March 3, 2010

Trying on Essays for Size

What’s the difference between a blog posting and a personal essay? As I review a series of essays for my creative non-fiction class at UBC, this question comes to mind. I review the points provided in our course pack by our ever-thorough (and enthusiastic) instructor Andreas Schroeder and one line about essays stands out: “it is mostly exploratory, giving itself time to peruse, analyze, speculate or marvel.” This sentence spring-boards into a theory.

Essays take up time whereas blog postings take up (cyber)space. This is a simple bifurcation but valid. How many people gaze up from computer screens with pensive expressions? While surfing the web you move from place to place, from text to video, and time is usually measured in the seconds you wait for something to load. In essays there is time to slowly and sensuously wrap your head around a thought. Time is of the essence.

I also consider how a personal essay is Socratic in its questioning approach whereas a blog posting is more declarative. Usually, people are getting some grief off their chest or promulgating some position or stance. There are a dizzying number of great blogs but on the other end of the spectrum you have people shouting: look at me! At the end of the day, it’s easier to shout a sentence than a question. (Try to imagine a crowd chanting a thoughtful question.)

I file my fingers through all the readings that Andreas has given up. One of the best essays in this superb collection in front of me is Cristina Nehring’s Our Essays, Ourselves, a piece of writing that shimmers in its rhythms of insight. What I also enjoy is the succinct analysis of the history and import of essays. We are taken from Seneca, the founder of the essay form, to Lee Gutkind, a contemporary proselyte of creative nonfiction and founder of the literary journal Creative Non-Fiction (which currently is running a competition on essays about animals with a deadline of April 2nd).

If this were an essay I’d wrap all this up with some insight into UBC’s remarkable MFA program, a reference to a cat I met yesterday on my walk home and the view I have as I type this on my iPhone as I look up through the diamond shaped UBC library window and wince at a fissure of brightness breaking through the clouds in the sky.

But this is just a blog posting and you have other places to go.

February 20, 2010

Sunday Afternoon Reading on Granville Island

Here’s something to check out if you should find yourself on Granville Island Sunday afternoon. Below is the blurb on the Thursday’s Writing Collective page.

The Thursdays Writing Collective is participating in the Cultural Olympiad at the art installation “The Candahar,” Sunday, Feb 21, 2-4pm, at Playwrights Theatre Centre, 219-1398 Cartwright Street (on Granville Island just past Kids’ Market on the right.) Tickets at door $7.

A dozen participants of the Collective will read pieces of published work and discuss the process of arriving on the page. Please join us for an afternoon of laughter and entertainment with an edge.

The Candahar is a locus for social interaction and the host site for an ambitious series of events — musical programs, theatrical presentations, performances and dialogues, both scripted and unscripted — curated by Winnipeg artist Paul Butler and Vancouver author Michael Turner (Hard Core Logo).

The name “Candahar” refers to the original location of the now defunct Blackthorn Bar in Belfast pub. Irish artist Theo Sims has recreated the bar in Granville Island’s Playwright Theatre. Part sculpture, part theatrical stage, The Candahar is an artwork that is also a functioning bar, open to the public and staffed, in collaboration with two Belfast bartenders who act as unscripted performers. The project fuses the authentic with fantasy, spectacle with stage, and at its heart acts as a catalyst for conversation, debate and dialogue — and a pint here or there.

February 12, 2010

Kudos to Cran

Vancouver’s poet laureate, Brad Cran, has stated that he won’t participate in the Olympic celebrations. In case you haven’t heard, here’s what’s behind his decision. Obviously, the whole question of the Olympics is a hugely complicated debate between millions of hopes and hundreds of thousands of concerns. I, for one, am concerned about the nature of big-budget global spectacle as the template for a future where cities pull out all the stops for the chance to produce the next “block-buster.” Under this analogy, the future is Waterworld, bad acting and all.

February 10, 2010

Elevating the Printed Word

If you find yourself in East Vancouver anytime soon and you’re interested in a quiet little place to read or write, I can think of no better place to recommend than Geoffrey Farmer’s Every Letter in the Alphabet. It’s a temporary gallery set up for one year, but in its short life-span it’s hosted a number of excellent shows. There are some great books to browse through and most wonderful of all there’s a book on a rotating pedestal in the display window. How often is it that the right things get put on pedestals in this world?

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February 9, 2010

In Conversation with Tobias Wolff

Lit lovers and makers are in for a treat tonight when Entitled Opinions features author Tobias Wolff, who’ll be discussing his fiction, J.D. Salinger and the art of short stories. That’s today from 4pm to 5pm on KZSU 90.1 FM in the SF Bay Area or you can listen to the live stream at http://kzsu.stanford.edu/ The episode is also available on the Entitled Opinions website and on iTunes.

February 7, 2010

Basho Unabashed in less than a Four and Twenty

Came across a nice little poetry site this afternoon that I thought I’d share with you. It’s called hello poetry, which might not be the most poetic of urls but it’s a nifty way to find poems and uses of concepts through key word searches. Since the beginning of the year I’ve been working through a series of alphabet poems based on two pages of the dictionary per day at twitter and so to shore up my knowledge of the use of the word “alphabet” itself, I did a little search and found some uses in poems by Neruda, Dickinson, Browning and something a little more humorous in the Spike Milligan vein. Behind the scenes of the poems that I’m writing at twitter, I’m working on extrapolating something larger and so of course I’m curious to know how the concept of alphabet has been used before. I’m also a big fan of the moon and was delighted to find this haiku by Basho:

A field of cotton–
as if the moon
had flowered.


On the topic of small poems, four and twenty poetry is a lilliputioushly lovely site set up through the auspices of Declaration Editing. It’s a great place to send small poems of four lines that total no more than twenty words. A simple but smart idea that’s put to great use in a monthly poetry journal.
Oh and yes, here’s my own personal plug, one of my poems is in there this month.

February 4, 2010

Cage Match of Canadian Poets

It’s long, it’s grueling, it’s telling, it’s replete with suplexes of poetics, pile-drivers of discourse and a great view into the poetry scene in Canada. Her Majesty the Queen shall soon decree that this debate between Christian Bok and Carmine Starnino be required viewing for students of poetry in Canada. Queen Elizabeth says: Christian “by the book” Bok, Carmine “stuttering sublimities” Starnino, who’s side you gonna be on? Biggest question of all: is Christian Bok a friendly robot alien from the future? Only time will time.

The Cage Match of Canadian Poetry from Kit Dobson on Vimeo.

February 3, 2010

I Feel Like Real Writers Tonight, Real Writers Tonight

I mean if you are in that mood yourself (note the catchy commercial jingle undertones in our title today, the sense of something fun right around the corner, something better than chicken), then you should check out the Real Vancouver Writers’ Series at the W2 Culture and Media House. Sean Cranbury will be hosting tonight’s line up of writers: Richard Van Camp, John Burns, Brendan McLeod, Bruce Grenville, Cathleen With, Jennica Harper, Robert Chaplin. If you haven’t escaped from Vancouver for calmer quarters, this will be the place to be each Wednesday in February.

p.s.
This just in: I’ve been asked to read as well, so you can add me to the list of real readers. (And not to that list of dead Salinger phonies. Too soon? Too sudden a shift? Too harsh? Blame it on the excitement at the bottom of a big cup of morning coffee where the whole world is thrown into play.)

February 2, 2010

Going for Poetic Gold (hold the fries)

Okay, so the warmest January just passed us by and February looks equally snowless. What’s a Winter Olympics hosting city to do? Simply drown your sorrows on Granville Island while taking in local non-weather dependent culture. The Candahar bar is a recreation of the Blackthorn Bar in Belfast. Besides the amazing line up of talent hosting various readings and events throughout the month they’ll be a site-specific collaborative installation between Vancouver poet Elizabeth Bachinsky and prose writer Alex Leslie. They’ll be inviting people to black out sections of Olympics promotional material with felt markers to see what kinds of poetics ensue.

January 19, 2010

The Essential Links

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Isn’t it wonderful how one thing can lead to another? The right foot in front of the left. One synapse firing up the next. I recently received in the mail the winter issue of Geist magazine, which is, cover to cover, one of their finest in years. The art direction is eye-catching and concise and most importantly the content is inimitably Canadian, helping as always to build a sense of our collective quirks while also reaching out to find bohemia and beyond outside our borders. All the articles are thought-provoking, but it was a review on a famous Canadian painter that tipped me in an interesting direction of thought. “The Canadian way of death is death by accident,” quotes Daniel Francis, getting trans-Canada mileage out of this concept from Survival in his review of a book about Tom Thomson, a Canadian painter whose bold work inspired the Group of Seven to formation.

The next day, with Thomson’s name fresh in my memory, a certain podcast on Entitled Opinions grabbed my attention. Last night I finally got around to listening to the first part of Tom Thomson in Purgatory, an interview with the philosophy professor come poet Troy Jollimore. I’m not sure yet if the titular Thomson is the Canadian painter of national renown, but the interview is inspiring with Jollimore reading several of his Occam-razor-sharp poems, which reminded me of the importance of hearing authors read their own work. Then I thought about this upcoming Sunday.

This Sunday afternoon is Dead Poets, an afternoon of poets reading from the works of those who’ve passed before us. As I listened to Troy Jollimore reading his poem Glass, I pondered the differences between him reading his own work and the work of someone else. Then it dawned on me that if you want to find out how writers dig inspiration from the graves of the dead, how one thing has led to another in their poetic imaginations, nothing beats a writer reading from the work of someone who’s influenced them. Listen to the speed, intonation, and rhythms of that author and you’ll have secreted away a writing class for yourself. Writing is part of a large and loud conversation but hearing a writer read from someone is like eavesdropping on a student and teacher taking in private after class. If you’re interested in listening in on such a conversation you can find the following writers at the location below:

Charles Bruce read by Sandy Shreve
Edwin Muir read by Christopher Levenson
R. S. Thomas read by Russell Thornton
Al Purdy read by Rob Taylor
Nazim Hikmet read by Kate Braid

Sunday, January 24, 2:00-4:00 p.m.
The Café for Contemporary Art, 140 East Esplanade, North Vancouver
One block up from the Lonsdale Quay and Seabus

This has been organized by the remarkably talented and friendly wordsmith David Zieroth, who recently won the Governer General’s Literary Award for his poetic connections placed carefully on the page. If you’re free this Sunday afternoon I can’t recommend this highly enough.

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