Olive Grey Frost

A 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 was a really good poet. She was young and oozed with potential. We now follow each other on social media and I've enjoyed watching how she's coming into her own.

Relatively recently, she posted these and ever since, I've been itching to make some of my own. Here's my first one, and I'm quite certain it won't be my last. (You can see it better if you link through to here.)

tattooed wives

When I came across the image of this amazing tattoo of a zombified Brigham Young and two of his zombie wives earlier today, I had five simultaneous thoughts:
1. Who does this belong to?
2. Why did they get it?
3. I really want to meet this person.
4. I am a little frightened to meet this person.
5. Those are not Brigham Young's first two wives. The one on the left is Eliza Roxcy Snow and the one on the right is Martha McBride Knight. (I had to look up Martha--I knew she was one of Joseph's wives, but I couldn't place her. (My apologies to Martha.) And now that I've connected her face to her name, she never was a wife of Brigham, which makes me even more curious about the tattoo and its owner.)
6. That I know #5 means I know more than the average person should about mid-19th century Mormon polygamy and it's probably time to find a new obsession.

my wives have been shortlisted

Last week the shortlist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry was announced and my manuscript Glossolalia is on the list. The winner should be announced shortly. I don't think my manuscript is innovative enough to win, but I'm thrilled my wives were included. It really is a huge honour.

Glossolalia Installation: Louisa Beaman

I had fun putting this installation together, going through all the scraps of ribbons and fabrics I've accumulated, in addition to the strange ephemera I seem to amass. I wanted the piece to be very tactile and textured. My favourite detail is the mini-teapot on the tiny vanity I picked up at an antique mall in Edmonton. During the planning stages of the installation, I took out about four costume/historical fashion books from the library to get an idea what women wore in that time. I'm not much of an artist, so the sketches of Louisa's dream dresses are not the best. She was believed to have been a seamstress, so I'm sure she would have done much better drawings.
Although weddings in those days were nothing like the events put on today, they were obviously very important, arguably more important in the lives of women then than now. I tried to envision what it must have been like for a young woman to have to give up her wedding day dreams, only to be married to a man that she was not publicly allowed to acknowledge as her husband.

(Louisa Beaman is the first polygamous wife of Joseph Smith that the church recognized. I won't go into it all here, but if you are interested in the real story, can find a comprehensive background on the woman here.)

Glossolalia Installation: Sarah Ann Whitney

(Again, I apologize for the picture quality. As you can see in the top one, this installation ended up with a lamp to lend warmth to it, but I didn't get a proper close-up of it. Oh well.)

The installation for Sarah Ann Whitney was the most abstract of the six (with Emily Dow Partridge a close second). I wanted to highlight her youth, but didn't want to be too overt about it either. I had a Jacob's Ladder toy (which in finding this link I have discovered is probably an anachronism!) which references the Jacob's Ladder in the Bible. I also made five fortune tellers out of old maps, with the fortunes varying greatly from schoolgirl silliness (one featured desserts to eat) to commands (such as "compliment the next person you see" and "write a letter to that friend--you know who" to something, I hope, more profound (such as "don't be afraid to show your love" or "do not underestimate the power of a shared pot of tea". (In addition, I had ordered two antique keys from Etsy that failed to arrive in time, which I had hoped would allude to Joseph's hiding, Sarah Ann's visits with him, and all the secrets.)

While I tried not to hover over the good people who went through the exhibit, I was able to watch a few of them and noticed that most did not interact with this exhibit. I had hoped people would have found their fortunes and read those of others, but it rarely happened, although the Jacob's Ladder was picked up fairly often. If I have the opportunity to do this again, in this form, I'll have to figure out a way to make it more inviting to people to interact with the pieces. If you have any thoughts on this, please share them!

Glossolalia Installation: Olive Grey Frost

First off, isn't Olive Grey Frost a great name? Say what you want about Joseph Smith, some of the women he married had fantastic names.

This was the most literal of the installations, but because the poem is so short, I think it worked. Plus I liked how the bed bug recipe ingredients looked laid out like that. Sometimes simple is the way to go. The recipe didn't call for handkerchief, but when I started compiling objects that I might use, I found it and knew I had to use it somewhere. I almost put it in a different one, but it seemed the right balance visually and I liked how it was a reminder of the woman behind it all.

Glossolalia Installation: Martha McBride Knight

Back in September, I took my wives to Toronto. I should have written about the experience when I first came back, but you know how life is, it bulldozes good intentions.

My installation featured six poems from my manuscript Glossolalia, about the polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, founder of the LDS Church. Over the next few weeks (months, probably, but let me be hopeful!), I will feature them. Thanks to the gracious Book Madam (aka Julie Wilson), I figured out how to upload sound to this site. The sound files are what was used in the installation. The photos I took, unfortunately, aren't the best, but hopefully they will give you an idea.

Taking the Wives to Toronto

As many of you know, I've been working on a poetry manuscript about the polygamous wives of Joseph Smith. I think I'm done. At least, as done as I can be before working with an editor. I've been writing it for almost the entire life of my eldest son and am pleased to be seeing the end of this phase of the project. I've had some of the poems published in literary magazines (thank you, Room, CV2, Wonk*, Event), a forthcoming anthology, and as a beautiful chapbook. None of the poems are online yet, otherwise I would share links.

But I'm not quite ready to say good-bye to my wives yet. This weekend, I'll be part of Lab Cab, a multi-dis festival in Toronto. I have created installations for six poems that include sound and interactive art/ifacts. I'm both thrilled and terrified. This is a new experience on so many levels and I hope it will speak to someone out there. I'm excited about taking my poetry beyond the page and hope this might be the beginning of something larger.

But before I fly to Toronto, I'll be taking in my husband's newest play, Tear the Curtain. If you are in Vancouver, I strongly urge you to check it out. I've been lucky enough to have seen some of the footage as well as having read an earlier draft. There is a strong buzz about this play and I really believe it is warranted. Check out the trailer below and wish me luck in Toronto!



*p.s. A few months ago, I did an interview with the fine folks at Wonk. You can check it out here.

A New Beginning

Well, six months sure flies by. And here we are: 2010. A new year, fresh starts, a blank page. It feels good, doesn't it? Or does it? Truthfully I'm ambivalent about the new year. There are things that happened in 2009 that I'm not ready to let go of yet and some things I wish had never happened.

Here on ATSAD, 2009 was the Year of the Writing Mother, a project I had always envisioned to run its course over the year. Although we are now in a new year and I neglected to post a word in the second half of the year, I'm not quite ready to let it go yet. I've decided to go with the Chinese calendar and let the new year begin in February. I have interviews with four fantastic writing mothers in my possession and will be doling them out between now and the Year of the Tiger.

Except it won't be the Year of the Tiger in my sliver of Blogland. 2010 is the Year of the Wife.

Over the last few years I have been working on a new collection of poetry told from the points of view of the polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church. I'm very close to finishing my manuscript and have started to find the wives homes in literary journals and a beautiful chapbook. I'd like to share a bit of my work with you this year as well as the work of some other very talented friends who have also explored wives in their own writings or readings. This idea is still very much in its infancy, but I'm pretty excited to see where it will go.

I hope you'll drop in occasionally to check up on me and the wives. I can't offer my standard tea with warm blueberry scones, but I hope to have some engaging discussions and writing to make the visit worth it.