28 August 2007

Ashes, Paper & Beans 2007aug28

Today's APB saw four of the most wanted read and live BlackTop Motorcycle Gang members invading CHSR: John Heinstein, Biff Mitchell, WhiteFeather & host Joe Blades.

An advance warning stated:
ALERT: Gang members on the road!

Four members of the BlackTop Mororcycle Gang have been spotted on the streets of Fredwrekton. They are believed to be converging on CHSR 97.9 FM http://www.unb.ca/chsr to take over the airwaves at 7 pm. The happy hour staff at Windsor Castle Bar are completly unaware that they are also being targeted by the gang after the BTMG have laid waste to another episode of Ashes, Paper & Beans.

Listen up or be there!
Also in the mix was the poem "What are You Going to Do With Your Life?" by Barbara DeCesare, the F'ton band Sleepy Driver with "Ring the Black Bell" off their demo EP and King Missile with the spoken word piece "What if?"

T-shirt: VII Nyári Ifjúsági Játékok, DMISZ, Zenta, 2006.július 19-22
loc: fredwrekton
temp: 19 C
sound: David Bowie Best of Bowie

26 August 2007

FREDERICTON POET TO COMMIT ‘RANDOM ACTS OF POETRY’


Random Acts of Poetry, a celebration of poetry and literacy, begins its fourth year during the week of October 1st to 7th, 2007. Random Acts of Poetry is a project of the Victoria READ Society, a non-profit literacy organization, established in 1976. Random Acts of Poetry is funded by The Canada Council for the Arts.

During the week, 37 poets across Canada, from Victoria to Newfoundland, including three of Canada’s Poet Laureates, will commit Random Acts of Poetry in their cities. On buses and subways, in donut shops and cafes, police stations, grocery stores, curling rinks, on city streets and country lanes, poets will read poems to strangers and give them their books. Poets will also read their poems in ESL and Adult Literacy classes across the country.

In Fredericton and Oromocto, just one poet will offer poems to passersby: Joe Blades—artist/writer/ known-world Viking. Blades has published four books of poetry and is also regional representative for the League of Canadian Poets and a member of the BlackTop Motorcycle Gang writers group.

“Poetry,” says Wendy Morton, “is the shortest distance between two hearts. I have read poems to people who hadn’t heard a poem in thirty years, and watched their eyes fill up with tears. Some burst into laughter or laid a hand on my shoulder, hugged me, took my hand. Poetry can connect us with each other as humans as no other art form I know. Poetry is a gift that we can create from whatever life has in store for us.”

Across Canada poets will commit random acts in: Victoria, Vancouver, Nanaimo, Kelowna, Calgary, Edmonton, Moose Jaw, Winnipeg, Stratford, Markdale, Brantford, Toronto, Ottawa, Windsor, Hamilton, Montreal, Fredericton, Oromocto, Charlottetown, Halifax, Antigonish, and St. John’s.

—30—



Wendy Morton
Random Acts of Poetry
250-642-3542
wendymorton@shaw.ca
www.randomactsofpoetry.com


Claire Rettie
Victoria READ Society
250-388-7225
crettie@readsociety.bc.ca

Joe Blades
Fredericton, NB
506 454 5127
joeblades@nb.aibn.com

25 August 2007

Studio Watch: Musgrave

Early this year the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton put out a call for submissions from eligible New Brunswick artists for its StudioWatch: Emerging Artist Series.

Bernard Riordon, of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, visited studios and saw artworks. He's since made his decision. The exhibition series, sponsored by Greenarm, will feature this years chosen artist at New Brunswick Museum in Saint John from September 9 to November 30, 2007 with an opening from 4-6 pm on Saturday, 8 Sept.

I've bitten my tongue for a few weeks but now am pleased to say that this year's chosen artist is Deanna Musgrave, from Sackville and a graduate of Mt Allison University, currently living and studying in Fredericton. Congratulations!

Back in, I think June, I first visited Deanna Musgrave's studio during a sort of fringy, unofficial timing that coincided with one of the city's organized fourth Thursday of the summer months Culture Crawls. Deanna said the studio wasn't as it usually looked because things had been rearranged for a studio visit by Bernard Riordon. It was days before the fantastic Paint the Town Red painting project organized by Gallery Connexion, and in the early days on my current exploded journal:
"Deanna's acrylic on stretched canvas paintings are generally large, hypnotic, contemplative meditations richly coloured in their depth, highlights and layers obscured. Classical music and Oriental art, especially Japanese sumi-e brush techniques for cherry blossoms, writing words, et cetera, are employed to create the foundation for each work. They require watching time to reveal what they contain . . . rippled reflections reminiscent of Monet's palette of sky, clouds, trees, plants . . . leafy fronds, shadowplay, and camouflage leading to illusions of stained glass-flavoured imagery or the currents and eddies of passage through insoluble liquids . . . Her paintings are magical, questing puzzles."

T-shirt: Storm Tech
loc: brokenspindeck
temp 21 feeling like 30
sound: Men at work Business as Usual, Niyaz Niyaz

23 August 2007

one year later . . .

A year ago this afternoon I caught a flight out of Fredericton that connected to flights that took me to Budapest for that three month sojourn with Jelena, Lara, and Kiara in Senta, Serbia, and all my biweekly travels out of that country to the university campus in Pale, Serpska. My fourth venture into the Balkans. First Canada sent in members of the armed forces then they encouraged their artists and writers to come and play . . .

After collecting me at Terminal One and two of Jelena's friends, just returning from a vacation in Spain, at Terminal Two we had a rich meal in an outdoor cafe in the Pest before the drive to long lineups at the Serbian boarder and a fast 40 minutes from there to the town of Senta. It's difficult to believe a whole year has gone since I made that leap into a larger life in Eastern Europe.

I miss the people—especially my love—places and sights greatly. It can still make being here feel frustrating and, sometimes, futile. But to live there I needed solid income or to be independently weathy. The job I had there still hasn't paid me for my time and effort (and I don't expect it ever will pay me). I had to move on . . .

T-Shirt: Jim Beam
loc: ellipse workdesk
temp: 22 C
sound: Red Hot Chili Peppers "Animal Bar"

21 August 2007

APB, 21 Augusztus 2007

First half of the show was from a recording I'd requested but that I didn't believe I'd ever see: a student poetry reading a week of two after my April 2006 trip to the University of East Sarajevo in Pale, Republika Srpska. It included original poems by a number of students, readings of the lyrics in English of "Wish You Were Here" (Pink Floyd) and "Famous Blue Raincoat" (Leonard Cohen). Second half of the show started with Liz Niven's "Wick" & other poems followed by a feature of poems—The Farmer • What Ever Happened to the Rainbow? • The Boxing Ring • Shooting at a Liquor Store • To My Young Brothers • My Freedom Poem • My Son • Father Do You Care • To the Boogie Man • It's Me • For the Love that I Gave • Don't Go No Where—by Tod Gaines off his CD Rocky Mountain Oysters and it closed with "Buffalo" by Hilary Peach off Poems Only Dogs Can Hear.

shirt: dress denim
loc: Fredtuesnite
temp: 16 C
sound: NOFX Wolves in Wolves' Clothing

19 August 2007

on the Atlantic View Trail

Finally . . . I've gotten to bike on the local ex-railbed trail on the Eastern Shore. I've biked in one direction (west) to Lower Three Fathom Harbour, Rocky Run and Lawrencetown Beach Provincial Park [a fast 25-minute ride, and much longer if one is leisurely and stops to enjoy the sights]; and in the other (east) to Seaforth Beach, Gaetz Lake and up the Blueberry Trail to the park where Bellefontaine Road out of West Chezzetcook crosses it and is about to cross the narrows to West Porters Lake.

Truly are some great Atlantic views along this trail as one passes barachois ponds, lakes, beaches, headlands, and crosses railway bridges. I could easily bike to Porters Lake and the shopping complex with StupidStore, juice store and more. Don't know where the trail resumes to the east past the DOT depot but someday I will check it out. Think that I can most easily bike from the new place in West Chezzetcook via Hwy 207 & Petain Road to the trail. Still climbs 125 feet or so from sea level but doesn't climb as steeply as Bellefontaine Road.

Mike's rust-spotted mountain bike, with is low clearance&@151;only 5 cm between petal and the ground—offers a better ride than the ruskie bike I used in Senta last year around town and outside along the Reka Tisa. Any bike is better than none bur a little love and sharing might be better still.

Last time I really traveled any section of this trail was two score years ago on a Scotian Model Railroad Society special centennial year passenger train excursion out of Dartmouth along the otherwise no-longer used tracks along the Eastern Shore and across to Pictou on the Northumberland Strait.
Two photos from that 1967 trip. Both likely taken by my father.
T-shirt: 100 Mile house, BC & Hobgoblin "Deliciously dark"
loc: Hawkeye Island & F'ton
temp: 14 C
sound: Best of Bowie:

11 August 2007

Found Photo du Jour

Without my scanner at hand, I chose to photograph the found photo print to make this post . . .

Found this afternoon on the floor of the garage attic with boxes of too much accumulated stuff at 430 Causeway Road, Seaforth, NS. It's a photo of my youngest sister, Ruth, at the Christmas table in our former house at 34 Swanton Dr, Dartmouth, NS in 1987 or later. A little bit of our grandmother on the right side. Some of our sister Carol's hair on the left. Photo was likely taken by one of our parents.

Shirt: Jim Beam
loc: Hawkeye Island
temp: 17 C
sound: Depeche Mode Playing the Angel on earbuds

10 August 2007

another travellin' blog post

Today, I’m wired for sound. Unstable on my feet. In want of coffee. A passenger in seat 29 of Acadian bus 15109 out of Moncton. The Bara MacNeils Traditional Album in my ears along with bus hum and nearby conversations.

The poetry reading last night at Kimberly the Studio in Moncton was a good one: Wanda O’Conner, Joe Blades & Kimberly Gautreau. Wanda’s mom and grandma, other relatives, and friends not see since camp as teenagers were there for her. White-gloved Wanda read from a new chapbook Romance & the Tidal Boar (ImPress) stapled togther upstairs in the minutes before the reading commenced Great sangria (both vegetarian and for meat-lovers). I read from Afterimage / naknadna slika (SpareTime Editions), Casemate Poems (W&O) and the 24-hour issue of New Muse of Contempt. Kimberly read selections from her two chapbooks and from new work. A nice, not too large audience, with a few good surprises for everyone :-) Believe that Lee Thompson might be posting a photo album on Facebook.

I’m Nova Scotia bound. Family bound. My sister Carol at Pearson International Airport in Mississauga, Ontario, her plane soon to takeoff and fly its arc over Kingston and Montreal en route for the Robert Stanfield International Airport nearer to Truro than Halifax. Or, maybe, she’s already in the air and will land before I reach Amherst. Don’t know the departure time of her flight. Suspect that she has a car rental in her name waiting. I don’t know those details that don’t really matter.

It’s enough to know that today or tomorrow we’ll see each other for the first time in over a year. Seeing her will be good. Being able to talk in person will be great. Better than our long phone calls by me from terminal payphones when I passed through Pearson in April and June on my Alberta trips. This will be the closest thing to a family reunion we’ll have this year, though we’ll not all be together. Our youngest sister, Ruth, and her husband, Mike, don’t expected to return from their Newfoundland and Labrador trip until Sunday evening—ferries and good driving permitting. With a flight out on Monday morning, Mom suspected my two sisters will likely meet up for breakfast in Bedford. Not mine to worry about. I’ll likely see Ruth and Mike sometime next week.

The teacher seated across the aisle, with grade one and two experience, hasn’t stopped talking since she boarded the bus in Moncton. No one boarded this bus in Sackville. One person disembarked. In less than two minutes I’ll be rolling into Nova Scotia. “No honey bees on me, sir.” Most of the passengers who’d been reading earlier have put their books down for a little travellin’ sleep or window gazing. One book remains held high as we approach the Amherst exit. It with a back cover top line in bold: WHY PEOPLE BELIEVE WEIRD THINGS&@151;all in eye-catching caps. Not a question. This library-borrowed book has answers, but I’m not certain I would believe that book to have absolute answers.

A woman with seeing-eye dog and young son holding a fuzzy animal toy boards the bus. Seems hard to believe that I not seen a blind person with seeing eye dog on one of these busses before, or, if I have, I’ve forgotten about them. An older man with gauze pad between eyeglasses and left eyeball sits in the aisle seat opposite me. His good eye staring down the aisle and out the front of the bus beside the driver. Seeing the movement, vehicles overtaken and passed. Seeing the curve of the road, around lakes, up and down hills as we roll along the Trans Canada Highway for the before Truro exit for Highway 103 towards Halifax.

If I have a self-appointed role it’s to observe and document fact, fancy, and dream—all are welcome..It’s part of what I do, though I don’t know why I’m writing about myself this way in what’s not an interview or a quest-for-answers essay. Maybe it could-should become another travellin’ blog post? I’ve been busin’ the many versions of this route since 1979 [when I was going Halifax-Toronto or Toronto-Halifax those times I didn’t fly or take the train, and the bus used to go through Shubenacadie, Stewiacke, Parrsboro, Petitcodiac, Saint John, the Village of Gagetown and many places no longer stops on this route.]

I’m having that wanted coffee now, in an old Riverdale travel mug that’s been on the road just a few years. Tasty was the V8 juice also bought at the Amherst Irving while five Acadian buses gathered to exchange passengers and parcels. This bus didn’t go to Springhill or into Oxford so I can’t imagine that we’ll turn off and travel through the Wentworth Valley. There must be another bus on the run this morning that’s collecting the milk. We’re in the Cobequid Pass at the moment, before the toll booths, with that long vista of Cumberland Highlands and glimpses of the end of the Bay of Fundy before we roll downhill, turn onto the 102 and cross Salmon River: “Home of the Tidal Bore!” next stop will be Truro, then the airport [where is Carol right now?], then onto the 118 to Northend Dartmouth where Dad will be waiting with the red mini-van for the drive to Seaforth on the Eastern Shore. We roll past a long traffic jam on the other half of the divided highway caused by recap paving between Brookfield and Truro Heights.

Written 8:45-12:40 on the bus. I’m so grateful for the AC electrical outlets underneath the windows for passenger use..

T-shirt: Quod nos non necat, etaim maxime laedit
loc: Acadian bus 15109
temp: ?
travellin’ soundscape: The Bara MacNeils Traditional Album, Anthony Kiedis and Red Hot Chili Peppers Stadium Arcadium via earbuds

07 August 2007

APB, 7 Aug 2007

• "Blood, blood blood" & other poems, by d'bi young.
• "cercles migrants" featuring a poem of Hâfez performed by Constantinople (followed by my reading the English translation of the poem).
• "Edasamus" by Iveel Othel.
• "three zine reviews" by Joe Blades from brokenjoe.blogspot.com.
• "Tattoo" by Hilary Peach.

shirt:
loc: postshowpostwilser's
temp: 23 C
sound: Moon Unit & Frank Zappa, "Valley Girl"

04 August 2007

Found Photo du Jour

With the digital takeover it's become increasingly rare to find a photo print but today was a good day . . .

Found near the corner of Carleton and George Streets, Fredericton, NB, on Saturday, 4 August 2007 at 6:15 pm. Night photo of a pink-haired girl-woman (with incredibly beautiful damage to the photo print).

T-shirt: Mojo Club, Senta
loc: Dzoshotbox
temp: 19 C
sound: ReGenesis

02 August 2007

Blog anniversary

can you guess the number of golf balls?Shirt: 100 Mile House, BC
loc: fredwerkdesk
temp 31 C
sound: Shooglenifty "The Point Road {Joiner's Mix}

01 August 2007

three zine reviews

dig.12
Wayward Armadillo Press
Toronto ON
waywardarmadillo.blogspot.com

It seems like it's been a long, long time . . . "a year," wrote Jennifer LoveGrove, busy with her soapmaking enterprise, hockey playing, and other activities . . . since she produced a new issue of dig. so this one is great to see. The issue, with its individually collaged covers, contains a collection of little treasures by Zoe Whitetall, Hugh Thomas, Alexandra Leggat, Jim Johnstone, Ray Hsu, Jason Heroux, Salvatore Difalco, Gary Barwin, and Sandra Alland. There are rings of connectedness between some of the writers through anothologies and chapbook publishers so reading this feels like you've decided to sit in on a group of friends: a poem for bp without saying so, several short stories and prose poems, a writer interviewing writer. Great pieces by Hugh Thomas and Ray Hsu.


Unquiet Desperation
June 2007, volume 1, issue 14
ISSN 1752-9247
myspace.com/unquietdesperation
www.facebook/com/profile.php?id=659690389
editor@unquietdesperation.co.uk
Editor: Mike Drabble
Co-editor: Steven Logg

First time I've see this publication. It was dispersed, distributed free, at span-o's ottawa small press book fair–spring edition in June by contributor-to-this-issue Warren Dean Fulton, of Pooka Press, back in Ottawa from Vancouver for a visit, the book fair, and to shoot a rogue mime short movie.

This issue of Unquiet Desperation is a compact 12-pages, including cover. Many pages are two-column to fit in more poems, a curiously segment artwork, a few prose or prosepoem pieces, and an editorial-rant-manifesto-statement to position the unsettled unquiet . . . Many pieces of articulate poetic anarchy, of narrators living existentialist lives, of natural rebelliousness in the face of corporate- personal- and interpersonal-exploitation, and so many fukshit governments' actions and inactions in the wrong places at the wrogtimes for the wrong reasons . . . What's an artist to do? Some wrote poems that were then published in this great, edgy zine.


Creativity's Canvas, Premier Issue, July '07
Open Door Press
95 Laura Lane
Moncton NB E1E 3S9
creativityscanvas@hotmail.com

A surprise in my mailbox was this new publication launched in early July. It's is a project of Eric Miklos and Abby Collette and its intent is to be a quarterly of the work of local and regional independent writers. Not surprisingly this first issue features writings by its organizers. A collection of poetry and short fiction, this issue has 32 pages laser printed with a cloth tape reinforced cover spine and a curiously woven twine binding. One interesting feature is the commencement of a "Continuing Story" wherein writers are encouraged to write the installment to be published in the next issue (and so on . . .) One thing that shocked me was the $40 annual subscription rate.



shirt: Quod nos non necat, etiam maxime laedit
loc: Siestanoloco
temp: 28 C feeling like 34
sound: NOFX Wolves on Wolves' Clothing