Zach Wells Reading: Collected Works Edition

Last Saturday Zach Wells read at Collected Works in Ottawa, a well attended event where he recorded his reading. You can listen to it here.

Biblioasis Poetry Bash

Vermeersch on Track & Trace

from Paul Vermeersch's blog:

This is, without a doubt, one of the most beautifully produced trade paperback editions of a poetry book I have ever seen published in Canada (and with publishers like Gaspereau Press, Pedlar Press, and this book's publisher Biblioasis on the scene, there are more beautiful trade paperbacks around than ever before). When I first heard it was being illustrated by Seth, I worried the result might be a little too gimmicky, but no. Seth's stark, simple illustrations work well as a counterpoint to Zach's meticulous craftsmanship. As for the poems themselves, Zach has definitely built on the burly aesthetic he demonstrated in his first book (which was edited by me, incidentally). This is an aesthetic generally characterized by an assertive (even, at times, severe) approach to metre that is enhanced by an ardent attention to sonic effects like alliteration, syncopation, rhyme, etc., and his control over such a severe metre is both admirable and remarkable (only on a couple of occasions does it sound too conveniently clippity-cloppity to my ear). And verse with such a robust physicality is well-suited to his subject matter: woods, ponds, floods, cormorants, slugs, briars, ice floes, etc.

I'm recommending that you order one today.

Metcalf-Rooke Award Shortlist

Laura Boudreau. A Cat Starving Its Way Through Winter. (Short Fiction)

Daniel Griffin. Stopping for Strangers (Short Fiction)

Lauro Palomba. Measuring Spoons (Novel)

A. J. Somerset. Combat Camera (Novel)

Cathy Stonehouse. Something About the Animals (Short Fiction)


The winner of the Metcalf-Rooke Award will be announced November 23rd.

Off the Road (A Placeholder)

Finally back in the office after about two and a half weeks of events. There's not been much activity around these parts for a while, though I'll do my best ot change that in the coming days. I have photographs from launches in Toronto, Montreal, and Windsor, among other places; a post on the Metcalf-Rooke shortlist (soon, soon) which we announced in Montreal last week, and much else. There's the new website we should be launching within the next several weeks, the new issue of CNQ which should hit newsstands and mailboxes later this, news about our current titles, forthcoming titles, a guest post or three, among many other things. So stay tuned ...

Parsons Legacy Inspires Words, Music

by Ted Shaw: Windsor Star

The truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels will gather tonight at Phog Lounge.

There's a unique event planned linking popular music to the literary arts, celebrating the music of Gram Parsons in song and the spoken word.

Novelist Ray Robertson, who is in town promoting his latest book, David, at Bookfest Windsor at the Art Gallery of Windsor, will slide over to Phog, 157 University Ave. W., at about 10 p.m. to join a Parsons tribute staged by local musicians, Kelly Hoppe and Greg Cox.

The event was put together by Bookfest, Phog's Tom Lucier, and Robertson's local publisher, Biblioasis Press.

Robertson, originally from Chatham, wrote a 2002 novel, Moody Food, which was based on the life of country-rocker Parsons.

The first line of this column was taken from Parsons' 1974 song, Return of the Grievous Angel, one of the tunes Hoppe and Cox will perform during tonight's set.

"I was a big fan of Gram Parsons all through the wilderness years of the 1970s and '80s," said Robertson, 43, who now lives in Toronto.

During that time, Parsons was often mistaken for the British pomp-rockers, Alan Parsons Project.

But Robertson was a purist who was drawn to Parsons' unique talent for blending many styles of American 20th- century music.

"I was drawn to it because, for me, (Parsons' music) consisted of all the stuff that makes up popular music. It had rock, it had country, it had R&B, it had gospel.

"It also had a quirky, psychedelic vibe to it."

Parsons is credited with being one of the originators of the country-rock sound. Born in Florida in 1946, he formed the Boston group, The International Submarine Band, in 1967, then got hired to join The Byrds the following year.

His time in The Byrds resulted in the seminal album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, which pop musicologists regard as one of the first country-rock records.

Parsons was in The Byrds a mere four months before splitting to form The Flying Burrito Brothers with ex-Byrd Chris Hillman and future co-founder of The Eagles, Bernie Leadon.

The wayward Parsons, whose fast life was fuelled and eventually felled by booze and drugs, was also a friend of Keith Richards, and his influence can be heard on The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street albums.

Parsons died at the age of 26 of a drug overdose in a motel room in Joshua Tree, Calif.

But in his last two years he managed to produce a pair of stunning solo works -- GP and Grievous Angel -- with the help and guidance of Emmylou Harris.

Today, Parsons is a patron saint of alt-country, and his influence is evident in the likes of Old 97's, Drive-By Truckers, Uncle Tupelo, and The Waco Brothers.

In Moody Food, Robertson used Parsons as the inspiration for his fictional character, Thomas Graham. (In a famous Rolling Stone Magazine article at the time of Sweetheart of the Rodeo's release, Parson's first name was misspelled as Graham.)

The novel is set in Toronto's downtown Yorkville neighbourhood in 1966. It was a time of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, and Yorkville was a mecca for aspiring musicians, American draft dodgers, wannabe hippies looking for a score, and college dropouts -- like Bill Hansen, the narrator of Moody Food.

Those who lived through those times have praised Robertson for his accurate portrait of the Yorkville scene in the late-1960s.

But it was all a work of the imagination -- Robertson was born in 1966, so he has no direct knowledge or experience of the period.

The character of Graham, his band The Duckhead Secret Society (Parsons produced the debut album of short-lived New Jersey band, Quacky Duck and His Barnyard Friends, in 1973), and the formative months in Yorkville are purely fictional.

There is no evidence, said Robertson, that Parsons visited Toronto in the late-1960s, although some of his contemporaries, including Jesse Winchester and Bill King, emigrated north to escape the U.S. draft.

Robertson will read passages from Moody Food at The Phog, and sign copies of the book.

Kelly Hoppe, meanwhile, was only too happy to prepare the musical appetizers.

He and Cox will have acoustic versions of, among others, 100 Years From Now and Hickory Wind, from the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album; Hot Burrito #1 and Dark End of the Street, from The Flying Burrito Brothers' The Gilded Palace of Sin album; and Return of the Grievous Angel and In My Hour of Darkness from the last two solo records.

"I like Gram Parsons," said Hoppe. "But I don't think of him as a huge influence on my music."

For his inspiration, Hoppe goes back to the same sources, namely the Bakersfield sound of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

Hoppe also uncovered a passion for covers in his research of Parsons' discography.

He will include many of those in the set, such as The Louvin Brothers' The Christian Life (covered by The Byrds on Sweetheart), The Bee Gees' To Love Somebody, and Haggard's Tonight The Bottle Let Me Down.

Pause For Breath: The Montreal Launch

We'll be heading down to Montreal for three events, including the above at the Word bookstore on Wednesday evening. If any Thirsty readers happen to be in Montreal please stop by for what promises to be a wonderful launch for a wonderful collection.

Rumrunners: The Launch

What Boys Like: Launch Tomorrow Night

What Boys Like arrived in the driveway at 9:05 this morn, 34 hours before we launch it in Toronto at the Gladstone Hotel tomorrow night. It's the tightest we've ever been to a launch date. The cool thing about it will be that Amy hasn't yet seen her book, so she'll be getting a first look at it the same as everyone else: when she walks through the doors of the Gladstone at 7 pm. For those of you who can make it tomorrow eve, please, please come on down. It's not every day a talented young writer launches her first book, and she deserves a good crowd. For those jaded readers of this blog with four or five books under your belt, remember what it was like that first time, and get over your cynicism and come on down to celebrate. For all of those who are still struggling to put together their first, well ... you know what she's been through.

Amy will be quite busy in the coming weeks, so I thought I'd list her upcoming events here. Should there be any readers in Ottawa, Kitchener, Montreal, Halifax or the surrounding environs, you'll soon be able to catch Amy there as well.

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009: BOOK LAUNCH, TINARS, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, 7 pm

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009: with Rebecca Rosenblum & Carrie Snyder, Art Bar, 101 Queen St. North, Kitchener, Ontario, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, 7 pm - 10:00 pm.

Sunday, October 25th, 2009: Ottawa International Writers Festival, 8:30 PM, Saint Brigid's Centre

monday, November 2nd, 2009: w/ Rebecca Rosenblum & Kathleen Winter, Drawn & Quarterly Bookstore, Montreal.

Thursday, November 5th, 2009: w/ Zach Wells & Wayne Clifford: Company House, Halifax, 6-8 pm

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009: Pivot Reading Series, Toronto

More events, including stops in London, Windsor, Vancouver and elsewhere, almost certainly to follow.

12 or 20 Questions: Amy Jones

Over at rob mclennan's blog, he's posted an interview with Amy Jones, whose What Boys Like launches next Tuesday, October 20th, at the Gladstone Hotel as part of TINARS.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I don’t know yet! I’m hoping astronomically! My first book is very brand new, so brand new, in fact, that I have yet to actually see it. I guess completing it and having it accepted for publication changed my life in that I started to think of myself as “a writer” as opposed to “a student” or “an unemployed hobo,” although I still can’t actually bring myself to say “I’m a writer” when people ask me what I do.

The stuff I’m writing now is different only because I’ve moved on to different obsessions. When I first started writing, I was obsessed with language; I wrote sentences because I liked the way they sounded. Lately I’m more obsessed with story – I really want stuff to happen. And my newer stuff is better, I think. I guess I still think of myself as a student in that way... I like to think I’m not even close to being as good as I could be.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I actually came to poetry first, if I’m going to be honest about it, but my poems really sucked, in that sixteen year old self-indulgent kind of way (even long after I was ever sixteen). I needed more room, so I started writing fiction. Non-fiction was never really appealing to me; the main reason I write is to entertain myself, and reality is almost never as entertaining as what’s going on in my imagination... or at least, I can’t write it to be as entertaining. I sometimes tell people that I like writing fiction because I feel like fiction can sometimes be more truthful because it’s not stuck in fact, but in really I just like to make stuff up.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

When I first started writing, everyone told me the best thing to do was to just write and write, even if it was crap, and then re-write it later, and for years I really tried hard to do that. But eventually I realized that method just frustrated me. For me, writing like making pastry or dough or something, cause I have to mix things together carefully, and if I handle it too much it just ends up ruining it. So I won’t sit down to write something until I have it completely worked out in my head. And I don’t take notes! If it doesn’t stick in my head, if it doesn’t burrow itself into my brain until I’m going so crazy that I have to write it down, then it won’t work for me. The story doesn’t always end up where I thought it would go, because my characters tend to sometimes have a mind of their own, but I have to know the voice inside and out before I can start putting it on paper. And when I start, it just comes tumbling out.

For the remaining 17 questions, please go here.

Sociolectric

A post-it note poem from Mike Barnes's blog, Graphomaniac.

Sociolectric

God-wire arcs
In the brain.
Smother the sparks?
Fan into flame?
Or rejig the load
- up to what code?

Kerry Clare on Cynthia Flood

Over at her blog Pickle Me This, Kerry Clare has a rave review of Cynthia Flood's The English Stories. This was a title I really thought might have had some shot at a Giller longlist, at the very least, especially when one considered the makeup of the jury. The good news is that word of mouth is doing very well for this collection, and we're working our way through the last boxes of the initial print run: perhaps a reprint will be necessary. This is as it should be, as this is one of a handful of the best books we've published here at Biblioasis, which I for one think is saying quite a lot.

More good news: according to Kerry, all of the copies of The English Stories in the Toronto Public Library are currently out. So if you live in the GTA and hope to read it soon, might be best to head on down to Ben McNally or Nicholas Hoare or Type Books or your favourite neighbourhood bookseller (even these guys seem to be keeping it in stock, at least for now) and pick yourself up a copy.

From the review:

This was an England not long out of war, in the throes of an age of austerity, coming to terms (or not yet) with fundamental changes in values and beliefs, and grappling with centuries of a empirical past that was quickly becoming irrelevant. And though Flood's protagonist is young, her stories' themes are not, which becomes the point-- Amanda struggling with the gap between the world as it is and her limited understanding. Understanding which is little achieved here, for Amanda is only eleven after all, and then just twelve, and thirteen. Far too young yet for "coming of age" and Flood doesn't do such neat resolutions anyway.

What she does do is a marvelous sentence: "At lunch on the rainy February day the King died, the sweet was custard and stewed damsons" opens "Early in the Morning", or "The Spring term in which Kay died and Constance disappeared from St. Mildred's, and I broke my glasses featured a school wide obsession with mealtime talk of sex" begins "Magnificat". These sentences both convey the way in Flood encapsulates the world wide and near, the great and small, inside her literary universe.

Read the rest here.

More on Moya and Snakes

There have been a few hits on the Moya/Snakes front this past week, including a good plug on the influential Shelf Awareness, and this review over at GoodReports. We've also seen a posting of an interview over at Bookslut between Translation Series Editor Stephen Henighan and Moya. Here's a bit of what Moya has to say about the origins of Dance With Snakes:

Dance with Snakes, the novel that Biblioasis is publishing this fall, first appeared in El Salvador in 1996. What was the context -- literary and/or historical -- of the composition of this novel?

I wrote that novel during the months of September and October 1995, in Mexico City. I had just come back from El Salvador, where a very ambitious journalistic project, the weekly newspaper Primera Plana, of which I was editor-in-chief, had failed. We went broke in July of that year. My mood was dark and defeated. Writing Dance with Snakes was cathartic, liberating. A couple of months later I wrote El asco (“Revulsion”).

As you’ve mentioned, journalists appear in your novels on various occasions. In Dance with Snakes, the journalist is a young woman. Was this a way of trying to dismantle some of the literary stereotypes associated with the figure of the journalist?

That novel was written in a very compulsive way, as if the story had already been saved on a hard disk in my head. The truth is that I didn’t set out to dismantle any stereotypes with the character of Rita Mena, but rather that she was the right person to continue the plot development. I constructed a cocktail of a character on the basis of two women reporters and a female designer who had worked with me on the newspaper, and I rushed ahead.

For the full interview please go here.

Cynthia Flood: The Rabble Interview

I haven't been doing my usual check-in on writer's websites these past few months, and so missed this link on Cynthia's to this summer's interview with Vancouver Co-op Radio. To listen, please go here.

Advance Review of Track & Trace

from Quill & Quire:

Born on Prince Edward Island, currently based in Halifax, frequent Q&Q contributor Zachariah Wells is a Maritime poet of direct speech and muscular lexicon, both of which can be counted among the legacies of fellow Maritimer Alden Nowlan. However, Wells boasts more cosmopolitan affiliations than Nowlan did: he takes his book's epigraph from Ivan Klima, and recasts poems by Rilke and the baroque sonneteer Jean-Baptiste Chassignet.

Since Wells works for Via Rail, one might supppose that the track in his title alludes to the transcontinental routes he travels. But this is no railroader's verse: he is interested in the tracks we follow and the traces we leave. Such abstract concerns are conveyed with admirable, if sometimes too effortful, exactness. In "Slugs," the titular creatures are "creeping beads / of cool snot"; in "Briar Patch," ploughing a cane thicket, the poet's father "John-Deered the patch." Sometimes he leans a little too heavily on line breaks, creating a stuttering effect, as in "The Pond," in which a creek is "percolating into a reek- / rich bog." On rare occasions, he succumbs to jarring metaphors, as in "Fool's Errand," in which a valley in a snowstorm is a "bowl of stirred-up curdled milk."

Yet, taken overall, such poems are among the most powerful in the collection, to which may be added the impressive "Dream Vision of the Flood," in which the poet, a Noah retreating to a hilltop, dreams of his island home becoming "redrawn / by water." Since PEI in winter is more or less an iceberg floating in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, it's not surprising that snow figures in many poems. Then, too, snow relates to his theme, given its ability to erase both tracks and traces.

Unashamed of end-rhymes or reworking the sonnet form, Wells also varies his work with incantation-like poems, in which line openings reiterate words or phrases like "Roads...," "Out with the...," and "It was a winter of..." Such litany-like exercises in parallelism are less successful than the poems in which variations on a theme are smoothly melded.

Even in Vancouver, Wells finds traces of his island home. Indeed, his most resonant poems reach back to the cormorants, red earth, and mussel mud of the province nicknamed "the million-acre farm."--Fraser Sutherland, whose next poetry collection, The Philosophy of As If (Bookland Press), is forthcoming in 2010.

The Salon's Afterlife

Though it's been more than a year since the Salon des Refuses, and both issues of the magazine have been long-sold out, the Salon continues to have an afterlife. In the mail today, the above from Mount Royal College, where the Salon des Refuses issue of CNQ is being used for an Introductory Canadian Literature class. If there are any others out there who would like to put together a similar issue, do let us know: we'd be happy to get the work out there.

Introducing Open Letter Books

Today, I'd like to introduce Open Letter Books, the excellent literary translation press run out of the University of Rochester. Some who read this blog will already, no doubt, be aware of their work: I've blogged about them before and talked them up to many. I'm also a daily reader of the press's blog, Three Percent, one of the best online resources for those interested in literary translation.

Translation has always been a big part of what Biblioasis is about. Our second and third titles were translations, of Goran Simic's From Sarajevo With Sorrow, and Yesterday's People. From there we went on to start the Biblioasis International Translation Series, with Stephen Henighan as series editor, and this is now the second year we've put out two translations. These have included Ryszard Kapuscinksi's I Wrote Stone, Ondjaki's Good Morning Comrades, Hans Eichner's Kahn & Engelmann, and Horacio Castellanos Moya's Dance With Snakes; forthcoming titles (2010) will include Mauricio Segura's Black Alley (Cotes des Negres), Mihail Sebastian's The Accident, and Jaime Sabines Love Poems. But I've had an urge to do more for some time, to expand the series to four or six titles a year. For the time being, alas, it simply isn't possible: we don't have the available resources of enough time, money or manpower, so we'll have to continue to develop the series at a more reasonable pace.

In some ways I've been jealous of Open Letter: if I could do more of what they are doing I'd do so. I've been corresponding with Chad Post, publisher at Open Letter for some time now, and we finally got a chance to meet in New York last May for Book Expo. Taking a break from the Kick the Can music festival we were at, we sat down for a few beers and hatched a plan which would allow us to bring some extra international literary titles to Canadian bookshelves and readers.


So: as of this month, Biblioasis will be representing Open Letter Books in Canada. For booksellers, this means that Open Letter books will be available through the LPG and Litdistco. Just talk to your sales rep, or place your orders when you order other LPG-repped books. For readers, it will mean you'll have easier and better access to some of the most exciting translations being published in the English language. If you don't see a title you want on your local shop's bookshelf, get them to order it. You won't regret doing so. To get a head start, please check out Open Letter's most recent catalogue here.

We'll be profiling and reviewing key titles on Thirsty in the coming weeks and months, starting with Jerzy Pilch's fabulous The Mighty Angel (pictured above) and keeping you posted of any other Open Letter developments, reviews or events that might be of interest. Just another reason to stay tuned.

Two Reviews of Dance With Snakes

We've recently come upon two early reviews of the fourth title in our Biblioasis International Translation Series, Horacio Castellanos Moya's Dance with Snakes. Damian Kelleher writes early on in his review:

Dance With Snakes, an equally slim novel written eight years prior to Senselessness, but published in English in 2009 by Biblioasis in Canada for its Biblioasis International Translation Series, offers both a further unnerving glimpse into this controversial author's mind, and a sense of where he has come from as an author, what territory he has uncovered as a writer. Dance With Snakes shares the comedy and violence of Senselessness, but it has a wholly original aspect of its own, a dark and disturbing side that outright rejects the possibility that the outsider in society can ever truly be understood by the common man.

...

It is indicative of the sad state of foreign translations that such an intriguing and – terrible word, but here it is justified – original writer had published eleven works before being translated into English, but both New Directions Publishing and Biblioasis should be commended on their courage. Moya is not an easy author, and his novels eschew – at least both that have been published in English – both easy answers, and indeed often an answer at all. Obsession, darkness, the fringe of the fringe of society: these are Moya's stomping grounds. Eduard Sosa is sympathetic while being almost totally alien, he is an enigma both to the reader, the other characters, and himself, but his answer, it seems, is this: there is no answer. Lee Paula Springer's translation handles admirably the shift in tense and perspective, while retaining an overall feel of the novel that remains coherent throughout the most bizarre of happenings.

Dance With Snakes is harrowing and violent, a deliberate and relentless effort to shock the reader. And, you will be shocked. There is something in here for everyone, to the extent that all boundaries are crossed and morals broken into insignificant pieces. Yet it is the ease with which Moya shows this happening that is the novel's greatest strength. We live in societies where we operate under the tacit assumption that most everyone will behave in a mostly orderly, ordinary, and regular manner. When a person shifts too far outside what we expect they are ostracised – witness the antics of teenagers as they jostle for attention and express their identities in an increasingly outrageous manner – and everyone knows someone who “isn't quite right”. Moya turns this concept into a novel, creating a mostly ordinary fellow who forces himself to become extraordinary simply to see what it is like, and succeeds so tremendously because people simply do not and cannot accept that which is so wholly different to their concept of normality.

For Damian's full review go here.

Over at Ron Slate's website, the poet and reviewer comments as favorably on Moya's novel:

Now, Biblioasis has brought out Paula Springer’s taut translation of Dance With Snakes (Baile Con Serpientes, 1996), Moya’s second novel of four parts. Dance With Snakes is a plot-driven story with twists and misunderstandings among its characters. ... Moya has cultivated a unique talent for giving senselessness a screwy depth – and the style and shape of his fictions, often compared to that of Roberto Bolaño, are truly his own. Only Moya could come up with a scene where Sosa and his ladies, spiked on cocaine and a surprising aphrodisiac, have terrific sex. Such is the dance with snakes.

Elsewhere on the internet, Scott Esposito over at Conversational Reading points to an essay -- only available in Spanish -- Moya has recently published on the American creation of the Bolano mythology:

Basically, in order to sell books marketers invented the Bolano myth, which Moya is taking as an act of U.S. cultural imperialism on Latin America. Throughout the rest of the piece, Moya goes on to argue that marketers and journalists created an image of Bolano to fit preconceived U.S. stereotypes of what a Latin American is--and especially what a Latin American author is.

Moya concludes that the Bolano created by American marketers and journalists fits in with a sterotype popularized in recent movies and books about Che...

We expect we'll start to see a lot more coverage of this novel in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. Better yet: pick up a copy, as they should be on shelves across North America any day now.

Draft Reading Series October 4th

Please join us for

Draft 5.1

Sunday October 4^th, 2009

4 – 6 p.m.

PLEASE NOTE IT'S A SUNDAY AFTERNOON THIS TIME

The Blue Moon Pub

725 Queen St. E.
That's just East of Broadview on the South side.
http://www.bluemoonpub.com/

Including new work by:

Amy Jones

Lina Medaglia

Sachiko Murakami

Rebecca Rosenblum

Roz Spafford

There will be an open mike. Seven readers, three minutes each. Please arrive at the beginning of the reading to sign up.

With the $5 admission fee you get a copy of Draft, a limited-edition publication available only at these readings.

For info:

draftreadings@gmail.com

416 433-4170

Why Confess? - A Shane Neilson Post

Shane Neilson's Meniscus is due from the printer mid-next week. In a guest-blog post, he writes about the poem as act of confession.

* * *

Why confess? Why take the personal and attempt to sanctify it in a poem? Why take what a few friends and family should know, and offer it up to a public?

The working title of my book was “My Manic Statement,” a reference to the granddaddy of the confessionals, Robert Lowell, and his “Memories of West Street and Lepke.” Lowell has been the presiding genius of this collection, not in terms of style but in terms of the confidence of utterance: I tried to do what Elizabeth Bishop said in a letter to Lowell, that Bishop might write about the events in her life but she doesn’t have the historical position that Lowell easily mines. I wanted to take a personal history and make it brittle, I wanted to make that history somehow relevant and pressing to more than just my own need. I wanted soul-excoriating poems that I could at least confirm had the ring of truth.

Many years ago, the first manuscript –drivel- I sent out to publishers was a collection of political poems, mostly about the then-ongoing war in Kosovo. One editor wrote back asking what knowledge I had of war, what legitimacy I possessed; he said it was a basic question that people would ask, how I was positioned to speak, if I was authentic. (What was understood: who was I kidding, really, a boy from New Brunswick.) I was devastated by this comment, and resolved instead to write about things I could verify; the war poems, little trinkets as I look back now, began to fall into the shadow of the only tumult that I really knew, and the only experience I could ever have.

But that doesn’t mean I’m left with a confidence. People have read my manuscript and said, “I think I now know you too well,” which means that there is the cringe factor in the confessional; but what man has not grieved, or longed, or succumbed? A man of serial failures and dogged persistence? One might say, “That’s just biography”, but I like to think that instead it’s authorship: these are the only things known to me, and are therefore the only things I can adumbrate, the only poems I could ever write, and the fantastic, odds-defying nature of the survivorship is the ringing back and front story of the collection, that it was written in spite of an unusual adversity. Rilke said in “Archaic Torso of Apollo” that “You must change your life” but as someone familiar with the confessional I know that the opposite is true, that my life changed me, and the very stuff of poetry is an investigation of states, of crossroad moments, of blunderings. Why not compose statements-in-poems that attest? That wrangle and pratfall? That “say what really happened?”

And then there is that great redeemer, love. It validates, and the book can be read as an in extremis love poem. The “I” of the book, used, I admit, as a function of the bondage of self, is rescued when the “I” looks at the cost: mounting, unmanageable. “I” becomes a love letter, a recognition that I owe all of this kingdom to “you.” Lowell broke the rules here, populating his poems with juiced biography, presenting one of his wives unfairly as a contrast; all of my use of the personal pronoun is an admission of culpability, a springboard to launch into reflection and not pronouncement.

But confessional, yes. A manic statement.

What Boys Like: List # 1 (Songs Boys Like)

As we count down to the launch of Amy Jones's What Boys Like at the Gladstone on October 20th, I thought it might be interesting to try and answer that question, at least insofar as Amy's collection offers answers.

Thankfully, Amy has made my job quite easy. She is, like a couple of characters in her book, somewhat ... list-obsessed, and her blog Listophelia offers a small window in on that obsession. Among the myriad lists you'll find there -- including one about a Spongebob roller coaster -- are a few tied directly to her book. The one I'll post this morning is 'Songs Boys Like,' a soundtrack to the collection -- and hopefully the soundtrack to her book launch as well. Amy writes: "if this amazing soundtrack doesn't make you want to buy my book, then i don't know what will."

1. "mr. jones" (a good girl) - sung by alex and yousef while drunk and high on a boat.
   
2. "rock you like a hurricane" (a good girl) - on the radio while alex drives home hung over.
3. "she will be loved" (a good girl) - alex and martine's first wedding dance.
4. "oh what a night" (one last thing) - playing at julia's imaginary prom.
5. "all apologies" (one last thing) - playing in the background at the coffee shop where julia searches for joey.
6. "in bloom" (one last thing) - blasting from a car stereo.
7. "girlfriend" (army of one) - playing on the radio as eric drives becca to the hotel.
8. "all i want is you" (army of one) - the song playing in eric's head all day.
9. "i'll be there" (all we will ever be) - emily and daniel's first junior high dance.
10. "powderfinger" (all we will ever be) - emily buys daniel the record and they listen to it while they cook dinner.
    
11. "funkytown" (all we will ever be) - emm and james get drunk and dance on a speaker.
12. "knockin on heaven's door" (all we will ever be) - emily listens through her headphones while making coffee.
13. "crazy" (all we will ever be) - emily and daniel dance in the kitchen.
14. "wild horses" (all we will ever be) - playing on the radio the morning after.
15. "bed of roses" (where you are) - playing on the radio when anna brings natalie home from the hospital.

Eden Mills Update

Spent the weekend at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival, one of the highlights of the Fall literary calendar. It proved to be a picture perfect day. Biblioasis had five authors reading, though not always, admittedly, in support of Biblioasis titles. These included:

Terry Griggs, author of Thought You Were Dead & Quickening

Ray Robertson, author of our latest reprint, Moody Food

Grant Buday, author of Dragonflies

Kari Grimstad, the wife of Hans Eichner, the author of Kahn & Engelmann

And Leon Rooke, the father of Eden Mills, and author of, most recently, The Last Shot, a damn fine short story collection.

Other Biblioasis authors, though not reading, were also in attendance, including



Rebecca Rosenblum (accompanied here by Mark Sampson), who was celebrating an anniversary of sorts, as it was at Eden Mills last year that she launched Once. It was also good to see Stpehen Henighan, who helped me man the booth and ended up being a much more convincing salesperson than I was -- if we sold enough books to pay for the weekend, it is largely thanks to him -- Shane Neilson, Kerry Clare (with Harriet and Stuart), Catherine Bush, Sandy Griggs-Burr (who will be illustrating Terry Griggs's Nieve), Paul Quarrington, Rosalyn and co. at TNQ, Mark Laliberte, Evan Munday at CH, Kitty Lewis, Alex Good, Nick Craine, Chris Banks, Seth ...

Thanks to everyone who came out and visited, to Dan and company at the Bookshelf, and the Eden Mills crew for throwing another wonderful weekend.

A Letter from a Giller Judge

Victoria Glendinning, current judge of the just mentioned Giller longlist, has offered some thoughts on her experience of Canadian Literature in the Financial Times, worth quoting here in full:

James Naughtie, announcing the Man Booker shortlist on Tuesday in London, spoke euphorically about the “pure, energising stream of talent” he and his team of judges found in their chosen six. October 6, when the winner is announced, is also the date for the announcement in Toronto of the shortlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s equivalent of the Man Booker.

Reading almost 100 works of Canadian fiction, as one of the judges for this year’s Giller, is a life-enhancing experience, and gives a glimpse into the culture. The Canadian for “gutter” is “eavestrough”, which is picturesque . Everyone is wearing a “tuque”, or “toque”, which in English-English suggests the lofty headgear worn by Queen Mary but is actually a little woolly hat. And in the holiday cottages among Ontario’s northern lakes and forests – evidently, the prime setting for emotional turmoil – they sit, brooding, on Muskoka chairs. (Look those up on the net.)

. . .

There is a convention in Canada of appending to your novel a list of people who are fulsomely thanked for their support, starting with the book’s editor – unfailingly sensitive, creative and patient – plus family, friends and first readers. These last are generally fellow members of a writing group, who have contributed insightful modifications.

But has any major work of art ever been produced by committee? Readers may wonder whether a writer’s vision and voice may not get ironed out by such proactive input, and indeed there is a striking homogeneity in the muddy middle range of novels, often about families down the generations with multiple points of view and flashbacks to Granny’s youth in the Ukraine or wherever.

The US, too, is a nation of immigrants, but American novelists do not bang on so about their heritage and antecedents. Brits do, but differently, less personally. As it happens, all the Man Booker shortlisted novels are set back in time.

Apart from brilliant Giller contestants, there are – as Naughtie boldly said about the Man Booker entries – “unbelievably dreadful” ones. It seems in Canada that you only have to write a novel to get grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and from your provincial Arts Council, who are also thanked. Complaints were once voiced that most shortlisted Giller novels emanated from just three big-name publishers, all owned by Bertelsmann, and that virtually every winner lived in the Toronto area. Now, many of the submitted authors, and their rugged subject matter, hail from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland. That’s maybe because small publishers too are now subsidised, and they proliferate. If you want to get your novel published, be Canadian.

Kahn & Engelmann: Buddenbrooks and Bildungsroman

Another excellent review international review of Kahn & Engelmann, this one again by Damian Kelleher. It would be nice to see a bit more Canadian coverage: outside of the Globe and Quill, Geist, MacLeans, one or two university papers, we haven't been able to interest a single Canadian media outlet in reviewing it. Yet in the US and internationally we're starting to build up a solid collection of rave reviews from industry journals, newspapers and blogs If anyone out there cares to review this book, please let me know: I'd love to see it get more attention, and know we won't be able to count on awards season to keep it afloat.

From the review:

It is difficult to properly pin down the novel. At times it is a family saga reminiscent of Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, complete with the rise and fall of the family company (though in this case, there are several); other times it resembles a bildungsroman, as Peter Engelmann's young self slowly awakens to the rich intellectual heritage of both his Jewish ancestors and the immensity of German literature. There are scenes devoted to young men escaping the clutches of SS troops, but also letters between estranged brothers-in-law who quarrel as the Austrian kroner rises and the business they are discussing steadily disintegrates. Add to this the slow awakening of the elderly Engelmann that his life has been a lie because he never truly faced the horrors experienced by the Jews during the Second World War, and you have an incredibly complex tale, one in which so many balls are being juggled it seems Eichner must drop at least one, though happily this is not the case.

Engelmann as a narrator is not particularly overbearing intellectually, though at no time are we unaware of his formidable intelligence. Several pages might go by during which Kafka or Rilke are analysed, or on a single page can be found the names of Proust, Mann, Dostoevsky and Neitzsche. Engelmann often wonders at how the German nation could fall under the sway of Hitler and his brutality, a thought he admits isn't particularly original, but he is able to shape it in new and interesting ways. Kahn & Engelmann is rich with Jewish and Austro-Hungarian history. Toward the end of the novel Engelmann visits the grave of his poor father, only to find the cemetery neglected and forgotten by his fellow Jews to the extent that swastikas still remain etched into stone because nobody thought to remove them. The swastikas, like Engelmann himself, bear “witness to the way that world was lost.”

Biblioasis's Translation Series also comes in for some praise:

Kahn & Engelmann continues Biblioasis' impressive International Translation Series, an imprint that has already proved its worth, and continues to do so with each new novel. Eichner's novel is a monument of intellectual exploration, a thoroughly satisfying journey through the memory of pre-WWII Jewish life, a bitter examination of the difficulties of family and business, and a fine example of the bildungsroman in miniature. The sheer volume of ideas presented in this novel is staggering, and the meticulousness with which Eichner brings to life the Jewish culture of his grandparents time is simply wonderful.

For the full review, please go here.

Pause For Breath

The first of three poetry titles we're expecting in the coming week or so arrived in the driveway this afternoon: Robyn Sarah's wonderful Pause For Breath. Sarah's ninth collection, it offers meditations on the times and on time itself, offering up what I think some of the most quietly beautiful poems of her career. The book itself turned out quite beautifully, printed as it was by the Coach House crew.

To celebrate its launch on this last weekend of summer, perhaps then a poem on summer's passing.

Once was full summer

Once was full summer.
Down the valley blew
a cheesecloth wind,
screening the curds of cloud
from the whey of haze.

Soon the mists burned off.
Sun sipped the dew
from the long grasses,
then laid them limp with heat;
waxing towards mid-day,
made them sweat
their own juices,
meadow-sweet.

Sun made his rounds
under the blue dome,
striding his realm
while all afternoon
hills cooled facing hills
with their shadows.

Biblioasis Fall Event Schedule

Biblioasis's Fall is shaping up to be quite busy. Below please find our confirmed list of events. More, including additional fall launches and several East Coast events, will be confirmed soon. Stay tuned: we'll do our best to update this schedule on a regular basis.

If there are any Biblioasis authors out there with events I've overlooked, please let me know and I'll get them up as soon as possible.

Sunday, September 20th, 2009: Ray Robertson, Hans Eichner(w/ Kari Grimstad reading), Grant Buday, Terry Griggs, Leon Rooke - Eden Mills Writers Festival, Eden Mills
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009: Ray Robertson: David (Thomas Allen) & Moody Food - TINARS, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto (Dave Bidini providing the music.)
Friday, September 25th, 2009: Terry Griggs, Thought You Were Dead - Thin Air (Winnipeg Writer's Festival) 12:15-12:45 pm (Millenium Library/ Carol Shields Auditorium)
Saturday, September 26th, 2009: Terry Griggs, Thought You Were Dead - Thin Air (Winnipeg Writer's Festival) 4: 00-5:00 Aqua Books, 274 Garry St. Winnipeg.
October 1st, 2009: Terry Griggs (Thought You Were Dead, University of Windsor, Windsor, TBA
October 3rd-4th, 2009: Fredericton Poetry Weekend: Shane Neilson (Meniscus) and Zach Wells (Track & Trace) attending
October 4th, 2009: Amy Jones (What Boys Like), Rebecca Rosenblum, (Once): Draft Reading Series, Toronto
October 14th, 2009: Terry Griggs (Thought You Were Dead), Trent University, Peterborough, Details TBA
October 17th, 2009: Rebecca Rosenblum, (Once), Plan 99 Reading Series, Manx Pub, Ottawa, 5 pm.
October 20th, 2009: Amy Jones (What Boys Like), BOOK LAUNCH, TINARS, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, 7 pm
October 23rd, 2009: Cynthia Flood (The English Stories), Vancouver International Writers Festival, 10 – 11:30 am, Revue Theatre
October 24th, 2009: Terry Griggs (Thought you Were Dead), Vancouver International Writers Festival, 2 – 3:30 pm, Revue Theatre
October 24th, 2009: Cynthia Flood (The English Stories), Vancouver International Writers Festival, 8 PM, Waterfront Theatre
October 25th, 2009: Terry Griggs (Thought you Were Dead), Vancouver International Writers Festival, 3:30-5PM, Performance Works
October 25th, 2009: Amy Jones (What Boys Like), Ottawa International Writers Festival, 8:30 PM, Saint Brigid's Centre
October 26th, 2009: Grant Buday (Dragonflies), Ottawa International Writers Festival, 2 PM, Saint Brigid's Centre
October 26th, 2009: Horacio Castellanos Moya (Dance With Snakes), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Details TBA
October 26th, 2009: Cynthia Flood (The English Stories), Regina, Vertigo Reading Series, Aegean Coast Coffee & Tea, 190l Hamilton S
October 27th, 2009: Mike Barnes (the Lily Pond), Toronto, Fairlawn Neighbourhood Centre: 7:30-9 PM
October 28th, 2009: Grant Buday (Dragonflies), Humanities Resource Group, University of Windsor, 7 pm.
November 3rd, 2009: Robyn Sarah (Pause For Breath), BOOK LAUNCH, The Word Bookstore, Montreal, TBA.
November 4th, 2009: Shane Neilson (Meniscus), Pivot Reading Series, Toronto, TBA
November 6th, 2009: Ray Robertson (Moody Food), Phog Lounge, Windsor, 10 pm (Gram Parsons's Birthday Bash, with music by Kelly Hoppe, formerly of Big Sugar)
November 7th, 2009: Terry Griggs (Thought You Were Dead), Bookfest Windsor, Art Gallery of Windsor, 7:45 pm
November 14th, 2009: Zach Wells (Track & Trace), Collected Works, Ottawa, 7:30 PM
November 15th, 2009: Zach Wells (Track & Trace), Poetry & Co., Kingston, Ontario, TBA
November 16th, 2009: Cynthia Flood (The English Stories), Vancouver Public Library, Main Branch, 2:00-3:00
November 18th, 2009: amy Jones (What Boys Like), Pivot Reading Series, Toronto
November 25th, 2009: Biblioasis Poetry Bash, Ben McNally, Toronto (Details to follow shortly)
November 26th, 2009: Zach Wells (Track & Trace), Toronto, LiveWords, TBA
November 28th, 2009: Cynthia Flood (The English Stories), McNally Robinson, Saskatoon, Sask: TBA
December 6th, 2009: Shane Neilson (Meniscus), LITLIVE, Hamilton, Ont.
January 5th, 2010: Amy Jones (What Boys Like), Strong Words, Gladstone Hotel, Toronto
February 7th, 2010: Amy Jones (What Boys Like), LITLIVE, Hamilton, Ont.

An Anti-Horror Story

Mike Barnes's The Lily Pond is one of the books I'm most proud to have been a part of. It's also proved to be one of our more successful titles south of the border, even though we have not received as much publicity for it: it is a case of the importance of word-of-mouth, and how important it is for a writer to take an active role in the promotion of his or her work. In Mike's case, he has emailed and corresponded with countless readers, doctors, psychologists and others, conversations which have continued since the book was released close to a year ago now.

Unless you live under a rock, you're probably aware that Barack Obama is trying to pass health care legislation in the US, and that there has been a tremendous amount of acrimonious debate about it. In the process, our Canadian health care system, held up by some as a potential model for the US to follow, has come under attack by right-wing radio pundits and others opposed to Obama's health care plan. Some of Mike's US correspondents have asked him about his thoughts about the Canadian health care system, and if all of the horrible things they've been hearing are true. He's just posted a response on his excellent blog, 2009, which you can find here. He's titled it "An Anti-Horror Story." Here's the first few paragraphs:

Dear Jenny,

Thanks for your email. You say that down in Florida you're hearing horror stories about Canada's socialized medicine, which have got you more worried than ever about Obama's proposed health care reforms. You ask if I can shed any light on the matter.

I'll try. We hear the horror stories up here, too. In fact, most of us have told a few. Stories about long waits, bad doctors, wrong treatments, no treatment–all the ways a system can let you down just where you feel it the most: your health. They're like stories of bad car crashes or miscarriages of justice, with this difference: no one claims that privatized roads or courtrooms would eliminate those ills.

Come to think of it, I can't remember the last time I heard a Canadian suggest we abandon our public health care system in favour of a private one. Even those with a financial incentive usually advocate privatizing parts of the system; they want to tinker up their returns, not tear down the house. Everyone wants the system to work better, but they want it to work better, not be scrapped for another one that does not guarantee universal coverage.

Complaining is natural; everyone does it. When it comes to putting a bad spin on a good thing, Canadians take a back seat to nobody. Still, we need to balance the horror stories with other kinds of stories, just as true and happening every day. Call them anti-horror stories.

Here is one.

Moody Food

This week we release the sixth title in the Biblioasis Renditions Reprint series: Ray Robertson's critically acclaimed sex, drugs and rock'n'roll-suffused modern tragedy, Moody Food. It takes place in 1960s Yorkville, when Bill Hansen hooks up with Thomas Graham, who draws Bill into an obsessive quest to create what he calls "Interstellar North American Music." As Bill recounts the rise and fall of Thomas Graham and his musical vision, he simultaneously tells the story of frustrated idealism and the passing of an entire generation.

Thomas Graham, as a character, is based on country-rock legend Gram Parsons. This book introduced me to Parsons's work, something I'm deeply grateful for. But the novel is more than a fictionalized biography of a wonderful musician: Moody Food is also, as Books in Canada opined when it was originally published back in 2002, "as good an elegy for the counter-culture as we've seen."

We'll be tagging along for the ride for the Toronto launch of Robertson's David (Thomas Allen) at the Gladstone Hotel next Wednesday, whith Dave Bidini, formerly of the Rheostatics, providing the music. If you happen to be in town, please drop on by. We'll also be doing a Windsor launch as part of Bookfest Windsor on November 6th, celebrating Parsons's birthday, with Kelly Hoppe (formerly of Big Sugar) performing the tunes. Details for this event and others to follow shortly.

Since this is a novel about the power of music -- and no one I can think of writes better about popular music than Robertson -- it only seems right that we launch it with some. Below, courtesy of YouTube, Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers singing WHEELS:

Places to Drink Outside in Halifax

Last week both the Globe & Mail and Maisonneuve listed Metcalf-Rooke Award winner Amy Jones's What Boys Like as one of the big books this fall. Maisonneuve has also put her excellent short story 'Places to Drink Outside in Halifax,' first published in issue 32 this past summer, online. For those who did not have a chance to check it out earlier, it can be found here.

Publishers' Lunch

We spent Saturday out on the water with Dawn Kresan, publisher of Palimpsest Press, and her family. Somehow, miracles of miracles, we managed to make it through most of the day without talking about business. Not much wind, alas, though it was nonetheless a picture-perfect day. Don't expect that there will be too many more like it.

A lot on tap this week: the last copy-edit of Marty Gervais's Rumrunners, review copy mailings for Moya's Dance With Snakes, Robertson's Moody Food, Sarah's Pause for Breath (due back from Coach House in the next day or so.) Re-reading Nieve, Terry Griggs's fabulous YA novel -- destined for a Spring 10 release -- and readying Spring 2010 catalogue copy and covers. Trying to get CNQ 77 off. Event planning. And preparing for Eden Mills this coming Sunday, where we've been blessed with a surfeit of authors. Grant Buday, Kari Grimstad (reading for Hans Eichner), Terry Griggs, Ray Robertson, and, of course, Leon Rooke. Should the weather be as excellent as it has been this past week, should be a wonderful festival.