Lit-POP-ed

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So I found out today that a poem of mine was shortlisted for this year's Lit POP Award for Poetry.

Aside from my Montreal dreams, I'm happy to see friends and colleagues on the shortlists!

Reprint: Furbaby

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So, two years ago, Kerry Clare's mothering anthology, The M Word, was published.

Kerry asked contributors to write updates to their M Word essays. My essay, "Primipara," was about my decision to only have one child.

"Primipara" was my first published essay. Though I was really very glad that Kerry asked me to write something, the actual writing-something process was excruciating. I was worried about what I had to say and how I was saying it. The essay seemed so long compared to a poem or even a suite of poems. And I distrusted double spacing: it looked flabby and weird.

But I persevered and got through both Kerry's and Goose Lane's edits. And then we launched it at McNally's, with Kerry Clare and Kerry Ryan and a visual artist/mother and jam-filled imperial cookies in the shape of a baby's head. (WE ATE BABY HEADS!)

Though I'm more comfortable with the essay form now, I wasn't sure what I wanted to write about this time. My daughter is almost ten but her status and is still an only child. What had changed was that we added another dependant to our household, which was a big step for us, being leery of dependents generally.

So: this essay is about kittens and daughters and love and claws. And I wrote it in an afternoon when I was avoiding another essay.

Suffrage 100

"With this issue, Prairie Fire marks the 100th anniversary of some women’s right to vote in Manitoba (a right that would be inexcusably denied to First Nations women for another 36 years). This milestone is commemorated with a number of short pieces by Manitoba women.

The issue also includes fiction by Alanna Marie Scott, Margaret Sweatman and Meg Todd; non-fiction by Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt; and poetry by Sylvia Legris, Jan Zwicky, Yvonne Blomer, Kate Cayley, Tanis MacDonald, Maryann Martin, Julietta Singh, Vivian Vavassis, Christine Wiesenthal & others."

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I'm pleased to say that I have a suite of poems called "No Votes for Women!" in Suffrage 100.

Here's how I described it for the issue: "Poems to & from Nellie McClung (1873–1951) on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of (White) Women Getting the Vote in Manitoba."

It was strange 'writing-about,' because I usually discover what the 'about' is after I've finished writing a poem. Beyond that, it took me quite a while to find a way into working with Nellie McClung's writing, both technically (found poems? cut-up poems? dictionary poems? glosas?) and in terms of tone. 

Nellie was most often earnest. When that didn't work, she used gentle humour, cajoling her audience into coming around to her point of view. 

I was most often angry while working on these poems, which culminated in the final poem of the suite, "Give us our Due."

The thing that saved me? A buncha great women poets, specifically Basma Kavanagh, Kerry Ryan, Yvonne Blomer, Tanis MacDonald & Leena Niemela. They read and re-read these poems. They pushed me to take them further, to not hide behind technique. 

Which is why it's so lovely that Yvonne & Tanis have poems in the same issue. 

My thanks to editors at Prairie Fire for asking if I'd submit something and to the staff at St. John's College Library at the University of Manitoba, who kept me in books-by-Nellie.

National Poetry Month in the Winnipeg Free Press!

Starting April 4, The Winnipeg Free Press will be publishing poems on their website as part of a National Poetry Month project edited by Ariel Gordon.

Poems by Manitoba writers will be posted to the WFP website every weekday in April. WFP staff will be taking portraits of poets and recording audio of the poets reciting their work, both of which will run alongside the poems.

Eligible poets: All Manitoba poets, which includes urban and rural Manitobans as well as former Manitobans. I'm committed to a diversity of voices: emerging, PoC, spoken word, Indigenous, established, and page poets.

Details: Email your poems to poetrymonthwfp@gmail.com. Send 3-5 poems, with each poem being no longer than 30 lines. As is this an unpaid gig, previously published (i.e. in magazines or book form) is fine. The deadline is March 23.

About the Editor: Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her second collection of poetry, Stowaways, won the 2015 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry at the Manitoba Book Awards. Most recently, she’s working on essays about Winnipeg’s urban forest. In addition to her English and creative writing training, Ariel also has a Bachelor of Journalism and works as Promotions Coordinator at University of Manitoba Press.

Poetry in Voice 2016

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So I'll be an Online Semifinal Judge again this year for Poetry in Voice: A Recitation Contest for Canadian High Schools.

There are nine poet-judges this year, including Gillian Jerome, Pierre Nepveu, Michael Crummey,
Joanna Lilley, Deanna Young, Andrée Lacelle, Liz Howard, and Éric Charlebois.

Poetry in Voice coincides with the Concour D'art Oratoire competition at my daughter's French Immersion school, so I've been thinking about what it means to get up in front of people.

In particular, I'm remembering when I did my own Concour D'art Oratoire presentations and my first poetry readings. I'd blush and stammer and run out of air...

So I have a lot of appreciation for the French Immersion elementary school kids who've spent the last few weeks memorizing speeches (my daughter's is about our cat) and all the high school students who've gotten poems off-book...

Headshot

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In most situations, a "headshot" would be a shot-to-the-head or a mug-shot, but in this case, it's a shiny new author-photo by M.

I was mostly wanting to show off a new haircut but wound up with something I could use more widely. Part of me wishes I'd applied some tinted lipgloss, but really, this is EXACTLY what I look like, 90% of the time.  (Well, a lot of time I'm also scowling, but...)

My thanks to M, as always, for the picture-ing.

The Puritan

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And then, a day later, I have another poem in The Puritan. Months and months go by without a new poem of mine in the world and then there are two in two days!?!

Today's poem is "Local Smoke," which I wrote in June and submitted while I was at the Deep Bay Cabin. It's an occasional poem, in that it was written based on a specific event, a particular place and time.

The occasion for "Local Smoke," was the forest fire smoke from drought-dry Saskatchewan and Alberta that blew into Winnipeg in early June that co-incided with the stabbing of a teenage boy at a Winnipeg high school. Both events caused me look at the world slightly differently, to shift my perception of normal, and I wanted to mark that somehow.

Interestingly, it was also a poem that came together very quickly, during a walk home from work.
Which is how I found myself standing in the no-man's land between the turn from Stafford onto Academy and the Maryland Street Bridge, scribbling madly—and awkwardly, leaning on the St. Mary's Academy fence—in my notebook.

My thanks to editors at the The Puritan for putting my poem in such excellent company. It's wonderful to see and hear (because editors get contributors to submit audio recordings of accepted poems...) my work alongside that of writer friends like Brenda Schmidt and John Wall Barger as well as that of young poets whose work I'm just getting to know like Cassidy McFadzean and Kayla Czaga.

Fun!

Weak Wood

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So a suite of found poems called "Weak Wood" was published on the Our Teeth blog.

Run by poet/parent/prof kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Our Teeth has the following mandate: "converses with/about/around/within/underneath/beside/without contemporary verses, diverses, perverses!"

While I don't usually co-mingle with experimental poets, kevin and I recognize each other as poets. Which is more than enough for us to be able to work with and also alongside each other.

But when Kevin asked that I submit something months ago, I was swamped. So I put it off and put it off and then, finally, had a look at current work to see if there was anything I could send.

And I had this suite of poems I'd composed while at the Deep Bay Cabin back in June/July, based on my reading of Donald Culross Peattie's A Natural History of North American Trees.

At the time, I was trying to learn more about the 24 species of trees that are native to Manitoba. I was also trying to jam some names for the coniferous trees that surrounded the cabin into my head. After a few sessions with A Natural History of North American Trees, I was most struck by the contrast between Peattie's lyrical writing about the beauty of trees and his listing of their uses by the lumber industry.

Of course, I gravitated towards the trees that were categorized by lumberjacks as useless—i.e. weak wood. First, because the useless trees  happen to be among my favourites, and second, because I realized that I am usually surrounded by copy paper, particle board, and MDF.

Basically, I pulped Peattie's mini-essays and built strange little structures—found poems—out of them.

It was great fun but the poems weren't successful, to my mind, until kevin had a look. He helped me push them further that I could have done on my own.

It reminded me, again, why working with editors is so essential to  writing. The best editors don't say "THIS IS WRONG. DO IT THIS WAY," they say "Hmm. Have you thought about this? This section here is especially intriguing...."

So: new poems from me, about trees. Also: submit to Our Teeth, because that kevin is a good nut.

Go Fly a Kite

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So I contributed a prose poem to Carin Makuz' The Litter I See Project: litter inspired writing by Canadian writers, for literacy.

The project is supposed to benefit Frontier College, which has "been recruiting dedicated volunteers to work with Canadian children, youth and adults from all over Canada since 1899." Frontier College also organizes the Giller Light Bashes around the country...

Carin sent me this image of a scrap of paper and asked me to write something.

I immediately fastened on the words/concept "Julie Andrews." I mean, she gamboled through the fields of my childhood, looking radiant and behaving sensibly. But she was the ultimate maiden (Maria) and crone (Mary Poppins): even though she was providing all kinds of childcare, she was removed, somehow, from the grit of it all. She made it look easy, as long as you had a magic carpetbag and some spare curtains.

And nothing about trying to balance a job and a partner, a child and a house, is easy. 

So this is my fanciful pushback, including taking the title of Mary's anthem "Let's Go Fly a Kite" and shortening it to "Go Fly a Kite," which is what my mother advised me to tell the people who were picking on me in elementary school.

Translating horses

So my prose poem "Fresh sheets" will appear in the anthology Translating Horses from Baseline Press this fall.

Photo by Moez Surani.

All of the poems/artworks in the collection are a response to Jessica Hiemstra's "I ache sometimes, from loving this world so much, from loving." The anthology as a whole was edited by Jessica and Gillian Sze, who is a Winnipeg/Montreal hybrid.

It was great fun collaborating en masse. (Yet another iteration of that process. I'm collecting them like bubble gum cards...)

The chappie will be launched in Montreal, Toronto, London on October 16, 22, and 23 if you're in any of those cities. 

I will have to content myself with a private reading from a hand-made chapbook chock full of glorious names.

My thanks to Baseline publisher Karen Schindler, Gillian and Jessica.

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Translating Horses: the line, the thread, the undersidepoetry and visual art anthology
editors: Jessica Hiemstra and Gillian Sze
upcoming October 2015
100 pp., thread bound, 5.75"x 8.5"
ISBN # 978-1-928066-00-2, $18
cover of St. Armand Canal; flyleaf of St. Armand linen wrapper

In 2010, Jessica Hiemstra invited poets to translate a poem of hers, however they wanted: improving it, making it theirs, changing its form, distilling or adding to it. She told them that she was simply curious about the process and what her poem would eventually lose or gain. Following that thought, she approached visual artists and asked them to throw light on "horse." What did they see when they heard the word?

With responses from 56 poets and visual artists, the project is held together by a few stray threads: linguistic inquiry, play, and collaboration. What you have here is proof (or not) that a horse is a horse is a horse. Of course.

The Translating Horses anthology features works by: John Barton, Gary Barwin, Darryl Joel Berger, Leila Boakes, Stephanie Bolster, Shannon Bramer, Ian Sullivan Cant, J. R. Carpenter, Michael E. Casteels, Weyman Chan, Stewart Cole, Tom Cull, Mary Di Michele, Stan Dragland, Beth Follett, Gabe Foreman, Ariel Gordon, Heidi Greco, Jennica Harper, Maureen Scott Harris, Kevin Heslop, Cornelia Hoogland, John Housez, Ray Hsu, Robert Huynh, Mary Kroetsch, Jo Kuyvenhoven, Anita Lahey, Madeleine Leroux, Lisa Martin, Sonia Alice Martin, David McGimpsey, Steve McOrmond, Audrey Meubus, Vanessa Moeller, Brian Musson, Shane Neilson, Soraya Peerbaye, Marilyn Gear Pilling, Harold Rhenisch, Sandra Ridley, Stuart Ross, Linda Schettle, Anne Simpson, Ricardo Sternberg, Alison Strumberger, Moez Surani, Aaron Thomas Swindle, Michelle Teitsma, Larry Thompson, Blair Trewartha, John Tyndall, Leslie Vryenhoek, Myna Wallin, Ian Williams

Reprint: Brushfire

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So the first essay from my ms. focusing on Winnipeg's urban forest has made its way into the world, specifically in ALECC's critical/creative journal The Goose.

My abstract for the piece is as follows: "“Brushfire” concerns itself with how people use urban forests, from indecent exposure to poaching to teenage drinking party-bonfires that get out of control. Though it could be construed as a manifesto on walking-in-the-woods, it also touches on some of the conflicts inherent in urban/nature experiences."

In their Editor's Notebook, Lisa Szabo-Jones and Paul Huebener had this to say about my piece:

"Ariel Gordon’s darkly humorous creative nonfiction piece “Brushfire” illuminates the uneasy  existence of how we use natural spaces, and the transgressive behaviours that urban wild spaces evoke in local residents. Gordon reminds us that we enter these shared spaces each for different reasons, some less salubrious than others."

Also of interest is Deer in Their Own Coats by Daniel Coleman, about how "urban deer are requiring a renegotiation of settler-Six Nations relations in Hamilton, Ontario." There's also an entire section of Audioecopoetics.

I'd be remiss if I didn't also note that there's a review of Merle Massie's Forest Prairie Edge: Place History in Saskatchewan by Matthew Zantingh.

It's been great to get feedback from friends and colleagues about "Brushfire." It feels like I'm in dialogue with people around ideas of human/nature interactions, about public green spaces, and that's exactly what I've always wanted for my writing.

Scanning

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So M, in his tradition of quietly supporting the people around him, has been scanning a selection of the girl's drawings and uploading them to his page on the Society 6 website.

Which means that you can get the girl's drawings of "Turtle on a Lemon" or "bob the Postman" on t-shirts and cushions and, well, shower curtains. If you want.

She's quietly thrilled.

And, also, wants to know when she gets her cut...

Reprint: Manitoba Arts Council

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So I'm leaving on Monday for my stint at the Deep Bay cabin.

I still have to assemble a teetering stack of books I have no hope of making my way through in two weeks, which is tradition. I still have to make sure I move all the files I'll need to my laptop. I have to make sure I have my camera and my camera's battery charger.

I have to pack sheets & clothes, sunscreen & bug spray, flip flops & hiking boots.

I'm looking forward to being alone, to bringing home a respectable chunk of new writing, but also to the shift in perspective that being at the edge of Riding Mountain National Park's wild will bring.

Working forest vs. urban forest. Tourists vs. neighbours. Resident squirrels & crows vs. resident bison & wolves.

My thanks to MAC for the opportunity and to Kristen Pauch-Nolin for all her help!

Lansdowne Prize for Poetry

It was the last thing I expected, but I'm pretty happy that Stowaways won the 2015 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry last night at the Manitoba Book Awards.

Here are the judges' comments:

"Stowaways is well imagined and well crafted, each poem tight, the poet’s attention evident. From wildlife to the clutter of the everyday to “how-to” offerings, the reader is charmed and enticed by the poet’s light touch and sure pen.

Images jump out at us, grab us by the throat, leave us gasping. Ariel Gordon’s second collection is as strong as the parts of its sum.”

—Margaret Michele Cook, Katia Grubisic, and Paul Savoie, judges of the 2015 Lansdowne Prize for Poetry / Prix Lansdowne de Poesie.

Laurent Poliquin ("A deep and far-reaching exploration of the possiblity of words and language"), Alison Calder ("There is so much of breathtaking beauty in Alison's Calders In the Tiger Park"), and Luann Hiebert ("A true ephiphany of sound, structure, meaning, allusion, intent") were also nominated.

I expected Alison to win, because, as the judges put it, she's a "a thoughtful imp that sneaks into our night mind, a tender and wry traveller inviting her readers along." And, also, because I admire her work so very much...

As such, I didn't have any comments prepared, so I mostly mocked/thanked M, who had commented just before my award was announced—having watched Rick Chafe's gracious wife accept the inaugural Chris Johnson Award for Best Play by a Manitoba Playwright—that spouses should always get to accept awards.

(M was there in two capacities: loyal/long-suffering spouse but also as someone who'd worked on the Winnipeg Free Press' City Beautiful book, which was nominated in the design category...)

I also acknowledged Alison as her role as member of my writing group, along with Kerry Ryan and Jennifer Still.

And then I made the crowd chant "Poetry is Forever" which was sort of fun, but completely forgot to thank my publisher Palimpsest Press or editor Jim Johnstone or the MWG or even my colleagues at UMP. Sigh...

But I had a new dress for the occasion from Foxy Shoppe and had had my hair done at Edward Carrier, so between the wedge heels I was wearing and the pompadour I was sporting, I was at least six and a half feet tall...

The ballroom at the Marlborough Hotel was spacious but also suffocatingly hot, so people rushed out when all was said and done, but a group of us went to the Round Table and had buckets of bacon. Which was a nice end to the evening...

Fun!

(My thanks to Anthony Mark Schellenberg for the acceptance speech photo, from the moment when I got the crowd to chant "Poetry is Forever," mostly because I could. And because I believe it...)

Reprint: Lemon Hound's New Winnipeg Poets Folio

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So I have two new poems included in Lemon Hound's New Winnipeg Poets Folio, "Hairshirt" and "Goose egg."

The poems are about hairballs and getting a booter and both contain in-poem swearing. (Ahem.)

Jonathan Ball, professional smart-ass, selected the poems. And his new Winnipeg poets folio includes both colleagues and friends and new-to-me poets, which is exactly as it should be:

Candice G. Ball, Michelle Daly, Kristian Enright, Joanne Epp, j robert ferguson, Ariel Gordon, Hannah Green, Luann Hiebert, Eileen Mary Holowka, Adam Kroeker, Kevin Kvas, Laura Lamont, Ted Landrum, Matthew Legall, Louella Lester, Jenn Angela Lopes, Chris Macalino, Janis Maudlin, Kegan McFadden, Maurice Mierau, Carmelo Militano, Adam Petrash, Davis Plett, Marika Prokosh, Kerry Ryan, Angeline Schellenberg, Cam Scott, Aaron Simm, John Stintzi, Chimwemwe Undi, Melanie Dennis Unrau, Joshua Whitehead

Manitoba Book Awards

So the news is two weeks old now, but the shortlists for the 2015 Manitoba Book Awards were released on March 30.

Sixteen awards will be handed out this year at the ceremony April 25th at the Marlborough Hotel. The list includes two new prizes, the Beatrice Mosionier Aboriginal Writer of the Year Award & the Chris Johnson Award for Best Play by a Manitoba Playwright.

And University of Manitoba Press authors got eight Manitoba Book Award nominations in five categories.

I'm proud of that, even though I had very little to do with it in my role as Promotions/Editorial Assistant at the press.

I'm also proud that my poetry collection Stowaways was nominated for the Lansdowne Prize for Poetry / Prix Lansdowne de poésie.

Many thanks to Palimpsest Press for its support of the book & to Toronto poet Jim Johnstone, who edited it.

Also nominated for the Lansdowne are the following books / poets, all of which I recommend you check out:

De l’amuïssement des certitudes by Laurent Poliquin, published by Jacques André Editeur

"Que peut rappeler le poétique au politique, la poésie à la loi ? Que la poésie va vers ce qui résiste. Elle provoque le réel, elle interprète ce que le corps et la voix peuvent tracer de l’espace et du temps. Laurent Poliquin, dans son recueil De l’amuïssement des certitudes, présente sa quête dans laquelle il cherche à structurer sa souveraineté et son opposition à l’asservissement quotidien. C’est dans la musicalité des mots et une certaine sensualité qu’il engage un combat contre la pesanteur de l’existence. Ainsi, les défis cinglants face à la mort, l’aliénation contemporaine, la brume des incertitudes s’atomisent dans ces poèmes épurés, fougueux et sans contredit: amoureux"

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In the Tiger Park by Alison Calder, published by Coteau Books

"Alison Calder's poetry is known for shining the light of the poet's curiosity on all manner of 'natural occurrences,' which nevertheless stand out. Again, as with her first book, Wolf Tree, this collection is about what exists at the edges of human experience, what's out there but is largely unseen by the average human being – animals, the line a receiver makes running down a football field, the calligraphy of pheasant wings in the snow. It's about ghosts, how these things operate as ghosts to us now, in this age—things that might have, in another age, occupied a more central place in our lives."

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What Lies Behind by Luann Hiebert, published by Turnstone Press

"What Lies Behind, Luann Hiebert’s debut collection of poetry, explodes the notion of the common and everyday. The seductive songs of motherhood and love and springtime on the prairies are confronted with illness, death, and the coldness of time marching on without us. With the weight of history behind her, Hiebert arrests the patterns of daily life and in their place leaves a beautiful truth that is more awesome and delightful than memory could serve."

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So: congratulations to all the writers who were nominated. I'm also thinking of all those writers whose books weren't nominated. Here's to all of us!

I'm off to assemble a vaguely-1920s costume...

Poetry in Voice 2015

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So I'm one of the online semifinal judges for Poetry in Voice again this year.

Which is great in and of itself: high school students reciting poetry that they've memorized. High school students reading and listening to poems...

I'm happier still that of the ten judges, four of ten are once and future Manitobans.

(We've taken over! Finally!)

FreeFall-ing

I have a piece of short fiction in the latest issue of FreeFall Magazine, which is based out of Calgary and edited by Micheline Maylor and Ryan Stromquist.

For the Winter 2015 issue, I submitted a text/image combo, which consisted of my "Gilly: gaijin/Galician/ghost owl" text and Darryl Joel Berger's "Claws Owl" image, and even though FreeFall doesn't often use images, they made room.

These texts are a continuation of the poems in the second section of Stowaways, which are known to me as 'the weremummy poems.' That is, poems about women for whom having babies and becoming parents are perhaps the slightest of their transformations.

Lots of other good stuff in this issue, including poems by Norma Dunning and Lauren Carter and non-fiction by Robert Boschman.

Thomas Wharton also has fiction in this issue, which is sort of fun, because I just finished the first book in his YA fantasy trilogy The Perilous Realm. I've been eyeballing his novel Icefields for aaaages.

River with Obsolescent Buildings

“Downtown Problems, Patterns, & Influences," from A Market Analysis for Metropolitan Winnipeg by Reid, Crowther & Partners, 1967.

* * *

Huzzah! My poem, "River with Obsolescent Buildings," was shortlisted for Arc's 2014 Poem-of-the-Year contest.

Which means that my poem was included in the Readers' Choice Award and available for download via's Arc's website, though without my name attached.

I didn't feel like coercing people to vote for me, to have to coyly parse out details of which poem was or was not mine.

So I didn't.

This is my third Arc shortlisting. I didn't win, place, or show the other two times. But I'm glad to be included again and, like always, I'll wait to see how the main contest - and the Readers' Choice thingy - shakes out.

(If you were also semi-secretly shortlisted or love a semi-secretly shortlisted poet, the winning poems will appear in the Summer 2014 issue...)

In the meantime, here's a map that poet Laura Lamont shared on Facebook one mid-winter afternoon. I wound up using some of the text in my poem - credited, of course - so I thought I'd share it too.

Check out the Manitoba Historical Maps Flickr group for lots of other intriguing maps. 

Uppercase Magazine

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My poem "How to Sew a Button" is in the Winter 2014 issue of Calgary art/design mag Uppercase. (It's on the right hand side of the spread, next to the card of red buttons...)

From Uppercase publisher/editor/designer Janine Vangool:

"The main theme throughout this issue is “broadcasting.” My broad interpretation of this term includes the sharing of ideas graphically and publicly through posters, social media and public art and also encompasses amateur radio, graphic novels and collecting vintage advertising posters. To round out the issue, haberdashery, hat-making and a love of sewing notions is a pretty and crafty thread of content throughout."

This poem was in my JackPine chapbook and will be in Stowaways, which I am just finishing up now.

Fun!