thinfragilair

Ok, ok... here is. Sorry for the delay...

2007-03-14T23:41:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the delay. There is no mystery here. I've been very reclusive. Andrea and I are speeding toward our wedding day. We have our rings, we've rented tuxes and found bridal gowns... It is awesome.

I've been feeling very quiet since publishing i ROBOT and Canada Post so close together. I'm working on a top secret project at the moment and I'm liking the poems very much, except I'm finding them a bit different than what I've worked on in the past... Not sure how I'll like the shift...

<<<< Plus, I have a beard again.

So, ok. Not too much to reveal here. Sorry if there was any mystery. Andrea go in to SFU for her MA so we'll probably be moving to Vancouver this Summer! I'm still waiting to hear about my PhD application but I'm not holding out much hope.

More to follow...

2007-03-05T09:52:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have been dormant. At least reclusive, from an outside perspective to the events in my life, this would include the virtual sphere represented here, I've been downright silent. Updates to follow soon.

ok. no explanation provided...

2007-01-08T23:12:00.000-07:00

Grats GSC!!

i ROBOT review on livejournal!

2007-01-08T22:54:00.000-07:00

Colin Martin kindly forwarded me notice that a review of i ROBOT appeared on Suzette Haden Elgin's livejournal. Colin, thank you for passing this along to me, and Suzette, thatnk you very much for you kind words about my book.

EXTRA! EXTRA! British Government Must Have Read i ROBOT!

2006-12-21T17:08:00.000-07:00

Check this out:

Either that or I'm in some sort of weird Sci Fi dream...

ok. i don't agree, but...

2006-12-17T16:29:00.000-07:00

Poetry Anthology 2008

2006-12-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

Hey. I'm one of the editors for a project initiated by Jessica Smith to create a massive anthology of poetry. If you are a Canadian and are interested in sending work to the anthology, please send it to me at the following email address: anthology2008@hotmail.com . My editorial role is to collect submissions to be considered for publication by the main editors so I can't garuntee that what I accept will be published, but I will definitely pass it along with my endorsement.

Here are the guidelines:

Standards:
• Garamond 10 pt
• .jpg or .tiff files for vispo
• 1-5 poems, published or unpublished

You can also send to poetry2008@gmail.com

The deadline is January so hop to it!

For a list of accepted authors click here

Poetry Meme Reply from A Cranky Bastard at Christmas

2006-12-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

Ok. Ok, Jessica . Here are my answers to the poetry meme. I wanted to reply earlier, but life has been pretty hectic lately and somehow it is already Christmas. Argh. Plus, I'm pretty down about poetry these days

The first poem I remember reading was... The Dream Poem by Michael deBeyer and that was at age 22. I’m a late bloomer.

I was forced to memorize numerous poems in school and... I don’t remember any of them. I don’t remember being forced to memorize poems at all in fact. The benefit of going to a public school in a smallish town I guess.

I read poetry because... I write it. I don’t read very much poetry these days. Most of what I have read I haven’t liked. The things I used to like, up until even a year ago, don’t interest me anymore and I’m casting around for some things to replace them. A lot of the poetry I find seems derivative of the poetry published in the last century and frankly I’m bored with much of it. There’s something archaic about the politics that lead to much of that poetry, a type of reading that was politically necessary coming through the 1980’s in North America that doesn’t feel subtle enough anymore to address the complexity of our current circumstances. I’m being purposely vague because I haven’t yet had a chance to really sit down and grapple with my feelings on this subject in a direct way, but that’s where my head is at. I didn’t even write about more ‘traditional’ representational poetry because almost all of that bores me. Almost. I’m not really interested in dividing poetry up into distinct realms that I either like or dislike.

A poem I'm likely to think about when asked about a favorite poem... Any of Ted Berrigan’s sonnets.

I write poetry, but... That’s weird. I write poetry, and I’m interested in loads of things. I enjoy making noise and messy visual poetry. I like to paint things on cardboard sometimes. I play a lot of World of Warcraft.

My experience with reading poetry differs from my experience with reading other types of literature... I’m also bored by a lot of other literature these days. So I guess it doesn’t differ all that much.

I find poetry... everywhere. While working at Sears in the maintenance department I would find poetry in the noises that the various mechanical devices I had to maintain would produce. I found poetry while sleeping on the roof and would send recordings of it through my cell phone to my answering machine at home to later record to my computer to manipulate with software.

The last time I heard poetry... was during the bill bissett tribute. Great to see McCaffery read again.

I think poetry is like... the bastard offspring of a utility-centric language (this includes poetry written to convey a message or that elaborates a concept through the use of literary devices.)

i ROBOT = i REVIEW the second

2006-12-08T11:25:00.000-07:00

Check out CM Magazine online for a very thoughtful reading of i ROBOT. Dave Jenkins's review provides much insight into the mechanics of the book. Thank you Dave for your kind and intelligent review.

I'm horrified

2006-11-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

Please go here . The soldiers in this video should be ashamed of themselves. And they are given guns. They can't even be trusted with a bottle of fucking water.

Thank you for posting this.

Poetry in Tesseracts 10!

2006-11-02T19:30:00.000-07:00

Check out the Edge website for more details!

SHE SAID YES!!

2006-10-29T11:19:00.001-07:00

So it is official. The big news is no longer secret - Andrea and I are getting married summer 07! Last night our friend Paul Kennett cooked a delicious dinner for us and at the end of the dinner I proposed and Andrea accepted. Paul made us an appetizer of cucumber slices with hummus and plain yogurt and sesame seeds. We ate them when Andrea got home from work and sipped on Kir Royales. We then had beef tenderloin slow roasted with tyme, baby yukon potatoes, and beans with onion and red and yellow peppers. During dinner we drank a bottle of Chateauneuf-du-pape, M. Chapoutier, called La Bernardine. It was delicious. For desert I had a cheese plate and Andrea had some chocolate. Paul and Jill joined us in toasting our engagement with some Pol Roger Champagne! Needless to say, we are a little hurting this morning. She said yes. And it is snowing today. Somehow that seems magical and apropriate.

Cowtown Launch of i ROBOT tonight!!!

2006-10-27T13:22:00.000-06:00

This is it! The hometown launch of i ROBOT poetry by Jason Christie happens tonight at Pages in Kensington. I'm particularly nervous abot this reading because so many of the people who have inspired me and encouraged me during the writing of this book will be in attendance. We'll also be showing the Book Short film made to accompany the book as well. Big night! O I am so nervous...

Aaaaaaand...

More news to follow very shortly of a secret and insanely exciting nature... dun dun dunh....

i ROBOT invades La Belle Ville and Tesseracts Ten!

2006-10-26T11:32:00.000-06:00

Montreal was spectacular. The reading went really well and the other writers there read really well too. Anita Hades was there to cheer me on which was really great and made me feel like I had some family in the room. Jon Paul Fiorentino was gracious enough to let me crash at his place and he crashed around with me all weekend. He even waited patiently while I got my hair cut. Ryan Statz and I hung out on Monday and tried to go to the Musee des Beaux Arts but it was closed... Instead I got to see all the cool art Ryan has been making! I think that was better than going to the Musee anyway. The only downside to the trip was that I couldn't have stayed longer! I didn't feel like I had my bearings in the city at all.

In other news, I found out I've got poems in Tesseracts Ten! A speculative literature anthology put out by EDGE . Check it out! I loved Tesseracts 9 and I'm honoured to have some work in this anthology!

On my way to Montreal!

2006-10-20T22:44:00.000-06:00

I'm headed to Montreal this weekend to launch Canada Post and i ROBOT poetry by Jason Christie. If you are in Montreal, please drop by and say hello. The event is at The Green Room (5386 St. Laurent) on October 22nd starting at 7:30 pm and admission is free! My globetrotting mate, Andrea, is in San Francisco this weekend to run a half-marathon with her mom! Everyone wish her luck! She is the best.

!!! Huun-Huur-Tu !!!

2006-10-20T22:40:00.000-06:00

The band Huun-Huur-Tu played tonight in Calgary and they were phenomenal. They are from Tuva, a country in the Russian Federation and they perform some traditional throat singing songs as well as some beautiful contemporary compositions. Their music moved from energetic pieces about horses to slow meditative songs that involved them replicating the noises made by animals and the environment. I can't get over the humble majesty and beauty of their music. If you haven't heard them before, please pick up a CD to support these phenomenal artists.

!!! Magnolia Electric Company !!!

2006-10-15T02:39:00.000-06:00

O. Jason Molina and Magnolia Electric Company played the Hi Fi Club tonight, October the 15th, here in Calgary and they fucking rocked. Before the show, Jason Molina signed my copy of his amazing new solo album. I had the good fortune to talk with him again briefly before his set and he was extremely kind and generous. It seemed that the sound at Hi Fi was off again, but Magnolia Electric Company rose above the feedback to play one of the most moving and incredible shows I've ever seen. I'm somewhat smitten with this band. See their myspace here .

i ROBOT = i REVIEW!

2006-10-12T18:00:00.000-06:00

Peter Darbyshire's Read This! column/blog at The Province's website has some nice things to say in his October 12th poste about i ROBOT! Thank you Peter!

oh dear god... how appropriate...

2006-10-10T15:25:00.000-06:00

thanks Jessica.

'What will your obituary say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Toronto Trip September 2006 to promote i ROBOT!

2006-10-02T01:24:00.000-06:00

I have just had an amazing time visiting Toronto this past week and a bit. I stayed with my grandmother and my brothers in Etobicoke and a few times with Conor Green and Angela Rawlings in Toronto near my most favourite coffee shop ever... Angela and Conor are always extremely generous with their time and living space when I'm in Toronto, and I can never thank them enough for their hospitality. This visit was no exception with loads of hilarious chats and delicious food.

One of the best things I did while in Toronto was to vist Katherine Parrish's high school. Katherine invited me to speak to a few classes in the library and then to her Writer's Craft class later in the day. Her students listened patiently while I read them some poems from i ROBOT and then asked some poignant questions afterward. My personal favourite was: are you rich? Thank you Katherine for such a wonderful opportunity!

While in Toronto I read at the Test reading series and I have to thank Mark Truscott for his invitation to do so, and also his graciousness as a host. His questions were challenging and insightful. I also quite enjoyed hearing Diana Fitzgerald Bryden read her work. My mother was especially moved by Diana's poems that investigated the language and attitude of self-help culture.

Speaking of my family... Many of them showed up to the Test reading. My Aunt Cindy and Uncle Rick, my Aunt Jackie and Uncle Mark and cousins Clayton and Alanna, my mom and her partner John, my two brothers, Shaun and Kevin and their partners Marion and Kim, and my grandmother all made it to the reading, then they continued on to a performance by Shaun and Marion at Now Lounge, then they came to Stones Place and stayed until 1 AM. My grandmother, aunt and mom all danced well into the wee hours of the morn, much to the delight of John Barlow. John claimed bragging rights for the fact that he got to dance with three generations of Christie family members. Though, angela, Conor, and Kyle could certainly make a case as they were quite welcoming to my family on the dance floor. WHAT A NIGHT! Although, there was one person missing, who would have made the night even better by her attendance...

Speaking of Andrea Ryer, we have some very exciting news that we will make public in a very short while... And no, we are not expecting any little ones just yet... I've really felt so lucky this year having two books out and now having this soon-to-be-announced secret...

Some highlights of the trip were: spending time with Travis Murphy and Carmen, Julie and Michelle, getting to see Kyle Buckley and Pasha Malla again, spending some quality time with Scott McVittie, seeing Reiko Simizu, Lindsey Blake, Mark Martin and Ryan Waye at the the Test reading, participating in Angela's Nuit Blanche performance of Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists (every so often I just have to type out that title), visiting Margaret Christakos at her house and hearing the Four Horsemen's poems echoing down the hall, seeing Jesse Huisken and Alanna Wilcox albeit briefly in both cases, Kilgour's with John Barlow, Mark Laliberte and Chantelle and Conor, seeing Jon Paul Fiorentino on his approach to Wort on The Street and subsequently finding out that he is ok, riverspine magazine, the fog sculpture along Philosopher's Walk on the U of T campus, signing copies of i ROBOT at Bakkas Phoenix books on Queen St, these little LED lights that angela and I bought at Active Surplus, the fact that angela is probably frantically playing Morrowind and will soon fall further down that slippery video game slope to World of Warcraft land...

There were some downsides to the trip tho: not getting to see Daccia Boomfield, not getting to spend more time with Bill Kennedy tho we did manage to get some drinking done at the Victory Cafe, not getting to see my friends in Milton especially Jim and Alison and Ava and the newest addition to their family, not getting to see Kyle and Pasha again, not chatting with Alanna W and Jesse more, not getting back to Active Surplus to buy more of those LED lights, not having Andrea there with me, not being able to play World of Warcraft, and not being able to mash everyone I care about in Toronto and Calgary into one big super mash-up.

Next event for i ROBOT madness: Montreal on October 22nd!

Birthday Bowling and House Party Fun!

2006-07-23T19:05:00.000-06:00

Thanks to everyone who came for the bowling and house party extravaganza... And, sorry that I went to bed so early but it was very, very necessary. That was one of the best birthdays I have ever had and it was because y'all are so much dang fun. Here's some of the photos from my camera happy spree:

!!! BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY BIRTHDAY !!!

2006-07-17T21:58:00.000-06:00

Dear friends,

July 18th, 2006 is the day that I will finally become a man. I will be turning 29. It is my birthday. For those in town, we are planning on going bowling this Saturday at
Chinookbowl.

http://www.chinookbowl.com/ (<<<<o hot classic hyperlink from way back when).

We’ll be there from about 6 till 7 or 7:30… then and then, we will be chez nous. Psssst me at

jasonchristie615@hotmail.com

for more info but I can tell you it will be after 8 and it will go late. Bring yer own drinks and maybe some snacks if ya got em or want em. Maybe we’ll order a wheel. Who knows? Perhaps Travis will do an impromptu magic show or something else with his new projector.

I hope you are all well, and, well, er, younger.

With age comes sincerity and therefore I am now sincerely yours,

Jason

From the Dead Letter Office

2006-07-14T17:20:00.000-06:00

><<Begin transmission of message>>
>
>Post Approved by Censor Program #31244568
>
>
>I am writing this note on the sad occasion of the news that my next book of
>poems, i-ROBOT (EDGE/Tesseract 2006) has now gone to the printer in ********.
>Therefore, it is with great sorrow that I ask for assistance to help promote
>awareness of the fact that the book is available for preordering thru the usual
>online channels and also from the EDGE website (www.edgewebsite.com) and will
>be commercially available September 1st, 2006. I don't know if this message
>will make it through in time as [truncated]. God help us all.
>
>Sincerely and with warmest regard,
>
>Jason Christie
>
>Formerly of the 31st Regimental Anti-robot Brigade
>and currently classified as MIA.
>
><<Message truncated>>
>

Vicious Beast

2006-07-13T03:09:00.000-06:00

The wolf that ate the sun passes as a story from tree to sapling to nut and back to tree again. In this way the wolf mythologizes into the yesterday specter that haunts the glades and meadows, the clearings under moonlight to sparkle rippled water and shine rocks. The trees shiver closer every time clouds cover the sun. Their leaves curl. They shelter. Branches hold branches and leaves slip softly against other leaves. Their animosity toward wolves is called protection and they level their justice in the violent wind, they harbour a deep seated resentment for the wolf that stole their sun, for each and every wolf that manifests the potential of their death. The trees shudder in their self-righteous wish to abolish the forest of wolves, they hide this truth deep in their roots and only speak of it underground where the wolves can’t listen.

Canada Post and i-ROBOT!

2006-07-07T13:58:00.000-06:00

Very thoughtful and kind review of Canada Post on rob mclennan’s blog:

www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

i-ROBOT went to the printer yesterday! …

Trying to organize a book tour for September … Drop me an email if you’d like details!

I’m still in a bit of shock over how fortunate I’ve been this year to have a book that looks as great as Canada Post out and another one that looks amazing on the way. I’m really proud of these books! Who’d a ever thought I’d actually pull it together to write one let alone two! It seems really bizarre to me that I now have books available through Amazon.ca. Not to mention that I have seen them on bookstore shelves! That was perhaps the biggest shock and warmest pleasure. When I can get them from the library, then I’ll know this hasn’t all been the wistful dream of a pimply 18 year old kid writing terrible poems in his basement. I’ll have to realize it is the reality of a pimply 29 year old kid writing poems in his basement… um… well, anyway… I’m excited!

The Leciconjury Reading Series

2006-06-23T12:33:00.000-06:00

Thank you Bill and angela for presenting some of the best poetry readers I know to the audiences in Toronto. I’ve only ever attended two Lexiconjury nights because the year they began I moved to Calgary to begin my MA. The two nights I attended were also nights where I had the good fortune to be one of the readers. Your kindness as hosts and organizers and the audience’s generosity made the Lex a paramount reading series and certainly the best one I’ve ever had the chance to experience. And in the spirit of the Lex, I offer the following Obituary:

The End of The Lex

Cramming sardines into small books at a local Cannery was not The Lexiconjury’s idea of a career.

"It was the worst job imaginable," she told her children decades later. "Instead of coffee breaks or cigarette breaks, we would take 'throw up' breaks. It was a real incentive to finish high school and start becoming a reading series"

As a San Diegan, The Lexiconjury found something more to her liking after meeting Bill Kennedy and angela rawlings.

While high-profile poets and sportsmen hogged the headlines, Rawlings and Kennedy were instrumental in setting up the meetings that resulted both in the Lexiconjury’s move to Toronto, Ontario, Canada and the instatement of the Open Michelle.

Rawlings and Kennedy laid to rest the Lexiconjury Reading series Friday at Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla. She was 76.

The cause of death was unknown.

Born Wanda Stintson in Carnegie, Okla., The Lexiconjury was the youngest of nine children in a farming family. During the Depression, her family moved to Monterey, where her father found work at Fort Ord, an Army base.

In high school, she worked afternoons at local fish canneries, which were suffering from a manpower shortage during World War II.

"If she hadn't been a real person, John Steinbeck might have invented her," said friend Steve Cain, comparing her to the transplanted Oklahomans who populated Cannery Row in the author's novels.

After marrying a Navy man and settling in San Diego in the late 1950s, The Lexiconjury worked for a local bakery. Starting as an office clerk, she rose to secretary-treasurer, winning awards for office efficiency.

"Mom was a 'modern woman' 20 years before there was such a term," said her daughter, the YARD reading series. "She raised three kids, started two successful businesses and still had time to work for her church and for interests that covered everything from horse racing to visiting art museums."

In 1968, two years after a divorce, The Lexiconjury opened the first of her two accounting firms. She operated her own business until 1988. In recent years, she worked with her second husband, a real estate investor while living in Del Mar. She will be missed.

We Are Not Afraid

2006-06-16T00:15:00.000-06:00

Thank you Stephen Harper for making Canada a great big target for Terrorism with your aggressive operations in Afghanistan. However, be not afraid Canadians! The people behind SARSstock are set to bring you: TERRORSTOCK! Let’s show the world through Rock ‘n’ Roll that we are not afraid to be targeted by militant religious groups.

Canada Post: 1st Review Ever!!!

2006-06-13T19:07:00.000-06:00

The lovely, talented and kind Sina Queyras has commented on Canada Post at her blog which means that she is the first person to review my book! Thank you Sina for your thoughts.

The subject in Capitalism?

2006-05-30T21:18:00.000-06:00

Do you see the man who’s savage and lean
His father’s ashes sprouted in his graying beard
And he bore his whole heredity in his face
He seemed to be dreaming about the future
Turning his barrel organ all the while
Its lingering voice lamented in marvelous
Glug-glugs squawks and muffled groans

-Guillaume Appollinaire, Trans. Anne Hyde Greet

The line that gets me is “he bore his whole heredity in his face.” Makes me think of Deleuze and Guatarri’s Faciality Chapter in 1000 Plateaus.

Boundaries and Frontiers

2006-05-26T17:16:00.000-06:00

Legally, the rocks challenge the wind and water for the right to wield supreme executive power over the forest. They believe only they are capable enough to determine the shifty border that separates the forest proper from the provinces beyond. The animals, for their part, stay out of it, content to exist within the comfortable confines represented by the visible limit of the forest as determined by the clear demarcation between trees and fields. The rocks extend the forest’s boundary a little farther to include the far-reaching roots which siphon water filtered through the bedrock under the fields. The water and wind challenge the rocks’ claims and determine that even the fields are within the domains of the forest since without the forest’s edge there would be no such thing as a field in the first place. The rocks are legacy, the wind and water an omnipresent history able to reference the constant stability of their repetitive impermanence. We have yet to hear from the trees as to which side of the debate they favour. Thus far they have been able to remain aloof despite having a vested interest in a larger, static and fixed forest.

flickr account activated!

2006-05-19T13:31:00.000-06:00

i'm not sure how to search it, or find my flickr page, but i was asked to make some of my visual poems available online by a friend and thot flickr would be the quickest and easiest way to do so. stop in and check out some of the poems if you can find them!

***hint: this link might work***

Open Letter

2006-05-08T23:10:00.000-06:00

Just received this Open Letter in an email. Thought it should be posted because it elucidates some of the larger concerns operating in our commmunity in Calgary as well as in the communities beyond.

I would like to commend Jay for his thoughtful response to the discussions flying around and beyond the Blogs. I would also like to call attention to the fact that the target of public malignment can often seem too far away to actually be affected by negative and hostile assaults, or too far removed from an immediate vicinity to the attacker, the Internet offers just such a distance, but the attack is no less damaging --- no one has broad enough shoulders to suffer abuse and no one should have to. The world is too small for this bullshit, people work too hard, and the Canadian writing community shouldn't have to suffer the presence of anyone expressing intolerant or cruel views, especially when such views pretend to hold critical merit but are actually shallow, poorly-articulated and baseless bashing. I'm not going to name any names, but it is sad to see friendships and friendly relationships destroyed because of the selfish desires and adolescent hijinks of so few. And I find it particularly important that these selfish desires mask themselves as 'truth' --- a shakey proposition with which to begin warring, keeping it real as though real weren't the greatest falsehood going. Please read the Open Letter below and if you'd wish to add your name to the letter then please let me know and I can connect you to the appropriate person.

Angela, you've been a focus of a hateful energy lately and a deep negativity. Please don't let this derail your creativity. You are at the very least as strong as the people who care about you, and from what I've witnessed with the conversations I've had this week, and those on and off the blogs, we are many. Thank you for your efforts to diminish abusive behaviours within the communities you call home and to call attention to how these behaviours are silently accepted and proliferated by those who do not resist them, and thank you to those who drafted this open letter for doing the same. I gladly add my name to the list and hope the tide will turn. We all deserve better, and we should all endeavour to try to be a little better.

OPEN LETTER

In response to recent events in which Angela Rawlings has been publicly slagged, we the undersigned wish to vehemently express our love and respect and admiration, both personal and professional, for Angela and our opposition to personal attacks against members of our literary community.

For all of us, the lexiconjury reading series and the lex list have been vital elements of our Toronto writing community. The labour, vision, connectivity, and generosity donated by Angela over the past many years have touched all of us personally and contributed greatly to our practice as individual writers.

Angela, we love and respect you, your community-building impulse and pro-activism, and your brilliant, brave, truly inspired writing project. You inspire and teach us how to build positive community and to lead an integrated artistic life.

Angela deserves our thanks and protection when some among us engage in misguided bitter shallow sarcastic and often sexist behaviour which seems aimed only at finding negative attention and inflicting cruelty.

We also wish to commend Jay Millar for the difficult position in which he has found himself as publisher and blog host, and for navigating what has been a confusing week.

We realize this letter may provoke general curiosity and concern from those in our community whose backs instantly go up at injustice. We would like to confirm that recent defamation against Angela by specific individuals in the experimental writing community is the tip of an iceberg that we've all observed melting down for some time, and that there have been other targets of abuse as well.

This defamation has taken the following forms, among others: Colleague writers have mocked and/or attacked other writers maliciously and ongoingly in public spaces -- including at readings, and on blogs and websites; and, Colleague writers have colluded in the sexist parodying of the body and private person of female members of the literary community, including at a public reading and on blogs and websites.

Let's ask that we all pay attention to how we treat each other, and if there are future occasions on which we see our colleagues being slagged, that we stand up to it and challenge it directly and openly and quickly. The lex list can be a space of discussion and social justice, which does not mean that we reduce our critical polylogue. Perhaps it means we take ourselves more seriously as writers and humans, read each other's artistic production and, instead of lampooning the generalized idea and quality of our artistic projects, we give it the substantive consideration it deserves.

The below list of signatories is not intended to be exclusive. We believe and know that our concerns are shared by many others in the community. We welcome responses and further dialogue, and we invite you to post this Open Letter on your blog and website to publicly support Angela and others who have recently experienced harassment and to promote equity and collegiality in our community.

The Robot Cuff Links

2006-05-08T00:46:00.000-06:00

Andrea bought me some awesome new cuff links to inspire me to finish off the last details of the robot poems book entitled, i ROBOT. Check out this website for some sweet info! Also, check out this website for information about a short film inspired by the wee robots in my poems.

Desert Program

2006-04-16T15:32:00.000-06:00

To tell the water: you have forced the necessity of your exclusion. As though the wolves could dictate an order their own size, shape and smell that sounded in their language, as though nothing existed beyond the cold, static, geometry of their many-latticed voice. What a prison, the rocks think to themselves, these wolves, too, will pass.

Canada Post

2006-04-12T21:48:00.000-06:00

I'm so very happy to announce that my very first book of poetry is available! It can be purchased online, preordered at Chapters or Chapters.ca or Amazon.ca or at local bookstores everywhere! The website where you can order it can be found here. Thank you so much to Jon and the team at Snare and Connundrum for all their hard work. The book looks great!

The Forest

2006-03-23T23:25:00.000-07:00

I showed up in the book at this point. I walked into the forest as I’d been instructed to do. I walked so far that I couldn’t see the surrounding countryside, all was leaves, rustles and twig cracks, all was green and brown, soft and springlike, or maybe autumnal. In the middle of the forest, I sat on a log to wait. After a few hours, animals began to creep from their places between the trees, out of burrows, the river burbled louder and the trees waved their branches a little more vigorously. They asked me, all in one voice, “what is it you are waiting for?” I looked all around me for the source of this one voice but could only see the forest and the trees. “I’m waiting for my friend,” I said aloud. “What was his name? Maybe we’ve seen your friend, or maybe your friend is lost. We could direct your friend to you.” Again I looked around, this time a little more agitated for the source of the voice I heard clearly though it was layered with the burbles of the river, the growls of wolves, the clack of rocks, the swish of leaves and the crack of twigs. “His name is Virgil,” I replied. The forest listened. The forest withdrew for a time, and then said: “your friend was here a very long time ago and your friend has passed on from here.” I sat on the rock, in the middle of the forest and for the first time realized I was stuck awkwardly in someone else’s book.

we MOVED!!!!!

2006-03-23T23:23:00.000-07:00

So Andrea and I are moved in with our good friend Travis. We have a couch finally so those in the Calgary vicinity should watch their inboxes closely for invitations to the best little housewarming in the west.

In other news, Canada Post should be showing up on my doorstep in the immediate future and I’m freaking out! I’m so nervous… Jon has done an amazing job with the cover and the design and I’m proud as all hell to be a part of the Snare Press publishing empire in the bloom of its nascency. I will be drinking champagne with my loved one when that book arrives no matter what the time of day. To think I will have a book of poems! Little Jason Christie from small town Ontario who was told by a guidance counselor that I would have a hard time in College and that I should learn a trade as quickly as possible.

In other, other news… The Robot Poems are several steps closer to being a fully fledged book. We have an anticipated launch date of September 1st, 2006. EDGE currently had the manuscript and we’ve had a bit of great news that I’m not sure I’m allowed to publicly share until it is made public by the pertinent parties involved…

Busy, busy, busy, busy. Sorry for so few updates fellow readers, and by that I mean Ryan…

Hope all youse are well. How is everyone these days?

Four New Wolf Poems!

2006-02-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

Glass Forest

Sometimes, when the wolves raise their voices, they can shatter trees. The rocks plead with them to stop such rampant destruction. A plea to which the wolves respond: “we burn bright, we travel the forest from meadow to mountain. In short,” they continue, “wolves know everything about the world. What would you know about our necessity?” Then, unceremoniously, the wolves turn and shatter a few more trees.

Bells

One day a wolf bent low to drink from the swift river. Amongst the tones and burbles he heard the sound of bells. He asked a nearby rock and the river itself to help him identify the noise. The river burbled on, only saying that it was simply a means and not an end. The rocks kept silent. If the wolf could have deciphered the noise, she would have understood that it contained a question. “What are those noises we hear mixed with the tones and burbles of the river?” the message asked. “And why does it sound like glass being shattered?”

Alternate Territory

“The river is a rough guide to follow to the city,” the old, sleek wolf said. “It is the only thing here not-glass.” The cubs gathered around his paws. They loved to listen to the old wolf’s stories even though all of their parents said he was mad for talking with the river.

Silhouettes

Light whispers through the otherwise silent glass forest. It carves these figures against a quiet backdrop. It makes actors of words. We see them move and slink to the end of the book and then back again. They act like wolves.

Testing, testing 1,2,3 . . .

2006-01-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

Fairly quiet in my life these last few weeks. Andrea and I have been ill. Spent the last few days in a flurry of bureaucratic activities: photocopied AFA grant application, printed off form I need to apply for interest relief status, plotted improvements to my computer and etc. In other news, we watched Ace Venture the other night… I forgot how old that movie was! I also watched the first two parts of a documentary called The Commanding Heights about the ‘battle’ for the world economy… I promise a much better update soon! How is everyone else doing?

Canada Post Delivers Canada Post Promo Material

2006-01-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

I love Snare books. The promo material for Canada Post looks beautiful. Printed on stiff cardstock pages with a ridged texture and cerlox bound into glossy covers... I'm drooling! Thank you Snare!

When I ask for Change You Take my Dollar and Make Sense

2006-01-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

Well, ok, so, words are commodities, sentences assemble them into a kind of product and an argument seals the deal with glossy syntax and grammar to boot. But the question has been put to me recently as to how poetry that eschews an obligatory sense-making could be conceived as political? Fair question.

I think art that sidesteps the language show is inherently threatening to a system meticulously built, with glaring loopholes yes, but built nonetheless from a certain organization for words and letters that results in meaning (say our, North American, social system. Our political arguments are constructed upon an agreement for a certain use of language, that of grammar and syntax). The only reasons a person cannot understand a written thing in such a system should be that the written things are too complicated for said person to read, or that they are nonsensical. An artist choosing to actively avoid using the bricks with which the foundations of our social system are built immediately becomes a threat because such an act invalidates the weapons we use every day to solidify our social individuality, our success, our self-image, our relationship to the atrocities and events that surround us, our world. When everyone agrees to an unwritten contract to use language a certain way it becomes threatening when someone deviates from that contract. A lot of power is derived from people being cowed into living within the confines of an elaborate language game. What would you say if you met a celebrity?

Sleeper Cells

2006-01-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

What do you call a self-sustaining ontology?

Canada Post in Matrix Magazine!

2006-01-10T00:02:00.000-07:00

Ok. One more post. My first book of poems ever, Canada Post has an ad in the new issue of Matrix! OMG… I’m all atingle. I new sleeping with the editor would work… Ok I’m just kidding… But he sure is handsome.

2005

2006-01-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

Things I discovered and came to love:

Band: Wolf Parade
Book: Jonathon Strange & Mr. Norrell
Person: Andrea Ryer (check out her sumptuous blog!)
Movie: Anchorman
Item: Cheese

The Last Little Bit of Theory... Gone...

2006-01-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

Is the refusal of meaningful intention in poetry a revenge against the thetic breaks posited by kristeva? Is it an inexpressible desire for a semiotic motility witnessed in the world around us that escapes as soon as we attempt to explain what is we are looking at and enjoying? Is it a revenge against a world that constantly interpelates us, forces us to testify in the unholy phantasm of representation just what it is exactly we think we are and what we think we are up to?

Clarity

2006-01-08T18:39:00.000-07:00

In the wind, the wolves feel their purpose emerge. They believe their words to be glass. To them, their speech sounds like the purity of a million shards shattering against the stone.

Second Book of Poems Ever - The Robot Poems!!

2006-01-07T17:43:00.000-07:00

So I've been pretty quiet about The Robot Poems for some time... In fact I don't know that I've written about it here before... but it looks like my next book of poems will be published in the fall! That's right! This fall The Robot Poems will be published by a Speculative Fiction press called Tesseract. They publish cutting edge Speculative Fiction that often has very unique plot elements. I'm reading one right now about Mounties!

The Robot Poems have enjoyed a warm reception from so many people over the last few years and I'm grateful to everyone who encouraged me to keep at them. They have appeared in several magazines, among them Matrix, West Coast LINE, dANDelion, and an upcoming issue of The Capilano Review. As well, some of The Robot Poems were published in the anthologies Post-Prairie (Talon 2005) and Shift & Switch (Mercury 2005). Thanks to all of the editors for their support too.

Christmas and New Year's Recap

2006-01-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

Andrea and I had a wonderful Christmas with her family. We were in the mountains and although it didn’t snow, we finished a puzzle, played games, watched movies, ate delicious food, and just generally relaxed. Her family and Santa spoiled me. It is tough to be away from your family for the holidays, but I am grateful for having had the chance to spend some time with Andrea’s family. They made me feel welcomed and made my Christmas merry! I hope everyone else had a happy holiday season!

For New Year’s Eve we kept it simple. We went to our friend derek’s, ate some good food, played trivial pursuit, we beat everyone at trivial pursuit, drank some yummy wine, and then headed home. It was a great night (thx derek) and because derek is in our neighbourhood we walked home. What did everyone else get up to for New Year’s? I would love to hear.

All best for 2006!

Tis the season to do nothing... Fa La La La La... o dear.

2005-12-21T15:59:00.000-07:00

Because I have little to do other than freak out and be sad about the holidays (despite Andrea’s wonderfulness and my best attempts at good humour it is a sad time of the year for me for several reasons), I have updated an old blog I made to post Good Day poems. Check it OOOOoooooooot!

Narcissism and Representational Art Practices (A Speculative Report)

2005-12-21T03:02:00.000-07:00

For a few months now I’ve been trying to figure a link between representational art practice and narcissism. I see film and tv in large part as a type of mirrored surface upon which we see representations of our lives played out. Sure the details are different, but the movies and tv shows amaze people in a similar manner to portrait and landscape painting in the past. We are amazed at how closely a story resembles our experience or an experience we would like to have (drama, comedy, romance), we are astounded when a complicated story is plausibly portrayed by actors/writers/directors et al (mystery, fantasy, sci fi). For all the unique plot twists, for all of the innovative telling, these movies really just show very human attributes played out in a number of situations. We sit rapt before these screens like a child who has not yet passed into the later stages of development. We are stuck in the mirror stage waving, giggling, pouting and watching ourselves move through the whole spectrum of possible human situations. I’m not suggesting we never tell stories again, watch comedies, tragedies, admire landscapes and portraits, rather I’m advocating that those who are interested begin to look beyond the narcissistic loop of representation. Of course, the other necessity is to not form our praxis against representation. Abstract art suffers for this reactionary approach to representational art. The two can simultaneously exist and should continue to do so, as should post-image/post-representational art practices and representational or imagistic art practices.

For writing, this might look like a break with syntax, grammar, sentence, word, letter… The results of this break will still become an object through the apprehension (interpellation) of a viewer; its break will be inscribed back into the language used to describe objects (i.e. sentences) so that we can discuss it/understand it. The phrase ‘I get it’ has this connotation of a person’s apprehension through view causing a previously amorphous entity to suddenly become meaningful. This is close to Jean-Jacques Monod’s notion of a universe without causality where the appearance of necessity arises from chance encounters between two things that (at the risk of sounding like a Spinoza brat) complement one another, decompose one another or have no discernible effect on one another. With post=representational writing we move into the world where necessity becomes an application caused by the reader; post-representational writing is akin to abstract art without the reliance on the abandonment of representation that abstract art requires for its own cohesion. I don’t like the prefix post-, non- isn’t much better. But for the purposes of a rather rambling speculation either suffices. Perhaps patapresentation?

Which _______ are you? (Thx Jessica)

2005-12-18T00:42:00.000-07:00

Which

major Romantic Poet are you?

I am Coleridge... um...

major Contemporary Poet are you?

I am Wallace Stevens... jeez...

form of poetry are you?

I am terza rima...

female poet are you?

Gertrude Stein.

The End.

Many thanks my friends...

2005-12-13T15:03:00.000-07:00

Hey! Jordan and Angela sent me this amazing tie in honour of my first book of poems. I'm not sure what they are trying to tell me... Maybe I need to be less of a critic? Thank you Jordan and Angela. You two are such amazing and kind people.

First Book of Poems Ever!!!

2005-12-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

Hey check out the link below! It is the online home of my first book of poems:

http://www3.sympatico.ca/jondrowning/snarenewtitles.html

Love,

Jason

Autumn

2005-12-09T17:44:00.000-07:00

The song weaved through the trees, branches knit furiously in the wind, beautiful and frantic music settled down to the forest floor where the rocks listened and said in reply: “It is you that has come.” The wolves sat near the rocks and said: “the music is only the wind through the trees, rattling cold branches together.” The rocks said to the wolves in one voice: “shows what you know.”

2005-12-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

Shift & Switch Launch a hit!

Thank you to everyone who attended the launch and to everyone who read last night! I'm all happy inside because of youse. My head is a bit too foggy to articulate anything rightly at this point . . .

Fucking Technology!!!

2005-12-06T13:15:00.000-07:00

Last night I lost all of my emails, and the entire contents of my Outlook address book because I clicked on some Outlook Configurations Settings icon. Outlook is now set to the original installation settings. Which means… I’ve lost your email address. Please email me if we haven’t spoken in some time and you happen across this website. Thank you. ARG. I am so angry.

Septiversary

2005-12-05T03:57:00.000-07:00

Happy, happy, Squish!

Prescription

2005-12-01T01:46:00.000-07:00

Ravens circle the forest, above the green treetops. There are wolves in the forest. The ravens know this and the stones rattle over a long enough period of time into smaller ravens. They take flight, then they join the circle high above the poem. Older ravens land amongst the dead leaves and dry branches by the river at the entrance to the forest. They settle where they land and are as motionless as stones. They become rocks to solve their permanence.

Wolf Transit

2005-12-01T01:42:00.000-07:00

Wind carries wolves past rocks and over the river. They howl in transit, past the forest boundary, in a language without syntax. Ravens purposefully misunderstand, if only to be able to say: “I am not a wolf.”

Beastiary

2005-11-25T01:36:00.000-07:00

Drunken Raven

A rough music rumbles stones against the riverbed, smoothes pebbles into rolling against the forest. It is an echo that destroys an original voice; like a ring of second growth around the primary scorch. Dreams toil between animals, keeps sound tacked to a barren copse. Let the anger permeate water to silver flow as rocks churn their permanence against a forgotten ability to change. That lets ravens become wolves and stones turn into both. I can’t remember when I began to speak.

*

2005-11-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

My grandfather passed away this morning at seven. My dad called to tell me but I missed the call. I woke from a strange vision in which I saw a raven with a plump green grape in its mouth. I called my dad to learn that my grandfather had died. I tried to get back to sleep after that but it was difficult, not only because I wouldn’t set the alarm and just kept hitting the snooze button either. I feel mostly relieved that my grandfather has died. That is a tough and natural reaction but it is hard not to feel guilty. While he was in the hospital, I couldn’t shake the image of him lying in bed with the tubes and everything, his body so wasted I could see the curves of his femur, his face gaunt. At the very least the frustrations that accompany being hospitalized are over. He was moved closer to my grandmother over the weekend I guess, to a palliative care facility that she’d been trying to get him into for the last week or so. The hospital kept giving her a run around saying it wouldn’t be possible. I think they were pissed to be losing a patient to another hospital system to be honest because the palliative care facility is on the other side of the Toronto-Mississauga border and my grandmother lives in Toronto right at the boundary. I think he held on long enough to see his family and get closer to my grandmother. I’m thankful that I could go home to visit with him, even if it was brief, and be with my family during this ordeal. It has been very hard on my dad and my aunts and my grandmother.

Death

A raven perched on a stone with a green grape in her mouth that was too large to swallow. The raven felt protective of the grape and only set it down to admire it, or to pick something else up to eat. Today, perched atop a small boulder, the raven watched a wolf pass her and the stone and head toward the thick and varied boundary of the forest. The wolf paused beside a shining birch tree and looked back at the raven, shadowy grey against the depth of the forest. The wolf said nothing, then turned and passed into the darkness. The raven scooped up her grape, said goodbye to the stone, and followed.

3 New Wolf Poems

2005-11-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

Long Distance

I sat next to the rock and whispered to it: “I admire your strength.” A wolf had crept up silently behind me and it quietly said: “You are only talking to yourself, you know.” I replied: “Yes, but I know that she will hear.”

Breakdown

Sometimes the forest needs to thin its trees. The water in a stopped river will only appear stagnant because of the volume of accumulating water, unwatched by any except the rocks the water from the river finds paths or makes them in the earth that lines the river, that gives shape to and forms the river, the mass of earth on either side that demarcates the river. If left unchecked the forest without thinning could grow into a haphazard mess forever wondering why it is alone and why it is said the forest has grown into its haunting. If left unchecked the dammed river threatens to spread into a stagnant, fetid pool lamenting the time when animals used to frequent it and keep it company.

Providence

The rocks watch as debris streams by their motionless faces. The rocks are all face; there is no point in a rock at which the rock, while intact, undergoes a differentiation within itself enough to say it has become part tree, or that it is an animal; the rock has no organs. The forest arranges itself around the rocks, even thinks of the rocks as its own thing to contain. The modern world looks at the rock with the face of a wolf and with the voice of a wolf says: “you have viewed people through my eyes.”

2005-11-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

The wolves led me into the book and said: "Listen, here is what we have made." And I listened. The rocks and branches, streams and animals all spoke, but it was not in the voice of the wolves; it was my voice ringing back from the forest. Sadly, I turned to the wolves and said: "I have become one of you."

thinking it through

2005-11-18T17:52:00.000-07:00

I think it will be difficult to accept my feelings about my grandfather while he is still alive. Is that weird? Being so far away from him and my family, and having had to already say goodbye to him knowing he will die has been really hard. I’m in the throes of a prolonged mourning. When my grandmother on my mother’s side died it was a shock and because of how quickly it happened there wasn’t a span of time between realizing she would die and when she actually died. So I found myself immediately faced with grieving. As it is, I’m experiencing a low level of grief at almost every second I’m awake and it is poisoning my happiness and willingness to be social. I feel like I’m faking being happy. This sounds sadder than I actually feel in reality. I guess I’m just taking the opportunity of journaling here to let myself think things through a bit, to spread around in my feelings and poke at areas that hurt. It has always been easier for me to do this kind of emotional exploration in writing than in speaking.

Fear

2005-11-16T23:18:00.000-07:00

The stones asked the wolves to listen. “We are poems,” the stones told them. “Our writing happens over time with the wind and trees.” The wolves said, “We write poems. The forest is our anthology.”

2005-11-16T21:45:00.000-07:00

tons of crazy posts = avoiding cleaning room after returning from toronto and avoiding doing the work i should be doing. bad llama.

deBeyer has a new book!!! and Shift & Switch has a new website!!!

2005-11-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

Check out Michael deBeyer's new book!!!

I'm very excited that Michael has a new book out. I'm picking it up tomorrow at Pages here in Calgary. I had to special order it! Michael was the first person to get me serious about writing poems. Before I met him I knew nothing about poems, but his passion for writing and his conviction put me firmly on the path upon which I currently still find myself. Not only is he a fantastic writer, but he is also easy on the eyes. His first book, Rural Night Catalogue is exquisite and I urge everyone reading this, yes that means you Fifty, to pick up copies of both. Michael also has poems in Shift & Switch edited lovingly by yours truly and a.rawlings and derek beaulieu. The website for Shift & Switch is a beautiful, beautiful thing. Much thanks to Matthew Hollet for all of his hard work there.

2005-11-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to a.rawlings and conor green for letting us stay with them in traaaanah. And thank you to Dash B. for getting us spirited onto the sneaky dee's dance floor last saturday night. I needed a little bit of ass shaking. Thank you also to Andrea's friend Megan and her roomies for opening their living room to us. Thanks to my little brother Kevin and his gf for picking us up and sporting us around. Thanks to Paul and Jill for kicking the whole trip home off with a little injection of care. WE LOVES ALL OF YOUSE!!!!

Manifesto

2005-11-16T16:27:00.000-07:00

Words carry letters.
Sentences carry words.
Paragraphs carry sentences.

Family Matters

2005-11-16T00:22:00.000-07:00

I guess with everything that has happened to my grandfather, family has been on my mind a lot lately. When I opened my suitcase here in Calgary, the smell of my grandparent’s house in Etobicoke wafted out. All of my clothes smell like my grandma and grandpa’s house. It is sad and at the same time kind of sweet. I really have to get better at calling my family and participating in their lives. I’ve felt so alone. I have the good fortune to have made some great friends, and am in love but I do feel alone without the unquestioned permanence that family offers. This is a difficult permanence in many cases, particularly in my own, but those who have it are often completely unaware that they benefit from it, those that don’t are acutely aware that they don’t have it, and are also acutely aware of those that do. It is hard sometimes not to act out of jealousy or envy of my friends’ families. It always has been a little tough. I realized while at home last week that it doesn’t have to be this way. I have a loving, vibrant family that may not be perfect, and are, like every family, far from it, but that love me unconditionally. The cure for my loneliness is in activity; I can call more often and take part from a distance in my family’s decisions and lives and they can take part in mine. They are at the periphery of my life waiting to be more central and I have only to realize it to remedy my loneliness. Going home has helped me to come to a better understanding of what it means to have a family and that I may have turned away from them under the misguided notion that they abandoned me a long time ago. I discovered they don’t know why I don’t call, why I have a hard time relating to family, and I thought all of this was painfully clear. I discovered, I guess, that they are all there still, my grandparents, my mother, stepmother, brothers and stepsisters and my dad, my aunts and uncles and cousins. My family is still there waiting for me. I just hope I can smarten up in time to really enjoy them.

*

2005-11-15T16:02:00.000-07:00

Near Death Poem

Mist precedes our faces into the sentence. We arrive in the poem fully formed. The wind sounds feeble tonight from your lungs. I’m not nearly clever enough to outsmart curled leaves, nor to uncurl them, to ask them to uncurl. Sometimes the need for food has more to do with dry leaves then with nourishment. I want to stop collecting small rocks, to stop rolling them in my mouth when the leaves get this stubborn. Because maybe then I could tell you I love you and that I think maybe bravery, courage and strength have more to do with letting the leaves curl into their death and learning to sing with the crisp night air and the wind for their passing.

2005-11-10T14:23:00.000-07:00

I have had a good time visiting my family in Milton and introducing them to Andrea. I'm especially glad that I get to introduce her to the friend I've had the longest tonight. I wish we could see him for a bit longer but we have to get into Toronto to start the last leg of our trip. She has been a great sport about hanging around in boring old Milton and spending a bunch of time with my family. I just hope it wasn't too rough on her.

We are on our way to stay with friends of Andrea's tonight then we'll be with friends of mine and my grandmother on the weekend. Anyone who is interested should look in at sneaky dees on Sat. b/c we will be dancing and cavorting there after seeing a friend's play.

Milton is this weird little place. It still has a small town charm to its downtown and to many of the homes in and around the downtown area, but the town is expanding at an exponential rate. Massive developments are springing up all around the town in what used to be farmland. I miss some of the quaintness that the town had when I was a kid. As part of Andrea's torture, we went around to places I used to hang out (the mall), to one of my old schools, and to the first house we lived in when we came to Milton when I was four. I remember that home being much bigger and I remember the field behind that house being much bigger. We used to play British Bulldog there when we were small and I seem to recall 20 - 30 kids stretched across this field, each with room to manouvre. Strange how the memory stretches and condenses things. British Bulldog was a game where we divided into two groups and each group took turns trying to get past the other group. The other group could do anything to catch and take us down. This game was really violent and usually involved someone getting a black eye, or busted lip. The field was ideal for this game becuase it was between two rows of houses, and the houses backyard's faced onto this field. So really it was a twenty to thirty foot channel between fences. We had nowhere to go but forwards.

We fly tonight,then we take Berlin

2005-11-08T15:15:00.000-07:00

Today is the big day! Paul and Jill have graciously agreed to get Andrea and I to the airport and my little brother is going to pick us up at Pearson at midnight. Tomorrow we will be in Milton! Andrea may continue on to London, Ontario to see her brother. I’ll spend a few days with my family and then we rush off to Toronto to see Andrea’s friend Meagan and my friend Angela. Should be ok. Then Sunday my family is getting together to visit my grandmother for her birthday. Andrea and I might stay with her Sunday night then I or we will go visit my grandfather in the palliative care facility. It will be hard. This whole trip home is vexed but I’ll be glad of the chance to see my family during such a tough time and to spend some time with my grandma and grandpa again. I’m excited to fly with Andrea. I love airplanes so much.

2005-11-07T17:16:00.000-07:00

Interviewed for a sub position at the Central Library branch today. Kind of shitty because if I get this job I’ll probably have to give up the job I have at the Village Square branch. I get enough hours at Village Square and would probably get enough in the coming months, but I do worry because they’ve hired another sub. This makes three of us fighting it out for hours… Not great. If I take the job at Central, then I’m worried I won’t get enough hours at Vsquare because they’ll have to hire another sub to replace me… ARG!

In other news. I’m heading home tomorrow with Andrea. I’m excited that she will meet my folks, and I’m excited to see friends in Toronto again, but I just wish it were under better circumstances. I can’t stop thinking about my grandfather.

Good news: Open Letter is taking an essay I wrote on Kenneth Goldsmith! Yes! Aaaaand, I might have some poems in an upcoming issue of The Capilano Review. The number of good things happening to me is conspicuously high which can only lead me to believe in some benevolent force trying to balance out the grief and sadness I’ve been feeling. Call it karma, call it whatyouwill. I’m grateful.

Newly Wolves

The trees said stay and we stayed. What were the trees other than the words we were looking for to say to one another?

Chorus

How else to move? There are too many of us now not to unpack a bit. Sound clashes against and off silver-white birch, our ears follow the zig-zag deeper into the forest. Sound ricochets from rock to jagged rock, tugs us inside. Sound thuds into moist logs and thick mud. When we lose our direction, even temporarily, follow the wolves, let the words always form a home one step away from nature. Let that home be a source, a reference at all points, a perpetual comfort from the cold, wind and rain. From here find the letters to lend your howl to the chorus, join the gale and downpour, let the world ring with your many voices. The night amplifies the polyphony for those who cannot be close.

Of Wolves

Words shelter together to travel. Sentences gather a momentum. Paragraphs arrive somewhere near the forest, to return the wolves to their wild.

Trip to Toronto

2005-11-06T20:01:00.000-07:00

So Andrea and I fly to Toronto on Tuesday. I’m really not looking forward to this trip tho. It is always a little hard to see my family because we don’t really get along all that well. Any trip home is already tense because of that, but this one will be extra tense because my grandfather is in a palliative care facility. It is hard knowing he is going to die. I have never been super close to my grandfather, and maybe that is partially what makes this so hard. I haven’t seen him in over a year now. Both he and my grandmother have been incredibly supportive throughout my life. They have unquestioningly trusted that I would follow my own path and even tho I didn’t see them as often as other people see their grandparents, I knew that they would always be there for me. It is hard now to think that one of them won’t be.

Brigade

A legion of leaves rasped form from sound. Quiet settles between breaths. We close the window. The room sticks into space like a clock ticks into time. Forests become the equivalent of leisure. We turn around into what we’ve lost: the path washed away last night under heavy rainfall. Only a muddy trail stretches and meanders back the way we’ve come, our footprints gone. That mud gets into my veins. My anger huddles somewhere around the stones, shuffles into the clear air, then hides behind a dead log. The words freeze. Words continue and freeze again. This winter will be exactly like every other one before. The trees assemble into a forest again. The leaves continue to rasp around me. The leaves continue and freeze again. I wish I could say these things to you before we close the window. Send them on the wind, play the leaves to communicate to you that I’ll miss you. When we see each other it won’t be through this lens. We are not wolves and yet we can’t find the words.

2005-11-05T00:06:00.000-07:00

Happy 6 months sweet pea!!!

new wolf poem:

Wolf Smile

What can a tree get except wind between its branches? That sound feet make sucked into wet mud then out again. Let the anger shatter stones from within, splinter trunks and boil rivers: I just want to see you again, shining in the sun.

2005-11-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

ONE HALF-YEAR FOR ANDREA AND I TOMORROW!!! i am so so happy.

Noise Poem Notes

2005-10-31T20:02:00.000-07:00

This write-up accompanied a cd of noise poems called lo-fi that were published by the mysterious NO PRESS. I thought I’d post it here, prompted as I was by my friend a.rawlings’s post about sound poetry. I can’t wait to hear what she’s put together.

Rumors of a Nomad Science: Noise Poems or a Rattle on the Stairs

Ghost voices. Phantoms Rattle. The noise as it passes into identity becomes a poem. These are gentle songs about sequence. They are gentle songs about the power of indeterminacy to enable a person to alter backgrounds at multiple points and in multiple ways instead of initiating a focused attack on a single (weak) point selected from many alternatives for its singularity and weakness; a note perches like a target on a map at which to take aim, one of several cities; an afterthought of theory. No notes, only noise, only gentle poems about a shifted perception: a machine's drone turns into a new context as part of a beautiful and frail noise poem; the machine’s physical utility is irrelevant because of its new role as a source of noise, a fragile myth, one voice crying into a revolutionary zeal, its silence gets lost. I composed many of these poems with the sound recorder software bundled into the Windows 2K operating system by layering and cutting-in sounds I found around my workplace. The sounds I found came from sources such as boilers and chillers starting up and the belts on air movers whining in the mechanical rooms of the building, saw blades whirring and air compressors chugging in the basement, cd skips and my recorded voice as well as ambient background noise while sitting at my computer. I recorded the sounds I found onto my voice message system through a cordless telephone. I then transferred the noises to my computer at home by playing the messages back into a cheap microphone through another cordless phone. I then manufactured and sequenced fragments of sound in an attempt to cast music and language as Royal Sciences that act like entrenched governments which ignore the noisy nomad cells of sound around them in favour of a markable or marketable standard, or in favour of a market within which to establish standards. Where elements of music and language appear in these poems, the surface tension between communication and its content forces sound into an ecstatic skitter which rattles like little ghosts up and down the poems' staircases; we go crazy.

With my poems I try to document the escape velocity of noise as it flies along the tangent of poetry away from the territory of music.

Meanwhile: If absence reifies presence, if absence is a precondition for a universe abundantly filled with matter, then these poems are esoteric noises signifying a boundary between being and meaning: not quite present enough to be music or evidence of a material self recorded and documented then broadcast, more like an echo overheard with no visible source, so, somewhat unlike most sound poetry. The voice recedes and these poems are not the sound of that vacuum, rather this recording captures a hesitant disbelief in the presencing of an original. The copy recedes into rumour like an unhinged ghost, a phantom presence that does not record a life lost or lived, a noise repeated into rhythm. If anything, then this is the early expression of a digitized being, its voice formed and limited by the constraints of technology: the software, hardware and interface of its enunciation. What was human about this recording dissolves in the static and hum of the digital copy. A recorded being in an aural virtual space exists imminently just before each instant and immanently throughout every coordinate of the space; it emerges but never arrives. Much like in the example of Schroedinger’s cat, we can never know whether the being is alive or dead until we check. Such a being is a ridiculous presence, always at once everywhere and until conceptualized, nowhere; it is caught between a comma and a period. Its laughter carves fake walls into a false space. We pretend an architecture to feel more at home or connected. These poems never exist. When the cd plays these ghosts haunt a virtual arcade with their laughter, theirs are the anamnestic noises of aural specters rattling an acoustic space. We are laughing. We pretend we are laughing.

Happy (sad) Spooky Day!!!

2005-10-31T18:09:00.000-07:00

Here’s a new wolf poem below. Today I got a lot of things finished or moved many things toward a finish of sorts. An extremely productive day for how I’ve been feeling of late. Andrea looked into some schools she is interested in attending to do her MA and we had a nice day hanging out.

Unfortunately things aren’t all upswing. Finances continue to be a burden. I need to fly home for a bit to visit with my grandfather who has been moved into a palliative care facility. It is sad to think of strangers caring for him in his last days, sad to think that he might pass away surrounded by people he doesn’t know and high on pain suppressants. I know my grandmother is sad that she is unable to care for my grandfather, she cared for her mother right up until her mother died last month. But my grandfather’s condition is unmanageable. It took my uncle and a friend of the family to get him into the car to go to emergency the other day. If his condition worsens then she won’t be able to do that. So I’m not upset with her. Andrea and I leave on the 8th and will return to Calgary on the 15th. So if for some strange reason anyone back in Toronto happens across this blahg, we might be seeing you soon!

A Pack Memory or A Paragraph

One to remember the tree that was hit by lightning. One to remember that a sentence knows when to stop. One to remember the cool shallow stream where we can fish. One to remember our secret cave in the hills toward the sunrise. One to remember the sunrise. One to remember lightning. The paragraph is a pack memory; the forest is our document. One to remember the grandfather you’ve loved faded into shadow then lost. A sentence knows when one remembers a sentence. What we call the hunt. Left alone the wolf won't hunt. Let me remember that left alone a wolf won't hunt.

2005-10-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

Today I am begginning the application process for two really sweet jobs at the Calgary Public Library. Keep fingers and eyes crosst. I'm not used to being this ambitious or eager. I think I'm usually too scared and then I hide behind being lazy. No more! Tomorrow I'm going to call SFU to see about ending up there as a PHd candidate. Here's a poem.

Scarves and Wolves and Leaves

Of a clear autumnal night, of the moon and meteor shower, and of that special alpha, say nothing. Instead, tell me about the snow, or write a sentence about scarves and wolves and leaves.

2005-10-30T01:03:00.000-06:00

sorry to have missed the party for those who might chance upon this blog and who were out in full scary revelry mode last night. i wasn't feeling to halloweenie. i took a small step toward finding some peace and happiness in my life. no wolf poem tonite. tonite it is sleepy time.

2005-10-28T13:01:00.000-06:00

Another of the wolf poems.

Like Wolves

Mist droplets tip each spike of fur on our lean bodies as we appear. Language becomes like our forest. We know where water falls, where safety exists and where to avoid and when. Trees spindle around us as we lope their lines, the disorderly forest neatly recognized in scent, in memory. When will the day come that our words can hunt again?

2005-10-27T10:37:00.000-06:00

Today I'm going to hang out with Gordo. I am also going to post another poem from The Wolves Won't Hunt. I'd be curious to know what anyone thought of these poems, tho I suspect Ryanis the only one who knows about this blog. Wolf's Miscellany Accept the branches, wind, lush grasses and leaves, leave me with the shadows scattered upon the earth. I'm beyond a receipt at this point for an easily formed mirage. What I wouldn't give to have the temperature remain warm, but I know harshness, threats, lean months, draw near. I smell them on the wind and can feel the wind as it turns, all sharp teeth and cold to smile in my direction.

2005-10-26T22:33:00.000-06:00

Ok another poem in the series. They've all ended up sad like... The Wolves Won't Hunt We lit the breakfast on fire, the ham, the eggs, and found ourselves a trumpet called island. What I wanted to say didn't materialize enough to serve lunch and so we chased the wolves through the forest in the hopes they'd transfer some of their speed to our legs, some of their fur to our thin skin, some of their call to our voices. Later, we gathered around the island because the music we'd heard elsewhere didn't satsify our need for community. We've always written novels. Eager to reshore beaches, and desperate to claim any lean-to within our windswept memory. The trumpet winds down. Our ears feel silence wave against the folds there between each short, sad note.

2005-10-26T22:17:00.000-06:00

I suddenly started writing about wolves the other day. So far I've put together a short suite of poems currently titled The Wolves Won't Hunt. The wolves are for Kyle Buckley and the poems are for Andrea Ryer. I'll post them here over the next few days just for the heck of it. I don't think this blog is on anyone's hit or shit list so maybe we'll all stay real quiet for a while. Cub Babble River and smoke, crisp mist floats from our mouths, then hangs suspended in mid-air, an emblem of what we said; the edges are necessarily foggy. Our eyes pierce any cloud or darkness. Our call reveals any distance. We grow into our warmth. We shed the river and run through smoke the same colour as our fur. We disappear in the fall. Our eyes loll peripehery into a uniform blankness. We've become wolves. Our words have become like wolves.