Monday, January 30, 2017
Monday, January 23, 2017
many gendered mothers : call for submissions
O god save all
the many gendered-mothers of my heart, & all the other mothers, who do not
need god or savior,
our hearts
persist in excess of the justice they’re refused.
Dana
Ward, “A Kentucky of Mothers”
many gendered mothers is a project on literary influence
featuring short essays by writers (of any/all genders) on the women, femme,
trans, and non-binary writers who have influenced them, as a direct or indirect
literary forebear.
This project is directly inspired by the American
website Literary Mothers (http://literarymothers-blog.tumblr.com/),
created by editor Nadxieli Nieto and managing editor Nina Puro. While we hope
that Literary Mothers might eventually return to posting new pieces, this site
was created as an extension and furthering of their project (in homage, if you
will), and not meant as any kind of replacement.
Basically: which female ,femme, trans or non-binary
writer(s) made you feel like there was room in the world for you and your
artistic temperament, or opened up your understanding of what was possible,
either as a writer or a human or both? Perhaps you were closely mentored by a particular
writer or editor, or perhaps their work was highly influential, even if not in
the most obvious ways.
While submissions by men are highly encouraged, the
argument that male literary influence has been long explored in print and
online is a reasonable one. This isn’t an argument for levelling the field but,
instead, expanding it.
We are currently accepting short essays of 500-1000
words as a .doc or .docx file, with “many gendered mothers” in subject line.
Please include: “Your Name” on “Author Name(s),” subtitle (optional) and a
short bio for yourself, as well as a .jpg image of your subject (if possible).
And: multiple submissions are encouraged! Simply because you’ve already had a
piece accepted for the site doesn’t mean you still can’t submit something
further down the road.
Submissions can be sent to any of our editors (if you
know how to reach them), or directly to neitherliterary@gmail.com
Labels:
call for submissions,
essay,
many gendered mothers
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Monday, January 16, 2017
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Monday, January 09, 2017
rob mclennan & Stephen Brockwell in Vancouver: January 18, 2017
rob mclennan & Stephen Brockwell read in Vancouver at Lunch Poems at SFU
Lunch Poems at SFU is a unique vibrant exchange of poetic ideas and cadence held the third Wednesday of every month, noon to 1 pm, in the Teck Gallery at Simon Fraser University's Harbour Centre Campus.
Lunch Poems at SFU is a unique vibrant exchange of poetic ideas and cadence held the third Wednesday of every month, noon to 1 pm, in the Teck Gallery at Simon Fraser University's Harbour Centre Campus.
Labels:
Lunch Poems at SFU,
reading,
rob mclennan,
Stephen Brockwell
Friday, January 06, 2017
The Calgary Renaissance: an interview with kevin mcpherson eckhoff
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.
kevin mcpherson eckhoff loves poetry parties
and saying “Me me me, me memememe … mmmmm.” Forge and rhapsodomancy
are
his fault, as are the final issues of dANDelion magazine and Open
Letter, guest
edited with his bff, Jake “The” Kennedy. Sorry! BookThug published MerzStructure No. 2 Burnt by Children at Play. Check it! Out! Library-style! When
kevin’s not teaching at Okanagan College, he hangs out with a Laurel and two
kiddos, sometimes cuddling at the Starlight Drive-in during a full moon in July
or dipping into Halfway Hotsprings during a light February snowfall. Oh, and
you can catch his face as “Tall Security Guard” in the film Tomato
Red.
Q: How long were you in Calgary, and what first
took you there?
A: I bodied & spirited in Calgary
on-and-off for about two years, between 2005 and 2007. I had applied to three
MA programs; the only one to accept me was the U of C.
Q: How did you first get involved in writing,
and subsequently, the writing community in Calgary?
A: I don't really remember. "Get involved
in" sounds like i joined Satan's Helpers. I wrote unfortunate poems and
stories all through my undergrad, but Calgary was my first experience with an
actual community of writers, which just sort of respirated outward from the
mitochondrion of classes, readings, pub hangouts, and friends of fiends of
friends...
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: This question has hugely helped me figure
out, I think, my current unwriting ways, my lack of current. For the past about
18 months, I’ve been a co-stay-at-home fodder for a baby and a toddler and have
been totally unprepared for the loneliness and the ensuing lost lust for
poetry, readingly and writingly. In part, I suspect it has to do with the
temporary suspension of any reason to procrastinate—i.e. avoiding class prep
& essay grading are super poetry energizers for me. I feel, however, an
equally significant factor is the withering of my social life. Hanging out with
writers, critics, mentors, artists, and performers in Calgary hugely
inspurred/inspored/insparred/inspired my understandings of contemporary poetry,
historical con/texts, language’s political uses and abuses, the business of
publishing, etc. This setting was hugely generative for me: two-and-a-half of
my books came from work that started during my 16-months living there.
Since leaving Calgary, my sense of community
has shifted, expanded across borders, somewhat dissolved, and concentrated in a
bff; overall, it has slowly become more and mar isolated, mostly due to
geography. And probably my incapacity to thrive on the sextuple-you (www). I
know I’m leaping like an acid frog between past & present, but there’s not
really one without the other, eh? I never really realized how remarkable my
moments and comrades in Calgary were until recent years.
Calgary provided a readymade audience of peers
and mentors—totally a support group, of sorts—that accepted just about anything
as poetry. I could name names, but other Renaissancers have already named them
all. Here might be something: the community out there allowed me to write for
myself, and by whatever means I liked. You know that dumb adage: “write what
you want to read”? For me, in Calgary, it became: “write what/how I want to
write (because writing isn’t reading)”.
Q:
What prompted your move away, and what kind of effect has the shift made in
your work?
My partner’s spirit rejected all of Calgary’s anti-matter, and I
started teaching at Okanagan College pretty immediately after graduating. For
the past eight or nine years, I’ve tried to recreate the kinda community I found
in Calgary by organizing poetry readings, starting the Bureau of Vertigo
Bookmakers, working with Kalamalka Press, etc. However, the pattern of trying
to energize students every semester, only to have them transfer away to another
institution after a year or two and having to start over has finally got me a
little exhausted/defeated at the moment. This is to say that one major shift
was from arriving at a readymade literary community that invigorated my work to
striving to create such a community, but never quite achieving it, at least not
consistently.
Another effect of moving back to Armstrong was the slow death of
the chapbook press I had started in Calgary, by the skin of me teeth. Its life
had been fueled by the literary gift economy that thrived in Calgary, primarily
derek b’s No Press, but also Jonathan Ball’s Martian Press and other one-offs
that folks would self-publish. I’ve tried resprouting the press both online and
in print as our teeth, but it’s been
challenging to find the kind of work that excites my ions, especially
innovative critical writing. I’m a terrible solicitor. I think I’m an extrovert
who needs a real-life literary culture in my face to provoke my work ethic,
both as editor and poet. Overall, the shift has meant a general decrease in
productivity. Or maybe shifting priorities. I dunno. Let me get back to you in
a few more years.
Sheesh. This is depressing. And that’s almost a pun.
Q:
What are you working on now?
Bah.
I usually need to work on multiple things simultaneously. There’s a something
called The Fool’s Sermons and another tentatively titled ☐☐, but both manuscripts move at a pace of about three poems
a year. I’m also supposed to working on a speculative young adult novel. Ah,
and the webseries Robot & Snail. Sporadic collaborations with my dear pal
Moez Surani. Performance/acting workshops. Learning how to dad. Carriage house
renovations. Volunteering at Caravan Farm Theatre. Allyship & witnessing.
Wednesday, January 04, 2017
Andy Weaver in the Edmonton Journal
Chaudiere author Andy Weaver, author of this (2015), was featured in the Edmonton Journal (including video of him reading) as part of his recent book launch as part of Edmonton's Olive Reading Series.
Labels:
Andy Weaver,
article,
audio,
Edmonton Journal,
The Olive Reading Series,
video
Monday, January 02, 2017
Amanda Earl : Vallum magazine,
Chaudiere author Amanda Earl has appeared twice on the blog for Montreal's Vallum magazine over the past few days, including as part of "Vallum 2016 Year in Poetry" and as their first "Poem of the Week" for 2017!
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