Monday, February 28, 2011

Reading!

Jeope and I have competing gigs next Wednesday... mine's a reading at Aqua, his a presentation at the GDC's first Pecha Kucha of 2011. Mine starts early; he's on in the second half, so really there's no reason a person can't attend both. That's what I'll be doing, anyway.

 

The Aqua Books Lansdowne Prize for Poetry Series:

Charlene Diehl, with Stacy Doiron and Kerry Ryan, Wednesday, March 9/11 7pm

 

 

Charlene Diehl 
Charlene Diehl is a writer, educator, critic, teacher and the director of THIN AIR, Winnipeg’s annual literary splash. She has published essays, poetry, non-fiction, reviews, and interviews in journals across Canada, and has to her credit a scholarly book on Fred Wah as well as a collection of poetry, lamentations, and two chapbooks, mm and The Lover’s Handbook. Excerpts from Out of Grief Singing, which appeared in Prairie Fire, won a a Gold Award for Best Article - Manitoba at the Western Magazine Awards. She was the featured poet in the fall 2007 issue of CV2. When she’s not chasing literary language (or her two speed pre-teens), she edits dig! Magazine, Winnipeg's little-jazz-engine-that-could.

Stacy Doiron 
Stacy Doiron is a poet, avid cyclist, kung fu artist, and editor whose poems have been published in Contemporary Verse 2. She recently participated in the Manitoba Writers' Guild Sheldon Oberman Emerging Writers' Mentor Program and attended the Great Blue Heron Writing Workshop at St. Francis Xavier University. She currently resides in a radical co-op house in West End Winnipeg and works at a corporate-esque publishing company in Point Douglas.

Kerry Ryan 
Kerry Ryan lives and writes in Winnipeg. Her first collection of poetry, The Sleeping Life, was published by The Muses’ Company in 2008 and nominated for the Aqua Lansdowne Prize for Poetry in 2009. She has had poetry published in a number of journals, including Prairie Fire, Grain, Room, CV2 and Carousel. Her second collection, Vs., was published by Anvil Press in 2010. Kerry was Aqua Books Writer-in-Residence for September-December 2010.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Unitered!

Nice story in The Uniter this week about Vs.! Check it out.

It was a fun interview, with thoughtful questions. (Many along the lines of: what's harder -- boxing or writing poems? Hmmm. Gooooooood question.) The reporter recorded it on her iPhone-a-ma-gadget. Which made me feel both totally modern and hopelessly out of touch.

I like that she picked up on some of the themes that other interviewers haven't: how boxing, and writing about boxing, affected my identity and self-perception, and how the hardest part of training was getting the brain and body to work together. 

I think it's funny she ascribed some boxing prowess to me. I must come off pretty tough while drinking tea at the Second Cup! As any Pan Am member can attest: you don't have to be good at something to write a book about it. (Still, it's a nice thought.)

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Honourably mentioning a new poem.

A winery in Southern Saskatchewan. Go figure. (photo by Jeope.)

I had a nice -- and hugely surprising -- break from my logey state of "What next?iness" this week when I came home to a message on the machine from the good folks at Prairie Fire, saying I'd received an honourable mention (read: just left of the podium, in 4th place) in the Bliss Carman Poetry Award contest.

The poem, "afternoon storm*", will be published alongside the winners in this summer's issue. In the meantime, I continue to covet the first prize, a spectacular silver and turquoise ring (a replica of Carman's). Still, it's exciting/heart-breaking to be within drooling distance.

* about an afternoon spent at the Cypress Hills Winery, pictured above.