12 January 2006

Pot Roast and Poetry

It's time, more than time, to try finalising another book-length poetry manuscript together and to send it off: "Awa' with ye, ye maggoty nightmare beastie!"

It's not that I don't have poems. My problems, challenges, I feel almost all stem from a perceived lack of time for my creative self and far too much of myself put into the press and its doings. I need time to play with my poems and poetry. Feel that I don't get enough time with them or my other creative writings. I need time to work, rework, edit my poems. Need to shake 'em up. See what falls off, what holds. Should read them aloud. Hear if they whisper or hum or sing or clunk. Need to nurture and prune them to better blooms.

Then I need to string or bunch them together. Make a stook of them before shipping the poor poems off to try to find-get someone to make them into a book. Some plucky publisher still open to Canadian poetry. I have need of a new book. My publisher in Beograd wants to see something new. They can apply for translation grants only for professionally published books. They might publish without the translation grant but why not enrich the project for both of us?

Sand-spreading trucks busy on the Fredericton roads and parking lots at this pre-dawn time. Slick, wet, black ice under the cold rain in our bowl of fog. Better than freezing rain (and that might be happening up on the hills or in northern New Brunswick).

I have a pot roast to cook for lunchtime. Have everything ready. Dutch oven pot on the stove awaiting my attention. First, brown the piece of meat on high heat. Next, put in diced tomatoes, a minced jalapeno pepper, garlic cloves, some beer or red wine (and some for myself—sun is over the yardarm in Beograd), cumin or sonoran seasoning . . . and leave to simmer for two hours. Add carrots, cored parsnip, spuds, turnip, sauteed onion, celery, whatever . . . Forget about it for another hour . . .

. . . and return to the poems or poetry manuscript, if possible, and don't get caught by application form financials and the bookkeeper/accountant, tax reports and returns, sales logs, email, business telephone, incoming faxes.

If not poetry, try a little reading or daydreaming . . . on a boat on a calm river, with a friend or a group of friends, beer or wine in hand, sun with scattered clouds, warm afternoon, talking and laughing and loving life. Something good outside the boxes lived in, lived out of, watched and staring back at you.

shirt: two black long-sleeved ones
loc: comCtr
temp: 2 C, raining, foggy
sound: Blues Traveller, Straight On Till Morning

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

how do you know Lucky Dube?
L.

Joe Blades said...

Comment out of the blue while listening to Exodus by Bob. I don't know Lucky Dube personally. But I have heard him. Even saw him perform a song on tv once. Like what I heard. Have heard people talk about him, his music, and a satisfied need for musical instruments with which to play. At a for-me-and-two-others common b'day party last year, the music on the CD-player outside was all Lucky Dube. Three CDs full.

Anonymous said...

U really like Beograd?
R.

Anonymous said...

where are you now..?

Joe Blades said...

can't help but like much of what i know and have experienced of Beograd. but i don't live there. haven't lived there and, therefore, don't know the reality of living and working there. have only been book fair busy there for about two and a half weeks total around the 49th and 50th book fairs. of course there's stuff seen that i don't like and/or don't understand but i also don't presume otherwise . . .