Western Canada Poetry Tour part 5: Vancouver and Victoria

I know this is long overdue. Since getting back to New York, I've been overwhelmed with apartment hunting and other things, and also just found it hard and odd to finish off this travel log - when I don't feel like I've come 'home.' The lines between traveling and being home have almost entirely blurred, which I found interesting or depressing depending on what kind of mood I am in.

Getting off the train, 24 hours or so after leaving Edmonton, was surreal and kind of magical. With all due respect to Edmonton, it was kind of like leaving black and white Kansas for the technicolour (Canadian spelling) of Oz. Snow to blue skies and cherry blossoms. Ah, those cherry blossoms, it was beautiful in Vancouver and Victoria I really couldn't take it. I don't know how people live surrounded by such beauty, seems it would lose its meaning after awhile.

and that mountain air.... honestly I would kill myself if surrounded by that all year round.

Looking back on my time now in Vancouver and Victoria, one thing that stands out is reading Dante's Inferno in Stanley Park, after having walked past ducks, geese, had my arms brushed by weeping willows and arriving at the sun setting over the pacific... the reading material made for an interesting contrast.

I felt fortunate to be hosted by my friend Chris and his girlfriend Rebecca - again, I've been blessed with hospitable hosts throughout. Same can be said for my Victoria host, Isa Millman - who truly does offer a poetry palace in what one of the most beautiful houses I have been inside, and I believe the 4th largest house I've ever been in.

3 biggest houses I've been inside:

1. Michelle Jean's "house" (aka Rideau Hall) (for my American readers, that's the Governor General. For my American readers the Governor General is... oh, nevermind)
2. The White House, then Bill Clinton's house (grade 8 field trip)
3. Allan Greg's House (long, long, long story and entirely unimpressive for my American readers)

One of my best reading experiences came at the pulp fiction bookstore in Vancouver... really good turnout, good audience (laughed at all the intentionally funny parts and bought books) and great co-reader - Sonnet L'Abbe. Also, through enjoyed the after reading party at the legion (I believe that's what the bar was called), oh and good to see Ray Hsu after all this time. (ah that poetry name dropping)

Also fought hard against a espresso machine (those espresso machines love poetry) in Victoria at the Planet Poetry reading there - hosted by the poetically astute and delightfully quirky Wendy Morton.

um, what else - I saw a heron and some turtles, and plethora of flowers. again, its sickening.

I feel that now that I've arrived at the end of the trip, I should have some profound insight on Canada and what it means to be Canadian, other than Canada's really big. I can only say that most people I met from a particular place, say if they were born in Saskatoon or Winnipeg, really 'felt' they were from that place in a way that made me envious, that made me realize that I can walk around much of Toronto with my eyes closed and still I have never felt entirely home there - its too big or too much wanting to be other places (i.e. New York) and I was raised by a New Yorker and maybe I've just lost too much there (maybe it used to feel like home and I forget - am I getting too heavy for a blog?)... I don't know. The trip was wonderful - but it made me feel like I come from nowhere, which I suppose, however challenging, is also liberating. and here I am back in the bankrupt land of liberty, not really knowing where I'm going, what I'm doing here...

Anyway, for those who bothered to read these blog entries, I really appreciate it - and might not even begrudge those who pressured me into doing it in the first place.

I might even continuing blogging, once and while... maybe.

Western Canada Poetry Tour, part 4: Edmonton Poetry Festival

So I'm getting really good at this time travel stuff. It was February when I got to Edmonton. I stayed, free of charge, at the Sutton place hotel, there was a jacuzzi. yes, I went in my boxers. I'm not ashamed.

I like the readings and the free shampoo, but my favourite thing about the festival was meeting the other poets. There were a lot so I won't list them all. Instead I am going to more or less steal from another blog" - http://www.twoonachoochoo.blogspot.com/ ... and do some unorthodox name dropping - staying at the hotel were: Elizabeth Dodds, Matthew O'Meara Bachinksy and David Tierney. When the names are arranged correctly - all really fine poets - and an honor to read (albeit at different places from each other in the city), and more importantly, drink with them.

I confess I had just read Bachinsky's Home of Sudden Service and loved it, and may have made a gushing ass out of myself upon meeting her.

On thursday night I read at a Turkish restaurant, which gave me a chance to practice the 3 words I still remember from when I lived in Istanbul seven years ago. I also read my istanbul poems - including a new one. I felt kind of bad that two of the poems mention the brib-ability of turkish officials, but its a metaphor for my love life at that time... so that's makes it okay, right?

I also did what's called a master class with several poets where we critique each other's work in front of an audience. fortunately I know how to hyper ventilate silently.

One of my 'favourite' experiences was walking down Jasper Avenue, which should be a tom waits song. on the aforementioned blog there is a shot of a store I am pretty sure we definitely did not go into. (the words "peep" and "25 cents" may have appeared on a sign - what a bargain).

I took the train to Vancouver with Jeramy Matthews and Dodd Tierney. it's a 24 or so train ride - and absolutely stunning, as the train swerves through the mountain and the rockies surround - and whatever I can't do it justice (what am I a writer?... poets present, don't describe, right?). but I really recommend it - i had a lot of ideas and lines for poems throughout the trip. I think Dodds wrote his next book... the landscape is poetically palpable is what I'm getting at.

I arrived in Vancouver yesterday morning. everything is in bloom. the weather is so perfect here it makes me sick. wonderfully sick.

Western Canada Poetry Tour part 3(b): Hermitage outside Muenster, Saskatchewan

I had a couple of days to kill between my last Saskatoon reading and my arrival in Edmonton, so on Mari-Lou's suggestion I stayed in a hermitage by St. Peter's College campus outside a town of about 300 or so people called Muenster, which is a couple hours north (?) of Saskatoon. It was different. It was actually quite wonderful. The hermitage was a little, little house without running water although there was electricity, basically on the edge of an expansive field - I could see for miles. I really felt, I realized for the first time, that I was in the prairies. The hermitage is there since the college is attached as I understand it to a monastery. I met some real Benedictine monks. In fact when I got off the bus there was a black robbed man standing in front of a pick up truck waiting for me. I hope it's not trite to say I found this neat. I also attended the monks nightly vespers which were quite lovely - especially the organ music. I spent those two days mostly wandering around the property during the middle of the day, feeling very small against the expansive far reaching land - oh, there's was lots of farm equipment (I took some pictures on my (cheap) digital camera, which sadly broke in my bag - then took some more on my cell - but I left the thing - that's the technical name for it I believe - that let's me upload the pics in new york). But my favourite part about it was the late afternoon/evening. I sat in the middle of a dirt road (I never heard a car by once the entire time i was there) with a bottle of Jamieson watching the sun slowly sink over the prairie-scape and listening the sounds of various birds and insects filling the air, incredibly loudly I might add. Just before the sun goes down the field glowed an unearthly (or more eartlthy than I'm used to) gold - and I felt that aliens might abduct me at any moment (perhaps they did).

On the first night after the sun went down I read the second half of Whitman's Song of Myself, having been reading it in small bits for awhile beforehand. I read this (long) poem about six or so years ago - and while I liked it then, I felt it was naive or something. Re-reading I realize that it was my own lack of experience - of simply not having probed those depths of human experience that made me think that - and now I feel that I have at least skimmed the surface of some of where Walt has been. But reading the poem out there, in all that isolation I felt really inside that poem - or at least parts of it - especially his engagement with time itself, like "My feet strike an apex of the apices of the stairs,/On every step bunches of ages, and larger bunches between the steps/All below duly traveled–and still I mount and mount." I woke the next day with my usual worries and anxieties and wondered how much of Walt's life was spent living in the sheer enlightenment of that poem. It was interesting also being in this religious - that is Christian environment and contrasting that with the Whitman's spirituality, what you could call an atheist spirituality (I won't say agnostic - since he 'knows' what he believes in) and a spirituality made from and out of the self.

The second night was perhaps the perfect contrast - I went into the bar (yes, there's only one) in Muenster. No one was in there but the owner Ken. I had a couple of Canadians, and watched the second half of canucks game with him. I think that's the first hockey game I've watched since I was in high school. I stumbled back (I had had some jamison with my friend the sinking prairie sun before that) to the hermitage - only getting a little lost - with my flashlight beneath a star filled sky. It was beautiful, but I admit a little scary since there were tons of animals sounds- only birds, I think. And at one point the branches above shook and I could heard a bird, perhaps an owl, was really close to me, but couldn't see him/her.

So that was my hermit experience. I imagine there's a poem in there, a nature poem... a prairie poem.

Hey, I've caught up in the blogs. Next entry will be about Edmonton, and will probably contain several mentions of the fact it has snowed twice here now.

Western Canada Poetry Tour part 3: Saskatoon

I write this now from my Sutton Place hotel room in Edmonton overlooking the baccarat casino. It's 8:45 am here and in an hour I have to read my poems to a high school - in other words, to kids who are used to being up at this hour. Anyway... Saskatoon. Okay, the Mcnally robinson reading was, well, not the highlight of the trip. Only two people, and their 8 year old (or so) daughter, who sat in the front row and squirmed the entire time, were in attendance. Oh and another guy who left about half way through. BTW I'm sympathetic to the squirming daughter having been dragged to poetry readings as a child by my mother - although much of the time I was horrified, not bored, as she read poems about me. The Mcnally reading was poorly attended because local poet John Livinstone Clark was having a book launch that night. After the reading, Mari-Lou Rowley, who I was staying with went over to the bar where Clark was launching. First a word on Mari-Lou, not only a terrific poet, but a remarkable host - she barely knew me and let me stay with her for 4 days, showed me around town, cooked me some lovely meals - including crapes for breakfast and even got the mcnally robinson people to pronounce my last name properly, which made me feel like I had my own handler - it was pretty cool.

I enjoyed meeting John Livinstone Clark, but have to say I was a bit intimidated, especially since I'm about half his age, when he was said, "So you're the GG guy," and then persisted that I read him a poem. I could faintly hear gunslinger music in the background. I think I passed - he seemed to genuinely like the poem. I also met there Taylor Leedhal who organizes and hosts the weekly reading series "Tonight's It's Poetry" at the Flint bar in downtown Saskatoon where I read on sunday - to a slightly larger audience than the at Mcnally - (the place was packed).

Taylor and her partner Megan also took me to a concert of a vancouver indie band - Mother, Mother, which I enjoyed. I even bought their CD, which is probably the first CD I have bought in five years.

as I said the Flint bar reading was great. there were about sixty or so people there and many of them weren't even poets it seemed. they just liked poetry - imagine. I read with several other really strong local poets - and in particular enjoyed Bruce Rice's reading.

So, I should probably get ready for this reading (I'm a bit nervous, I have to admit... kids + poetry + 9 am +?.) I will be blogging next about my experience staying in a hermitage in nothern (I think northern) Sasketchewan....

How about a readable version of that poem?

Here's version that doesn't require a magnifying glass:

The Bus Ride that Became a Horror Movie

 

It’s 98 km to where, more or less, the incident occurred. You

probably read about it for weeks. Remember that first day

when it was a tragedy, before it unraveled into punch line?:

a man walks onto a bus and saws another man’s head off

for (drum roll) no reason. My American friends sent me emails like:

“I hear they’re beheading people in Canada now.” You get it? –

we’re one of those countries. Ad it to the list

of what Americans know about us: everyone

plays hockey, they have socialized medicine, and

once and while slice each other’s heads off, because

it’s really fucking cold there, I guess.  And here I am

taking that route and thinking about the Saturday

Globe last summer where the reporter rode from Edmonton

to Winnipeg as though the landscape could reveal

or explain anything, as though this highway was haunted

now (as though it wasn’t before). Thinking

this is how we approach trauma in this country – with headlines

like The Bus Ride that became a Horror Movie 

or A Quiet Ride then Carnage. And I watch 

the passengers. Mostly young guys, sitting alone, 

like me. The man across is the one

whose head I might just chop off, then eat his face.

Isn’t that what happened.? The murderer spitting his victim’s

teeth out like watermelon seeds. Who remembers

 

the details now, as we depart, driving through the prairie-scape,

driving into Spring, ice patches melting all around,

barren shrubs half submerged in water, the tall grass still

a dull yellow, its colour sucked out like blood. A deer

half flattened by the side of the road, bloodied ass

mooning us. Quickly approaching Portage, passengers

hooked into ipods and dreams, anywhere but here

and a sign reading “Various Positions Available” and everything

on sale. Right here, approximately, just hacking and hacking,

how many times till a head pops off? Watching

the parking lot fill, the line up growing inside the Tim Hortons

like they were selling indulgences in there, translates,

into an argument for various acts of violence. But doesn’t

mean anything, really. That’s what causes us,

maybe, to play so much goddam hockey and forget

every route in this endless country

is a passage through death,

 

as we arrive in Winnipeg. Sunlight a golden sludge, thick 

as blood, oozing off the warehouse facades, glorious 

and utterly unnewsworthy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Western Canada Poetry Tour part 2: Winnipeg

So I apologize for not updating more regularly. This is the Winnipeg chapter, though I am writing it at St. Peter's College just outside, Muenster, Saskatchewan - (I'll explain later). I took the infamous bus last week, through Portage, Manitoba - infamous because that's where the beheading took place last summer - pretty much the only thing that happened in Canada to make international news in recent memory, other than the near-democratic coup, as I call it, of the conservatives. I have a friend in Istanbul, who emailed me about it. Once in awhile someone blows themselves up in Taksim square, but no one ever cut another guy's head off on a Dolmus (kind of like a bus, and kind of like a taxi, but not really either). Anyway, I could go on, but instead I will re-post a poem I wrote about my experience taking the bus, at the end of this entry. 

I was only in Winnipeg for a couple of days, so could only get into so much trouble. I read at the McNally Robinson bookstore, a Canadian bookstore chain store with three (if I'm not mistaken) massive stores in Western Canada. About a dozen middle aged woman pretty much made up the audience. And I feared that they might not be the biggest fans of my poetry. But they were actually a great audience - laughed at all the parts that are supposed to be funny, listenened attentively and bought books - nearly all of them came up the book signing table, book in hand afterwards - so I would say it was a pretty successful reading. I also was received with wonderful hospitality by my Winnipeg friends - Andrew, Melanie, and Heidi - who took me to lunch at Aqua books, where I was given a tour - which made me feel special. it's a pretty cool store. its converted from a Chinese restaurant.- I recommend checking it out if you're ever in Winnipeg.  

I also caught up with an ex-girlfriend who was originally from Winnipeg and moved back there. I have various thoughts, of course, on such revisits with the past, but since this isn't a personal journal or a public poem... (somehow writing about the most personal matters in a poem seems less invasive, I guess because there I have my persona - though I often wonder if my voice outside the voice of the poem is not actually the persona... never mind), I won't go into all that, other than to say, it was nice to see a familiar face.  

Here's the poem:

The Bus Ride that Became a Horror Movie

 

It’s 98 km to where, more or less, the incident occurred. You

probably read about it for weeks. Remember that first day

when it was a tragedy, before it unraveled into punch line?:

a man walks onto a bus and saws another man’s head off

for (drum roll) no reason. My American friends sent me emails like:

“I hear they’re beheading people in Canada now.” You get it? –

we’re one of those countries. Ad it to the list

of what Americans know about us: everyone

plays hockey, they have socialized medicine, and

once and while slice each other’s heads off, because

it’s really fucking cold there, I guess.  And here I am

taking that route and thinking about the Saturday

Globe last summer where the reporter rode from Edmonton

to Winnipeg as though the landscape could reveal

or explain anything, as though this highway was haunted

now (as though it wasn’t before). Thinking

this is how we approach trauma in this country – with headlines

like The Bus Ride that became a Horror Movie 

or A Quiet Ride then Carnage. And I watch 

the passengers. Mostly young guys, sitting alone, 

like me. The man across is the one

whose head I might just chop off, then eat his face.

Isn’t that what happened.? The murderer spitting his victim’s

teeth out like watermelon seeds. Who remembers

 

the details now, as we depart, driving through the prairie-scape,

driving into Spring, ice patches melting all around,

barren shrubs half submerged in water, the tall grass still

a dull yellow, its colour sucked out like blood. A deer

half flattened by the side of the road, bloodied ass

mooning us. Quickly approaching Portage, passengers

hooked into ipods and dreams, anywhere but here

and a sign reading “Various Positions Available” and everything

on sale. Right here, approximately, just hacking and hacking,

how many times till a head pops off? Watching

the parking lot fill, the line up growing inside the Tim Hortons

like they were selling indulgences in there, translates,

into an argument for various acts of violence. But doesn’t

mean anything, really. That’s what causes us,

maybe, to play so much goddam hockey and forget

every route in this endless country

is a passage through death,

 

as we arrive in Winnipeg. Sunlight a golden sludge, thick 

as blood, oozing off the warehouse facades, glorious and utterly unnewsworthy.

 ...

So, next entry will be about Saskatchewan, where I did a couple of readings in Saskatoon, stayed with Mari-Lou Rowley, the world's best poet handler and spent a couple of nights in a hermitage.  I would write now about some of that, but the monks are serving lunch now - yes, monks. That's my cliffhanger.

I probably won't write again till I get to Edmonton (I leave tomorrow). I am hoping to eventually catch up in my blogging so I am not writing about places after I leave them. This is probably a metaphor for something.

 

Western Canada Poetry Tour, Part 1: Brandon, Manitoba

As promised, and against my better judgement, I am going to keep a record/account, via this blog, of my reading tour. The tour is 22 days, covering six cities (in four provinces) in Western Canada. All together I think I am reading thirteen times. My first stop was Brandon, Manitoba. For those who don't know much about Brandon, and as I've learned the hard way, Brandonites don't like their city of 50 000 or so people, being called a town. Though I meant it as a compliment. Any way, Brandon is a small city in south western Manitoba, about 10% of the population is made up of Native Canadians. Also, Tommy Douglas went to Brandon University (then Brandon College). For my American friends, Douglas was the founder of Medicare/Single Payer Health Care in Canada. For my American friends that means "socialized medicine."

It took me 12 hours getting from NYC to Brandon. I had a layover in Minneapolis, and then had to take a shuttle bus from the Winnipeg airport to Brandon. There was snow on the ground when I arrived and I considered turning around and getting back on the plane (but its finally Spring now on in Manitoba!). I was also sent to that little interrogation room by the Canadian customs officials. I am assuming because I said I was on a "poetry reading tour" and that sounded ridiculous to them (I was also using my U.S. passport). In the room, a different customs official asked me what the purpose of my trip was. When I said I was a poet. His co-worker asked me, "do you know it?" I confirmed that I did in fact, know it, even though I wanted to say something else, and they sent me on my way. The experience kind of summed up how I feel, in my darker moments, about being a poet - that it's a joke to most people, worthy of mockery and little else. In many parts of the world poets end up being jailed or even executed. Here, we get mocked... 

Moving on...

I enjoyed the 'bus' (really a van) ride through the prairies. I imagine a lot of people find the flat, seemingly endless landscape kind of boring. I find it both fascinating and scary. It threatens to swallow one whole. And at first it is dull, or rather looks all the same for miles and miles. But I find all that expansive, empty space requires one to meditate in a way on space itself. 

I did two readings (well one reading and one workshop) at Brandon University. I had a pretty good turn out (40 people or so) mostly it seemed of English and creative writing students. Apparently in preparation for my reading some of the classes had read a few of my poems. 

 I was also asked to hold an open and free workshop for the community. Considering it was Easter weekend, it was also well intended, about a dozen people or so. It went well I think, but was not without... well, let me tell the story. One of the participants was a Byzantine Catholic Priest (I didn't know one could be Byzantine and Catholic, but apparently so). I was nervous from the start, especially since one of my planned workshop exercises involved reading an excerpt from Ginsberg's "Howl" - which of course is full of language that any moderate practicing Catholic would consider blasphemous. I considered not doing it, but as the coordinator of the workshop pointed out, he came to me - it was my workshop. At any rate, he didn't throw holy water on me or anything during the exercise. But at the end of the workshop he asked me if one has to be alcoholic or a drug addict to be a poet. I was, well, caught off guard by the question, so I just laughed. Actually, I laughed for quite awhile, before finally answering "not necessarily." I still wonder, if that's how I should have answered it. 

I arrived in Winnipeg yesterday, after taking the infamous greyhound through Portage (where the beheading occurred) and will write about my experiences here soon. Thanks for reading.