffling this poem to make lines end-stopped? In this case, the long sentences would have to be printed on the page landscape not portrait, and it would make for a very ragged edge. What impact does the poet’s choice have on reading? The meaning is compressed into couplets. The mid-sentence allows for reveals of surprise shifts that expand on the image in a new direction after the line break. It hooks forward and allows a rest at the end of each couplet.
The different lengths of sentences and phrases gives a texture. In dense ideas, it forces more pauses which allows more density. If one had the same density but run-on sentences and a block like prose, one would run out of breath and headspace, dizzy trying to chunk up the ideas onself.
By choosing a pacing and varying it, one is clustering thoughts and giving something extra to the eye. It is like food arranged on a plate. Choose well. If one adds an element that lessens the overall effect, it’s like adding plate decoration of unripe tomato slice and wilted yellowing parsley. Better to leave off syntactical variation if it is not done with enough artistry or feels forced.
Doing it for the sake of doing it isn’t enough. Fix a flat poem by enjambing it is like adding ruffles to cover poor sewing on a shirt. It is not to cover up or fluff up or because enjambing ruffles are the rage this year but to complement the thrust of the poem.

On Thursday Gerry Shikitani read in Ottawa again for the first time in 20 years with the AB Series on Thursday.
Here’s a small clip:

A resonant voice and comfortable stage presence, he’s been performing poetry for a few decades. He shifted it around with different styles, some like this using a recording he interacts with as multiple voices and less linear, more exploratory of sounds and meanings transforming. His words sometimes tumble in a vortex of segments by times as someone looks at the chain of sound goes from…the upturned hibiscus’s cup, up.
Some pieces were more linear and pointed such as one referencing the birth defects born in areas under nuclear wind. Some mixed in pieces of history, such as a quote from the 1400s which pointed out Muslim Moor or Christian, in Spain at the time, everyone could use Arabic as a lingua franca and were conversant with each other’s beliefs.
Some poems mixed register, parts in French, English, Japanese. In a poem on identity there was the phrase ‘the parole of my skin’, a cross-language double entendre of judiciary parole and the French word for word, label.
Interesting stuff. I appreciated the structure opting in for a 2-set performance. Too many long performances in poetry don’t do that and the brain overfills.
“We have only moments to live.” ~ Jon Kabat-Zinn. That’s the best advice Richard Truhlar heard. Richard Truhlar reads this Thursday as the AB Series’ closing act of season.