“It is not my job as an instructor to reify the knowledge that students already have and the spaces that they understand – it is my job to present them with information that they don’t know how to parse” ~ derek beaulieu in interview.
Blab chat on experiences with making anthologies with Ally Bishop and others. Interesting tidbit, if it’s a Kindle anthology users may not know how to get to the table of contents so if one piece isn’t as interesting they are more apt to skip to another book rather than poke ahead many times to get to the next story. Also, suggestion that a 4-month lead time is best if you have over 5 contributors to the anthology.
(Blab is a few-month old platform where you can video interviews, panels, informal live chats, etc.)
The semicolon project to get tattoos as gesture of solidarity and de-stigmatizing mental illness had an event where 27 got tattooed and the parlour gave the money towards the cause. ““The semi colon represents your story is not over” says Wile who is doing other events to publicize the idea.
The Ottawa Public Library now has a copy of The Other 23 & A Half Hours Or Everything You Wanted to Know That Your MFA Didn’t Teach You By Owen, Catherine and 4 are in line.
Amy McLay Paterson tracked her book reading, comments on learnings and made a public spreadsheet which tracks page number, nationality of publication, why it was chosen to read, and like GoodReads Reading Challenge, which I may eventually figure out (but the interface sure is bearish).
““We get drawn into arguments we did not choose for ourselves.” Sometimes I feel like I would rather talk about Kathy Acker. But what does the word “disability” mean? Is it useful to me? Can I get some heat from it? I am reminded of what Borges said to his nephew, “If you behave, I’ll give you permission to think of a bear.” Most often, I think about disability when I am asked to think about it. Then I feel an obligation to behave.[…] You are expected to be moral and teach. I think this is why Amiri Baraka wrote “Fuck poems / and they are useful.” Or what Laura Hershey meant by “Everything you say will prove something about / their god, or their economic system.”” Jillian Weisse
Sometimes an interview is enough to put a book on the to-read list, like this, with Laura Clarke‘s Decline of the Animal Kingdom.
Peterborough news had a prevailing “bleak fascination with crime and deviance, and a blandly smug insistence on the universality of majority values, of family and home and country.” but Electric City to the rescue as an alternative.
“Attention is a muscle, one that requires development.[…] While it might not work for everyone, the daily practice, and the momentum it can create, is the only way in which I get anything done.” from The Malahat Review tips column with rob mclennan. In the fall Shane Neilson did a column and said, “(currently I spend at least half of my professional life attending to the writing of others in essay form) I am immersed in the writing of others and I contribute to a conversation about that writing as a matter of course.[…] donate—invest!—ten percent of your professional time towards the writing of others in the form of reviews.”Jessica Michalofsky in her column agrees with the value of reviewing, how to get started and how to proceed.
Reviewing, workshopping and judging the work of others can hone the editing knife you can turn on your own work….
3 more days to vote for the people’s choice award of haiku at Heron’s Nest. Back issues are online.