Episode Three: Montreal by Words

In the third installment of Montreal by Words, which we call the Food Episode, we talk about Montreal as a food city, a discussion with Jonathan Cheung of Appetite for Books, and we also talk to writer Jonah Campbell about his hilarious collection of short pieces, Food & Trembling.

Poet Laureates and Angry Reactions

So the poet Natasha Tretheway was named as the US Poet Laureate this week. Another well-known poet, whose name I won't mention, then wrote a scathing post on his Facebook page about her lack of talent and how poetry has been dumbed down (some clumsy metaphor about lowering the bar so low, we trip on it).

A lesson in the dangers of emotional reactions, I guess. I am all for strong opinions about writers and their work, but reacting in anger or frustration seems like such a dangerous road to go down. I learned the lesson long ago that writing just about anything while angry (Facebook posts, emails, blog posts) is never a good idea and always ends up being something I regret terribly.

Part of what Mr. Angry Poet reacts to, perhaps, is the simplicity of Trethaway's language. She is not, it's true, an overtly complex poet. Yet this tendency for certain male writers to dismiss certain female writers as talentless seems so 1962.  It gets at the heart of a common question I get: about which writers I would never invite. Last night over dinner, I was debating this with someone I had just met: whether a literary festival needs "good" writers in order to be considered successful. And it's something I feel strongly about: while "good" writers are fine, my goals as a Programming Director are to create interesting, complex and, yes, entertaining events. If that means including writers who are not considered "serious" or "good" writers, I really couldn't care less.

Another aspect of criticism easy to throw at Trethaway is how her "story" often seems to supersede her work, as if the details of her biography and those influences on her poems are an integral part of her poems. They shouldn't be. Naturally, though, her experience does reflect a certain kind of American experience and Tretheway's exploration of race and class in modern America does seem to capture something important. But her poetry is very "accessible" (the word my former advisor used to use to dismiss a writer as "not serious," as if an inaccessible writer is naturally smarter. Please. "Inaccessibility" often just strikes me as bad writing. Period).

Natasha Tretheway

Of course, we can't have a Festival with just NYT bestsellers and we do need to present a wide array of writers (representing different ages, genders, life experience, etc.) so that we can appeal to as many different kinds of public as we can. But though I am a bit of a snob in terms of my own personal reading habits, I don't approach festival programming in the same way. As I often say, it's not "my" festival.

No matter how one feels about her work, Natasha Tretheway would be a great "get" for us though I imagine now she's going to be quite in demand so if anyone's hoping to see her in 2013, it's a long shot.

Incidentally, I am fascinated by Tretheway's work and her story personally. That said, I respect Mr. Angry Poet's work a lot more and find his work to be full of subtlety, humour, and intelligence.

William Least Heat-Moon

In discussing our long list of potential 2013 Grand Prize winners, the writer William Least Heat-Moon came up in conversation. He's a writer I kind of forgot about though I remember reading his book, PrairyErth, when I was an undergraduate and being amazed by it. The book chronicles the writer's journey on foot through a rural county of Kansas, the people he meets, the stories he hears. As in his earlier book, Blue Highways (though this one spans a larger geographical area), Heat-Moon is a fascinating travel companion. He is so open to people, almost never judgemental, and his analyses and reflections seem to represent a time in North America that is long gone (though the book is only 30 years old).

I've been re-reading Blue Highways this week and I am struck again at the complexity of thought that emanates from a simple journey. Before cell phones, before Google maps, the author has to learn about where he goes by talking to the local people, hearing their colourful language and historical memories contained in day to day stories.

There is also a good deal about class though not overtly: the people he meets are often poor, uneducated, both suspicious of and open to "Northerners" or city people (outsiders generally). But the author delves into their stories as if these poor and isolated rural people were the movers and shakers. Like Studs Terkel, who also overcame that writer's knee-jerk tendency towards misanthropy, Heat-Moon finds value in those lives we often don't value.

Though I am no Luddite, Blue Highways resonates with me because it underscores the isolation that is more common in our contemporary lives. We all have such vast pools of knowledge at our fingertips but that ability also cuts us off from one another, all staring into our own separate illuminated boxes, countless faces all staring into these machines late into the night, fewer face to face conversations, less understanding of each other through just sitting down and getting the story directly from those who live it.

Peppered with photographs of the people he meets on his journey, the book is as visually appealing as it is textually engaging. In fact, a CNN piece I found last night revisits some of the people and places the author features in his book, thirty years later.

It's been a real treat re-connecting with this writer who I was such a fan of when I was in my early 20s. Often writers we like when we are young we grow out of, but not in this case. I hope I feel as thrilled to read William Least Heat-Moon in another 20 years.

Montreal by Words, Episode 2

Episode Two of Montreal by Words

Daniel Allen Cox, the "enfant terrible" of Canadian writing, talks about his new novel,Basement of Wolves, which is set in the contemporary film world of Hollywood. Cox talks about how his travels seep into his work and how cities play a role in his creative life.

Check out the podcast here.

Live from Banff

Spent the last few days here at the Banff Centre in the mountains above the village and have had an extraordinary time here with Festival directors from across Canada. From Cape Breton and Moncton to the Sunshine Coast of BC, representatives of 15 different festivals came together in two days of meetings to discuss our festivals, our futures, our pasts and our important shared interests. And what an amazing venue! Anyway, I can't work out how to embed photos from my iPad so the aren't any amazing shots with which I can illustrate this post, but I will try to post more information once I am in front of a proper computer back home.

Patrick Friesen's A Dark Boat

I've been loving this little book of poems by Patrick Friesen, called A Dark Boat.

Full of striking imagery and haunting lyricism, the book explores common every day themes (travel, working, nature) but with a dark twinge to them. This one, for example,

TULIPS

two tulips bent
like gravity a death
a third defiantly
yellow

the room wants
to leave through
the open window

a widow walks
the hallway
looking for a way
back in

she catches her breath
there is no one to
touch her ever but
the yellow tulip
where she sat
at the sill rain falling
on her hands

It's so simple on the surface: tulips growing juxtaposed against the notion of widowhood, but then the poem delves into a complexity with unusual phrasings like "the room wants to leave through the open window." There are passing references to Lorca (and a poem addressed to him) insofar as Lorca believed that "the timelessness of a poem depends on the quality and coherence of its images" (citation). Though on another side, there is a universality to these images and a debt to Lorca since the book seems to take the form of a kind of travelogue through Spain, made up of all the infinite number of moments or passing experiences that happen when we travel. And how can a poet travel through Spain and avoid nodding to Lorca?

ALMOST 60 OUTSIDE PEÑA DE LA PLATERÍA

the alley is as long as anyone's life
it bends like anyone's life
you sit on a cold stoop in the dark
waiting for the song you've waited for
gypsies walk by in black
guitars slung over their shoulders
laughing out of the east like a memory
the moon tilting into the courtyard
drunk with age and ancient youth
and tonight the rain is thirsty
tonight you are finally visible

tonight the rain is waiting to fall
filled with its longing for earth
a mongrel sidles near and stops
raising its snout to howl
then slowly lowers itself
looking up at you or the moon
you extend your hand
and it eases its weight fully
into the buckled cobblestones
and you don't know your age

you hear the heat
somewhere over the wall
somewhere in that courtyard
the staccato of black shoes
hand claps and a familiar guitar
and yes the rain is thirsty
and the stone gutter waits
for the running water of music
and tonight you will return
to your room on horno de oro
awake to the splattering rain
on the street outside the window
to the rain that falls
on a tile roof on a cedar tree
the rain that falls through you
in your sleep

tomorrow you'll
listen to the darro rippling by
in the shade you'll watch
christ swilling sangria
with a spanish thirst

The shifting back and forth between images of thirst and water, of dryness and wet splatter, then, again, the occasional odd juxtaposition or phrasing: the dog backing up when the protagonist extends his hand and that perplexing line, "you don't know your age" (some kind of reference to not acting one's age?) and then the ending imagery of Christ drinking sangria (which, of course, has the same root as the word blood). The complex images and the simple language give these poems such a charming accessibility and I find myself repeating certain phrases over and over (it also makes me long for Spain).

Occasional photographs (taken by the author?) allow the poems open up somewhat when sitting alongside an image of a quiet street in Granada or boys swimming in a river. I really love this book.

Formerly of Winnipeg Friesen now lives on Vancouver Island. He's written many volumes of poetry and is also a translator and playwright.

Grrrrrr.

If students are the ones responsible for smoke bombs in the Metro this morning, patience is running low. I am sure the officialdom will come down and condemn this kind of action and for me, actually, it wasn't a bad morning. I walked down Mont-Royal, bumped into a friend of mine on her way to work, had a coffee and croissant and walked through the park to catch the bus down the hill. Every morning should be so relaxing.

Jeanne-Mance Park on a cloudy spring morning

Unfortunately, on the bus, people were griping and moaning, saying things about how if it does turn out to be student-related, they have lost support of working people. I am sure that's an overstatement but interrupting the entire city's morning sure seems a stupid way to get people on your side. And most Montrealers are on their side. For now.

At any rate, by the time I made it down the hill, the Green line was back up and running so I resisted the urge to hit the bookstores downtown and made it into work. I was the second one here...so starts my Thursday.