We continue to grow the Laurier Poetry series with the latest volume, Verse and Worse: Selected and New Poems of Steve McCaffery 1989–2009, selected with an introduction by Darren Wershler. Here’s a sample. Please ask for the book in your local bookstore to read more. Have you considered using these books to teach Canadian poetry? Ask us about a price bundle.
Correlata for a Cryptogram
It looks like California outside
the mudslides of pure mascara
but it’s been said before:
you can’t give an inch a new nail.
Curious, however,
the return to the mystic writing pad
for just the briefest scribble
of top-right Celtomania.
Around these parts
simultaneity in claws is
the puma’s best form of disappearance
just follow the arrow from the national diagonals
to reach the correlata for a cyrptogram
around the throat of America
the way milk escapes the entire history
of its blackness.
We’re pleased to announce the release this week of Textual Mothers/Maternal Texts: Motherhood in Contemporary Women’s Literatures (edited by Elizabeth Podnieks and Andrea O’Reilly). This fascinating book focuses on mothers as subjects and as writers who produce auto/biography, fiction, and poetry about maternity. International contributors examine the mother without child, with child, and in her multiple identities as grandmother, mother, and daughter.
I haven’t read the book closely yet, but I have dipped in. One of my favourite chapters has to be Emily Jeremiah’s “We Need to Talk about Gender: Mothering and Masculinity in Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin.” I tried hard to get through that book and struggled so much with the main character of Eva, mostly because her views on mothering were so different from my own. This chapter gave me a lot to think about regarding my reaction to that novel.
I also really enjoyed Di Brandt’s “(Grand)mothering ‘Children of the Apocalypse’: A Post-postmodern Ecopoetic Reading of Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners” because it gave me new insight into one of my all-time favourite books and literary characters.
I look forward to discovering more like this and I urge you to check it out too. In the book’s acknowledgements the editors relate that they had more than one hundred submissions to the project. How difficult it must have been to choose just twenty and what a testament to the quality of what was included.
If you’re in town, don’t miss the chance to meet all the contributors to Woldemar Neufeld’s Canada. Laurence Neufeld, Monika McKillen, Paul Tiessen, and Hildi Froese Tiessen will be signing books from 2–4 at Gallery on the Grand, 580 Lancaster St. W. in Kitchener on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend (Jan 23–24). The gallery features many of Woldemar Neufeld’s art works and is located in the Bridgeport area, not far from many of the locations Neufeld chose to paint. I’ll be sure to post pictures here next week in case you’re too far away to stop in.
If you’re feeling like a rebel, why not join a rally in your city to protest the proroguing of parliament? Here’s where you can find details of events happening coast to coast in Canada. I (Clare) will be attending the Waterloo rally at Waterloo Public Square at 11:00am, so if you’re there, please say hello.
Also, please don’t forget to tune into Canada for Haiti tonight, which also features programming from Montreal for Haiti, and the US Hope for Haiti telethon. If you haven’t already contributed to the Haitian relief fund you will have a chance to do so. If you have, kick back and watch the entertainment, or donate again.
Many of us have spent the week stunned at the horrific news of the earthquake in Haiti. Canadians are proving to be generous and have donated millions of dollars for relief efforts. If you would like to make a donation, there are many charities to choose from. The Humanitarian Coalition is a coalition of charities with proven reputations that includes Care Canada, Oxfam Canada, and Save the Children. The Canadian Red Cross, The Mennonite Central Committee, and Doctors Without Borders / Médécins sans Frontières are just some of the other options. The Canadian Government is matching donations made between January 12th and February 12th by individual donors to registered charities.
For simple and painless giving, Rogers Wireless and Fido customers can donate $5 per call to the Haiti relief efforts by sending the text message HELP to shortcode 1291. You will be asked to confirm, and the charge will appear on your Rogers bill. For other options, see this round-up of charities (not all Canadian) taking donations by text.
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We continue to grow the Laurier Poetry series with the latest volume, Verse and Worse: Selected and New Poems of Steve McCaffery 1989–2009, selected with an introduction by Darren Wershler. Here’s a sample. Please ask for the book in your local bookstore to read more. Have you considered using these books to teach Canadian poetry? Ask us about a price bundle.
