¡4 Broken Jaws @ WordsSpring, 13 May 2011!

WordsSpring's Friday evening schedule, which is so full it's overflowing.

May 13, Sussex Artist Co-op

6pm. Social time, meet and greet

7 pm. Book Launches and Local Authors, featuring:

Joan Hall Hovey
Joe Blades
Nela Rio
Roger Moore
Desa
Kelly Cooper
Lee Whitney
Beth Powning
Vanessa Moeller
Edward Gates
Karen Davidson
Elizabeth Stevens

The brief readings will be interspersed with music from local youth talent, and books will be for sale.

WordsSpring, May 13-15, Sussex, NB.

See http://www.umce.ca/wfnb/wordsspring2011.html

Writers' Federation of New Brunswick
Box 306
Moncton NB E1C 8L4
506-459-7228
wfnb@nb.aibn.com
http://www.wfnb.ca

Found photo du jour

Found at 4:36 pm, Friday, 6 May 2011, facedown over a sewer grate on the southeast corner of Regent and Aberdeen streets, Fredericton, NB.

Poetry Recital in Spanish and English: 30 April 2011

Celebrate National Poetry Month!!!

The Fredericton Chapter of the Iberoamerican Academy of Poetry and the League of Canadian Poets invite you to a Poetry Recital in Spanish and English by Fredericton Poets Nela Rio and Joe Blades on Saturday, April 30th at 2 pm at the River Reading Room in the Fredericton Public Library, 12 Carleton St., Fredericton. Both poets will be reading from recent publications and new materials. Nela Rio has recently been nominated for the League of Canadian Poets’ Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She recently launched her collection of poetry, La Luna, Tango, siempre la luna /The Moon, Tango, Always the Moon (Broken Jaw Press, 2010). Blades’ most recent work published is Prison Songs and Storefront Poetry (Ekstasis Editions, 2010). He is an active member of the local BlackTop MotorCycle Gang writers’ group, coordinator of the Fredericton Small Press & Community Fair, and President of the League of Canadian Poets.

This event is held in conjunction with the 2011 National Poetry Month. For its 2011 National Poetry Month activities, The League of Canadian Poets acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program. Other sponsors include the Public Lending Right Commission, the Government of Canada, and the Canadian Library Association.

Please join us for what promises to be an exceptional reading!

Nela Rio: 16 April reading, Fredericton

Fredericton poet and artist Nela Rio will launch her book, La luna, Tango, siempre la luna/The Moon, Tango, Always the Moon on Saturday April 16, 2011 at 2 pm, at the Fredericton Public Library’s beautiful River Reading Area (upstairs), 12 Carleton Street, Fredericton. The Fredericton Chapter of the Ibero-American Academy of Poetry is hosting the event. The book, published by Broken Jaw Press in 2010 has been translated from the Spanish by translator Edith Jonsson-Devillers and includes a prologue by Governor General’s Literary Award winner, poet and translator, Hugh Hazelton. This collection has been short-listed for the League of Canadian Poet’s prestigious Pat Lowther Memorial Award, a prize given for a book of poetry by a Canadian woman published in the preceding year in memory of the late writer whose career was cut short by her untimely death. The judges commented: “Foreign accents, mystery, intrigue, sensuousness, all culminate in the dance that steps over, around, and through the mundane and lifts its skirts to new heights and wishes.” Please join us for a rare opportunity to discover one of Fredericton’s most talented writers. There will be a brief presentation of the book, followed by a bilingual reading of selected poems from the collection.



La poeta y artista de Fredericton, Nela Rio, lanzará su último libro, La luna, Tango, siempre la luna/The Moon, Tango, Always the Moon el sábado 16 de abril a las dos de la tarde en la Biblioteca Pública de Fredericton (en la linda sala River Reading Area), 12 calle Carleton, Fredericton. El capítulo de Fredericton de la Academia Iberoamericana de Poesía es huésped del evento. El libro, publicado en el año 2010 por la casa editorial Broken Jaw Press, fue traducido por la traductora Edith Jonsson-Devillers e incluye un prólogo por Hugh Hazelton, poeta y traductor premiado por Governor General’s Medal. El libro de poesía de Rio ha sido seleccionado en la lista corta del prestigioso premio Pat Lowther Memorial, de la Liga de Poetas Canadienses, un premio que galardona a una poeta publicada en el año anterior, en nombre de una poeta que falleció siendo joven y al principio de su carrera. Los miembros del jurado comentaron: “Acentos del extranjero, misterio, intriga, sensualidad, todo culmina en el baile que da paso, da vueltas y traspasa la rutina y levanta sus volantes hacia nuevas cumbres y deseos.” Están invitados a reunirse con nosotros para esta rara oportunidad de (re)descubrir una de las escritoras más talentosas de Fredericton. Habrá una breve introducción del libro, seguido por un recital bilingüe de poemas seleccionados del libro. ¡No se lo pierda!

i don’t want to know who

i do want to ask why
fredericton’s nationalists
have risen this winter
to write their hatred
in the so white snow
outside the buildings
they believe house
people they are telling
go home! leave canada!
hate wins! the building
where i live is one
targeted by racists
not because of anyone
visibly living here
but they don’t know
who lives where

i don’t want to know who
my neighbourhood racists are
because then what would
could should i do because
of them or do with them?
better to be aware of them
than to round them up
and exile or execute them
or report them to the can
you keep a secret? force
or prosecute with righteousness
these sidewalk bigots writing
in the public snow words
i erase with my mitts
without looking to see
if i’m being watched

i don’t want to know who
fredericton’s racists are
because that will point
my judgment finger
inward to my own heart
and i will be more of a
come from away than now
and i will be targeted and
bullied called offensive
for being direct as i am
already being judged
othered by self-superiored
in armchairs who dislike
my calling anyone to task
when what right have i
to single anyone out

Call fot poet participants

THE 11th INTERNATIONAL
MULTICULTURAL-MULTILINGUAL POETRY READING
and POSTER POEM EXHIBITION

in conjunction with

The United Nation’s Dialogue Among Civilizations Through Poetry,
World Poetry Day (March 21), Mother Language Day (21 February), and the United Nation’s “International Year of Forests 2011”

Organized to foster tolerance, respect and cooperation among peoples

Theme 2011: El bosque / The Forest / La forêt

26 March 2011
Saturday, noon to 5pm.

11th International Multicultural-Multilingual Poetry Reading and Poster Poem Exhibition.

Gallery ConneXion
Chestnut Complex
440 York St
Fredericton, New Brunswick
Canada

Organized by: Nela Rio, the Founder of International Multicultural-Multilingual Poetry Reading, with the support of Gallery ConneXion; revue ellipse mag; Broken Jaw Press; Registro Creativo de la Asociación Canadiense de Hispanistas; the Latino Association of New Brunswick -PRESENCIA-; and the Capítulo de Fredericton de la Academia Iberoamericana de Poesía.

We invite you to join us at the 11th celebration.

Previous celebrations, since 2000, have featured poets and members of the community reading in many languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, Mandarin, German, Japanese, Dutch, Danish, Urdu, Turkish, Amharic, among others.


REGISTRATION FORM FOR POETS

Please include your name, postal address, email address, the title of the poem, text of the poem (use Time New Roman, 12 point). The poem should have 30 lines maximum, including stanza breaks (this is for the purpose of printing it as a poster for exhibition at the event). Send this information to nelario@rogers.com before March 7th, 2011. The certificate of participation will be sent, after the event, by email. Please note: this community event will not be paying artists or performance fee. This event is open to the general public and admission is free.

NOTA: For information about previous events visit Registro Creativo de la Asociación Canadiense de Hispanistas: THE INTERNATIONAL MULTICULTURAL-MULTILINGUAL POETRY READING.

Thank you very much, Nela Rio

“[Poetry] it also has the virtue of being intimately connected to our private practices of writing, reading, translating and sharing. In this respect it is more then ever before at the heart of the pact we have entered into, in the context of the International Decade for a Culture of Peace and Non-Violence for the Children of the World (2001-2010), to promote an enlightened learning based on the ideals of artistic and literary creation, freedom of expression and cultural diversity.” Koichiro Matsuura, United Nations

the latest snow

This time last year Fredericton was two-weeks done with snowstorms for the winter. Not this year ...

An early morning photo of a sidewalk snowbot on Dundonald ...

Same house on Dundonald: a photo shoot after the driveway was shovelled out.

Director's Choice Barry Award

on ortho xmas

uke christmas day 2011
and it's snowing light flurries
that stick to cold ground
—ukranian not ukulele—
and ivanchuck’s goin
down the road to montréal
from chippytown abode
with backdoor perogie
following a car-snake
behind a sandtruck
slowly broadcasting
but fredchicken horizons
eventually and džo
hears his door buzzed
two jars of balkan juice
chilled with winter chillin’
thousands of miles or nautical
miles and kilometres of land
and sea from those mountains
to this river valley
on orthodox christmas
for the believers—not to
be confused with giving
and a sharing exchange

New book! Prison Songs and Storefront Poetry

Just in before the year end is my newest book, Prison Songs and Storefront Poetry with Ekstasis Editions in Victoria, BC. I received my first copies last week while on the Eastern Shore in Nova Scotia.

ISBN 978-1-897430-60-6

All of the poems in this book, except for three, were composed on the portable, manual typewriter in my cover photo. Writing, creating poems on a manual typewriter in this age of wireless laptop computers is a curiouly slower and more physical means of writing, and different again from writing longhand as I do in my journals. One “prison song” was was first written longhand and two “prison songs”, including the first one written, were written on the computer.

The idea for Prison Songs came to me from Marko Kristić, in Belgrade, Serbia. He told me while we were travelling in April 2006 on buses to and from a promotional reading in Kruševac for my book Pesme iz kazamata (Belgrade: i.p. Rad, 2005), that the book’s title translated from Serbian back into English not only as the original Casemate Poems book title but also as “prison songs”—a theme he explored in his review of the book. At the time he was a PhD candidate at the University of Belgrade. I felt I should try to write some prison songs.

Many of the Prison Songs I wrote in July 2006 during a one-week Fredericton Arts Alliance artist residency. The residencies happen in an open to the public space shared with another artist. During my week I shared with a potter, Ursula Sommerer, and we collaborated on a ceramic platter that she formed. When it was leather hard and the slip she applied had dried, I sat down for several hours and letter by letter stamped “prison song 05” into the clay. Ursula fired it in a kiln with iron powder in the letter forms to give them contrast. We exhibited the platter then sold it to the City of Fredericton for their art collection. Using the Fred-eZone free wireless network, I also blog posted each poem written as soon as I had retyped it into my laptop.

The poems “prison song 19” through “prison song 29” were written in a 24-hour period and they are both shaped and influenced by the posters gathered the morning of 21 July 2007 as the page layout of the 24-hour created issue of my New Muse of Contempt zine printed in a hand-sewn edition of 48 copies.

I believe that for some “prison songs” I put myself in the mindset of various people imprisoned or other wise trapped in a situation along with a few in which the writer in the one feeling trapped or locked up.

Storefront Poetry is the title given by The Rabbit Hole store staff to my one-week writing residency in September 2008. Much as in the early 1980s I had lived and worked several years in Banff and seem to make it back there every few years, this was my first time in Grande Prairie, northern Alberta, and nothern British Columbia. Because the storefront window would be too hot to sit in for hours at a time, I was set up with a small desk beside the store entrance with my manual typewriter, journal, and laptop computer. Security was surprised at the airport when they scanned my suitcase and found the typewriter. As with the FAA casemate residencies, I interacted with people who came by—sometimes having lively, extended conversations while I was writing.

If you would like an autographed copy of this book, send me $25 ($30 for copies to be shipped outside Canada):

Maritimes Arts Projects Productions
BOX 596 STN A
FREDERICTON NB E3B 5A6
CANADA

or get a copy in person by helping me tour the book by hosting a reading:
• Next Canada Poetry Tours Reading Program application deadline ($50 admin fee) at the League of Canadian Poets is only a month away: 31 January 2011.
• Next Literary Readings program at Canada Council for the Arts deadline is 1 March 2011.
• The Writers’ Union of Canada’s National Public Readings Program ($75 admin fee) doesn’t have a deadline (but the fund does dry up before year end). Applications for readings after 1 April 2011 are being accepted.

I expect to be launching this book in Victoria in early June, and mid-June in Ontario.

New „Putevi“ includes Džo Blejds fiction

The newest issue of „Putevi“ literary journal, number 10–11, in Banja Luka, RS (BiH), includes two pieces of Џо Блејдс/Džo Blejds/Joe Blades fiction, from a manuscript titled “Burying Ground”, in translation by Татјана Бијелић/Tatjana Bijelic. Below is the first page …

early media coverage

After about a 10-minute (don’t believe the bogus precise “nine minutes and 41 seconds” (as if I was stopwatch timed when I wasn’t) four-leaf clover picking frenzy at my grandparents’ (Dad’s parents) family home–farm in (I believe) 1973. Photo article was in the Dartmouth Free Press weekly in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, where I was living and going to Bell Ayr School (Elementary or Jr. High … or in between … I’m unsure … depends on when exactly that year).

unexpected coffee collection

My/Broken Jaw Press’ house coffee has been organic “Breaking the Silence” Guatemalan coffee (prepared by Just Us! Coffee Roasters Co-op in Wolfville, Nova Scotia), a fundraiser for Breaking the Silence (BTS) a voluntary network of people in the Maritimes who began to organize in 1988 to support the efforts of Guatemalans struggling for political, social, and economic justice: see the blog at breakingthesilencenet.blogspot.com.

I’ve also kept Grand coffee from Novi Beograd on hand since my travels in Serbia. It’s for those days I want something different—a little stovetop “domestic” coffee.

Earlier this year I was given some Kurukahveci, a real Turkish coffee, by a fellow grad student in an MEd course :-D



This morning, I had Wake Up Joe coffee gifted for my birthday. It’s an Arabica from Paramount Coffee in Lansing, Michigan bought because of its name.

This week, at Christmas, I was given three more whole bean coffees:

Sumatra Harimau Tiger from the tiny and new Puddle Jump Coffee Roasters on Causeway Road, Seaforth, Nova Scotia;

Another organic Arabica bean coffee, Harar Ethiopian, from Just Us!—a great small bean coffee that I’ve been given before;

and, most unexpectedly, a Jumping Bean Newfoundland Screech Rum Flavoured Coffee from St John’s on the Rock.

Must have a year’s supply of coffee in maison Broken Jaw!

@ the UGSW Collective Agreement signing

Tuesday, 7 Dec 2010 in the Wu Centre, UNB Fredericton. Photo take, with my camera, by PSAC/AFPC Regional VP Jeannie Baldwin.

Seated (L–R): Peter McDougall (Associate Vice-President (Human
Resources),UNB), Tiffany Thornhill (Bargaining Team, UGSW President).
Standing (L–R): Donald Desserud (Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, UNB–SJ), Heather Sears (Human Resources, UNB), Pride Abownga (Bargaining Team, UGSW), Gail Lem (Chief Negotiator, PSAC), Greg Ericson (Bargaining Team, UGSW Treasurer), and Joe Blades (UGSW member).

I was there to photograph the signing for the union, the UGSW, because I figured (rightly so, it turned out) UNB would not have a photographer there to document the historic occasion: the signing of the first Collective Agreement between the Union of Graduate Student Workers at the University of New Brunswick (UGSW)–Public Service Alliance of Canada/Alliance de la Fonction publique du Canada Local 60550 and the employer.

UGSW on Facebook
www.ugsw-psac60550.ca
ugsw.unb@gmail.com
PSAC–AFPC

Movies watched in recent weeks

Landed, a Stairwell Dwellers Production, 2010

Whale Music, 2003

Pink Floyd—The Wall, 1999

Werner Herzog's Stroszek, 2004

Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth, 1976

Kinji Fukasaku's Batoru rowaiaru (Battle Royale), 2004

Off the Hook

Off the Hook (detail)
by Joe Blades, 2010
mixed media installation piece
145 Marshall d'Avray Hall
University of New Brunswick
10 Mackay Dr
Fredericton, NB

qualitative methodologies
including arts-based research
grad students' office located
in a former custodians' room
three fire extinguishers behind the door
key cabinet on the wall

keys welcome!

18 Dec. Fredericton Crafters Sale

18 Dec, Saturday, 9am to 4pm. Fredericton Crafters "Last Minute Christmas Shopping" show & sale @ St Andrews Church Hall, 512 Charlotte St, Fredericton, NB. Free admission!

Joe Blades/Maritimes Arts Projects Productions and Broken Jaw Press will be there with books, chapbooks, notecards, and handmade books.

Day without Art

Found photo du jour

Found at 10:57 AM, Monday, 15 November 2010 in the ground floor hallway, Marshall d'Avray Hall, 10 Mackay Drive, UNB-Fredericton, near the Graduate Education Students' lounge ... possibly a theatre production photograph.

Freud interpretation