Father's Day, eh

I'm not sure about these Hallmark holidays, but fatherhood has been something of a recurring theme in my poems. Here's a set of poems from Track & Trace, the first three of which are occasion-appropriate. Or inappropriate...

The Literary Litter of the Littoral-Minded: Elizabeth Bishop's Ideas of Disorder at Key West

Here's audio from my talk at the Elizabeth Bishop symposium t'other day:



I made several more recordings over the course of the weekend, but haven't uploaded them from my dictaphone yet. I probably won't be posting them myself, but will send them over to the folks who organized the symposium, who will likely be posting them on the Bishop Centenary blog at some point.

Colm Toibin on Elizabeth Bishop and Thom Gunn

I was very lucky to attend this talk the other night. It isn't edited, so start watching at minute 33.

Watch live streaming video from ukings at livestream.com

It Must be Nova Scotia

This has kind of snuck up on me. I'm giving a talk at the University of King's College (my alma mater) tomorrow morning. It's part of the Elizabeth Bishop centenary symposium taking place at King's. Lots of awesome stuff going on over the weekend. You can see the full schedule here.

Interview online

Maurice Mierau has posted a little interview with yours truly at The Winnipeg Review. It's all about e-books and whatnot.

LUXURY'S DECAY

My leather wallet went AWOL while I
was buying Lego at Walmart. I can't
afford another wallet that posh. I've spent
too much on home and tuition to buy

such a pricey pocket for my money.
I love building Lego with my daughter,
but in this land of loaned milk and honey
I'm watching all my wine turn to water.

Interview online

A couple of months ago, I received an email from Angela Rawlings inviting me to take part in a project she was coordinating. Angela had been working with high school students at Malvern Collegiate Institute in Toronto, getting them to write poems and introducing them to the work of contemporary Canadian poets. She thought it would be good for the students, having been introduced to the work of a poet, to make contact with that poet and conduct an interview. I've had fantastic experiences myself interacting with students of that age, so I agreed to take part without hesitation. Since I was going to be in Toronto at the end of March and beginning of April, I asked Angela if the class's teacher would be interested in having me visit. He was, and we worked out a date. I got my interview questions, from a student named Micaela, a few days before the visit, which was pretty great timing. As usual, I had a really fun and rewarding experience talking with and reading to the students at MCI (a school, it turns out, that my grandmother attended!).

Anyway, Angela has now made the interviews--with 30-odd poets in all--public. You can read them here. My interview is here. Angela and teacher John Ouzas deserve a lot of credit for organizing and guiding this project. It seems to me an example of how these things can and should be done, with minimal cost and ample reward.