Where am I?

A few days ago the Parliamentary Poet Laureate assumed that this weekend I'd be in Montreal for LTAC, for the translators' meetings, but I'm not a member and never had plans that way. Jo-Anne Elder will be there. Hugh Hazelton will be there. Nigel Spencer will be there—even doing a reading from his poem translations in Funambule / Tightrope (Broken Jaw Press) by Pauline Michel, the Parliamentary Poet Laureate . . .

Poeticaly, it would have made more sense for me to be in Ottawa at the itinerent PoetryFest, the The League of Canadian Poets AGM weekend. Pauline, as Parliamentary Poet Laureate, gave a talk last night. rob mclennan and so many other poets there. I haven't attended a whole LCP AGM in years. In recent years too much of my writers' org meeting attendance has conflicted with or been preempted by publishers' meetings and tradeshows.

Right now, I should be in Toronto (again). BookExpo Canada weekend after the days of AGM of the Association of Canadian Publishers. The tradeshow opens in a few hours, and runs today and tomorrow. Broken Jaw will have a limited presence there, in the collective booth of the Literary Press Group of Canada. Broken Jaw should be there. LPG is our sales group. We've no author appearances or book signing giveaways at BEC this year. Our major authors for the year Pauline and rob are both busy in Ottawa. Plus there's no Joe-publisher-in-person presence to glad hand the booksellers, other publishers, writers and authors, members of the media, and the swarms of indigo locusts let loose. rob's forthcoming book and its aubade sampler will be our display feature.

It was two years ago at BEC that I, and other publishers, met with the Serbia & Montenegro Publishers Mission accompanied by Olgica Marinkovic, the Academic and Cultural Officer from the Canadian Embassy in Beograd. That meeting began the most unexpected turn in my literary career and personal life. One that resulted in two of my poetry books being translated into Serbian and published there. Three trips to Serbia in the past year and a half. Another on the horizon . . .

Where am I? Fredericton, in rain-soaked New Brunswick. The cartonned building blocks of my pyramid, my tomb, my oubliette surround me. I need to get out for a big ride before the neighbouring god clubs congregate this morning, then I'll get back on this or another computer to continue working. It's the work that has kept me pinned here. On Friday I signed "okay to print" sheets for ellipse 77's cover and insides. Yesterday, I uploaded PDFs for a book cover and another "promote Joe Blades" postcard to my printer's FTP site. Have so much more to get done and gone!

T-shirt: nbcc volunteer
loc: BJP off
temp: 13 C
sound: Grateful Dead Europe '72