tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15416792277662205392024-03-13T11:48:54.033-07:00All Things Said & DoneA catalogue of readings, events, and other book related newsmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.comBlogger194125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-35468902165441000232014-12-23T11:21:00.001-08:002014-12-23T11:21:47.415-08:00"Being underestimated…is something most women have in common.""It’s not just men who reveal their assumptions in this way. Being underestimated — by men, by women, by themselves — is something most women have in common. We have to work harder from the outset to resist being dismissed, to attain equal footing, and then to maintain it. It’s endless, repetitive work, cut across and intensified by yet other assumptions based on accent, skin color, class, mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-21924729113303131862014-12-16T21:15:00.000-08:002014-12-16T21:15:12.787-08:00on rereading: Short Haul EngineI'm rereading Karen Solie right now, beginning with her first collection, Short Haul Engine. I realized that it's been a long time since I picked up her first book. I'm often returning to her third book, Pigeon, but cannot recall the last time I revisited her first, the one that made me fall in love with her work. (I was going to write her most recent, but I see that she has another forthcoming. mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-68401527181756946582014-12-13T16:17:00.000-08:002014-12-13T16:18:39.713-08:00Undark: to have lived is not enoughI was first introduced to the work of Sandy Pool when we read together at The Edmonton Poetry Festival. She gave an incredible performance and was also completely charming. I finally read it recently, devouring it in two evenings.
It's an accomplished book, rich with stunning images and voices. It's subtitled "An Oratorio" and has a list of Dramatis Personae, which includes Sappho, Undark ("a mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-90378942769939697362014-12-02T22:02:00.000-08:002014-12-02T22:02:21.343-08:00a meagre attempt at catching upIt's been busy, but mostly good. I helped program the Victoria Writers Festival this year as well as hosted my first panel. It was a lot of work, but very rewarding. I should have blogged about it all as it was happening, but I didn't and I fear so much of the great stuff is now lost. But I will say this: if you ever get the chance to hear Leanne Simpson speak, do everything you can to attend. mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-25955976998675093002014-10-01T21:52:00.003-07:002014-10-01T22:22:31.982-07:00Hello, 40.
I turned forty today, and it wasn't full of drama or melancholy. I think I got that all out of my system fretting about it in advance. Or perhaps I'm saving it for this weekend when I'm having a small party to celebrate. I'm sure I'll be teary and tell a huge swath of the revellers that I love them. Because that's what I do when I have a bit to drink and am brimming with feelings.
It was a mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-85489440611124770612014-09-26T10:53:00.000-07:002014-09-26T10:53:12.037-07:00woman in clothesFashion, like religion, is easy to disparage, in part, surely, because a majority of the devout tend to be women. A style of dress, like a creed, may be freely chosen, or cruelly enforced. The design world has its mystics and charlatans, its tyrants and liberators. History and emotion are vested in the clothes we wear, and they shape our identities, individual and collective, even if we profess mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-20058563779898576272014-09-06T10:52:00.001-07:002014-09-06T10:52:56.348-07:00"Is that me?"My youngest, H, will turn three in a few weeks. She is strong, determined, and feisty. She holds her own just fine with her two older brothers and is not one to be idle. It's as if she has a switch that says, why stand if you can dance? Why walk if you can run?
We live across the street from a small dead end street, where the boys will often ride their bikes. She doesn't ride yet, but loves to mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-45687113610208799752014-09-05T14:01:00.000-07:002014-09-05T15:54:26.166-07:00girl runningTwo years ago, I was a runner. Well, at least, I was working on becoming a runner. I took two running classes and ran my first (and only, ahem) 10K at 1:03:03. Then we moved, then life got complicated. I started again, but then life got in the way again. And then I tore ligaments in my knee last August (a camping injury!) and was in pain for almost eight months.
Throughout the summer, I'd been mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-80588508870536198142014-09-04T11:02:00.000-07:002014-09-04T11:02:30.547-07:00schoolingBefore we had children, even before we were married, my husband and I had many discussions about our future children's education. Nothing seemed as important. Home schooling them was an option that we talked about a lot. My husband was, and still is, quite taken with the idea. Before having children, and before my kids were school age, I thought about it quite seriously. I read some great mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-90361447478140549822014-08-28T15:32:00.000-07:002014-08-28T15:32:01.296-07:00transitionToday is the last day of my residency. I've packed up all the papers and books, taken down the drawings my children made for my walls, found a safe place to transport the now brittle, but still red, maple leaf that I picked off the ground the first morning I was at the university after my Mother-in-law had died. I still need to wipe down the shelves and the desks, but this is it, this is then endmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-49943377127670330202014-08-20T12:19:00.000-07:002014-08-20T12:19:16.536-07:00hope I have been on the verge of tears all morning. Not for any particular, concrete reason, but more for the cocktail mix of circumstance and conversation.
I'm at the Centre today. I haven't been here much this summer and my residency ends next week. I am one for being nostalgic for times while I'm still living them, and this morning has been infused with missing my time here. Only a few more days mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-40182303226920326542014-07-23T17:20:00.000-07:002014-07-23T17:20:58.994-07:00deer and stonesToday is the fifth anniversary of the deaths of three very special people. On the first anniversary, I was by myself at the Wallace Stegner house. I went for a walk and came across three young deer. It was, of course, just a coincidence, but I longed to give meaning to their sighting. Also on that day, I read Louis Glück's Autumnal and threw three stones into the stream that ran behind the house.mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-34099638535520926222014-05-30T12:15:00.000-07:002014-05-30T12:15:15.138-07:00"storytelling is intrinsic to biological time""This story has everything a tale should have. Sex, death, treachery, vengeance, magic, humour, warmth, wit, surprise and a happy ending. It appears to be a story against women, but leads to the appearance of one of the strongest and cleverest heroines in world literature, who triumphs because she is endlessly inventive and keeps her head. The Thousand and One Nights are stories about mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-68111803302870389332014-05-07T12:30:00.000-07:002014-05-07T12:30:35.648-07:00the fears of readingAs I mentioned earlier, I’ll be reading from my The M Word essay on Thursday night at Russell Books. I’ll be honest with you, I’m fairly nervous. Nervous because, while usually I love to read my work and know I can give a good performance, I’ve only ever read poetry. Not only this is prose, this is memoir-prose. And it’s not funny, or light. No, the essay I’m reading, “What Can’t Be Packed Away” mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-57249323260493163632014-05-06T11:42:00.000-07:002014-05-06T11:42:34.685-07:00The M Word on the IslandThe M Word is coming to Victoria! I have the honour of launching this anthology with Fiona Lam, who is joining us from Vancouver, and Yvonne Blomer who will be reading from her essay in How to Expect What You're Not Expecting. We'll be reading at Russell Books this Thursday, May 8. Doors open at 7:00 and we'll start reading at 7:30.
I'm about to catch a flight, so I hope to write more about mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-43483062301598702562014-05-01T14:36:00.000-07:002014-05-01T14:36:06.064-07:00Edmonton Poetry Festival I'm not sure how to write this post, how to start it except by starting it. Part of me doesn't even want to write it because you know how it is when you have such a wonderful time and you start telling people about it and after a while the story and the event loses it's magic because you've spread it too thin? I can't be the only one who feels this way.
What I want to write about is the few mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-62043584979761178992014-04-28T13:09:00.000-07:002014-04-28T13:09:44.751-07:00imaginary syllabus: California as EdenI'm reading Wallace Stegner's All the Little Live Things right now (and will write more about it soon, I hope) and I can't help but make connections between it and two books I read earlier this year. I do this a lot and I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, as in a sense, that's a part of reading, making connections between the text and all the things that inform our lives. I often think, mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-75637073442441980592014-04-22T09:46:00.002-07:002014-04-22T09:46:59.023-07:00"creative recklessness is what it takes to be an artist""The freedom and creativity of that early life forms part of her theory about why there are fewer female than male choreographers in the ballet world. 'Things have changed a lot now but I think until recently, for a young boy to make a choice to be a dancer already takes a kind of courage and recklessness. It is easy for a girl to grow up in ballet and there is nothing she necessarily has to mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-200907546033992832014-04-18T19:02:00.001-07:002014-04-18T19:02:08.927-07:00"the prevailing metaphor for women of my generation has failure built into it""'I think that’s not even to be wondered at,' he said. If you have a creative life, you can only do so much, he explained—something he, too, had had to come to terms with. 'If you give it in one place, it has to be taken away from another.'
Maxwell’s response to my puzzlement was so matter-of-fact that I didn’t realize until later that he hadn’t really explained the contradiction—he had just mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-37066766014367971842014-04-11T18:10:00.000-07:002014-04-11T18:10:13.445-07:00doing the workI've been writing. Like really writing. Not editing, not doing research, not answering emails or hustling or blogging. I'm on a spurt and it's been great. I'm hoping to keep my head down and the eye on the prize (a finished first draft) by the time the residency is over. If I don't get distracted, it will happen.
Strangely, I have to thank the conversation I've posted below. Out of all the manymhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-87546680804687399922014-03-27T15:29:00.000-07:002014-03-27T15:29:09.002-07:00Hurricane EdnaLast week I finished reading East of Eden. A few hours later, I stalked my bookshelves to see what I should read next. I pulled a couple books out that I've been wanting to read/reread, but none of them seemed quite right. It was hard to imagine following up this American classic with a recently published Canadian novel--it didn't seem terribly fair to the newer book, but I also wasn't sure I wasmhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-14140593073191414312014-03-26T22:02:00.000-07:002014-03-26T22:02:12.890-07:00The M Word has arrived!My copy of The M Word arrived earlier this week. I was getting pouty because according to social media, all the other contributors had received their copies the previous week. (Yes, Canada is a large country, but I'm fairly impatient when it comes to mail regardless.)
I've decided that I'm not going to read it cover-to-cover, but flip around and read what speaks to me. I'm reading another mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-76339575066551722972014-03-20T11:34:00.000-07:002014-03-20T11:34:02.718-07:00Helen LawrenceLast Friday, I went to a preview of Helen Lawrence, the highly anticipated play created by Stan Douglas and Chris Haddock.
This play has been in the works for years. Stan Douglas is a brilliant artist and I was very much looking forward to seeing his take on late 40s Vancouver, specifically Hogan's Alley. His co-creator is Chris Haddock, whose work I don't know very well. I've never seen mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-39473262037003031142014-03-14T08:30:00.000-07:002014-03-14T08:30:00.084-07:00On rereading: East of EdenI'm rereading Steinbeck's East of Eden right now. I've read it twice before, but the last time was about half my life ago, so I won't go on about how much I have forgotten.
It's a long and meandering novel. I know this is popular to say about books, but I really don't think it would be published now. Actually, maybe more to the point, I don't think it would be written like this now. The mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1541679227766220539.post-30511612433292798172014-03-13T08:30:00.000-07:002014-03-13T08:30:00.190-07:00Olive Grey FrostA million years ago, I taught a course at University of Alberta's Women Words. I can't remember the title, but it was about creating your own chapbook. We looked at how to consider the body of one's work and we paid close attention to how to order one's work while considering narrative, style, and them. There was more to it than that, but this was the essence of the class.
One of the students mhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01804113244825043303noreply@blogger.com0