May 30 2010
[from the blog 'Bluenose Garden', May 28th 2010]:
I was reading the Complete Works of poet Elizabeth Bishop last night, and was struck again with how perfect Bishop’s poem “Cape Breton” captures what I always thought construction season must have been like on the island during mid-century (and I thought about that quite a bit while I was writing my thesis).
May 30 2010
[Christopher Lockett, from his blog 'An Ontarian in Newfoundland', May 23rd 2010]:
To put it another way: Why study poetry? Because it is complex and subtle and nuanced, and offers multiple interpretations simultaneously. What literary study offers is not breadth, but depth. What it offers is an opportunity to pit your mind against some of the greatest linguistic creations of the past five centuries—difficult at times, frustrating, but ultimately more rewarding than reading something facile and one-dimensional. To use a sports analogy, you don’t get better by playing with or against inferior players.
May 27 2010
Now at
THE RED MARTINI GRILL
75 Front Street 1, Nanaimo, BC V9R 5H9
(Cross Street: Front ST and Anchor WAY)
Phone: (250) 753-5181
MONDAY, May 31st, 2010
May 26 2010
['Bookhugger', May 18th 2010]:
In 2001 my mother mentioned, quite casually, that she and my father had arrived in Trinidad with two suitcases and a green Raleigh bicycle. I’d heard many of her early-days-in-Trinidad stories before, but not this. A green bicycle? They’d come by boat and the trip had taken weeks; this seemed like a very odd thing to bring all the way with them. I made my mother sit down and tell me everything about her green bicycle, enthralled with the image of her on a bike, cycling all over Port of Spain. Later, I wrote down on a scrap of paper ‘the white women on the green bicycle’ and stuffed it in the back of my filo-fax. There, the idea gestated for four years until late 2005 when I took the piece of paper out again and looked at it and thought, okay, yes, its time to think about writing this novel.
May 26 2010
May 25 2010
[Icelandic writer Gerður Kristný interviewed by SJ Fowler, 3AM Magazine, March 14th 2010]:
Gerður Kristný: I was 24 years old when my first poetry collection, Ísfrétt (Ice Warning), was published. My poetry was rather inward in the beginning. It took me six years to write my next collection, Launkofi (Secret Cabin, 2000). Time worked with me and the difference is obvious. The poems are much more outward and even more so in Höggstaður, (Weak Spot, 2007) my third and latest poetry collection. The frontiers of my poetry have expanded. Now I don’t hesitate to write about my deepest feelings, my family and what ever comes to mind. I can think about the same idea for weeks and months before I realise that it is actually a poem. One small example: my older son was born cross-eyed and had to have surgery in fact. A friend of mine looked at him and said ‘he’s got such beautiful eyes that they are drawn to each other.’ I kept telling people this until I realised that this could be something.
If a pregnant woman
stares at the stars
and the northern lights
the baby will be crosseyed,
says my friend
And look!
Your son
has such beautiful eyes
that they get drawn
to each other
May 17 2010
[Erin Balser, from 'books.torontoist.com', April 27th 2010]:
In November 2009, writer Chad Pelley launched Salty Ink, a blog dedicated to covering the Altantic Canadian literary scene. Since then, Salty Ink has emerged as an authoritative voice on all things bookish on the East Coast, covering everything from book design (they held a Judge a Book By Its Cover contest earlier this year) to emerging Maritime and Newfoundland writers (check out their monthly Shedding Some Ink On… profile series). Atlantic Canada has a vibrant literary scene, and Salty Ink covers it with humour and heart.
May 17 2010
[Jeannie Guy, Newfoundland Quarterly Volume 102 Number 2, 2009 Issue #433]:
He told us that he had never come across people before who ate the same dishes on a certain day of the week. He said in all his reading and studying people around the world, he had never encountered it. It was something foreign to him and he wanted to understand why we did it. I remember we students looked at each other shyly, strangely, out of the corner of our eyes when he said it. We did not know what he was talking about but we did not want to embarrass him or ourselves. What did he mean?
May 17 2010
[Chay Lemoin, 'IceNews', May 6th 2010]:
In 2002 I began an informal study of why Halldor Laxness dropped off the literary map after the initial success of his epic novel Independent People. When published in the United States in 1946 the book was a major best-seller with sales of 450,000 copies. It was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month club and was mailed to thousands of households across the United States. In 1995 the publication of the article of “A Small Country’s Great Book” by writer and academic Brad Leithauser in the New York Review of Books began a Laxness revival and he was once again read and lauded as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. After reading about Laxness’ support of Communism, I filed a Freedom of Information request, hypothesising that the United States government had information on the writer. After over a year of requests and denials I received proof that J. Edgar Hoover was involved in the investigation of Laxness which resulted in American publishers unwilling to publish an alleged communist at a time when such an association could result in jail and public scorn.