Festival Kickoff

Well, today might be the first day on the posters but last night was the kickoff for the Writers Festival, with a launch for Michael Blouin's Wore Down Trust at the Barley Mow. I love when the Festival kicks off with a party for a local writer. The place was jammed, loud, happy, friendly, and celebratory. The reading even pre-empted Game 7 (it's okay, Montreal lost anyway.)

And the talk all died down completely so Mike could read from the book, which he did with aplomb, reading from each of the three sections of the book (from the perspectives of, severally, Johnny Cash, Alden Nowlan, and a semiautobiographical third character.)

What he read was grounded, bluesy, considered stuff, and I certainly thought I heard a few echoes of Cash's voice. The book itself, from all accounts, is hard to describe, and he didn't read for that long - I for one could have listened to much more. So, I got a sense of the feel of the book, but not, I think, the whole: I know I really want to get my hands on a copy so I can spend some time with it. 

Short Stories

This afternoon, for Literary Landscapes, I got to interview the winner of the CBC Literary Awards for short stories, Meghan Adams - a Masters student in Creative Writing. Her story, "Snapshots From my Father's Euthanasia Road Trip, or, Esau," is a family portrait in miniature, where a daughter finds herself, vaguely unwilling but unable to refuse, driving her father from Nova Scotia to Toronto so he can jump off the Don Valley Bridge rather than die of some unnamed disease.

The show's here, if you want to listen!

Writersfest Season

I can't believe I haven't actually written about the fact that Writers Festival is coming up in a couple of weeks! I guess because I know everyone else is already posting their picks, etc. - for example, rob mclennan just posted one of his "12 or 20 questions" pieces with J.M. DeMatteis, who will be coming to the Festival this spring. (Search around: he's done 12-or-20s with a few other Festival guests too.) Most Festivals, I've been far too busy running around helping to put the Festival together to write about who I'm looking forward to seeing. But, as most of you know by now, I'm not working at the Festival anymore (although, festivalgoers will possibly not notice much difference, as I will be working for the bookseller and have been hired to drive authors around to schools, so my days during the Festival will be much as though nothing has changed. I'm really looking forward to being on site and part of the team again, actually. It feels really weird to be an audience member. I keep wanting to jump up and help with the mikes or the box office.)

Anyway. Have you seen the new and beautiful Writers Festival website? It's gorgeous. I really like the way you can print off your own tickets, and how the information is organized. Bye-bye scrolling and tiny brown font. And that index page is bold-looking.

What am I looking forward to? Well, I know I'll be selling books a lot of the time, so I may not be able to sit in on many of the events. But I'll be driving for the school program, which means I may get to sit in on sessions with JC Sulzenko, JM DeMatties, Mike Carey, AJ Lake, Lesley Livingston, or Arthur Slade - all of whom are people I really like and/or whose books I enjoy (not having yet met JM DeMatteis, I don't know what he's like in person, although I'm betting he's cool.)

The geek in me, too, is looking forward to Mike Carey and JM DeMatteis's talk on graphic novels, as well as the session where Mike and Andrew Pyper will talk about creepy stories. I'm also very curious about the You Are Not A Gadget session with Jaron Lanier and Lee Smolin, and the session on science's quest for immortality with John Gray. And of course, the geek in me will be there for Robert J. Sawyer's Webmind event. Can't miss out on one of Canada's most important SF writers.

Meanwhile, the poetry nerd in me is looking in anticipation at the next Messagio Galore (if you haven't seen one of these, you've been missing out on some exhilarating mental exercise), wiggling happily about getting to see Pearl Pirie read at the Poetry Cabaret, hoping to sneak in to the Poetry Masterclass with Robert Pinsky, and hoping to finally wrap my head around what a ghazal is and why everyone's so het up about them at the Ghazal Concert (besides,with Lorna Crozier, Rob Winger, Sandra Ridley and Robert Pinsky reading, it's sure to be awesome.)

I've found that, inevitably, going to hear poetry makes me more determined to try and write poetry. Once I get over sitting there with my jaw dropped thinking, "well, crap, I'll never be able to write like that..."

Other things that catch my eye - Marina Nemat, who is always lovely and gracious and whose story is just heartbreaking, is going to be at the Books and Brunch. Michael Blouin is reading from Wore Down Trust at the Barley Mow. There's a Short Story Masterclass with Clark Blaise. And Giller winner Johanna Skibsrud's coming too. And I can never resist an adventurer, so I'm eyeing the Will to Live event with Survivorman Les Stroud.

But that's just me. You be keen on all the stuff you're keen on. And see you there!

More Local Touristing

My second piece on Local Tourist Ottawa just went up: an extended mix of the review I wrote here of Clare Murphy's show at the Fourth Stage. . . May be doing some writing for them about Once Upon a Slam, too, which I'm heading off to tonight (which reminds me, I really need to run through my story and get it down to 5 minutes! It's a break from my past stories: a historical true story from the last days of the Vietnam War. You'll have come out if you want to know more!)

And then, just for a change, maybe I'll write something for them that's not about storytelling.

First Local Tourist piece!

Hey, check it out: just posted my first piece on Local Tourist Ottawa, where I'm writing about the lit scene. This post covers the wrapup of VERSeFest and why I think it's going to make a huge difference to Ottawa's poetry scene.

Gods and Monsters

Am I ever glad I ran - ran - from the CKCU studio to the NAC in time for Irish storyteller Clare Muireann Murphy's On The Heels of the Hound. This was a presentation by the Ottawa Storytellers Fourth Stage Series, and not one I wanted to miss (even if Thursdays are choir night, so, sadly, I often have to miss OST Fourth Stage shows.)

I'm an Irish mythology geek, so I was pretty happy to find out Clare Murphy was going to be here. On Saint Patrick's Day. To tell the really old stuff; origin myths and creation stories and ancient epics.

The room was pretty full when I came sneaking in minutes before the show (and my friend Ruthanne had saved me a seat right up at the front, bless her!) The teller came on stage singing, carrying a staff, in a white dress with a green shawl and ogham letters written down the back (and yeah, I knew what they were and thought that was a great touch.)

Murphy's storytelling is conversational, and vivid. The sound effects and different voices she could produce with just her voice were amazing, and she leaped from character to character, becoming a a warrior poet, a snorting, belching, repulsive giant, a crafty old Druidess, an arrogant king, a little boy - often back and forth between lines of dialogue. She spoke straight to the audience - to particular people in the audience at times - involving us in the story as well. We became, through the show, the chant that healed King Nuada's arm, the sound of the wind, servants put to sleep by magic, druids being chosen for a task, and by the end, the chorus of the song she'd been singing between stories. So in a way we became shapeshifters as much as she did, as did her staff and shawl, which became different objects through the stories as well.

Something about the updated, conversational, 'this is all happening in a time and place we can recognize' tone she used kept the myths she was telling fresh: these stories are thousands of years old, but she kept them from feeling distant. You could relate to these people, which is one of the things I find so interesting about the Irish legends. The characters are very human, even when they're gods. They have human failings and passions and fears and loves - and senses of humor - and Murphy brought that out. I don't think I've ever felt quite so much compassion for Fionn mac Cumhail in his search for his lost wife, or for little, stubborn, innocent, pigheaded, terrifying Setanta (he grows up to be Chu Chulainn, who Murphy described as "like Hercules, but psychotic and homicidal.") And I'm not sure I breathed during the warrior poet Amairgin's crossing of the nine waves to land in Ireland.

I wanted more: when she was done it felt like no time at all had gone by. Certainly not a couple of hours. Now where's my copy of the Dictionary of Celtic Mythology? Think I want to spend some more time with these stories.

VERSeFest Taught Me

I'll be on CKCU's Literary Landscape tomorrow 6:30-7:00, 93.1 FM) talking about the repercussions and impact of VERSeFest with Jessica Ruano (and possibly other poetry people).

I'll also have a blog post up soon about VERSeFest on Local Tourist Ottawa, which I'm right now composing, and struggling not to drag the possibly-not-yet-embroiled LTO readership into the heated, sometimes vitriolic 'page/stage' debate. But still wanting to give them some sense of why that debate exists, why it matters, and why what VERSeFest did, in bringing together a very diverse group of poetry organizations, was not only important, but got a few people all verklempt at the closing party.

I think it was really important to have a space where people got to hear what was going on at other reading series and among other groups in town. It was very, very cool to hear the spoken word audiences snapping their fingers for the page poets, and the page poets responding to the spoken word. And for me, it was particularly interesting to be there for back-to-back shows and to hear - along with the differences between styles - what was similar.

At the moment, I'm running a quick Twitter campaign - using the hashtag #VERSeFestTaughtMe, I'm hoping to garner some responses on what people learned from this opportunity to be exposed to other people who might be practicing poetry differently from them. Just sent out another call - I'll read whatever I get back out on-air tomorrow.