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Posts Tagged ‘Literature’
A loving ode to a Warrior Queen
The Warrior Queen: Chasing Boudicca
Thursday, January 20, 7:30 p.m.
National Arts Centre – Fourth Stage
I should have come earlier.
The salon-like Fourth Stage at the National Arts Centre was already packed with charming café tables, candle-lit, naturally. And all of the 30 or so tables had been claimed 15 minutes before “curtain rise”. It was sitting room at the back only. Even from there the view of the stage was clear and intimate.
Three women in shawls inscribed with Celtic patterns walked onto the stage. Musician Nathan Bishop played a Celtic drumbeat. The crowd was hushed.
Storytelling for the 21st century
Performance storyteller Ben Haggarty (Photo credit: Richard Stanton)
Storytelling is a difficult art to peg.
Oscilliating between theatre and literature, the best examples of this arguably most common and least accoladed art encompass the best of both disciplines.
Ben Haggarty‘s and Sianed Jones‘s telling of Frankenstein last Saturday, November 20 at the 21st Ottawa Storytelling Festival, was such a performance. Their intelligent and dramatic retelling of the Mary Shelley classic, stripped the often misinterpreted story to its narrative bones and brought new life to the original author’s impassioned concepts. (pun unintended)
Haggarty is not called a performance storytelling for nothing. In Frankenstein, he inhabits a pantheon of characters all the while never straying from traditional prose banter with a few stretches of dialogue. Carny showman, a misguided youth, a broken father, a tortured Creature, all are fully realized in seconds as Haggarty expertly flips from one character to another. Why see a play with a cast of characters when one man can play the cast so expertly?
Musician Sianed Jones (Photo credit: Richard Stanton)
For her part, Sianed Jones not only complemented Haggarty’s performance with musical pauses and mood, she would take the next step in the narrative, shrieking or cooing the inner mantras of its characters aloud. She also drew from a creative mix of instruments: violin, hurdy-gurdy, synthesizer, electric bass including playing the latter with a violin bow. The two had its attentive audience of nearly 200 spellbound over two acts and more than 90 minutes.
Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, once again, proved herself to be an excellent and appropriate host. Her basement walls have been spruced up, an open foyer has been built and art for purchase lines the walls. Then there is her civilized and practical policy of allowing its audience to bring paid beverages into the performance area, which is appreciated by her audience.
The telling of this science fiction classic also attracted members of Ottawa’s steampunk community, moving Haggarty and Jones to remark that they had never performed for such a well-dressed audience before. ‘Twas a fine evening of culture on all accounts.
Ottawa StoryTellers
Ottawa StoryTellers, the organization that is at the heart of this annual festival, also holds several other events over the calendar year at various locations across the city including the Shenkman Arts Centre, the National Library and the Billings Estate Museum.
Upcoming Ottawa StoryTellers shows include “Tales of Christmas Past and Present” (December 16, 2010) and “The Warrior Queen: Chasing Boudicca” (January 20, 2011), both taking place at the National Arts Centre’s 4th Stage. Book now to get your fix of story performance.
Nichole McGill is an author, a former reading series organizer and a woman-about-town. She blogs about books and electronic culture at www.nicholemcgill.com
House Band Reading Series – Behind a written scene: “Loeb.”
The “Loeb” scene (video below) was presented at the May edition of the House Band Reading Series, which featured the launch of Chapter 2.
Riding the #2 bus
photo by R. Dupuis
Boarding the number two at Rideau and Nelson, the bus driver warns me not to swallow the two quarters I have pinched between my lips. Adding cheerfully, “you’ll get sick to your stomach and then I’ll have a mess to clean up!”
At the Rideau Center, a woman dressed in generic work clothes she probably doesn’t like very much, is reading The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. She’s only on page eight, and judging from the look on her face, she’s not enjoying it very much. Occasionally, she looks up from the book and checks her Blackberry. She sighs as she does this, as if disappointed that somebody forgot her birthday, again.
Turning down O’Connor, two professional looking women talk about the virtues of CBC radio and NPR. The one who’s doing most of the talking looks like she votes NDP and proudly frequents nude beaches. While speaking, she deftly integrates her affection for foreign films, The Economist and the Sandinistas into one sentence. The woman standing next to her nods her head, a tight smile on her lips.
On the Somerset portion of the route, there are lots of haunted looking men. They look lonely, like the have demons. Day after day, they return home to empty apartments, their hours stretched thin, they dump overflowing ashtrays into the toilet.
In Hintonburg, a man carrying a pack of Peter Jackson cigarettes and a Coke gets on the bus. He has a shock of white hair and a soul patch on his chin. He walks with a limp and wears mismatched clothes that almost look cool. He tells the person he sits beside about a horse that came in on Sunday night that paid out $75. He speaks slowly, as if it’s difficult for him to locate the words he wants to use.
Pimped out kids loiter in front of the Community Center. They look dangerous, like you wouldn’t’ want to watch them play street hockey, frightened to see how they might use their sticks.
Passing through the fashionable Westboro district of the city, the #2 emerges onto Richmond, where the demographics change. Here, on the bus, there are only women. Sitting quietly, they all stare straight, holding their bags carefully on their laps they look like they’re on important missions.
At Bayshore, a large woman in a hijab reads a tiny chapbook about half the size of a baseball card. Her thumb obscures the entire page of Arabic text on the opposite page to the one she’s reading. Her lips move slowly as her finger traces the words on the page.
Two girls share an iPod. One listens attentively, like a studious music geek, while the other girl bops about playing air guitar and snapping her fingers. Eating from a bag of Hickory Sticks, she shouts, “I have to pee so frigging badly!”
Plump and happy, a man wearing a Dave Matthews concert t-shirt decorated with the buttons of all sorts of not-so-cool rock bands gets on. He looks like he collects action figures and has an informed opinion about which Star Trek franchise is superior, like he’s dying to talk to somebody, to anybody.
A woman, who has made a point of carrying all of her groceries in cloth rather than plastic bags, answers her phone. At first, her “hello” is neutral, a question. When she finds out who’s calling, she relaxes, “oh, hi,” she says, warmth now infusing her voice.
It’s raining now, and as the 2 returns downtown an Asian man runs like the wind to catch the bus. He flashes by The Plant Bath, where, through an illuminated window, you can see dozens of children in karate outfits doing jumping jacks.
mmurray also blogs here: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
12 or 20 Questions – with author rob mclennan
From September 2007 to June 2008, to correspond with my time in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, I asked some two hundred writers from North America and beyond a series of similar questions, to see what their answers might be.
Being that I an engaged with a number of writers in Ottawa, I tried to interview as many of them as possible, and as many in Alberta as well, working to learn the community around me in Edmonton, during my tenure west. Much to my surprise, some of the first series of interviews have been taught in University courses, and a couple were even reprinted in a recent issue of Montreal’s Matrix magazine, thanks to editors Andy Brown and Jon Paul Fiorentino. Some have suggested there should be a book version of the series, but why, I wonder, when they’re all already online? And who would want to publish a collection of literary interviews that could run into the hundreds of pages?
This second series, created to correspond with an upcoming period of Toronto activity, is an altered version of those same questions. The goal is the same, to see the range of answers from poets, fiction and non-fiction writers, aiming for a completely different set of authors from the original series, as well as a variety of new questions to replace the original “non-sequitor” question thirteen, provided by Lainna Lane El Jabi.
The original question thirteen was lifted from Ellen Degeneres, speaking to David Letterman on his Late Show in late August 2007 about being a talk-show host, and not necessarily caring about their new movie, new television program, new project; sometimes you just want to ask them, she told him, when’s the last time you ate a pear? To replace this question, Lainna has provided a series of about a dozen new questions, which will change randomly from author to author.
Newly published: Slide. Check it out at http://www.signature-editions.com/xbslide.htm
Since the late 1990s, Barbara Myers has published widely in journals and anthologies, and has won literary prizes including Other Voices (first place, 2000) as well as Arc’s Poem of the Year (HM, in 2006). For six years, she worked as an associate editor at Arc, Canada’s Poetry Magazine, to which she continues to contribute reviews and essays. She has published a number of chapbooks, both her own and collections compiled from the work of students in a poetry group she facilitates.
A community activist, she lives in Ottawa.
1 – How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
This is my first full published collection. It’s a triumph over procrastination – and a kind of rite of passage.
2 – How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or
non-fiction?
Although I wrote poems sporadically all through my life, poetry fully claimed me about ten or so years ago. Why? its music, its scope for imagining, its compression and depth, the constant challenge to dig deeper, the fact it can never be mastered. It not only felt like a step up from the kind of prose I’d written to make a living, but also held more meaning for me than my tentative attempts at fiction.
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?
Slow, slow, slow, like seeds germinating, sprouting, maturing – then being shaped into bonsai. On the occasion that a poem comes more quickly, it still gets knocked around quite a bit before being let out of the house.
4 – Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short
pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a
“book” from the very beginning?
Usually the inspiration is for a series or even a book, but the outcome, more often, is a single poem or a short sequence. I admire other poets who can sustain longer pieces.
5 – Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are
you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
It depends. I love to hear other poets read and I do enjoy reading myself if the stars are aligned and the audience responsive. No matter how much poems may be written for the page, they can never disown their oral heritage.
6 – Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds
of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even
think the current questions are?
Mostly it’s wonder and pondering – on what we all wonder and ponder about – what are we doing here? Sometimes it’s the “here” that I wonder about, other times the “doing” – as in heating up the planet. I try not to find it intractable because that only leads to a sense of helplessness, and as Sina Queyras said last week, “we must imagine our way through this mess.”
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture?
Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
The only role the writer has is to speak.
8 – Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or
essential (or both)?
Good question – and it’s both, of course. Difficult in the sense of letting in someone else’s sensibility and weighing their responses and recommendations without muttering, they just don’t get it! Beneficial (perhaps not essential) because there’s always something you haven’t thought of, some unintentional ambiguity, or blooper, or infelicity, that another person can feed back to you. Show the same piece to ten editors and you’ll get eight different takes on it – which makes you think harder about the work, not a bad outcome.
9 – What is the best piece of advice you’ve heard (not necessarily given
to you directly)?
“Fool,” said my muse to me. “Look in thy heart and write.”
— Philip Sidney
10 – What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have
one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Irregular, spasmodic, but filled with good intentions. Deadlines of any kind are helpful.
11 – When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for
lack of a better word) inspiration?
First, to poems – old, new, formalist, experimental. Canadian, American, all nationalities (in translation). Second to poetry criticism – Helen Vendler, Stephen Dobyns, Terry Eagleton, Jane Hirshfield, Robert Pinsky, etc etc.
12 – What do you really want?
Trusting we are in a irony-free zone, the answer is I just want to say my piece as well as I can. Otherwise, as Kathleen Jamie writes, to be “The Queen of Sheba”.
13 – David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there
any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science
or visual art?
Books do come from books but even more they come from the world, as we perceive it. Also from the news, space, dreams and childhood…
14 – What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply
your life outside of your work?
Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer, Americans Wallace Stevens and Charles Wright, Canadian/American Anne Carson, 6th century B.C. poet Sappho, and many Canadians writing today, more and more as time goes on. For relaxation I like police procedurals (e.g. Peter Robinson) and cozy mysteries (The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, for example).
15 – What would you like to do that you haven’t yet done?
Perhaps write a whole book on one theme; also more travel – Turkey and Eastern Europe especially.
16 – If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be?
Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you
not been a writer?
It would be grand to be a musician – perhaps in another life.
17 – What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
No choice, really, it was always there in one form or another. Unless I had had musical training (see above) I’d have felt I wasn’t doing the right thing if I had not been writing.
18 – What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Sorry, these are unanswerable questions for me. I don’t say “great” anymore, I say “good.” There’s such a discourse around us in our own day and age and, through books, from times past, we hear now one voice and then another coming through, and many are valid and often troubling. But FYI, the Canadian novel I read most recently is Exit Lines by Joan Barfoot; the last film I saw (on DVD borrowed from the library) was Red Road, a British psychological thriller set in Glasgow
19 – What are you currently working on?
A book about the exotic and the alien – and fear.
This is part of Ottawa writer rob mclennan’s 12 or 20 questions series, up at http://robmclennansindex.blogspot.com/2009/06/12-or-20-questions-second-series.html
Nominate an artist for a big, fat award
Expanded local arts awards amount to $14K
Detail of the Victor Tolgesy Award
It’s satisfying to see a great idea bear fruit.
Four years ago, I sat at a bistro table at the Novotel’s Café Nicole with other motivated members of the outreach committee of the Council for the Arts in Ottawa (CAO), drafting an ideal arts awards scenario that would adequately celebrate and encourage the work and careers of local artists who made the seemingly insane decision to make Ottawa, in place of T.O. or Montreal, their artistic base. Four years of lobbying work later (and two years after I amicably stepped down from the board to pursue motherhood), we have that scenario.
New emerging artist and expanded mid-career artist awards
This week, the CAO announced the expansion of its Mid-Career Artist Award program as well as the creation of a new award for emerging artists and an arts award lunch.
Beginning in 2010, instead of a mid-career award and a $1,000 cash prize going to one recipient, three mid-career awards will go to one winner who receives a $5,000 cash prize with two finalists receiving $1,000 each. The same formula will apply to the new RBC Emerging Artist Award co-founded by the CAO and the Royal Bank of Canada.
Fear not, the CAO will still be adjudicating the jewel in its awards crown, the Victor Tolgesy Artist Award given to an individual whose contribution to the local arts community has been significant. Its recipient list reads like a who’s who of Ottawa artists and arts champions: Penny McCann, Julian Armour, Jennifer Dickson, Ian Tamblyn, Paulette Gagnon, Tom Henighan, the list goes on.
All three sets of awards plus the Council’s Business Recognition Awards will be presented in a new format at the CAO Arts Award Lunch presented by RBC.
So how can you celebrate this good fortune?
Nominate an artist. Heck, nominate three. It is one of the greatest compliments you can give them.
But before you nominate, please read the criteria for each award which are available on the CAO’s website. (Because I know you’re asking yourself, “What the heck is a mid-career artist, anyway?”)
Nomination forms are available by calling (613) 569-1387, emailing council@arts-ottawa.on.ca, or by downloading the nomination form.
The deadline for all three awards is December 15, 2009.
Good luck. Merde.
Nichole is an Ottawa author and e-communications gal who also blogs at http://www.nicholemcgill.com and http://www.twitter.com/nicholemcgill
Literary Landscape On CKCU FM
PRESS RELEASE: Local writer Brendan McNally will guest host Literary Landscape, CKCU FM’s weekly program of literary affairs, on Thursday, November 19th, 6:30-7pm EST. Listen live: http://ckcu.magma.ca/listenlive.html
“A Letter to Virginia” was the first piece I ever had on the radio,” says McNally. “And it was on CKCU, so I was thrilled to be asked to guest host. I’ll focus the show on D.I.Y literary events, self-publishing, blogging. That sort of thing. And replay the letter.”
“A Letter to Virginia” is a humourous chronicle of McNally’s adventures with Santa Clause over the years.
He will be joined by guest Amanda Abdelhadi, of the blog Bovine Voodoo Magic.
For a variety of reasons, I have a large network of friends on Facebook, including some people that I’ve never actually met in person, and others I haven’t seen in years.
Still, although we don’t always communicate directly, I feel like I know them all.
Over time, through my random encounters with their status updates, their lives take on a coherent form, one that has an actual presence in my life. In a very passive way– not entirely unlike absorbing the ambient gossip at the local corner store– I find out who is going through a tough time or training for a race, or who might be falling in love or looking forward to a walk in the sun.
However, more important that the particulars of a life, is the general point of view, the general disposition toward the world, that each person unwittingly reveals. Although you don’t find out how people interact with the world, you do find out how they interpret the world around them. In a weirdly sincere and poetic way, you discover character.
Some people are habitually angry, always pissed off at the government or the forces that caused the hot water heater to break. Other people reveal themselves frustrated and tired, exhausted by the demands of their children, while others, the vast majority, express gratitude and optimism for the small pleasures of the day.
Sam thanks everybody for the generous birthday wishes.
Lucy thinks life is pretty sweet when you can sit outside in the sun drinking coffee with a friend.
Benedict is wondering what it means when a small dog stashes all her kibble in a slipper.
Christine is enjoying CBC radio and the smell of soup on the stove while she does some administrative paperwork—all is good.
I’ve always taken great solace in these people, and have grown very fond of their quiet and benevolent presence. When I see their avatar pop up, I feel like they’re quietly sitting in the room with me, and I get the same comfort from them that I would get from seeing a familiar neighbour out, once again, raking the leaves.
Michael Murray also blogs at: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
Dave Cooper’s latest inspiration
When a pomegranate isn’t just a pomegranate
Painter and illustrator Dave Cooper might very well be Ottawa’s best known visual artist whose international reputation seems to, sadly for Ottawa, overshadow his local rep. His paintings of pillowy women that are, at once, erotic, innocent and can veer into the mildly disturbing, sell in New York, Los Angeles and Paris while his current hiatus from the graphic novel world is also mourned internationally.
In “Nice Ottawa”, his work is occasionally on display in “one-night stand” format at Ottawa’s black sheep of the visual arts scene, Galerie La Petite Mort or recently at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
But perhaps his latest series will be found to be more palatable to the more conservative in Ottawa.
When a pomegranate isn’t just a pomegranate
Cooper’s latest mini-series could loosely be termed as “the erotic innocence of fruit”. Pomegranate A (below), B (left) and C (top) were originally conceived as a triptych with “A” being unabashedly lush, B” a balance of age and vitality and “C”, a literal balance of opposites.
Luckily for me, “Pomegranate C” is snapped up. (Yes, I’m the culprit. It was an extravagant birthday gift paid in sweat, paint and affection.)
Still, it’s worth following Dave Cooper’s visual arts site and sniff around the galleries in town to see if Dave will explore this new concept further or return to his “pillowy girls”.
Dave Cooper is accepting commissions. You can contact him at dave [at] davegraphics [dot] com.
Images all © Dave Cooper. Republishing available with permission.
A Fury of Pigeons
As many of you will have already heard, my Yahoo Fantasy Hockey Team—A Fury of Pigeons—is utterly dominating my league. It’s not even close.
You should know that I wasn’t “invited” to become a part of this league, but was randomly assigned to it when I signed-up to participate in a Yahoo league. I think that the reason I never get invited back to leagues to defend my crown (I always win), is because people hate winners. Sure, people have cited my “racist taunts” as inappropriate behaviour for the league, or my groundbreaking strategy of sending viruses to opponent’s computers, as “unsportsmanlike,” but that’s obviously just a smoke screen. All of my previous opponents, whom I have crushed without mercy, are a bunch of losers who live in loserville, and sick of losing, exclude me from their leagues.
What. Fucking. Ever.
Anyway, this year I was assigned to a 12-team league called The Orangeville/Kiruna Project. As usual, I’ve been intimidating and demoralizing my opponents with my spirited trash talking and am once again in first place.
However, this morning I received a letter from a Miss Watson, who claims to be a third grade teacher at a school in Orangeville. She claims that her class is involved in a joint project with another grade three class, this one located in the town of Kiruna, Sweden. According to her, the kids from both classes are operating this pool together as a sort of project, in which, acting as pen pals, they get to learn about each countries “unique culture, via our shared love of hockey,” and that my addition to the league was a mistake. She goes on and on and on, but to make a long story short, she wants me to drop out of the league!
As if!
Just because they’re a bunch of kids—soft kids—that doesn’t mean that I should take the foot off the gas pedal! These kids need to learn some tough lesson about life, and one of those lessons is that there will always be winners and losers in this world, and the sooner they understand that, the better. Miss Watson wrote that Mr. Ljungberg—the Swedish grade three teacher—told her that little Halvard (who only has players whose names begin with “H” on his team) has been having nightmares and has been wetting his bed, ever since he started to read my posts on the league message board. Well, if Halvard can’t stand the heat, then he should get out of kjitchen, or however the stupid Swedes spell that.
Look, I skipped grade three, and now that I’ve been given the gift to return there and dominate, like I so clearly would have in the past, I’m sure as hell not going to give it up.
Game, on, bitches!
Michael Murray also blogs at: http://www.michaelmurray.ca/blog/
