5th Tuesday APB, 31 July 2007

Busy month, wha? Today's the fifth Tuesday and the sixth Ashes, Paper & Beans program I've produced this month.

Tonight's episode started with emcee Emily Elder, artistic director Sheri-D Wilson, poets Shannon Maguire and Wendy Morton from the Women's Circle show of the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival 2007.

Wendy is also the coordinator of the annual Canada-wide Random Acts of Poetry Week.

That was followed by R.C. Weslowski with "ww3: war on the worms" and "memo from the gods"; "Solway Sunset" and other poems by Jackie Galley from Scotland; and Nova Scotian Lloyd MacHardy with his song "Oh Those Union Dues".

shirt: Jim Beam
loc: postAPBreporting
temp: 25 C
sound: Bedouin Soundclash Root Fire

Lloyd MacHardy surprise visit

Got a phone call yesterday afternoon: Lloyd MacHardy, of Merigomish, Nova Scotia, calling from a friend's place near the Mactaquac dam.

We've known each other from those days back in Halifax when the BS Poetry Society sometimes joined up with the Halifax Folk Club. We'd talked on the phone occasionally since I moved from Halifax in 1990 and, a few years back, Lloyd left copies of his CDs for me at CHSR, but this was the first time since the late '80s that we've met up. We went to the patio of the Rogue for convo, scallop fettuccine and drink—Picaroon's Best Bitter for me.

Things picking up for him, he's been doing a mess of small gigs, mostly around Nova Scotia, selling CDs outta his car or van. Recently he joined the Songwriters Association of Canada and signed up for several songwriters workshops in Ottawa and through Humber College, Toronto. That's where he was on the road home from yesterday. Spontaneous shows or campfire singalongs. Meeting other songwriters and musicians seems to be good for him. New friends in Ottawa, Gatineau, on the East Coast, Toronto and elsewhere. Future show potentials. Other people interested in recording his songs. More song lyric ideas and improved music scoring . . . All good stuff to have happen!

shirt: Jim Beam
loc: Frestimadesk
temp: 23 C
sound: Three Baggies and a Troll "The War of 1812"

Accident Response

While many were wasting watching late night snewscasts I interrupted my online text chat with the rogue druidess to phone 9-1-1 on a two-vehicle accident that just occured in the (my) intersection of York & George streets in downtown F'ton.

air bags deployed in the truck
don't think there's any serious injuries
two peeps in truck: guy & gal, a dog
one girl/woman, "very fuckin sorry" in the car
plastic but no obvious liquids on the street
seems a second dog has disappeared
run away—run east on George Street
two ambulances then two police cars
no fire dept emo response truck
or other fire d trucks
eventualy a tow truck arrives
to haul the jeep/cherokee whatever truck
onboard and away to a mechanic of their choice

T-shirt: Surf Joe Boards
loc:fredresponsedesk
temp: 20 C
sound: The Cure Wild Mood Swings

Highland Ashes, Paper & Beans 2007

Another episode of Highland Ashes, Paper & Beans done! Featured a selection of contemporary Scottish poetry:
• Liz Niven, "Wick" & other poems
• Douglas Lipton poems
• Hamish MacDonald, "An Ode . . ." & children's poems
• Hugh McMillan, "Suprise Attacks" and other poems
• Janet Paisley, "Sandra, in all Innocence"
• Tom Pow, "The Football" and other poems

T-shirt: CHSR Highland Radio 2005
loc: Hi'landRadiomess@home
temp: 26 C
sound: The Best of Leonard Cohen

tha Scots ou comin'

Wha happened ta July? Seems like Can Day just happened. The Gallery Connexion commissioned painters . . . All the music, the space invaders, my poem writing marathon . . . There's sill a crop circle in the grass beside the pedway from the all-day pony rides.

Last night, for the first time, Deanna sat with her Can Day–Paint tha Town Red painting now on an outside wall @ Wilser's Room. First time having a brewski with her creation . . .

Now it's "Be a Scot for a Weekend". Means it's last weekend of July and time for the New Brunswick Highland Games & Scottish Festival (the 26th such) here in Fredericton.

Means it's time for another edition of
on CHSR . . .

I not ready. My mind's not there. Just not wrapping itself around the event starting today!!! Highland Games parade at 12 noon on Queen Street. Highland radio starts this afternoon. I'm to be on air 6-8 this evening from the studio, and possibly Sat- and or Sunday afternoon from the games' site on the Woodstock Road.

Thought I'd be in a HD Camera workshop all weekend but it's been rescheduled to late September. Then thought I'd be acting in a short movie scene shoot on Saturday morning but one of the actors isn't available . . . but then there's the 28th annual NB Film Coop bbq party Saturday evening. Should be a good one.

T-shirt: CHSR Highland Radio 2005
loc: the wee box in the ex-kirk
temp: 25
sound: fans and cars and Portishead Roseland NYC live

a new New Muse of Contempt

vol 13 no 1 · "The 24 hour zine thing" issue

Creation started at 7:30 am, 21 July 2007

Release: July 2007

24-pages incl. cover, photocopied B&W, 5.5" x 8.5", hand-sewn (w/ a variety of cotton and linen threads) chapbook-style zine. Initial print run: 48 copies.

$6 (Prepaid to Broken Jaw Press, Box 596 Stn A, Fredericton NB E3B 5A6, Canada)

The challenge:

The webpage for the 2007 24 hour zine thing is up and running at 24hourzines.com. We're ready for your sign up if you're interested in attempting the challenge this year. And what a challenge! To make a 24 page zine in 24 hours from start to finish! You can sign up at any time, but remember that you need to complete your zine during the month of July.

About my NMoC mag and this unexpected issue:

The texts in this NMoC issue are all first drafts of poems in my ongoing "prison songs" series. Most were composed on my wee manual typewriter (a.k.a. the "bouncy thing"). They are ones I started writing on the morn of 21 July, after collecting posters in downtown Fredericton and selecting the posters whole and in part to become the foundation for the 2-up spreads of the zine pages.

"prison songs" is a series I started writing in July 2006 during a Fredericton Arts Alliance artist residency (one week) in part because Marko Kristić in Beograd, Srbjia, had told me while we travelled together to promote my book in translation, Pesme iz kazamata (i.p. Rad), that the title—translated from Casemate Poems could also translate back from the Serbian into "prison songs".

NMoC I started publishing in 1987 in New York City. This 24 hour zine thing issue is the first since the "winter 1999 · vol 12 no 1" issue.
—Joe Blades, editor

---

shirt:
loc: Fredhotboxx
temp: 26 C feeling like 34 C
sound: The Medieval Experience Various Artists

'nother APB: 24 July 2007

Started tonight's Ashes, Paper & Beans with more of my cassette recording of the Big Bang Poetry & Music event in the 2007 Calgary International Spoken Word Festival: Blake Brooker, emcee; Sheri-D Wilson & Cheryl L'Hirondelle with "Big Sky Alberta", and Dwayne Morgan with various poems including “Ugly in the House Tonight”, “Everyday Males, or, eMales”, "This is Hard" & “The Making of a Man”. Then a Finnish sound poem by Leevi Leto: "Sanasade (Marko Niemi remix)". Show closed with "Revival" by Andrea Thompson.

NOTE: Special episode!
Highland Ashes, Paper & Beans this Friday, 27 July 2007, @ 6 pm! Ach, aye, its Scottish poetry (followed by an ho'r o' Scotch Music!

shirt:
loc: fredblackhole
temp: 24 C feeling like 31 C (even after sunset!)
sound: Portishead Dummy

from Ambasada Kanade (Sarajevo)

I've just received a letter and photo from David Hutchings, Canadian Ambassador to Bosnia and Herzegovina.

He was writing to offer his thanks to me "for the contribution of Broken Jaw Press to the project of re-stocking the National and University Library of Sarajevo. The donation of these books is a grecious gift which will greatly benefif the students and other who utilise the facilities of the NUL."

Nice! Sarajevo only 16 km for the university faculty where I taught in Pale last autumn. I can identify several of the books I donated including Jo-Anne Elder's Postcards from Ex-Lovers, Robin Peck's Sculpture: A Journey to the Circumference of the Earth, my River Suite, and one of the editions of my Casemate Poems.

shirt: button-up grren w/ yellow threads
loc: fredhotbox
temp: 24 C
sound: NOFX Wolves in Wolves's Clothing

Ashes, Paper & Beans, 17 July '07

Started last night's Ashes, Paper & Beans with side A of my cassette recording of the Big Bang Poetry & Music event in the 2007 Calgary International Spoken Word Festival: Blake Brooker, emcee; Kris Demeanor with "Dr Meat", "Practice" (song) & "My Game"; and Sheri-D Wilson with "Reality Over Hangover". "He Sings" by Fortner Anderson. "It Doesn't Hurt" by Ivan Coyote. "Dominant Hand" by Barbara Decesare.

T: Ian Dury; Reason to Be Cheerful
loc: brokenworddesk
temp: 16 C
sound: traffic out my open window + The Best of Leonard Cohen

found art

one from a custodial god on queen street, fredericton:

My next film rôle

I'm good enough to be shot. Not just my mug for newspaper and news stories. In the opening scene of My Selfish Life, by Steve Doiron (Dark Night Pictures) in Saint John, I'm to be one of three [really, it's four, but three are numbered not named] professors murdered, executed, with a gunshot to the back of the head, before the suitcase bomb explosion . . .

Back in February, at the end of an Intro Directing workshop led by Gia Milani, Stephen came up to me and said that I looked like a character he was looking for for a short film project he had in the works. I gave him my business card but he didn't have one to give me . . .

Recently, New Brunswick Film announced the 2007 recipients of their Short Film Venture Program. Four recipients are to receive financial assistance for the production of short films (10 minutes or less) in province this year.

The Short Film Venture Program, administered by New Brunswick Film in cooperation with the New Brunswick Film Co-op, assists emerging New Brunswick filmmakers who have a serious interest in establishing a career in filmmaking.

The 2007 recipients . . . [include]:

Steven Doiron of Rothesay, who is writing and directing My Selfish Life, a 10-minute story about a woman's unfulfilled life, her unfinished past, and her vision of a second chance

I'll be in the movie's Art Dept as well, writing and producing the aged newspaper clippings, with Steven's headines, that the Elderly Woman will pull from an old box in her basement. Four professors killed in bombing of research laboratory, is one of them. I'll be making them in the next little while . . . as soon as I receive the chosen photos of the four professors.

As yet, I don't know who any of the other actors will be. My scene is to be shot by early August. The rest of the movie will be shot on the last two weekends of August. It should be screened, if not premiered, in Silver Wave Film Festival 2008.

T: Belgrade City
loc: brokenwordlab
temp: 23C
sound "Amazing Grace" on bagpipes during pre-wedding service music rehearsal

found notice

Submission ≠ Subscriptions

In a writers' discussion of submissions to magazines and book publishers, focusing on the time period before (if ever) receiving a reply, one of the writer-editors of an eminent journal was seen to bemoan the lack of subscriptions held by writers submitting their creative work to said journal. They treated this as a crime worse than ignorance. Possibly one worse than plagiarism. Most definitely worse than accepted exploitation of the usually humble, cash-strapped, even starving poet or artist whose writings or art are the foundation and raison d'être for many an academic.

If having a subscription was mandatory to make a submission to magazine, I'd have to fork over about $120 for the poetry submissions made in recent weeks. If that rate of submissions was maintained over the course of a year, I'd have to buy $1,500-$2,000, or more, in magazine-journal-periodical subscriptions just to support my interest-efforts-desire to see if mag editors liked my stuff well enough to stick any of it in the frames of their mirrors.

Sometimes, I wish I could afford to take out a subscription but subscribing to every mag submitted to would cost a small fortune, let alone building the then necessary shelving, and knowing I’ve never have the time to get around to reading all those publications . . .

Fortunately, I believe:

Submission ≠ Subscription

We can all form our own opinion and belief system about submissions, unsolicited submissions, contests with subscription-equivalent entry fees, manuscript reading fees, subscriptions, complementary contributor copies, artist fees to contributors, mandatory author purchases of magazine copies as the only means of seeing one's work in print . . .

Consider this:
   If a poet prepared to commit-invest $1,500-$2,000 in their poetry decided to instead start a publishing operation and produce a book of their poetry, might they be better off in the long run? Of course, much would still depend upon the quality of the poetry, its editing, the book's design and production values.

Or maybe it's the academics who build their careers examining and expounding upon the creative work of writers and artists that should be investing more money in the writers and artists, and into their books and artworks, to sustain their own careers?

shirt: red "Joe"
loc: brokenwritingdesk
temp: 23 C
sound: Billy Bragg Must I Paint You a Picture?

the rain

the rain has come to town
heavy and phat drops thick
as thunderstorm rain only
none of that yet just sirens
of police car and firetrucks
heading downer into downtown
and the river only three
streets and a parking lot away

windless pewter grey sky
maple trees brilliant green
against that low dullness
pressing down as it rolls
or flows over us—finally
the rain has come and the air
through open windows livens
all that stifled heat stilled

black coffee doesn't up energy
i yawn with the hidden sun not
yet halfway from here's horizon
to the yardarm of high noon
the young frogs will be lively
and the gardens thick with slugs
—yellowy-orange and smaller
than black ones on the left coast

shirt: yellow Covington
loc: fredopenwindow
temp: 19 C
sound: the rain and vehicles on wet streets

APB, 10 July 2007

Last night's Ashes, Paper & Beans started with Shane Koyzan's CD Visiting Hours from his book of the same name. That was followed by two cuts from the Dig Your Roots Spoken Word CD: Steph Berntson with "Barreling Madly" and Kevin Matthews with "Arsenic and Boldface". Then it was "Equilibrium" by Neema, "I've Been Thinking / It's about Time" by R.C. Weslowski; “What are you going to do with your life?” by Barbara Decesare; "Tattoo" and "Loretta" by Hilary Peach.

T-shirt: CHSR Highland Radio 96
loc: fedputerdesk
temp: 22 C
sound: System of a Down

tuesday morning

congratulations go to belisarius
on the oh so near effectiveness
of coordinating his surprise attack moose
just as i'd ridden past the christ
jesus died for our sins yellow
clubhouse where gibson becomes canada
street and i was marysville bound
was almost airborne when the head—
her huge lips and nose out in front—
lurched up from alder and birch ditch

swerved the bike sideways and my
heart already pumped from railbed
grade climb from devon now opened
flat out and i thanked my lucky stars

---

to see wildlife while biking around fredericton is normal for me: deer, groundhogs, chipmunks, osprey, kingfishers, snakes, muskrats, turtles, eagles, chickadees, crows and more crows, frogs . . . here's a few pics from the past week:

weasel, mink, martin or [ . . . what?] on the saint john river. photo taken from the ex-train bridge. if only i had a serious telephoto lens . . .

a most unusual dragonfly i've found only in lincoln. the white body reminds me of a moth

someone messin' with us: bart and shrek take a break

a dzo watching doe

one of several osprey on nests that i cycle past. this one had at least one down-covered chick when i went by on saturday

t: gaspereau press
loc: broken phone-in
temp: 17, bright overcast
sound: pogues waiting for herb

Monty Reid on APB

The feature on today's Ashes, Paper & Beans show was a live interview-discussion with poet Monty Reid. Before him, I played the Canadian Tourism Commission produced spoken word artist pieces « La Première Fois » by Ivan Bielinski and “We Are More” by Shane Koyczan released for Canada Day 2007. Ended the show with “What are you going to do with your life?” by Pennsylvanian poet Barbara Decesare.

Then I went for a hard peddle of the Marysville loop in 40 minutes. My first and only bike ride of the day.

T-shirt Pennsic XXXII
loc: Fredpostshow
temp: 16 C
sound: Bob Marley Soul Almighty

my Canada Day 2007 poem

© Joe Blades

typewriter on the green is green

underneath black paint i added
years ago in another town
manual not electric greenery
on the clover under leafed tree
shadow of canada flag over me
sun and wind and big clouds—
clouds trailing rain not reaching
all the way down to the ground

sterling creek pony rides nearby
trap kids holding parent's hands
walk a short circle inside rope corral
a large red on white sign advising
wash hands after contact with animals
—good idea not often practised
especially as there is a wash station
and so many dogs in holiday crowd

firebird and royal fireworks music
is the stravinsky or handel in the arcs
feathers and maple leaves first layer
on the gessoed sheet of plywood
today's harder canvas for the five
paint the town red commissioned artists
wind shear and rain in a blue wash
makes deanna start to like her painting

the elephant is hidden in dana's
fields of colour layered and layered
more hidden than the stag in blue
glade in third floor studio4ward
hidden as this morning's doe
briefly on gibson trail watching
me on bicycle roll closer to her
before she leaps into tree shadows

faraway bagpipes are playing
likely part of the marshalling
parade—two long lines of people
lining the curbs of half of pointe
sainte-anne drive parade route
for the about to begin green
harmonious with ever-changing
earth creating and recreating

korean drums and percussion
kiwanis bear costume huggers
the town’s largest gideon bible
on a wagon pulled by a horse
chinese dragon dances on road
the pipes and drums approach
deanna steps on her palette
a painted heel for her art

i am sprayed with fine splatter
not from heavy clouds overhead
orange drops off dana’s brush
on poem paper clothing and me
almost mushroom cloud shape
thunderheads on northside and
i’m asked if there are still
bouncy castles or pony rides

red wine in my water bottle
my typewriter not so quiet
on this red and white day
painting with words this town
my red road red word world
charlotte paints a big leaf
green and her older sister
adds small falling light green

more than child interaction
there's parents and audience
watching them and me create
with all that we have available
self portrait smiley cat face
in the otherwise so abstract
reality of coffee cans and
large frozen yogurt pails

paint and more surprise paint
charlotte and janice the able
assistants as a truly promising
raincloud drifts along the river
writing words with the magic
buttons immediate and right there
no erase function on typewriter
x-ed out the only true edit

truly busy crowd now happening
deanna's wish for children
to collaborate has happened
the grey clouds approach
this typer a bouncy thing
never before seen by some
—not an inflated castle
or another island for no

rain still hasn't happened
burnt-out artists in public
marilyn flat-out on grass
dana returns with coffees
bag of grapes by my hand
a love fredericton t-shirt-
wearing challenged younger sister
of someone sits here talking

her father setting off fireworks
from carleton park 10:45 tonight
was in the greened parade earlier
handing out sun-maid raisins
with one way jesus stickers
on every unsuspecting box
followed by police service dog
bear on i can follow the rules

je peux suivre les règles sticker
darth dust devils and lawnmower-
chewed 7 of spades playing card
element(s) wind water fire earth
and the pony wranglers haul out
as the music turns hard country
a little burnt sienna luminosity
meredith approaches across the grass

vocalist calls out "are there
any firefighters in the crowd today?"
answered with a few whoops
as paint splatters across art
water runs down the surface
layer upon layers whooped
and highlighted for the late
late arrival of biff the fanatic

     —Fredericton, NB

T-shirt: postes canada
loc: brokenscancentre
temP; 19 C
sound: The Cure Wild Mood Swings