Moderate goals:
I would like to 1) read in Montreal 2) do a poetry workshop at Sage Hill 3) and maybe the Banff Centre 4) read in Vancouver again to an awesome audience like the incredibly awesome audience at the KSW last spring 5) read in Portland again because they were pretty awesome too 6) read in Ottawa 7) turn my current writing project into something complete and significant 8) make more chapbooks 9) write that book review I said I would write 10) go to more than one reading a month.

Fascinated lately with the idiocy and insensitivity of certain newspaper headlines. On cbc.ca the other day:

"Suncor to reign in oil sands' plans"

And in either the Sun or the Metro on Monday after somebody set several fires in Calgary over the weekend, causing a lot of damage and exhibiting a reckless disregard for the safety of others:

"Arsonist lights up weekend"

Looking for something to read? Read Taken by Daphne Marlatt. I just finished it and started Ana Historic, also by Daphne Marlatt. I read them both several years ago and was left with a lingering impression of Damn!She does prose well. And she really does:

And so there was the constraint of finishing tea, stiffly, passing the last of the Jaffa biscuits, wiping her mouth on the serviette before getting up to help Mother with the plates, the washing up she did herself now, and all the time wanting to rush out into the street, howling at the unfairness of it all. War. And what of those women who'd managed to get to Signapore and decided to stay there, stick it out to the end with their husbands? That kind of courage. What was Peggy doing now? Still meeting for coffee at Robinson's, displaying her baby over petit fours? Putting a brave face on it, playing mahjong with other wives holed up in The Raffles? And what if the hotel itself took a direct hit? Could she stand it? The game of keeping up morale, stacking your dragons and your winds in neat little walls, while the real walls were falling all around you -- surely they'd have a bomb shelter. But where? Under the dance floor, under the Palm Court where the waiters in their high-buttoned tunics would hardly be standing by? Panic, smoke, people rushing out to get the last food in the shops. No difference between mem sahib and servant.

-Marlatt, Taken

Spotted chump in escapades, espadrilles, expirate, solidify. Spot chump among the loverly, whippeting, cradled. Stop limbs. Stop lips. Stop drawn out thankfully. Spot me new language. I’ll spin. Lay new grooves, I’ll mitigate. I want to level. Want to phosphorate. I’m gamely and gaming. Salivating. Shuddered.

Why does some blog grab text from other blogs and translate them to some language and then imperfectly back into English? I have no idea. But it came up with some nifty sentences:

She's almost French Canadian and almost efficiently on French.

Its mA thesis busy sentences and its central situation of Gertrude Stein's in the letter.

She was poetry publisher and then handling publisher for gas station magazine, between 1999 and 2004.

And it describes my thesis about as well as I ever did.

I guess that's what can happen when you put your name out into the internets. I guess this can happen too. All kinds of poets are all up in arms over it, but I don't really see why. Anyone who reads poetry knows you didn't write the poem attributed to you there. And anyone who doesn't read poetry, well, doesn't read poetry. They don't care.

I love the comments that threaten legal action. Seriously, on what grounds? Defamation? Because they implied that you're a poet? Copyright infringement? Because you own your name? Litigousness is a disease. Use your common sense instead.