buzz
Poem: Unsent Letter #5
21 May 2013
We're justifiably proud to be publishing award-winning poet Carmelita McGrath's new collection Escape Velocity. On the eve of its release, here's McGrath's:
Unsent Letter # 5
Stillness for the first time in days; something bronzed
and grey and made of light has laid an overlay
on the maples and the rowan trees. Within
the gilt of noon, not even a branch stirs;
for once the wind is quiet and the voices of birds emerge —
chickadees, juncos, the hawk come from the lake
and to make things worse, a seagull overhead, sunlit,
crying into the enameled afternoon. What I'm saying is
there should be someone here with me
in this light to be shared, here in my aerie
among all the branches and the late sun and the gathering
of shadows and their filigree on clapboard, fences.
A thing I could say to you, or you to me
until the gilded day became a memory.
IAIN BAXTER& conquers art & architecture
21 May 2013
IAIN BATXER&: Works 1958-2011 was a labour of love, not only for the artist but for our mighty design crew here at the Goose. Obviously the love was too much to contain, as BAXTER& has been awarded the 2013 Melva J. Dwyer Award!
As the official press release states, "The integrity of the critical essays, high quality art reproductions, academically sound citations, rigorous indexing, innovative nature of the publication’s “Narrative Chronology,” and authoritative bibliography all make this a publication of unique value for researchers in Canada and beyond."
Poem: "As the ice storm flags"
13 May 2013
May is a time of renewal. Let's renew our Icehouse Poetry series with a poem from Adrienne Barrett's new collection The house is still standing.
As the ice storm flags
Murky skin of a canned plum,
the sea. Six horses in a field, startled
into stillness. White globes cling
to the windshield. Dusty Sheen
of a pool slide remembers flesh, heart
steers itself out of my bundled chest,
Only a week before, this road
shot through gold-suffused air.
Now a blackbird flaps its wings and
time is slow.
I have never cared for birds. Sky,
what else have you got?
Wayne Curtis on the Miramichi
13 May 2013
Ever heard of the Miramichi? It's an area of New Brunswick famed for rich fishing, wondrous wildlife, and epic authors such as our own Wayne Curtis.
Speaking with Saltscapes, Curtis (Of Earthly and River Things)waxed on how growing up on the Miramichi affected him:
Local boys such as Wayne Curtis and David Adams Richards have gone on to pen award-winning books and short stories about the Miramichi, her history, her culture and her people.
Says Curtis: “After a family lives on the river for 200 years, as mine has, the river becomes part of our soul. The Miramichi is very sacred to us. It’s like an umbilical chord that keeps us all connected.”
Curtis has fished this river since he was shorter than a shovel. He lived on a farm that’s still in the family, and recalls haying during the summer, and how his father used to send him off to catch a fish for supper.
“I loved that, because I had allergies and suffered from hay fever, so I’d go to the river, and, by hook or by crook, I always brought a salmon home.”
Says Curtis: “After a family lives on the river for 200 years, as mine has, the river becomes part of our soul. The Miramichi is very sacred to us. It’s like an umbilical chord that keeps us all connected.”
Curtis has fished this river since he was shorter than a shovel. He lived on a farm that’s still in the family, and recalls haying during the summer, and how his father used to send him off to catch a fish for supper.
“I loved that, because I had allergies and suffered from hay fever, so I’d go to the river, and, by hook or by crook, I always brought a salmon home.”
Read the full article at the Saltscapes website.
The athletics of prose
13 May 2013
We've always known that Sharon McCartney (For and Against) is a world-class author. Now the UK knows it as well.
In an interview with The Oxonian Review, McCartney divulges her inspirations for many of her poems, her hobbies, and Little House on the Prairie:
What’s the longest you’ve ever worked on a single poem? What was the fastest poem you’ve ever finished?
Hmmm. There were poems in my first book that dated in earlier drafts to high school. That book was published in 1999 and I graduated from high school in 1977. But I wasn't working on those poems all that time! I tend to work poems over quite a bit, so they might be in various drafts for three or four years. But I can’t think of a single one that took longer than all of the others. And then sometimes after they’re published, you still want to make changes.
Fastest? I don’t know. There’s never been one that’s been fast. No one-draft wonders. For me, fast would be several weeks to a draft that I could walk away from.
You’ve worked as a legal editor, and you’ve got a ‘hobby’ (or maybe, given how long you’ve stuck with it, a passion) for body-building and cross-training. Which has more in common with your writing life: your athletics or your professional experience?
Oh, definitely athletics. Legal editing is utterly analytical. Some of the cases were compelling and even entertaining, but no poetry ever arose out of a legal decision for me. It’s just what I do for money. Now I’m working as a parliamentary editor producing Hansard, which is the journal of the debates in the legislature. There will be no poetry coming out of that either, believe me.
Athletics is another story. In the gym, you’re constantly pushing yourself, wrestling with yourself. That’s what you have to do in poetry too. So the two have a lot in common! For me, poetry is pushing myself to go deeper into the important questions: who am I? Why am I here? What do I love? What does it mean to love? Where am I going? In the gym, I’m pushing myself to go deeper into my body, to ask myself what I can do and how far I can challenge myself. They feed each other.
Read the full interview at the Oxonian Review website.
Monday poem: "The Primitive Streak"
6 May 2013
Let's face the new month of May with vigour and a taste for the adventurous, with Brent MacLaine's:
The Primitive Streak (from These fields were rivers)
The primitive streak, biologists have made it known,
is a kind of crease through the middle of the cell
that cuts its wholeness in half,
and folds upon itself;
thus, symmetry is born, and as far as I can tell,
that's why we have limbs in pairs and backbone.
Later, however, the heart appears,
and no doubt, that's what throws the whole thing off.
happening
Jim and Sue Waddington have started a new FB page for their upcoming Fall book IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF THE GROUP OF... http://t.co/qUk8iCfaNK
5 minutes ago
5 minutes ago
RT @GillerPrize: Richard Wagamese wins First Nation Communities Read competition http://t.co/uYWtqWRbpC via @sharethis
28 minutes ago
28 minutes ago
Paradis perdu, manifeste écologique, ma...
catalogue downloads