branta

Si on simplifie, outrageusement, ce portail de la littérature, on peut ainsi penser qu’il ouvre sur deux voies, apparemment contradictoires : chercher à inventer, chercher à dire la vérité. Mais heureusement il existe beaucoup d’autres approches, d’autres théories, parfois sur-utilisées, dans les cours de création: l’Oulipo et les différents exercices auxquels se sont adonnés ses membres, par exemple. Le ludisme littéraire.

They are the forms that break new ground, use unexpected combinations to express either new ideas or long standing ones that benefit from little shocks or big pushes. They can ask big questions. They can offer researched answers. But after looking at them side by side for about a decade I’ve come to a conclusion that their root difference is: new music actively gathers to it an audience whereas poetry seems content being left alone.

One of our mandates for 2010 is to keep an eye out for places where technology and writing interface in meaningful ways. At the Atwater Library and Computer Centre in Montreal (Canada’s oldest lending library!) they’ve been archiving readings for their Poetry Project since 2005. One recent reader was Brent MacLaine reading from Athena Becomes a Swallow. Come inside and have a listen…

Late in December I asked contributors and Branta readers what their holidays would hold viz things literary. Whether writers would write or be stymied; if the readers would benefit from the downtime to catch up; what gifts of lit they were hoping to receive. This post gathers their thoughts and recommendations.

In-between is the traverse through darkness, feeling the icy breath of the forest, hearing squeak of boot on snow, bearing frost-smelling coats into warm kitchens. In-between is the starry sky, the black universe beneath which we understand our need for one another. We progress from home to candle-lit home: grateful for food, for warmth, for companionship.

“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.” -Emily Dickinson

Insult? Compliment? Online they can easily be interchangeable. November also holds these three new pieces to refine or redefine your enjoyment of autumn:

It was cold outside
by Abigail Whitney
What I thought of in the Shoe Shop
by Christopher Willard
Cooking Corner: Orphan Thanksgiving Sandwich
by Angus Fletcher

It’s been a little while since my David Lynch / David Foster Wallace and my Beck / Korgis / Stackridge brushes with cosmic coincidence, so I though the Jungian subconscious roadway had been closed for upgrades (like simultaneously repairing all the bridges into some New Brunswick towns). Turns out that a few of the bypasses were still open for traffic. Check this post for the latest.

We just had our first modest snowfall in Fredericton. Nothing to write home about… or text home about, depending on your level of technology… but a signpost nonetheless. And since we’re not ones to ignore augury here at Branta it seemed a good time to inaugurate (oops…) the changing seasons with selections from our first volley of unsolicited contributions.

Links are inside this post.

Just seeing the different creative approaches that people brought to their work. It was very motivating to read all the stories and know that people all over were writing fiction and trying to do it as well as they could. And just because they could, and liked doing it. It obviously wasn’t about the money or pushing “product” or being part of a publicity machine. It was all very encouraging and liberating. What I’d always thought literature should be.

On the other hand, daily news is a work in progress, a constantly evolving account of the story-”history on the run,” as Thomas Griffith put it. As new information comes to light, the reporter can incorporate it into follow-up stories, coming ever closer to something resembling truth. Without subsequent editions, however, a book is immutable.