…of tree seems to be hard to get these days. Unless of course one is willing to spend $120 dollars on a Balsam fir. And this doesn’t include the fact that simply buying a real tree is getting harder and harder to do, the lots are fewer, the trees fewer, the sizes smaller. Thank goodness for Doulgas Fir!! Not as expensive as the Balsam, not as uniform, and somehow it’s delightfully imperfect. Anyone can have a perfect fake tree, but it takes real space to have a real tree! As you can also see by the emptiness underneath, it takes real money too. At least this year, there’s still space in the living room for the couch. This year, when the holidays are all over, I’m turning the ceiling fan on.

I feel a post coming on. Watch this space soon!!

Heh.

Featuring live performances by:

Johanna Bundon
Kris Brandhagen
Kelly-Anne Riess
and
Lia Pas

and includes works by:

Andrew Wenaus
Beatrix Moersch
Dale Perkins
Giuseppe Rapisarda
Mark Zaki
Sibylle Pomorin
and Tatjana Böhme-Mehner

…is just around the corner, which means cooking a turkey, making cabbage rolls from the sour cabbage someone soured at home, and thankfully gave me, hauling in the last of the garden bounty, and generally being thankful for many things which have been offered to me in the past year.  As I try to get back into a regular schedule with the blog, I’m also grateful for other writer’s blogs, esp. those that post on a regular basis. This fall I’m happy to be checking out one writer in particular, Maureen Scott Harris as she enjoys her adventures abroad, posting  from the wilds of Tasmania. Thanks Maureen!

…and one of the books I found this time. A first edition, first book, by one of Canada’s finest poets. I wonder if I get her to sign it now, if it adds value, or detracts from it?

Sunset reflected on the tree.

…clearly I’ve been remiss in writing on this blog, though I’ve been productive during my summer of lack. I finished editing the second ms for Coteau, which will be out in April, 2010. It’s title morphed into Interruptions in Glass and I don’t foresee that changing now. I’m looking forward to next year, the tours, the people, the money (heh).

While at Emma Lake I had the opportunity to meet a few artists, M. Eileen Murray who not only is a photographer, but a remarkable painter as well. My brain breaks often involved heading down to see what Eileen was working on, and to watch the progress of a different form of art. The artist in residence at Emma Lake was artist and educator Monique Blom Metcalfe, and although I only spent a few days with her, I found her incredibly inspiring as well as a very patient educator in the arts and the creative process. Also present was one of a group of landscape artists making waves out of the water, Men Who Paint, Paul Trottier who runs Emma Lake Kenderdine Campus.

I attended as part of Emma’s residency program, and it turned out it was a productive, and conducive space for editing. I found, after figuring out what people  meant when they asked where I was working, the long conversations stimulating to the editing process as well as the generosity of the artists to share what they were working on, to be very helpful to my process.

Next week I’m heading out to check the Thin Air in Winnipeg. Maybe I’ll blog a bit from there, and give you some juicy gossip.

And in other news, the Vertigo Reading Series is about to begin the fall season with a night of Saskatchwan talent, so check out the blog!

holophon.ca is a concert series and audio collective based in Regina, SK that engages with sound as an artistic medium, with a focus on uniting various artistic, geographical and cultural communities through sound-work. In partnership with Tracy Hamon, a poet and writer from Regina, SK we are planning a collaborative concert that reacts against perceptions of post-post modernism by reaching back to modernist roots for inspiration.

Whether it’s Symbolist, Impressionist, or Gertrude Stein’s hermetic word portraits, consider the exchange as an opportunity to emphasize your work. We are seeking submissions that engage modernism as an integral trend of thought that affirms our power to create.

The open call accepts:

• pre-recorded material

• performance • sound/slam/text based poetry

• or any combinations thereof

• no more than 10-15 minutes of material/work or 10-15 pages of text

This event will occur in Regina, SK on Nov. 7, 2009 as a part of season two of holophon.ca’s ongoing event programming. Honorariums will be paid, but we cannot support artist travel fees at this time. Submissions must be received by Sept. 25, 2009.

PLEASE INCLUDE WITH EACH SUBMISSION

– A short description of how the work will be performed – including diagrams or explanations of speaker arrays if applicable

-A 50 word max. program note on the work submitted

-A 50 word bio

-A 3 page max cv complete with contact information and mailing address

FORMATS ACCEPTED – CD or DVD-based works and support material – Works must not run longer than 15 minutes

holophon.ca accepts any audio from 16bit 44.1 kHz to 24bit 96kHz, also from mono to eight track files.

Please send submissions to:

holophon.ca Modernism

2724 Sinton Ave.

Regina, SK S4S 1K1

A dog adopted me today, or fell in love with me. He had the most amazing blue eyes. Muscular legs. A powerful dog; he was built! Part husky, part something else, this dog caught up to me around the two mile mark in my walk around the grid, just after the farm on the corner near the site of the first communion by the priests of St. Peter’s. At first, because of his colouring, I thought, Wolf!! I was skittish, especially after being lunged at by one dog already this summer. I was a little leery of another strange dog nipping at my heels, but alas, this one was different. He quickly caught up to me, licking my hand, and he followed me for the last two miles, hunting whatever he could in the tall grasses beside the grid (always amazing to watch a young dog spring into the air with all fours while trying to catch a mouse, a vole, anything). I wasn’t really worried about the dog. I figured he was a farm dog prone to wandering, and that he would easily find his way home again. What I didn’t figure on was his attachment to me. Smitten. When I returned to the Abbey, he was still by my side. There were tons of people milling about due to the choir concert, and still, he stayed close. He followed me to the door of Scholastica, the building in which we stay, and proceeded to try to gain entry when I went to go in. Then he barked until I came out–angry that he was ignored. As we were heading into Humboldt for a shopping spree at the Good Neighbour store (one of the best used stores around), I thought that when I left in the car, I would lose him, that he would tire of the place and return home eventually. But what I didn’t expect was his devotion; he followed me as I got in the car and drove away, running desparately after the me until I hit Muenster. Poor boy–I lost him then, in the gravel, the town, and in the rain.

I’ve always said that children and animals are attracted to me. This is the other creature that we adopted this spring.