Hilda Doolittle (1886-1961)

A poem from the Selected Poems of H.D. (New Directions Press, 1957):


SCRIBE

Wildly dissimilar
yet actuated by the same fear,
the hippopotamus and the wild deer
hide by the same river.

Strangely disparate
yet compelled by the same hunger,
the cobra and the turtle-dove
meet in the palm-grove.

Dave Barrett (1930-2018)

At noon on Sunday I walked from my place on 19th Avenue across Knight Street, through the Tyee Montessori School grounds, past Dumfries, up the hill to Fleming, where I turned right, then a left on  20th, then another left on Commercial Street, where I eventually came to the Croatian Community Centre for former NDP premier Dave Barrett's 1pm "Celebration of Life".

The service was hosted by former NDP MLA Moe Sihota, who does well in these situations. Moe introduced Squamish First Nations band member Deborah Baker, who provided the "indigenous welcome," followed by some humorous reminiscences by current premier John Horgan and some very touching ones by New Westminster NDP MLA Dawn Black, who spoke of Barrett's compassion; after that, what quickly transitioned into an infomercial by Barrett contemporary Bob Williams, who, though a brilliant politician and community leader, someone I admire for his intellect and will, started pumping his latest project: Vancouver's Centre for Social & Economic Innovation at the former police station at 312 Main Street.

Not sure what Dave Barrett would have thought of Bob's project. One thing he would have taken issue with was Bob's rather off-hand comments about the civil service. Yes, bureaucracies can slow things down, and yes, they can take on a life of their own, but if slowness is something we have come to appreciate in our race-to-the-neverending-finish-line that is our increasingly extreme, bottom line culture, then more slowness, please, not less. (Imagine what a little slowness might have brought to Ron Burnett's new Emily Carr University of Art & Design complex? Certainly a better gallery/bookstore -- maybe even better painting studios.)

As for the rest of the program, I missed it -- too put off by Bob.

The 1972-1975 NDP provincial (B.C.) government was a remarkable achievement. While it is true that this government worked quickly to pass more than 350 bills in three short years, they had many years in opposition to consider what needed passing, and why. For more on this government and its achievements, see Geoff Meggs and Rod Mickleburgh's excellent book The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power, 1972-1975.

Rosanna Deerchild

Rosanna Deerchild opens up Unreserved's "Valentine's Day" episode (February 11th) with interviews at Winnipeg's Portage Place Mall, where we meet Josh and Cody (1:50-4:00), who ever-so-sweetly remind Rosanna that for gay men, it is not Tinder, but Grinder.

The week prior (February 4th) is an episode dubbed "The power of transformation" that focuses on changes to the corporeal body (Gwen Benaway, Lauren Sylliboy and Vizin), but also to that body of writing known as the text (Jordan Abel on his recent book Injun, 2016 [29:04-37:27]).

Like Abel, Deerchild is a literary writer. Her books include this is a small northern poem (2008) and Calling Down the Sky (2015). Here is a link to one of her best known poems, "On the First Day".

Annharte

Annharte is a writer I reach for when the mood moves me. The nature of that mood is difficult to define; sometimes it is a good mood, other times it is a bad mood. "Good" and "bad" have little to do with what moves me.

Here is a passage rob mclennan quoted from Annharte's essay collection, AKA Inendagosekwe (CUE, 2013), for a piece he published in Jacket2:

"Don’t listen to your elders…sometimes listen to that coyote voice within you and do something that will both shock and entertain your elders. They like innovation too, not the same boring mainline crap, preaching about Native Culture. We got to decolonize our thinking and that is why experimenting with ideas is needed. Too much of Native Literature is about passively accepting colonization and exploitation. World-wide indigenous writings—the literature of resistance—needs our contribution and attention too."

Annharte, Judith Copithorne, Maxine Gadd and Marcia Crosby are senior writers and thinkers who are important to me. I have learned -- and continue to learn -- so much from them.

Literary Festivals

Canada's literary festivals have always privileged books over writing. Recently published books. While these festivals receive public monies, they have become reliant on the marketing budgets of big house publishers to put on their shows. That's why they look the way they do, with inclusion determined as much by the publishing houses who supply them with their writers authors as the festival directors who invite these authors to read, sit on panels and sign books.

When Alicia Elliott tweets that a nearby festival (Hamilton's gritLIT Festival) is using the title of her published essay ("Is Canlit a Raging Dumpster Fire?" September, 2017) to banner a panel on Canada's literary culture ("industry" is Elliott's word), a panel that includes neither her nor anyone from the communities affected by this culture, she is right to complain.

I wonder if this situation would have been different had Elliott published a book within the festival year cycle? My guess is that the festival organizers would not have thought twice about inviting her. The case of a knee-jerk bureaucratic structure -- the shape of things -- determining the content? (See Hannah Arendt on the topic of bureaucracies.) Here is an apology from the gritLIT Festival's artistic director:

Like the Music and Film industries, the Publishing industry is relatively late to extinction. But it is dying, and with it will come the death of festivals driven by recently published trade books, particularly now that the big houses are spending less on author appearances and more on the means by which Elliott's complaint has reached us -- that Tolkienian ring known as social media.

Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970)

The Poetry Foundation has uploaded a few more Lorine Niedecker poems since last I checked. Niedecker's "I rose from mud marsh" can be found in Jenny Penberthy's intelligent collected. (Althea's Listers of Earthy has mud on my mind.)


I ROSE FROM MUD MARSH

I rose from marsh mud,

algae, equisetum, willows,

sweet green, noisy

birds and frogs

to see her wed in the rich

rich silence of the church,

the little white slave-girl

in her diamond fronds.

In aisle and arch

the satin secret collects.

United for life to serve

silver. Possessed.

Afternoon Walk

A dull grey walk on Main Street. A few changes since the last death march. The community arts studios at 216 East 28th have moved to Commercial Drive, but Le' Gent Antiques is still at the corner.

The YWCA Thrift Shop continues to do good business. The record bin out front had just been reloaded. Stared awhile at the Sheena Easton album. Shay Semple's early portraits came to mind.

The highlight find was a 15th anniversary re-issue of Lila Abu-Lughod's Writing Women's Worlds (1993, 2008). Price: $1. I still have the first printing ($19.99).

Here is a passage from the Introduction:

"...the first lesson of feminist analysis from Simone de Beauvoir on: relations -- or, more accurately, constructions -- of self and other are rarely innocent of power. To be feminist entails being sensitive to domination; for the ethnographer that means being sensitive to domination in the society being described and in the relationship between the writer (and readers) and the people being written about." (5)