Taken by the Urge

"Suddenly, I am taken by the urge to collect all the warm bread to be found in poetry." (G. Bachelard)

As for me, I'm suddenly taken by the urge to collect those moments in a text where a writer reveals various obsessions or attunements with the materials with which she writes. I've started to jot down quotations in a notebook - will see what patterns emerge. (This could take years...) Would dearly love to expand an essay I wrote ages ago, called "Try." (You can see it here on page 51 of the Garneau Review).

Since I began working part-time in a beautiful stationery shop my obsession with paper, pens, ink, notebooks, journals and etc has deepened. I've been collecting links to all sorts of sites run by people who are even more obsessed than I am and thought this would be a good place to share some of those intermittently. Of course, in the back of my mind I'm thinking 'blog project.' Would love to get writers to talk about their mode of getting their thoughts down. Are you qwerty-averse? paper shy? Hooked on Moleskines? An Inkophile? A typewriter addict? A fountain pen lover?

My current journal (still in decent shape even though I spilled half a glass of red wine on it) is pictured above, along with my Lamy Al-Star fountain pen (fine nib) and my favorite Lamy black ink.

Raw and Loose

A person oughta google herself from time to time I suppose. I've been neglecting to do such things lately, and then there's the 'what you don't know can't hurt you' aspect of it all. I'm not surprised that Red Velvet Forest hasn't much been reviewed. In fact, I can't say I'm sad that the usual people who hate my books have left it alone. A hearty thank you to them.

I was pleased though, I admit, to see these short few lines this morning (though they're from way back in September as it turns out) by Jennifer Still in the Winnipeg Free Press. Mainly because this is precisely the kind of reading/reader I was hoping would find RVF.

Suffice to say it made my day to read this:

"These are poems that read with an intense privacy, as diary entries, raw and loose, written as if never to be seen."

Yes, I Thank You

Why is it that at certain times I am drawn to this book of interviews, Woman to Woman - Marguerite Duras and Xaviere Gauthier? And I admit I know exactly what I'm drawn to - the 'wild and scraggly' parts of the interviews, those parts that Gauthier chose to leave in that others would have likely edited out. She says, "we know we are taking a risk in leaving them exactly as they were said." She allows us to know that the telephone rang, that a dog outside barks for some time and there is a worry that on the tape it will have drowned out their voices. There are pauses for wine to be poured, books to be leafed through and cigarettes to be lit. There are interruptions. In between the interviews they make jam. More than once, the tape runs out and then noticed, and an attempt is made, the conversation is reconstructed. We know it is not as intense as the original but we are grateful for what we have.

I am grateful for this sort of insight: "It was much later that I moved on to incoherence."

and

"I'm in an abominable state of doubt..." (Duras).

Equally so for these types of exchanges:

"XG: Could I have another cigarette?
MD: Of course."

or

"MD: Would you like a glass of wine?
XG: Yes, I thank you.
[interruption.]"

Life, as always, intervenes. Voices are drowned out by barking. Words go unrecorded, are lost. A friend of mine once suggested that she should write a book of the interruptions she experiences rather than what she was attempting to write. When I become more weary than usual of the interruptions (for interruptions there will always be...), I like to return to these polite exchanges. Would you like a glass of wine? Yes, I thank you.

Humming, Hanging

This photo sums up how I'm feeling these days...humming, hanging, auming, longing. Not quite in between projects, but almost. Not really wanting to finish, wanting to finish but unable to find the time, the proper mental space needed. Wanting to start the new project, feeling my way slowly into it. As fragile as a glass hummingbird, hanging, on the cusp of winter.

Riot of Blue

I discovered this late breaking riot of blue in the neglected backyard yesterday...followed by thoughts of Joni Mitchell.

White Feather, Blue Skies, Yesterday Morning Revisited

Found this on my front step yesterday morning as I collected the newspaper. Went inside with it and listened to a few versions of Blue Skies while thinking about the symbolism of the white feather, its arrival. Still letting it sink in. Walking with the moment of the arrival of the white feather, humming Blue Skies through the day. Most partial to versions by Ella and by Susie Arioli at the moment.

Shy

A number of years ago I wrote an essay titled, Shy which was published in Prairie Fire. I've thought that at some point I'd like to expand it into a book, but at present that seems a long way and several books off. However - I was delighted to notice (thanks to the magic of the Facebook status line) that this is a subject other people are also interested in. Naomi Lewis tracked down my essay from PF (I apparently neglected to transfer it from my last computer as it died a slow death a year ago) and asked if she could use it for an anthology she's planning. Sounds fascinating!

Here is the call for submissions from her website:


I am compiling essays, stories and poems for a literary anthology about shyness.

I’m amazed by how surprising, even unpredictable, it is who does or does not consider themselves shy. And each person who claims shyness defines it differently. Even psychologists can’t agree on what shyness is; some call it a personality trait, synonymous with introversion, or introversion’s dark side, and some see it as the warning sign of a mental illness. Millions of children and adults are medicated for social anxiety disorder – a disorder that’s only existed since the 1990s. Is shyness a flaw to overcome? Is it a gift? Does it stem from fear, from a preference for solicitude, or, as Freud claimed, from narcissism? Do we embrace it or try to beat it down, and how does it affect the decisions we make, the directions our lives take?