The Calgary Renaissance: an interview with Jonathan Ball

Edited by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan, and designed by Chaudiere co-publisher Christine McNair, The Calgary Renaissance highlights some of the diverse and astonishing experimental poetry and fiction that has emerged out of the past two decades of Calgary writing. An essential portrait of some of the most engaged and radical of Canadian writing and writers from one of the country’s most important literary centres. You can order a copy directly, here.

For further (ongoing) interviews with contributors to The Calgary Renaissance, check out the link here.

Jonathan Ball holds a Ph.D. in English and teaches literature, film, and writing at the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of Ex Machina, a poetry book about how machines have changed what it means to be human, Clockfire, a collection of 77 plays that would be impossible to produce, and The Politics of Knives, poems about violence, narrative, and spectatorship, and winner of a Manitoba Book Award. Jonathan also published John Paizs’s Crime Wave, an academic study of a neglected Canadian cult film classic, which was launched at the Toronto International Film Festival and also won a Manitoba Book Award. He co-edited, with Ryan Fitzpatrick, Why Poetry Sucks: An Anthology of Humorous Experimental Canadian Poetry. Jonathan has also directed short films (including Spoony B, which sold to The Comedy Network), been a section editor for The Manitoban and filling Station magazine, served as the managing editor of dANDelion magazine, and founded the literary journal Maelstrom. In 2014, Jonathan won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. Visit him online at JonathanBall.com, where he helps ambitious writers learn to edit, experiment and grow, and become more productive so they can build sustainable careers.

Twitter: @jonathanballcom

Facebook: @jonathanballcom

Instagram: @jonathanballcom

Email: jonathan@jonathanball.com 

Q: How long were you in Calgary, and what first took you there?

A: I spent four years in Calgary, and went there to complete a Ph.D. in English (with a focus on Creative Writing) at the University of Calgary. I had two offers — U of Alberta in Edmonton and U of Calgary — and both were nearly equal in terms of the money offered. So I looked over my bookshelf and there were more Calgary authors there than Edmonton authors, and that sealed the deal.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community in Calgary?

A: I first began writing seriously in grade school — it just seemed a natural extension of my reading. I literally ran out of books I wanted to read because I grew up in a small town without a library, other than my grade school library and my grandparents’ home library, and so started writing stories until I realized that I could get my mother to take me to the library in the town where she worked.

Then I started pulling books off the shelves based on their titles, which is how I read two of the books that had a huge impact on my development as a writer and made me want to start writing seriously: Black Night Window by John Newlove and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Newlove was my first real exposure to modern poetry, and Rushdie’s novel had an architecture like nothing I had ever seen. Those two books somewhat set my dials, to tune me into sharp, stark phrases set inside complex formal structures. 

I had met Derek Beaulieu at an academic conference in Winnipeg where he was seated with me and my then-girlfriend, Lindsey Wiebe. He gave “us” (read: “her”) a book and I stole it and then when I arrived in Calgary, I emailed him. I literally just sent him an email that said something like, “Hey, I’m moving to Calgary, let me buy you a beer and some poutine or whatever and in return you will plug me into the Calgary writing scene.” And then that’s what he did.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? What did Calgary provide, or allow?

A: Some time before the move, I had written a poem for Lindsey that won an award and a nice little cash prize. She was thrilled and I was happy but it confirmed a feeling I had, which was that I felt very much like I had discovered the formula for writing a certain kind of poem and I was bored of it now. I made my girlfriend happy and I made some money and now I was done. But I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have a clear sense of what else there was. I was well-read but I didn’t connect the variety of what was on offer in the literary world with the in-front-of-my-face world of people around me doing work.

Calgary at the time I was there was a hotbed of young writers. I was instantly surrounded by people who were publishing books. It felt like every week one of my friends published a book. It made me feel very competitive, in a good way, and the quality of the work was so high overall that I really felt like I had to work harder to stand out. I was very ambitious, as I still am, but there was an energy in the air then that I don’t feel now.

It really felt like what I imagine Paris felt like in the time of Hemingway and Stein and so on — everyone was doing amazing work and pushing each other to do better work. And everyone was different. Very few people were doing the same thing, but they were all working at a very high level. The range was astonishing and there was just so much going on. Derek himself was a massive influence on me, as were Jason Christie and Ryan Fitzpatrick and Chris Ewart and Natalie Zina Walschots, and a host of other writers — too many to name. Caleb Zimmerman, who I wish would write more, was a major supporter — we used to meet in the mornings just to make sure we were both awake and working rather than sleeping in.

Also, two teachers in particular had a massive effect on me: Christian Bök, who was always extremely encouraging and challenging, and Suzette Mayr, who was my supervisor. Suzette more than anyone really made me work. I applied to her creative writing manuscript class and while I was scrambling to leave town she emailed me to say something like, “Your writing sample is strong and you seem like a good writer but the project you say you want to work on is super-boring. It’s so boring I can’t stand it. I don’t know if I should let you in this class.” And so I rushed her back an email saying, “Don’t worry, I’ve got another project, I’m not at home right now but when I get home tonight I will email you the info on that.”

In reality, I had nothing. I had sent her my best idea, a novel I had already planned out and written a bunch of pages for, and I had nothing else. Like, NOTHING. At the time I was reading Kafka’s Amerika and so I panicked and emailed her something like, “The new project I’m doing is called Kanada, it’s like Kafka’s Amerika sort of, like a satire of first novels and has the same basic plot and also the main character is called “I” so it’s written in both the first- and third-person at the same time …” I just made up the craziest stuff I could imagine so that it wouldn’t sound boring. She emailed me back something like, “Sure, whatever.” But then somehow became my biggest supporter and my dissertation supervisor and really an amazing friend.

Another major person that meant a lot to my development as a writer while in Calgary was Natalee Caple, who was the outgoing writer-in-residence when I arrived and who began a Ph.D. a little later than I and who shared an office with me for a time. Natalee and I began a “short story club” and gave each other a lot of feedback and encouragement on various manuscripts. She was writing The Semiconducting Dictionary (Our Strindberg) while I was writing Clockfire, so we both had these theatrical poetry books. And then we were also writing dissertations at the same time and we still regularly keep tabs on one another (we share our weekly writing goals and progress) even though I probably talk more about my daughter than my writing with her these days.

In short, Calgary made me work at a level I didn’t think possible for myself and to push my ideas farther and farther and farther as I tried to compete and earn my place at the table with an explosive group of massive talents. Even the students “below” me were incredible talents — Paul William Zits and Helen Hajnoczky and Bronwyn Haslam and so many others. It was a literary scene like nothing I ever imagined or have seen before or since.

I should also have mentioned kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Jordan Scott and Jill Hartman — I could go on forever and I’m sorry everyone I haven’t just mentioned but I’m exhausted and just had a third child (the second baby in the house now) and I had a horrible day and I’m going to sleep now.

Q: What prompted your move away, and what kind of effect has the shift made in your work?

A: I moved away from Calgary, back to Winnipeg, because I have a daughter with an ex in Winnipeg. I won’t get into the personal issues, which are complex and beyond belief. Anyway, I finished my degree as quickly as possible and then moved back to Winnipeg to be closer to my daughter.  So I don’t have a literary answer. I left Calgary to be closer to my daughter. If she was in Calgary then I would have stayed.

I had lived in Winnipeg previously, and so the first time I lived here made most of the impact. However, since moving back, I’ve been able to more fully embrace and rediscover my love of genre fiction. Winnipeg plays hosts to an amazing bundle of talents in various popular genres, like fantasy and horror, and being around those people has helped me branch out more fully into those arenas, where I always saw myself in part.

For example, earlier this week I finished a short story that is a weird Lovecraftian sword-and-sorcery / Cormac McCarthy / feminist deconstructionist sort of thing, which will be bundle with a story by GMB Chomichuk and another by Chadwick Ginther for a project we’re doing called Shared World. They did one Shared World book and I loved it and forced them to include me in Shared World 2 by virtue of being a pushy jerk.

This will sound strange, but even though everyone considers me an experimental poet, I have always seen myself as an author of experimental horror fiction. Nobody agrees with me, but in Winnipeg they at least pretend they agree with me once in a while.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Here’s the list:

* I finished a short story collection titled The Lightning of Possible Storms and it is under consideration right now.

* I’m writing a screenplay called Edenbridge for director Solomon Nagler, which is partly set in the Jewish farming settlement of Edenbridge, SK, now a ghost town.

* I’m returning to my Calgary PhD dissertation, The Crow Murders, and putting that into publishable shape. Go to www.thecrowmurders.com and sign up to keep updated on this multimedia project.

* I’m gathering and writing poems for a collection called The National Gallery. You can read one of them here: http://www.jonathanball.com/franklin-carmichael/

* I’m planning to revamp and revive my dormant website at www.jonathanball.com — so go there and join my mailing list! http://www.jonathanball.com/newsletter/ — I will give you a free ebook about how to create and maintain a writing schedule, which is the thing people most tell me they struggle with. Then in the fall/winter as the site progresses and develops, and when I start my podcast (I’m starting a podcast!) you will hear more about that, and everything else I’m doing.

Amanda Earl reads at the RailRoad Reading Series, November 6

Chaudiere Books author Amanda Earl reads as part of Ottawa's RailRoad Reading Series on November 6, 2016, alongside Suzanna Derewicz, J.C. Sulzenko and Carol Stephen, launching their collaborative Slant of Light. For more information, check out the facebook event page here. And of course, copies of Earl's Kiki (2014) can be ordered directly, here.

The Calgary Renaissance: an interview with Hollie Adams

Edited by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan, and designed by Chaudiere co-publisher Christine McNair, The Calgary Renaissance highlights some of the diverse and astonishing experimental poetry and fiction that has emerged out of the past two decades of Calgary writing. An essential portrait of some of the most engaged and radical of Canadian writing and writers from one of the country’s most important literary centres. You can order a copy directly, here.

For further (ongoing) interviews with contributors to The Calgary Renaissance, check out the link here.

Hollie Adams is originally from Windsor, Ontario. She has an MA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Windsor and a PhD in English from the University of Calgary. She currently lives part-time in Calgary and part-time in Red Deer, where she teaches English at Red Deer College. Her writing has been published in several magazines across Canada, including Prairie Fire, The Antigonish Review, and Carousel, as well as on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and in an anthology of short fiction inspired by the band Broken Social Scene. Her first novel, a second-person comedy about grief called Things You’ve Inherited From Your Mother, was published in 2015 by NeWest Press.

Q: How long have you been in Calgary, and what first took you there?

A: I’ve been in Calgary for 6 years. I moved to Calgary from Windsor in 2010 to start a PhD in English at the U of C.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community in Calgary?

A: I suppose I’ve been involved in writing since I started university—I took university-level creative writing for a literal decade. But I’d been writing for fun (and to avoid having to go outside and play with other kids) years before that. I got involved in the writing community in Calgary when I started taking creative writing classes at the U while pursuing my PhD and by going to reading series, literary events, and book launches in the city. Calgary has a lot going on writer-wise—I think you could probably go to a reading a week if you wanted to.

Q: How did being in such a community of writers shift your thinking about writing, if at all? What did Calgary provide, or allow?

A: Being exposed to so many interesting, talented, and innovative writers definitely challenged me to question my own practice and my conception of fiction, what it can be, and what it can do. I see a lot of questioning of genre and collapsing of boundaries here. I also think writers here are very theoretically and politically engaged. I think they’re concerned with more than just their craft, how to write a sentence, and how to craft an image. I’d like to believe my writing has become more experimental since becoming a part of this community and I’m certainly a lot more conscious of how my writing might be used to contribute to a theoretical or political discussion. I also wonder if Calgary’s reputation as this right-wing, socially conservative “Cowtown” has in some way spurred the writers and strengthened the community by giving us something to rally against—though despite the reputation, I have always found the city centre to be actually quite progressive, liberal, and artsy.

Q: What do you see happening in Calgary that you don’t see anywhere else?

A: I’m not sure that this isn’t happening elsewhere, but what I see at Calgary writing events is a mix of more traditional writing and the experimental avant-garde and both seem equally supported and respected. I don’t notice a lot of pretension or battling egos. I think humour is also really prevalent in the writing; I think it’s easier to have a sense of humour about things if you’re living in an underdog city (artistically speaking). The writing community seems both large (and growing all the time), but also close-knit. The city itself has all these draws and opportunities for writers, so the writers here are from all parts of the country which makes for a pretty diverse community, and then because rent isn’t as expensive as somewhere like Vancouver or Toronto, I see a lot of writers staying—or leaving only to come back.

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements there?

A: Yes, when I first moved to Calgary I couldn’t stop writing about the city. I was taking a class where we read a lot of space and place theory and I became really interested in writing about the city as a place and the physical space of my new apartment. I think my latest project—I’m working on a short story collection—responds a lot more indirectly to Calgary; I’m realizing none of the stories are actually set in Calgary (though there is one set in Banff), and yet the stories wouldn’t have been written had I lived anywhere else.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Right now I’m working on a short story collection. I’m really interested in rare, playful, experimental, unusual, and/or unnatural forms of narration, so the stories are narrated in pretty non-traditional ways and the collection tries to break as many narrative “rules” as possible. The story that appears in The Calgary Renaissance is a part of this collection.

The Calgary Renaissance: an interview with Derek Beaulieu

Edited by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan, and designed by Chaudiere co-publisher Christine McNair, The Calgary Renaissance highlights some of the diverse and astonishing experimental poetry and fiction that has emerged out of the past two decades of Calgary writing. An essential portrait of some of the most engaged and radical of Canadian writing and writers from one of the country’s most important literary centres. You can order a copy directly, here.

For further (ongoing) interviews with contributors to The Calgary Renaissance, check out the link here.

Derek Beaulieu is the author of the collections of poetry with wax, fractal economies, chains, silence, ascender / descender, kern, frogments from the frag pool (co-written with Gary Barwin) and Please no more poetry: the poetry of derek beaulieu (Ed. Kit Dobson). He has also written 4 collections of conceptual fiction: a a novel, flatland, Local Colour and How To Write (Nominated for the W.O. Mitchell Award). He is the author of two collections of essays: Seen of the Crime and The Unbearable Contact with Poets. Beaulieu co-edited bill bissett’s RUSH: what fuckan theory (with Gregory Betts) and Writing Surfaces: fiction of John Riddell (with Lori Emerson). He is the publisher of the acclaimed no press and is the visual poetry editor at UBUWeb. Beaulieu has exhibited his work across Canada, the United States and Europe and is an award-winning instructor. Derek Beaulieu was the 2014–2016 Poet Laureate of Calgary, Canada.

Q: How long have you been in Calgary, and what first took you there?

A: I’ve been in Calgary since 1976; my parents arrived here for work, driving from Montreal with a tent-trailer, a toddler and apprehension of what it would mean to live in Calgary, so far from the cultural (and family) centre that was Montreal at the time. Our family lasted only a year away, returned to Montreal in 1977, but found that the culture and politics had shifted so significantly that perhaps Calgary was a good idea after all. In 1978 we stayed — I’ve lived here ever since.

Q: How did you first get involved in writing, and subsequently, the writing community in Calgary?

A: After doing a BA in English at the University of Calgary (1991–1995) I began to see inklings of the types of conversations happening under Fred Wah’s tutelage (and in online communities), but it wasn’t until I joined the filling Station collective in 1997 (and founded housepress that same year) that I really learned the depth and breadth of Calgary’s literary community.

Q: I know, since that period, you’ve been seminal in helping establish and encourage the answer, but what do you see happening in Calgary that you don’t see anywhere else? What does Calgary provide, or allow?

A: Calgary hasn’t had an abundance of literary presses or long term magazines — so the community has had to be dedicated to DIY aesthetics (a mindset that has worked very well); I think that the community also had very few older mentors (i.e.: people to come to the city to be students and then return home, but also many tended to retire and move away), so it was — and remains — a youthful community that is open to radically, risk and experimentalism. Despite the small size, strong communities of writers flourished which centred on fiction, spoken word, lyric writing — and the very vocal, boisterous community of experimental writers.

Q: I’ve always been curious about that Alberta divide: Calgary appears to host the bulk of the literary journals and micropresses, and Edmonton hosts the bulk of the trade publishers (NeWest Press and University of Alberta Press, for example). Why do you think that is?

A: To be honest I haven’t the foggiest. Perhaps Calgary has historically been so focused, as a city, on business/industry while Edmonton has the centre of government?

Q: The purpose of our work on The Calgary Renaissance has been to acknowledge some of the literary work done over the past two decades-plus, but has anyone attempted to catalogue any of the publishing history throughout the city? With a few decades worth of ephemera, where does one go to find out anything on what has emerged from Calgary’s numerous small presses?

A: As far as I know there hasn’t been a history written of Calgary’s community, nor is there a central archive of the decades of small press and magazine traffic. I know that Simon Fraser University in Burnaby BC has an ongoing record of my presses and of filling Station, but there is a lot of research and archival potential for further study and discussion for sure.

Q: Have any of your projects responded directly to your engagements there? How did the city and its community, if at all, change the way you approached your work?

A: I don’t necessarily write with community as my subject matter, but over the years Calgary’s literary community has been a laboratory for attempts, drafts and risks — a place to premiere new work — it has formed lasting friendships, critical readers and a way of making writing something for community.

Q: Given, as you suggest, Calgary has a certain percentage of presses that come and go, for a variety of reasons and lifespans, what and who has emerged over the past year or so that has caught your attention? What new activity should we, perhaps, be aware of?

A: Calgary’s community has built in waves, moments of more prominent development and publishing followed by quieter periods. I never know what's going to happen next.

Michael Lake reviews N.W. Lea's Understander (2015) in Broken Pencil

Michael Lake provides a new review of N.W. Lea's Lampman-shortlisted Understander (2015) in Broken Pencil. Thanks much! This is the third full review of Understander, after Julia Polyck-O'Neill reviewed such over at her blog, and Rob Thomas did his write-up over at Apt613. You can see Lake's review here. And of course, copies of Understander can be ordered directly here. As Lake writes:

N.W. Lea is a poet of brevity, and the poems of Understander are tiny sparks of an intuitive mind. There is a dreaminess about this collection, and anywhere a reader picks it up, they are sure to be dropped into a strange new world, disoriented, delighted, and surprised. The poems often feel like glances at something commonplace, twisted and skewed by shadows. Lea’s cursory observations of people and things are astute and never predictable, yet are always accessible. Many poems have the succinctness of the Imagists or of a haiku, but Lea seems to be observing the mind rather than the world. He is concerned with the details we take in and the associations our brains make as a way to understand a moment. There is the occasional rhyming, but it is always fun and clever and never plodding.

Energy also comes from how Lea never lingers on an image or idea long before floating to the next one. The poems are not so much related thematically as they are stylistically. They are short bursts of stream-of-consciousness associations that I imagine were all written under mad moonlight.They also manage to escape the trap of whimsy by being so damn beautiful. I don’t know what half of them are about, but they are lovely little portals into somebody else’s mind.

Monty Reid (Edmonton) and Roland Prevost (Ottawa) readings:

Monty Reid reads with Frances Boyle as part of The Olive Reading Series, Tuesday, October 11 at 7pm at The Almanac, 10351-82 Avenue, Edmonton AB.
See the Facebook event page for such here.

Roland Prevost reads with TBA as part of The Sawdust Reading Series, Wednesday, October 19 at 7pm at Pour Boy, 495 Somerset Street West, Ottawa ON.
See the Facebook event page for such here.

The Calgary Renaissance : first article!

The Calgary Renaissance gets a nice write-up in the University of Calgary's Gauntlet, an article which is now available online. And the book will be available very soon! And pre-orders are now available...

rob mclennan at The Resonance Reading Series, October 4, 2016 (Montreal QC

rob mclennan reads at The Resonance Reading Series in Montreal on October 4 as part of a stellar line-up of poetry and prose. rob reads with Joni Murphy, Sandra Ridley, Joseph Denham, Owain Peach Nicholson and Kasia Juno.

Resonance Café
5175A Ave du Parc, Montreal, Quebec H2V 4G3
9-11:30pm
For more information, check out the Facebook link here.

LCP POETS’ CORNER: ON MENTORSHIP | PEARL PIRIE on rob mclennan

Chaudiere author Pearl Pirie has written a generous piece on author/publisher rob mclennan and mentorship, including her time as a workshop attendee, over at The League of Canadian Poets blog.

Arc Poetry Magazine presents Ottawa Poetry Awards Reading

Each year, Arc Poetry Magazine is proud to honour Ottawa poets. We are pleased to present  finalists for the Archibald Lampman Award for the outstanding book of poetry published in 2015 by a National-Capital area author.   Also featured are winners of the Diana Brebner Prize competition, which honours emerging poets in the Ottawa area. 

The readings will take place at Pressed, 750 Gladstone Ave, Ottawa, Ontario at 7:00pm on Tuesday, October 4 [Nicholas Lea will not be in attendance].

The award is named in honour of Archibald Lampman (1861 – 1899), one of Canada’s finest nineteenth-century poets. Lampman moved to Ottawa in 1882, and much of his metaphysical nature poetry was inspired by the National Capital region.

The Archibald Lampman Award will be presented on October 19, at Ottawa City Hall, in conjunction with the Ottawa Book Awards. Congratulations to the finalists and their publishers!  Arc would also like to thank judges Liz Howard, Shane Book and Sachiko Murakami.

 The Lampman finalists are: 

David Groulx   Wabigoon River Poems  (Kegodonce Press, Neyaashiinigmiing, 2015)

A ferocious, erudite collection centred around an unflinching epic poem, breathtaking in its wide-ranging look at oppression, revolution, and survival. 

Nicholas Lea, Understander  (Chaudiere Books. Ottawa, 2015)

A brilliant book of compact lyrics, where themes of alienation and fragility meet dark humour and hope. 

Pearl Pirie, the pet radish, shrunken: (BookThug, Toronto, 2015)

Pirie rubs words until they spark and fume, turning the common into an uncommon blaze. Every line is joyful in its eccentricities, and eminently re-readable as it tumbles through language.

The event will also feature the finalists for the Diana Brebner Prize, given for a poem by an emerging Ottawa-area poet not yet published in book form.   The 2015 winner of the Brebner Prize is Claire Farley for her poem ‘NU’. Farley lives and works in Ottawa where she is the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal Canthius.  The Brebner Honourable Mention went to Susan J. Atkinson, whose poems have appeared in literary journals in the U.S. and Canada. She was named one of the Hot Ottawa Voices by the Tree Reading Series. 

For further information contact Arc Poetry Magazine at arc@arcpoetry.ca.

Brick Books' Celebration of Canadian Poetry : Pearl Pirie on rob mclennan

Pearl Pirie was good enough to do a short write-up on the work of rob mclennan for the Brick Books Celebration of Canadian Poetry. Thanks, Pearl!

coming soon : The Calgary Renaissance, eds. beaulieu + mclennan,

Edited by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan, and brilliantly designed by Chaudiere co-publisher Christine McNair, The Calgary Renaissance highlights some of the diverse and astonishing experimental poetry and fiction that has emerged out of the past two decades of Calgary writing. An essential portrait of some of the most engaged and radical of Canadian writing and writers from one of the country’s most important literary centres.

Contributors include: Hollie Adams, Jonathan Ball, Braydon Beaulieu, Christian Bök, Louis Cabri, Natalee Caple, Weyman Chan, Jason Christie, Chris Ewart, Aaron Giovannone, Helen Hajnoczky, Susan Holbrook, Ken Hunt, Jani Krulc, Larissa Lai, Naomi K. Lewis, Nicole Markotic, Suzette Mayr, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Sandy Pool, Sharanpal Ruprai, Ian Sampson, Jordan Scott, Nikki Sheppy, Natalie Simpson, Emily Ursuliak, Natalie Zina Walschots, Andrew Wedderburn, Julia Williams, Rita Wong, Eric Zboya, and Paul Zits.

Introduction by derek beaulieu and rob mclennan. Cover by Natalie Lauchlan and Nathaniel Mah.

Order today from your local, independent bookstore! Keep an eye here for information on ordering copies directly, most likely by October.

$25.00, Paperback, ISBN 9781928107071

Amanda Earl gives a Tree workshop, September 13, 2016 (Ottawa)

Tuesday, September 13, 2016, 6:45 - 7:45pm

Tree Reading Series

Gallery 101, 51 B Young Street, Ottawa

BEYOND SURFACE: CLOSE READING & RESPONSE BASED ON SOUND, SHAPE & SYMBOL In this workshop we will read a poem aloud & explore its non-semantic attributes to glean elements that resonate in order to write poems in response or simply to appreciate it. Too often in poetry, readers are focused solely on semantic surface meaning rather than considering other elements that make up a poem’s music, and mood. Let’s see what happens when we focus on sound, shape (including line break, punctuation, line length), symbol (including imagery, free association with Jungian archetypes, mythology). Each participant will write something (a line, a poem, an image) inspired by the source poem and will share the results with the group.

Poet,  publisher, fiction writer, Amanda Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca , and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Her books include Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014); A World of Yes (DevilHouse, 2015);  and Coming Together Presents Amanda Earl (Coming Together, 2014). She was inducted into the VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour in 2014, and two of her manuscripts have been shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Innovative Poetry Award. Her most recent chapbooks are Queen Christina (Ghost City Press, 2016) and firstwalks of the year (In/Words Press, 2016). Amanda is the editor of the AngelHousePress Close Reading Service for New Women Poets. For more information about the service, please visit AngelHousePress.com . For more information about Amanda, please go to AmandaEarl.com and follow her on Twitter @KikiFolle.

http://www.treereadingseries.ca/workshops

followed by the first Tree Reading of the season with an open mic and featured readers: Margaret Christakos and Jessica Moore.