Marshall Hryciuk on the poetry collection he launches today in Toronto writes:

“I call them “franklie…” because poetry needs to cease whining or apologizing for having no purpose, no purchase in the social, political and mechanical world people without poetry call reality.

And if poetry makes nothing happen, symboliste poetry makes even less. Perhaps it’s high time that humans did something other than make things happen…”

via Sharon Harris

I’m on a haiku and senryu trip again having read hundreds of the small phrase poetry over the last couple days. The intensity dilutes the effect of stillness and pause, but they’re addictive little micro-narratives. I’ve written 4 dozen or so in the last 12 hours or so (which isn’t to say well-done, or done, but drafted). They are a useful size of conduit for some types of images, observations, awarenesses.
Prompt 25 at One Single Impression is homecoming.

he’s cleaning nails
with a jackknife –
this subject’s hard

and in a different sort of coming home

skin on neck says old
firm tanned tattooed calves
and nose ring say yo!

Haiku Links: Jim Kacian’s article on haiku included the Basho quote: “Go to the pine if you want to learn about the pine, or to the bamboo if you want to learn about the bamboo. And in doing so, you must leave your subjective preoccupation with yourself. Otherwise you impose yourself on the object and do not learn.”
Dim Sum is a handsome biannual journal of senryu and haiku with some beautiful moments captured.
Looking back a decade elsewhere, Michael Dylan Welch is looking at hot and cold.

wet experience slosh guarded

behind antiseptic phonemes
polyurethane silicon
hypoallergenic membrane
gap of keystrokes perpetuates
arms length hold, bonds
without embrace
nor release from ward
or from word complex this con
-tact is -flict &
flinch of 50 years of
intersection and sects
di- & resurrects
Eden’s oust appl
ause & -tempts

For the the 15th anniversary of above/ground press next week there’ll be a Factory Reading – Thursday Aug 14th featuring Amanda Earl and myself.
As a pre-reading reading we’ll be interviewed by Susan Johnson on Friday’s Special Blend tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Listen live at CKCU fm
The reading itself:

The Factory Reading Series
15th Anniversary above/ground press Reading and Chapbook Launch
Featuring Amanda Earl (Ottawa) and Pearl Pirie (Ottawa)
Thursday, 14 August 2008, at 7:00 pm (readings at 7:30)
Presented by span-o (the small press action network – ottawa)
and The Ottawa Art Gallery
Lovingly hosted by rob mclennan

So looks like the Demenstruative poem series have a forum, and its a go in under 2 weeks.

I’ll be performing the poems as part of the 4th Radical Vulvas at Club SAW, 67 Nicholas Street on Sunday Aug 10, 7 p.m. $5-$8 or pay what you can.

Started in Halifax at the Dalhousie University Women’s Centre in 2007, The Radical Vulvas is a multidisciplinary response to Vagina Monologues, turning it into a dialogue, a forum, for further discourse about women’s experiences and gender issues through any medium (song, monologue/dialogue, poetry, theatre, visual art, dance, performance, etc.) on the subject of women.

A positively-Yoni space.”