I chose some words that I took aside as words I liked and made sets of slant rhymes for ABBA ABBA CDCDCD. That done, I had them ready, with no idea of subject set. On waking I had some thumb twiddler to wake up with.
somewhere before dawn
ambitious day’s train decoupled derailed. some sinus pickaxe, some bodily aches who is the master, who is the dog, made to stay? a bark at small balled body, tail between legs. jaw in cahoots with the head. dreams of party-crashing t&t’s retail mochi, frozen dim sum, moon cakes curtailed. 1000 years away, those quail eggs.
I saw the parking lot full, what a schmuck to attend unmasked. thought I could carouse like some Viking king born of gods, what pluck to feel invulnerable. naif to choose that as if elastic youth. what the cat drug in. mousy, mouthed nape fever-damp, I drowse.
As I mentioned, the anthology launch of a Gatineau Valley spec fiction anthology is coming. Hill’s Al-manach des Collines has arrived. For locals, you can check out the library copy, when it gets processed into the catalogue and shelves.
It is a fun and beautiful thing, split run, some with sewn binding, some with stapled to a warm reception regardless. About 40 attended which is pretty decent for any literary readings these days.
If you missed it you can still get copies. I’m not sure how many sold last night, but there were somewhere around 50 in the print run, after contributor copies. They are $20 each with proceeds going to a mutual aid society. The image on the covers is a risograph print by Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt of a brass sculpture of a moose vertebrae by Craig Commanda. From the tradition of zines, it is without isbn and its own creature.
I tried to get a photo of each contributor but I lost count and at least one person called in sick. The contributors were both French and English. I won’t do the post bilingually but the event was.
There was some social time, and some pizza and some flipping through copies while people gathered.
The organizers, névé dumas and Marc-Alexandre Reinhardt welcomed and introduced the concept and process.
Because the process was collaborative, starting with a grounding workshop of envisioning land and community, literally walking the hills, and some was done as collaboration between writers and artists, it was fitting to do a launch in a circle with a lamp at the centre.
Each present could add, ask or discuss whatever, share process or what was included in the anthology or what they didn’t submit to include.
Here is an image for Ilse Turnsen’s poem, art done by Marianne Debonté.
Anya (right) shows the art cart that became a whole large page image.
Ariane went ahead to 2286. Some responded in poetry, some in short story. Art was made digitally, in painting, in watercolour, in pencil and all converted to green, blue, black and pink..
Madeleine composed songs which she performed to a tidal wave of applause.
Contributors:
Craig Commanda: moose spine / glass beads (scuptures reproduced) névé dumas: échos d’une colline Ariane Roberge: 2082 / 2109/2286 (poetry) Finn Douglas Drake: bridges (art) Pearl Pirie: history flashes / recipes / ads / did you know? Hannah Kaya Sideris Hersh: field manual / recipes Dalie Giroux & Amélie-Anne Maillot: bestiaire Ilse Turnsen & Marianne Labonté: fieldguide (poetry and art) Genevieve Cloutier: chairs (art) Madeleine Cloutier-Lynch: one after the other (song) Hannen Sabean: the heavy coffin (short story based on local history) anya: in the summer we can only go out at night Marc A. Reinhardt & névé dumas: édition / impression Jamie Ross: faerie magick
All in all a warm festive night thinking about how to make a future that’s healthy, connected, an act of listening to one another’s visions. There was talk of sequels. Time will tell.
Poets are coming though town March 24-30th. Ottawa’s VERSeFest has lectures, readings, workshops, and a slam at various venues around the city.
A bunch of subgenres are represented from Sanita Fejzic to Robyn Sarah on opening night. Gwen Aube with a first chapbook to Daniel Lockhart with his heaps of books Wednesday. An invitational slam and an open mic happen Thursday.
The new Common House university magazine gets a showcase Friday along with a VF feature night with Hajer Mirwal, Jérôme Melançon and Paul Vermeersch. Paul also offers a workshop the next day. Another workshop is offered Saturday by Sheri-D in hybridity. Plan 99 brings in some big names that day as well.
Sunday has a lion’s share of events with a haiku event starting at 1:30, then Factory Lectures Series, one my my fav events each year. The Hall of Honour returns to unveil an honorary award to a poet. Early show has Jumoke Verissimo, Lydia Unsworth from the UK and Nada Gordon. Late show has the much lauded Karen Solie, French poet, Alexandre Yergeau and Polish poet, Kacper Bartczak. Past the closing ceremony is a special Q&A on Monday at Carleton University with Karen Solie.
There’s been a shift at night. Used to be I’d forget to attend class until exam time. Sometimes my primary school or secondary school or university graduations were rescinded because I missed a class. Pretty common dream among people I understand.
Or I searched a toilet and all would be out of service. I’d show up for meals and it was all eaten. I’d be lost, disoriented. I hid, evaded, be pursued, shot at. I’d run through cities forests in primeval fear. I’d stash myself under furniture, in heating ducts. I’d almost always escape. Sometimes I was a disembodied observer of other people and did nothing in my own dreams but watch chaos unfold.
There were non-stress dreams of course. But the shift is this: on waking, say, that was stupid, I should have this or that. I broke into my own dreams lucidly.
In dreams I started asking for other student’s notes, asking the front desk to confirm my schedule, chatting with professors, being in lectures, graduating.
I started asking directions to a working washroom, pee anyway even if the only one was a urinal in a crowded hallway. I started showing up at buffets before the crowd or before opening. Being lost in another souk, I said in my dream, no not this again, so bored, walked past the vendor, threw up the flap of the tent and hailed a cab.
Being lost and locked in a museum or store at night I started stealing stuff. Or exploring, finding new underground tunnels, and new rooftops to observe from.
My run in the forest became a joy of running and watching the neighbourhood sprout houses and businesses and I started talking with these familiar fictional neighbours, each dream a next time lapse.
Being held hostage, I started to huff, disgusted with fellow prisoners, getting up, telling off the gunmen until he reddened. I demanded cash for damages, or snatched his gun, taking him out and the marksmen.
The shifts have mostly happened over the last year, some spreading back a decade.
The roots started slow, perhaps end of 1990s when walking in Joshua Tree park realizing I scrambled to make room for a boy and his dog to pass. I counted myself lower than a child or a dog, giving way and in the process, slipping, ripping my pants, abrading my hand. This grovelling stops now I thought. That was a pivot point.
I had bullies before in the 70s and 80s who didn’t respect my space and smirked to make me walk backwards. In the early 2000s, I nailed my feet to the floor, feeling Christlike, but refused to cede ground, even if my torso leaned back as I flinched.
In that era I felt my axis tilt from death wish to life wish. That took the better part of thirty years.
It’s a bit murky. I was familiar with panic attacks and anxiety disorder by age 10. I was bullied at school from at least age 9 (until I left that godforsaken wasteland to go to university.) It’s safe to assume I was probably was sexually abused as a toddler as were many of my cousins and neighbours.
In the year 2000 a pivot came when the freeze response melted in a blaze of rage and I chose not flight, but fight. I picked up overstepping men by their shirts and threw them bodily. I tried deflect, indirect non-verbal, redirect, extended verbal, direct verbal, and louder, and still wasn’t heard.
I didn’t know seeing red was so literal. Was it the sun in my face and eyes shut? It happened twice that year and nobody died. One of my manuscripts is pinpointing the key pivot points in life where I created myself.
Learning how dismissed seniors are to doctors and having to learn to advocate for my mother taught me self-advocacy. This is percolating into unconscious. If I float along others will not get for me what I want.
After studying Gandhi first reading his biography in grade 6 or 7, again in grade 10, again in university it was clear: Non-violence, collaboration or avoidance. Anything else was bestial war.
I was in a constant state of turmoil, fear and anger and needing to perform calm. What did that look like? I don’t know. I can only speculate. I wasn’t there, on the outside.
I spent a first lifetime curating peace in my childhood, defusing others. I was very committed to turning the other cheek, the soft reply, creating amicable laughter, being the comedian, clown, distracting, explaining, playing the go-between, reassuring, forgiving, educating by example, deescalating. Or maybe suppressing because expression wasn’t safe.
In a way that path is agency, has choice, but the focus is agency for others, and not a full set for self.
It was defensive, not setting terms. It presumes a transactional respect of equals. It is more a Ginger Rogers dancing backwards in high heels. Yet even she only did that for a few films and ended up making 73 movies and playing professional tennis. She was shrewd. She worked with and around power structures.
I have often rather played opossum than oppose, assumed I will be refused, rejected, ridiculed, so am free to bullheadedly do as I like, ignored, but also without help. Praise is greeted with suspicion as transactional script to get something or to trick. It’s a lot of data to synthesize.
I do realize self-reliant instead of helpless isn’t enough. Helper isn’t enough. It is a task assigned to me, perhaps not even a good fit.
The dreams are starting to echo being a member of community, taking roles as protector, saviour, competent, self-serving. I move from inaction and reaction to action.
Twenty years pass and I don’t feel cringe for existing. I ask what I want and instead of writing down goals and sub-steps, on some deep level I give permission instead of self-flogging. I don’t try to manage others or bow to others. There’s some equality. There’s some interdependence. There is something opening. Out of the forest, into the plain. New options.
This will naturally have fallout as all tectonic shifts in worldview do. I’m overdue for such a quake. They used to happen every 5-7 years. Is it finally something going slower as I age? Such an earth-tilt changes implications of what matters, therefore the use of time, attention, speech, social writing, publishing.
