close call, by Rob Budde

GM=God-like Manipulations

does this seem frivolous and dangerously indulgent to anyone else?

January 2006

Upcoming events to watch for:

--launch of The Forestry Diversification Project a collection of new PG poets (UNBC Press)
--a celebration of Barry McKinnon's collected letters at the UNBC Geoffrey Weller Library and Archives
--the first Annual Prince George Chapbook Fair
--launch of Flicker by Rob Budde (Signature Editions)

katabasis by Rob Budde

everything is intelligent
and you are in it;
everything is unknowable
(that slug you tried to keep
in a jar and it disappeared;
that pool of water in the woods
with no bottom)
and you are in it
at the edge
of all human feeling

the basics are nowhere to found
floating in the weekday routine,
the latte enemas, traffic snarls and
strange meat on the table—the bottom
is lost, indecipherable as ancient ruins
scuffed over at the back of the schoolyard
that beat you up

a depth of feeling bred out
in echoing classrooms,
by the mechanisms of making things,
through wired technologies of the inhumane,
and sheer laziness

i went back to that place
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
(the pond, the gold image
of my face)
when i was 12—it was sweet,
unnerving, and sharp;
i went back to that place
in language and it was folded,
unsupported, and mine

The Culture Mill

hardy f & I'd like to create on online hub/blog/site that would connect all the various Prince George based cultural activity. If you'd like your site connected email me, theculturemill@gmail.com or 'comment' on this item.


Sites could be related to any medium or form of the arts in the Prince George area:

--events updates
--literary review
--visual arts postings
--music reviews/events
--audio files
--general commentary
--personal arts-related blogs
--schedules and programs

The hub would be to

1. connect artists,
2. spread the word about local events & releases, and
3. inform the world of the PG arts and increase our online presence.

All Prince George and area artists and arts organizations are invited to participate.

the regional materialist by Rob Budde

can’t be there and here
is a bias of communication, a trick
of the wind patterns or
myths that have forgotten what they are

they asked me for ID
and i said your poems
desecrate graves with
their assurance

i see cutting the lawn as
a way to let only imported
grasses survive except
at the edges

i am a type of trying to
do too much but what’s
the difference between status
quo work and the police state
poetics of look at me

it is a commitment to not
and the writing lines bend
to hold that evasion:
look, there it goes

Iconoclast, by Heather Glasgow

Announcing the release of the chapbook Iconoclast by Heather Glasgow. Heather is an English students at UNBC and a singer. Check out PG's new set of pipes in this debut book. Email Heather to get your copy.

Okal Rel Anthology

The anthology is the first of a series set in the Okal Rel Universe that is hosted by Windstorm Creative of Port Orchard, WA, under their Fandom Press line. The Okal Rel Universe is a science fiction setting established by the ten novel series by Lynda Williams and Alison Sinclair, that is published by Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy of Calgary, AB.

The Okal Rel Universe Anthology I includes:

Percentage Play
by Rick Hoggarth

Where Passion Rules
by Elizabeth Woods

Redemption
by Adam Volk

Arbitrary Attentions
by Sarah Trick

The Perry Affair
by Amanda da Silva

Rob Budde Flicker

Rob Budde


celebrate the launch
of his new book, Flicker

Go here to order





Charmagne de Veer
Marketing Coordinator
Signature Editions
PO Box 206, RPO Corydon
Winnipeg, MB R3M 3S7
T: 204-779-7803
F: 204-779-6970
marketing@signature-editions.com

The feedback cycle feedback cycle by Ken Belford

At times it’s hard to tell the difference

between a word and a decision.

Understanding’s accumulate.

There are bindings between words,

a kind of retrieval of memory traces.

First I saw distant lightning,

then heard what I thought was thunder,

then trees coming down, a chain reaction.

New meanings fold into the interchange.

Word or part word, poetry isn’t always

an act of understanding. Consciousness

is an episodic series of moments but narrative isn’t

necessarily consciousness. Fix saw, cut pole,

sometimes there’s a darkness in the brain.

There’s something beyond what can be grasped

even in poetry, beyond the list of words

that do not appear. Subjects discriminate,

and there’s an infinite variety of forms

in the background feedback cycle of cues.

The Soup by Rob Budde

make it quickly, without
speaking and use only what’s
at hand, chance is your ally
the pot, the colander without rim

—don’t drive anywhere,
ever, walk, write, or invite a neighbour
with the ingredients, never go
for flash or imports—keep it local,
simple, smell the bunch and you’ll know

it should be chilly outside but
no flurries yet; the words
diffuse ice fog, a suggestion of
spice but let the stock take it all

toss it together the timing and
root and juices and let it stew

tell a friend what’s in it and
how poetry is hearty, how
it cleans the blood

there should be no flourish or garnish
no main dish or dessert;
don’t let one vegetable dominate the dish—
variety is the strength, what keeps it going

the ladle and bowl should be plain,
well made and sturdy, they will
be scuffed and nicked with use—
this is a good sign

serve hot so it fills the room with its
energy, be assured it is a mantra, something
to believe in, something you’re part of

home when it moves you, by Gillian Wigmore

With the launch of home when it moves you, Creekstone Press is honoured to bring Gillian Wigmore’s powerful poems to public attention.


“What a wonderful, fresh voice Gillian Wigmore brings to the page,” writes award winning poet Robert Hilles.

“These wise poems know the push and pull within family. They reveal the
tender truths behind the rough edges of small town life.
Her voice resonates with authenticity, and whether she
is writing about a near drowning or ice fishing, she is
ultimately writing about the complications of love. These
are poems you will not soon forget.”

In this collection of nine poems, Wigmore demonstrates
with astonishing skill the kind of spare poetics that she
strives for. Each of her poems is a complete story, a vibrant
collection of sound and images that pulls the reader into
her landscape and makes her poetry imperative.

With the publication of home when it moves you Creekstone
Press is pleased to announce the launch of a regional
collaboration with Dawson Creek poet, Donna Kane,
and Prince George poet, George Sipos, to create
design-rich handmade chapbooks.

“I think the goal of book design is to make readers more
attentive of the work inside,” says Kane. “A handmade
book honours the poems in an even more personal way.
My hope is to give each step of building this chapbook
the same care and thought as the words that make up
Jill's wonderful poems.”

Retail price: Handmade limited edition (ISBN 0-9684043-7-5), $17
Facsimile: (ISBN 0-9684043-8-3), $12

Landmarks by Ken Belford

for Si

Up is north and now that I’m older
and more complex, more close
to the rising and the setting -
there are two countries, one
at the top edge of the map,
the other at the bottom.
When the current increases,
so does the field, and the spin
of bodies and waves in the night sky
are landmarks used for direction.
If you go up the river
until you come to the end of it,
then go down the valley where
the water flows the other way
for a long time, you will see
what I mean. I was repelled
by other things and you, a primary
direction in the form of a turning
point, were an outside influence
that flipped my poles.

The Lyric Launched: George Sipos

A newly released book of poetry by a Prince George literary mainstay:

George Sipos, Anything but the Moon , Goose Lane

George Sipos, until recently, owned and ran Mosquito Books, an independent bookstore. He now works as General Manager of the Prince George Symphony Orchestra. He is acutely aware that life, in its strangeness and beauty, will always elude whatever he can say about it. The tension between the humble recognition that words are in-adequate and the insistent urge to capture what he sees and feels gives Anything but the Moon its blend of quiet reverence and meditative urgency. In lush lyric poems about driving in his truck or listening to the sounds of a henhouse, Sipos reflects upon how everyday ex-periences slip through our fingers, never to be fully understood or articulated. The rhythms of his poetry are beautifully shaped to the arc of seeing and thinking.

For Prince George Citizens by Rob Budde

                                 close to
cottonwood siphons, traveled
in the blood valley and lakes 
they stay where bills dissolve
and families of mergansers 
reform from them

the air is a cipher;
the sidewalks crack with those already left

how a river might slice through
your heart as it outlasts its function—that affinity
to the sculptured moose with sunglasses,
the gargoyles of too much beer,
northern hardware holding on

the welcome here--the pick-up
pulls up exhausted holding the newspaper headline high:
the big men are coming to town tomorrow
and the streets are blocked with living

lettering on the old diner still in relief
proclaims that moss is filling our lungs
sucking out the beloved toxins without our knowing
 
you see, the going back is hardest, wheels
on the future paddle past the bank,
trust in disbelief and the way stones float

UNBC Aboriginal Writers and Storytellers Festival

Festival Schedule

(All events free and open to the public
except the Gala Evening Friday Sept 29th)


Sunday, Sept 25 8:30 pm - Poetry Train 2 reading
Lee Maracle, Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, Joanne Arnott, Michael Blackstock, Heather Harris
Railway & Forestry Museum

Monday, Sept 26 2:00 pm - Michael Blackstock photo exhibit, Louie Singers & a talk on the Nadleh Whut'en Culturally Modified Tree installation
UNBC Atrium (reception to follow)

Wednesday, Sept 28 6:15pm Rm 7-158 (reception to start)
7:00 - Storytellers

Friday, Sept 30 7:00 - GALA Evening
Louie Singers, Marcel Gagnon, Nak'ulamen Performance Collective, cc Hamel, storytelling, more
Playhouse Theatre
(tickets available through UNBC FN Centre)

Saturday, Oct 1 7:30 - Marilyn Dumont, Eden Robinson, Jeannette Armstrong, Janet Marie Rogers
Two Rivers Gallery

Monday, Oct 3 6:30 - Marie Annharte Baker
7-150 UNBC

Tuesday, Oct 4 7:00 - Storytellers
7-150 UNBC

Friday, Oct 7 7:30 pm - Tomson Highway
UNBC Atrium (reception to follow)

Saturday, Oct 8 1:00 pm - Marie Clements, Garry Gottfriedson,
Richard Van Camp
Art Space (reception to follow)

Honorary Prince George Writers

Jay MillAr

Jay MillAr is a writer, editor, publisher, bookseller and environmental research assistant. He is the author of The Ghosts of Jay MillAr (Coach House, 2000), and Mycological Studies (Coach House, 2002), which was shortlisted for the ReLit Poetry Prize. He publishes chapbooks under the imprint BookThug and distributes these titles through Apollinaire’s Bookshoppe—his “imaginary bookstore specializing in publications that no one wants to buy.” His most recent book is from blewointment books of Nightwood and called False Maps for Other Creatures. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Hazel, and their sons, Reid and Cole.

Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley was born in Massachusetts in 1926 and graduated from Black Mountain College where he befriended Charles Olson and edited The Black Mountain Review. Publications include: For Love (1962); Words (1967); Pieces (1969); The Finger (1970); St Martin's (1971); A Day Book (1972); Thirty Things (1974); Away (1976); Later (1978) and Memory Gardens (1986). He held the poetics chair at the State University of NY at Buffalo prior to Charles Bernstein. Creeley came to Prince George to read in the 1970s and has since kept in touch with local writers Barry McKinnon and Ken Belford.

Al Purdy

Al Purdy is one of Canada’s best-known and most-loved poets. His cantankerous persona roamed the country for over four decades, delighting and shocking audiences with his candour and humour. He published thirty-three books of poetry and is best known for his ribald, down-to-earth voice and his representations of distinctively Canadian experiences and landscapes. His poems deal with intimate human emotions across a variety of situations ranging from personal insecurity to human history. His most famous books include The Cariboo Horses (1965), North of Summer(1967), Sex & Death (1973), and Piling Blood (1984). Two major collections of his work have been published: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy (1986) and Beyond Remembering: The Collected Poems of Al Purdy(2000).

George Stanley

George Stanley was born and raised in San Francisco where, in the sixties, he was a member of Jack Spicer's circle. A long time educator in Terrace, BC, Stanley is now retired and living in Vancouver. His books include The Stick, Opening Day, Temporarily, San Francisco's Gone, Gentle Northern Summer, and most recently, A Tall, Serious Girl (San Francisco: Qua Press).

George Bowering

Novelist, poet, editor, professor and historian, George Bowering was recently named the first Poet Laureate of Canada. A native of British Columbia, Bowering has made an outstanding contribution to arts and culture in this province. While he has a prominent international and national profile, his work is inescapably rooted in BC, with stories of growing up in the Okanagan, haunting poems of urban Vancouver, and his innovative treatment of historical B.C. events. Bowering has authored more than 80 books and his work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese and Romanian. His writing includes books of poetry, fiction, autobiography, biography, collaborations and youth fiction. His award-winning titles include: George Bowering Select, Rocky Mountain Foot, The Gangs of Kosmos, Burning Water, and, His Life: A Poem. In 2001, he retired as a professor at Simon Fraser University where he taught and inspired two generations of young writers. Bowering supports the work of other writers as a generous mentor and literary critic.

Simon Thompson

Simon Thompson, MA, is the English and Writing Instructor at the Terrace Campus of NorthWest community College. He has read in Prince George many times and has adopted Barry McKinnon's printing press that has made many famous Caledonia Writing Series and Gorse Press chapbooks over the years.

Donna Kane

Donna Kane lives and writes in Dawson Creek, BC. Her work has appeared in sub-TERRAIN, Geist, Contemporary Verse 2, and The Malahat Review. She has participated in the Banff Centre for the Arts writing program. Her Hagios Press book, Somewhere, a Fire was published in 2004.

rob mclennan

rob mclennan is a prolific poet, editor, publisher & visual artist. The author of over three dozen poetry chapbooks, he won the 1999 CAA/Air Canada Award for most promising writer (in any genre) in Canada under 30. He has published poetry, fiction & critical work in nearly two hundred publications across Canada, the US, England, Finland, Ireland, Australia, India, & the Czech Republic. He has done dozens of readings across Canada, & in Ireland & the US, including The Ottawa International Writers Festival, The Winnipeg Writers Festival, Via Rail Great Canadian Writers Tour, the University of Maine, & the Galway Arts Center. Recently, rob wrote an essay called "Sex at Thirty-One -- McKinnon, Fawcett, Gold, Stanley, etc." on Poetics.ca about Barry McKinnon and other writers connected to Prince George.

Robert Kroetsch

Robert Kroetsch was born in 1927 in Heisler, Alberta. He attended the University of Alberta and then and U of Iowa. After a stint working on the river boats in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories, he eventually taught at S.U.N.Y. Binghamton. Kroetsch then taught writing and literature at the University of Calgary and the University of Manitoba. At the U of M he was mentor to Rob Budde. He now lives in Winnipeg. Kroetsch is internationally know as a poet and novelist. He is also widely acknowledged in Canada for his literary criticism and theory. Kroetsch won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction with his novel The Studhorse Man.

G.P. Lainsbury

G.P. Lainsbury is an English Instructor & Senior Instructor in the Academic Program at Northern Lights College in Fort St. John. His book, entitled The Carver Chronotype: Inside the Life-World of Raymond Carver's Fiction, argues that "despite having worked primarily in 'minor' genres, Raymond Carver merits consideration as a major American writer." Also, Lainsbury's article "Generation X and the End of History," first published in Essays in Canadian Literature, has been collected in the volume GenXegisis: Essays on Alternative Youth (Sub)Culture. Lainsbury began teaching for NLC in September 1995, and received his PhD in American Literature from Simon Fraser University in1996. As well as teaching courses in literature, film, creative writing and workplace communication, Lainsbury is also Poetry Editor of the journal Textual Studies in Canada, director of the Fort St. John Poetics Research Group and publisher of Cosmodemonic Poetics.

Eden Robinson

Eden Robinson is a Haisla woman who grew up near Kitimat, British Columbia. Her previous collection of stories, Traplines, was awarded the Winifred Holtby Prize for the best first work of fiction by a Commonwealth writer and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book of the Year. Monkey Beach, Robinson’s acclaimed first novel, won the B.C. Book Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the 2000 Giller Prize and was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her newest book Blood Sports will be out soon.

Who is missing here? Add to the list!

Michael Armstrong--In Their Nightgowns, Dancing

The first literary release by UNBC Press!

Launch & Book Signing
Michael Armstrong's In Their Nightgowns, Dancing
Now on sale at better bookstores! or
to order click here



"Michael Armstrong has crafted a lyrical and haunting play that captivates with its sensuous imagery, riveting journey, and naked honesty. His story of two people each blown by the winds of enormous political and social forces resounds with authenticity of place, time, and character. This play is funny and tender and a gorgeous examination of possibility, chance, imagination, coincidence, opportunity, and all those endless forks in roads that combine to make a life. It is a richly rewarding story of rebirth and hope in that eternal human struggle to understand who we are as individuals. What I loved and still love is Armstrong’s ability to create such complete moments with such economy of language. The characters are so well cared for; there is such love present in the writing and it makes for such a beautiful journey to take."

--Kevin Kerr, Jessie and Governor General's Award winning playwright as well as a director, actor, and founding member of the Electric Company



For more information, contact UNBC Press.

UNBC Aboriginal Writers and Storytellers Festival

September 23 – October 8, 2005

UNBC’s First Nations Studies, the First Nations Centre, the English Program, Social Work Department, and Prince George
community organizations are organizing what will be one of the largest and most exciting First Nations writing festivals
in Canada.

We are coordinating a series of storytelling festivals across the north in communities and nations which will then send a
representative storyteller to the Prince George festival in the fall. This promises to be an exciting combination of literary readings, performance, and traditional storytelling events.

Confirmed performers/readers are:

Eden Robinson
Marie Clements
Gary Gottfriedson
Richard Van Camp
Michael Blackstock
Heather Harris
Marilyn Dumont
Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
Janet Marie Rogers
Lee Maracle
Tomson Highway
Jeannette Armstrong

Also local performers,
an opening Gala,
Poetry Train 2,
storytellers from across Northern BC
and more!

Contact Rob Budde or Paul Michel for more information.

George Street Letters

George Street Letters, Issue #2

GSL is a long-awaited and much-needed arts and culture magazine
which will be documenting, reviewing, and promoting Prince George arts. The local newspapers
seem to have disavowed local arts and PG culture is crucial to civic identity and community well-being. GSL
will be distributed free to local coffeeshops, arts organizations, and
other meeting places.

Pick one up and engage in the conversation!

Contact George Street Letters for more information or if you'd like to submit material.
(Painting by Erin Arding)

Intervals a new chapbook by Ken Belford

photo by Ken Belford
to order contact Ken Belford

cruise by Rob Budde

“norwegian dream” or some dis-
placement carried over, the escape
a package of metal floating over the inlet

Tony Blair calls on Londoners to ‘go on
with their business—to be afraid
is to let the terrorists win’      the tracks
cleared, the schedule resumed

what it means to truly disembark
the infamous missile, remote 
controlled, the target a fuzzy
bunker filled with crosshairs

the permanent tourist stands in front
of the monument, history then
a digital file emailed to oneself 

the horn sounds announcing
what? you too can dive into
a swimming pool on the Pacific
and become weightless

Prince Rupert, July 2005

modernity by Rob Budde

all of it made carefully, over top
the ground, calculations of amplitude,
erosion, gestation;

the engineers looked over their shoulders
down and away, a blueprint of forgetting

fingertips placed gently together in front
of the magistrate's words

it is not mortality i am fighting;
it is what that sure-footed vision gets you
that bothers me

the coherence cannot hold

power grids, establishment
reckoning, the aesthetics taught as formative--
all those attempts to justify
the expenditure, the waste, the damage . . .

it is a letting go, an un-named
un-naming strolling over the hill
i seek       no longer
god or mystery
but anonymous among us

Surrounded by corners by Todd Bruce

Standing in the kitchen, straining fat from a fresh, cooling batch 
of turkey stock when I heard the squawk of the intercom. He let 
her in by pressing his thumb on the button just below the intercom 
buzzer.

I heard her reach (or climb, to describe it accurately) each step on 
the inside front porch – the house creaking here and there, just a 
little. She stopped – they kissed hello. I assume she flicked her hair 
and shivered her shoulders slightly to tell how cold it is outside 
without saying it out loud. 

A pair of shoes (boots more likely by the sounds of them), one by 
one, dropping to the carpeted floor (one heel like a mis-hit 
xylophone hammer on the adjacent hardwood floor). Ting.

Toppling.

A wool coat being tossed onto a wooden chair. A silk scarf 
dripping down a coat sleeve and balling into a loose cocoon 
near its cuff. No one but you and I know this until she leaves. 
And even then it means nothing to her – other than a scarf on 
the floor at the cuff of her coat sleeve. 

Does it drop or does it fall? In either instance it layered onto 
the back porch like a lost letter and accumulated into miniature 
banks within which I nested the kettle of broth, coaxing the 
remaining fat to congeal. I secretly look forward, in the early 
morning, to removing the pot from the porch (when I hear her 
nestle into the down-filled sofa and him into his high-back 
chair) to see the ring – the negative – left from melting snow. 
A crop circle. Fine art. 

The CD changer shuffles (I can barely hear its drives click and 
shift) as I slowly fill the sink with cutlery and plates. He has 
selected in advance the music he wants her to hear as they 
sip scotch and talk and eat expensive cheeses. I am doing 
the dishes. I am not there. The water is boiling hot and soapy. 
Grandmother taught me to boil water to clean dishes--the 
tap does not get hot enough.

wink books

titles:
Rob Budde-------my american movie (2004)
Rob Budde-------Software Tracks (2004)
Jeremy Stewart----one hour more light (2004)
Rob Budde-------A Sleep of Faith (2005)

chapbooks produced in small runs sporadically.
to order find rob and he will give you one. or
check books & co. or the university bookstore.

each edition is designed and assembled by rob.
usually printed by barry wong at the unbc
copy center. he's great.

chapbooks rule baby.

wink books, inc. by Rob Budde

over, there's the page where the language would have you 
sold, secure; flipside, this is
the one that got away, fin flash
 
a story stalled long pauses and awkward
breaks enough to glimpse blur, flinch
 
the grain of wood, sawdust scent
flying up, the topography closer though, 
felt in the roll of thighs, the eye-trained horizon, squint
 
after the speech, denial loaded into the back
a reverb stings the microphone; flipside, the subtext
twitches, an aside snuck, tucked
 
intimate meaning alongside the highways and
their agenda, a noise that rips the killed, rends
 
flipside; a book of herbs or ways of preserving
berries, fin and fat, paper-stained accidents and care, creased
 
i would give you this first from Fort George before
the forest wars, or from after, a de-settling
pinch of paper and bone

Writing the Place Awake: Culture in a Northern City

by Rob Budde

And so the north moves north.
--Ken Belford

Economies, ecosystems, and writing all begin from the periphery,
the outside. The outside can be many places: the hinterland, the
outback, the north, the edge, the rez, the gateway, the bush, the
back country, the borderland, the in-between, the small town, the
headwaters, the forgotten places, the mountains, Third World,
nowhere, nature, the middle of nowhere, God's country, the interior,
the coast, the boonies, etc. You know the place. It's not where it's at.

But it's where we're from, where it begins. And it is a place the
centers of power necessarily silence.

Economies depend on these places for raw resources but the
relationship to the center has to be one of extraction not reciprocal
recognition or nurturing. Outside is outside because the inside
depends on it. The discourses of power must construct the outside
as outside in order to fully realize the (artificial) potential of the
inside. The outside, as a construct, is built to disavow itself. It is
self-deprecating and without a strong identity. It lacks self-awareness
and has low self-esteem. Its history is erased and its culture
undermined.

But while this imaginary identity is instituted as a grim map of Northern
BC, the place's real living goes on underneath it. And it is rich.

American writer Wallace Stegner wrote "a place is not a place until it has
had a poet." Stegner was writing about the American west, but that sense
of 'frontier' space still exists in terms of cultural representations and
stigma. What is at issue is the power of representation and who is doing
it. Place-making can occur from without or within and the imaginative
creation of a place is a crucial focus of power. It seems a kind of
territoriality but it is also a empowering act of self-reliance and self-
awareness. We need to create an imagined Prince George of our own.

Around 1970, Barry McKinnon began the Caledonia Reading Series
which later became Gorse Press. He produced hand-made chapbooks
by poets of this place and handed them to people. Today, Prince George
is known for its chapbooks and the nation knows Barry McKinnon
is here. This, dare I say, entrepreneurial spirit is what creates the culture
of (and for) a place. It is this kind of activity Prince George is starved for.
Recently, a symposium in Prince George ("The Writing Way Up Here"
March 30, 2005), a conference panel ("Writing the North" AWP
Conference, Vancouver BC, April 1, 2005), and the launch of two
watershed books, Ken Belford's Ecologue and Barry McKinnon's
The Centre: Poems 1970-2000, have all contributed to a resurgence
in Prince George cultural pride. And it is pride, in the sense of William
Carlos Williams' "local pride" as an essential attribute for the contemporary
poet. "Pride" as a kind of recognition, a refusal to disavow place and
embrace where you are.

You are here.

In terms of regional politics, this empowerment would involve value-added
industry, decentralized decision-making, and resources for local initiatives.
In terms of culture, it means creating art in Prince George and affirming it.

New Prince George Book Release!

The Courtesan Prince by Lynda Williams.

Book I of Lynda Willams' Okal Rel Universe 10 book novel series (Throne Price was the 4th of the series).

In this novel: "The status quo is shaken up when egalitarian Rire discovers the Sevolite Empire and exposes all to irrefutable proof that a commoner sword dancer is actually racist Sevildom's long lost crown prince, Amel. Relationships destined to influence history are forged, and the stage set for power struggles in Amel's name."

To see more go to Okal Rel Universe or to order go to EDGE online.

Disturbances by Ken Belford

Trees make shadows and
alternative environments
 
are fragmented by disturbances.
Water snakes and anglers come here.
 
Strong stories with strong tails
and long, broad gills are going
 
and now I walk around town
remembering the big trees.
 
Rainbow have a strong fidelity 
to wood-formed pools in the fall,
 
matrix dams last for years
and the bigger the trees the better.
 
The loss of the old growth 
makes huge disturbances.
 
Rivers need trees that don’t move 
until everything moves.
 
Complex flow, heterogeneous zone.
Look around – trees in the water
 
and trees on the ground
make new sediment terraces
 
and a certain kind of fish 
in a certain kind of water
 
forms around obstructions 
that cause friction.

Fred Wah, from Alley Alley Home Free

"No single meaning is the right one because no “right ones”
stand still long enough to get caught. But because we do not
know does not mean we are lost. Something that is strangely
familiar, not quite what we expect, but familiar, is present.
That quick little gasp in the daydream, a sudden sigh of
recognition, a little sock of baby breath. Writing into meaning
starts at the white page, nothing but intention. This initial
blinding clarity needs to be disrupted before we’re tricked
into settling for a staged and diluted paradigm of the “real,”
the good old familiar, inherited, under-standable,
unmistakable lucidity of phrase that feels safe and sure,
simple sentence, just-like-the-last-time-sentence."

George Street Letters call for contributions

Issue #2 theme: Finding beauty in things and places we would
not expect, especially garbage, junk, litter, broken things, etc.
Addressing the impending environmental catastrophe with a post-
modernist sense of playfulness bordering on naiveté.

Looking for articles and reviews on topics such as literature and art
about garbage and catastrophe, and social/environmental/cultural
issues of consumption and waste

However you don't have to take a concerned environmentalist
approach to this, rather the underlying message might be "This is
our world and we love it, no matter how ugly it gets - Hey look, isn't that
piece of litter pretty?" rather than "We're all going to hell."

POETS- I'm want half of the special section to be poetry on top of
photography, so start writing on these topics!

Contact George Street Letters for more information!

Robert Creeley, On Charles Olson

"So he is able to read his own life as text rather than reference. One
time at Black Mountain he said to me, "I need a college to think with,"
meaning, I understood, that he wanted the multiplicity of instance, all
particular and active, not the discrete or isolating possibilities of a
chosen few. "Come into the world," he said, "Take a big bite." It was
poetry that could move with the necessary syntax and speed, to 'be here'
coincident with recognition, a locating act."

disfunctional title by Rob Budde

growth by measurement, props
of entitlement improving on the last
quarter and what it might sink

vehicles tell us where to go
in the long run

skulls with clacking teeth, the whole
visual effect slouches across Central Street

the wrong alarms went off
and the volunteers never did make it

a better poet would miss this—
unpanicked lines more mellifluous

through us, fully enabled
Nechako water moves us

the making of the humans
would account for nothing
and find everyone

George Street Letters

Coming June 1, 2005
George Street Letters, Issue #1

GSL is a long-awaited and much-needed arts and culture magazine
which will be documenting, reviewing, and promoting Prince George
arts. The local newspapers seem to have disavowed local arts and
PG culture is crucial to civic identity and community well-being. GSL
will be distributed free to local coffeeshops, arts organizations, and
other meeting places.

Pick one up and engage in the conversation!

Contact George Street Letters for more information!

Write Off by Ken Belford

Half is gone along the river, 
in the channels, in the flows.
The threat of extinction bores people now.
So does the disappearance of clean, cold water.
It’s a write off so we tell stories 
to ourselves, to cover up.
If you will live then I will live. 
You swim upstream with money in your jaws. 
But salmon are not for eating and
the belly fat of white men is expensive.
Before they saw it, before they heard of it, 
the people of the selfish gene imagined the Columbia.
They die so quick and then they live again,
the buffalo pulsing on the cobbles. 
I fell in love in another generation,
then fell in love again.

giving way by Rob Budde

either living off the land or accruing debt;
different houses, same living

a kind of slow leeching of nutrients
falling out of the language

I am obtrusive in cities because
I step aside, give way
and throw off everything

the colonial inclination to cohesion—writing
the good story—and 
empty space a vision of development

yesterday, a strip mall ate my path
inside out

policies are roads and I am off

Cynthia Wilson Memorial Reading

In memory of Cynthia Wilson, and so that those who knew her
can have a time of closure, Vivien Lougheed and Ken Belford
are organizing an evening of readings by some of the Prince
authors Caitlin Press published.

Additionally, her brother Howard White, nephew Silas White and
one or two others from Harbour Publishing will be coming to
Prince George for the memorial reading planned for the evening
of June 08, to be held in the Library at 7:00 PM.

So that a Cynthia Wilson one-time bursary can be created we are
asking that all who attend donate $10.00 at the door. Some of the
local authors scheduled to read are Jacqueline Baldwin, Ken Belford,
Barry McKinnon, Jack Boudreau and Vivien Lougheed.

Contact Vivien Lougheed for more information.

"green" noun by Rob Budde

what is inside the saying
out, divulged, a kind
of explosion of the singular

word or located thought--
not both--across a table
but talk of how to stay
in language and land--
not both--across a poem its own

myth is the expectation
that some have done it for you better

knots of recoil, not taking what is given, not
beholden to the south--sustainability is

in poetics, is keeping the poem close,
a territory, a ceremony, a smaller economy
of naming ink into thought out

meaning can stay in catalogues,
the course lists, the collective
protections, a manifesto that is not one saying

prince george is not memorable 
like that usual world.

Hardy Friedrich, Way to Inuvik [review]

        A lot of Canadian writers have traveled north to find 
something, or get away from something, and have come back 
with an extra literary (or extraliterary I suppose) awareness 
that produces great writing. Maybe it’s that kind of absence 
that pulls out language from somewhere other than the same 
old always already. Hardy Friedrich found it along the Dempster 
in 2004 and at least part of the result is a punchy little chapbook 
called Way to Inuvik. 
        Friedrich is way too cool for his own good. He reads his 
poetry with a slick chic groove that suits the playful and under-
stated poems he tends toward. There is very little pretension here, 
partly because of the brashness of Friedrich’s youthful (read 
‘hormonally induced’) tack. But also there is a lack of overcon-
structedness that is so easy for new writers to get caught up 
in. In Friedrich I hear the awareness and fluidity of bissett or 
Purdy, the grittiness of Gilbert or McKinnon, the lust of Cohen 
or Kroetsch. 
        Way to Inuvik is a sixtyninebuffalo production—one 
of many chapbook presses that are revving to life in Prince 
George. It is expertly laid out with luxurious margins and crisp 
style. Despite Friedrich’s penchant for poems about aimless 
young male angst, the poems in the book are first and foremost 
about cultural contact, colonialism, and the narrator’s complicity:


           The violent sun of Yukon forest fires
           mends the raven hair of a passing girl


           know nothing
           the edge of her stare
           pushes a blade into
           my history

The landscape is not so much imagery as a collection of clashing 
myths and violations (“violent topography”). There is a careful 
narrator here, one that asks hard questions about subjectivity, 
history, and race:

           copper forever
           covers the history
           of a crown

Friedrich articulates a deep Caucasian fear: the fear that we 
really don’t belong here. And what are we going to do about it? 

           . . . more like a raven
          so big
          will slaughter us on our Starbuck
          sofas and bars and save-ons
          and corporate political or not . . . 

In the place of arrogant colonial presence, Friedrich inserts an 
insecure and questioning consciousness:

         I am alone
                pastey
                loitering

Part of being a writer in Prince George is a sense of alienation, a 
kind of alienation that allows a kind of easy affinity to those others 
who are exiled in this country. Ken Belford, another roving Prince 
George poet,  has written of his connection to the Carrier First 
Nation peoples “I am one of them.” Friedrich offers a similar affinity:


          And far from home
          that is the sky
          where now I
          hold my bones
          Inuit style
          in a pink-lined sunset.

Friedrich’s range is growing and he is yet another new Prince 
George poet to watch. 

Richard Krueger, a new map [review]

          Richard Krueger’s writing is like ice; it’s hard, cold, 
multifaceted, at times necessarily ugly (those slug-like 
creatures that inch over gutters as winter progresses), at 
times wondrous. The poems are there and not there. They 
catch on your tongue. Even sting. The cover of Krueger's 
a new map of the bird perfectly signals that difficult 
terrain--jittery, wintery, jagged. 

          There is no such thing as authentic poetry but Krueger 
does not put on anyone else’s poetics. He is influenced by 
Prince George and, so, Barry McKinnon but also, I would guess, 
a host of other eclectic experimental poets. Krueger plays with 
a lyrical deck of cards but plays that lyric with a variety of formal 
tricks; he cheats, palms the ace, calls in the pot too soon, and 
hums inappropriate tunes. The innovative forms Krueger adopts 
displays a poetic maturity that comes out of the artistic drive for 
to reinvent the world. These crystalline poems are chiseled finely 
and they can cut, leave a reader bleeding, cursing. The poems 
refuse to allow very much down-time; there are not many 
places for security in subject-matter or tone. When there are 
concrete images, they have to do with place, Prince George and 
region, but only fleetingly—Krueger does not give in to pastoral 
temptations--or language and communication models, which 
don’t lend themselves much to image construction. The first 
section from “the town south of salmon valley” 
exemplifies Krueger’s contemplative narrative stance, 
some of his thematic concerns, and his use of form to 
accentuate and layer meaning:

                    the fence,un
                    -aware,cuts deep

                    into the field,di
                    -viding the textures

                    into slow circles,ha
                    -rsh squares.ideologies

                    into which faith is ke
                    -pt sealed,like churches

                    in towns,towns we pa
                    -ss every second or third

                                      hour / / our

                    town repeats itself in ma
                    -ny indistinguishable locations. (22)

The ‘town south of salmon valley’ is Prince George which 
is quite a bit larger than the hamlet of Salmon Valley; 
Krueger likes to make perspective strange. Like an eccentric 
postmodern poetic Icarus, Krueger enacts a kind of ironic 
failure over and over again:

                     wiper blades
                     per blades wi
                     r blades wipe


                     there’s a permanent poem in my wi
                     ndshield,in that frame,but no matte
                     r how hard i strain,i can’t get wet.th
                     e rain never reaches the page.  (43)

Probably Krueger’s most challenging piece is the long poem 
“the folding season.” Like most of his other work, 
this poem consists of many diverse discourses and the 
discourses fold into each other with a loud grinding sound. 
Nothing is easy; the sections range from a catalogue of fatal 
illness, aboriginal words for seasons, diagrams like fractals, 
html code, reflexive references to the material poem, and 
footnotes on language, animals, and myth. The folds erase 
the page and all that is left is pure agency, the motion through: 
“(every word is true.it is only their / meanings which are false)” (104). 

          One of the distinctive devices Krueger uses is his collapse of 
the spaces around commas and periods. The effect of this is to compress 
and force a recognition of signs irrespective of spatial cues. It sets 
the easy visuals of text on a page off-kilter. Krueger is a twitchy, angular 
fellow and his poems match his physicality eerily. Whenever I talk to him, 
language always seems off-kilter. This is true for most great artists I 
think—a necessary unease to the work, a falling away, or a sudden 
shatter:

              navelmaybe we’ve got it all wrongmaybethe drumlin
                    is not a convex bump
               on the face of the earthmaybeit’s concave

               maybe we’re on the inside,looking out  (63)

Krueger is a prolific chapbook maker--look for his newer productions 
A_box_full_of_clouds and Aries. What makes these books
even more exciting is the fact that it is part of a much larger book that 
Krueger is assembling. Its working title is The Monotony of Fatal 
Accidents and all of Canada should be looking for that one. A new 
map indeed.

Upcoming Events

-------

A new INTER-ARTS WORKSHOP
is meeting every Wednesday at 7:00 p.m.
at Art Space (above Books & Co. on 3rd Ave., Prince George)

Contact Jeremy Stewart for full information.

Here's the schedule for May:

Wednesday, May 18 - 8 PM - Artspace
Album Launch / Concert

The band formerly known as Carrie Jane Grey will
be performing its last show and releasing its full-length
album as well as staging an album-listening at this event.
There is no workshop for this night. Admission is $5 at
the door--the album will be $10.

Thursday, May 19 - 7 PM - Café Voltaire
Writing Workshop

This is less of a serious workshop and more of a sharing
session, intended to keep us up to date with each other
and offset the large number of other events this month.
It won't run all that late. Writers of all stripes: bring your
unfinished work for a chance to benefit from others'
experience through constructive criticism. All other
creative types are also encouraged to come and meet
and greet.

Wednesday, May 25 - 8 PM - Artspace
"Pushing the Edge"

This will be the first performance of Peter Stevenson's
Northern BC Free Jazz Ensemble. It is not a workshop
or a jam; it's a concert. Tickets are $10 at the door or
at Books & Company. This will be a very exciting show
for our city.

Thanks, everyone, for your continuing support of our
group. This is an important time for Prince George and
its creative people; be a part of the action. Musicians,
writers, visual artists, and other artists are welcome!
See you there!

Suggested donation $2 to pay for meeting space.

-------

WACK!
WOMEN’S AWESOME CREATIVITY KIOSK!
SATURDAY SEPT. 10TH, BOOKS AND COMPANY

Kiosk = a light open-fronted booth from which food, newspapers,
tickets, poety, skilled & dynamic talents… a building in which
refreshments are served such as in a park or zoo… kiosk’s can
fill a traditional market with color, magic, vibrancy, crafts, jewelry,
paintings, books…

WACK! Hoping to raise a wack of funds! Hoping to have a wack of fun!

The WACK night is being ‘guest hosted’ by (at least) one
representative / activist of the following organizations:

Northern Women’s Wellness and Information Center
Phoenix
The Elizabeth Frye
The UNBC Women’s Center

Core supporters or ‘kiosk divas’ include representatives from the
UNBC Continuing Education Department, the Social Work
Department, the English Department, and the UNBC Women’s
Studies Department.

Goals:
- to raise money for those four organizations who serve women
in this community
- to celebrate and recognize the role of creativity in our healing/
well-being/ empowerment
- to let the wider community know that ‘women’s issues’ include
self-care, fun, delight, fooling around, play… (i.e. we are not just
concerned to avoid/stop violence – we also want to fully actualize
and have roses and sparkle in our lives!)
- to help new students/ community members know which
organizations and in which roles they might want to do volunteer/
activist work (and where they might go for support during the
rest of the year)

Contact Si Transken for more information!

----------

UNBC First Nations Writers and Storytellers Festival
September 23 – October 6, 2005

UNBC’s First Nations Studies, the First Nations Centre, the English Program, Social Work Department, and Prince George
community organizations are organizing what will be one of the largest and most exciting First Nations writing festivals
in Canada.

We are coordinating a series of storytelling festivals across the north in communities and nations which will then send a
representative storyteller to the Prince George festival in the fall. This promises to be an exciting combination of literary readings, performance, and traditional storytelling events.

Confirmed performers/readers are:

Eden Robinson
Marie Clements
Thomas King
Marilyn Dumont
Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm
Marie Annharte Baker
Lee Maracle
Tomson Highway
Jeannette Armstrong

With a special guest talk by American Indian activist and thinker
Paula Gunn Allen.

Also local performers,
an opening Gala,
Poetry Train 2,
storytellers from across Northern BC
and more!

Contact Rob Budde or Paul Michel for more information.
-------

Jeremy Stewart, one hour more light [review]

There are six or seven poets in Prince George (that I am 
familiar with) that I am positive will be widely published 
before long. Jeremy Stewart is one of them. I know Stewart 
mostly as a poet but he is also a successful musician/songwriter 
and painter. In all his endeavors he is relentless and hard-
nosed. Fine Prince George pedigree. 

one hour more light was published by my chapbook press, 
wink books, in 2004. It is the first chapbook I’ve published that is not 
my own. It may seem odd for a publisher to review his 
own publication, but chapbooks are a bastard form and all rules 
are off. I will describe the book to you. Find it and make your own 
call. 

The poetic persona of this book is a Prince George street. It’s 
a kid on a Prince George street who, despite the street’s
violences, believes in the street. Believes it is in him. It’s an 
awkward gruff language that greets him. He loves it: 

a raspy throat crows a hoarse cry
                                             /  calls out:

wire birds sing the day before a black cloudburst
/  descant with ghosts
                              who will not answer

this is my street
so I sing along

Stewart’s poem “(lines for my famous father . . . )” is now a 
Prince George anthem and captures the essence of the city 
in its abused but loveable town mascot/statue “Mr. PG,” a 
cartoonish character made of fake logs. Stewart’s chapbook 
is about place and the negotiation of place—the kind of odds 
Prince George artists are up against and persevere.  

In the poems, Prince George is laid bare: its boom and bust 
(“that was the bust that nursed me”), its stalwart poets in the 
Sears Country Inn  (“sitting across the cafeteria / from Barry 
McKinnon and John Harris    unbeknownst to us / laugh 
now    a secret convergence of poets"), the haunted landscape 
(“the horizon through the scrawny lodgepole pines      
green     blackening”), misguided graffiti (“FAg”), and songs 
from real places (“7th Avenue, Legion Hall parking lot”). The 
chapbook is a sourcebook on surviving with creativity in a 
northern logging town. It is history, memoir, and tall tale. It is 
sprawling, bold, unabashed, young, and heading out:

 

to break down
decompose          the black
                                        and white lines
                       on the sheet of news-
                                                     print that lies
under the fallen poplar
                               leaves
                                        rotten beyond recognition
when the snow melts in
                                spring     seeping
                                        sustenance from dead layers
into the green earth

that is the creative process
of a northern poet




___________


Stewart, Jeremy. one hour more light. Prince George: wink books, 2004. 
44pp. unpagenated. Printed on Digital color Xpressions text stock and 
Blue Sandstone cover stock. Photograph and drawings by Jeremy Stewart.

Derryl Murphy, Wasps at the Speed of Sound

Prince George's own Derryl Murphy has released Wasps at the Speed of Sound through Wildside Press.

11 of Murphy's stories have been collected under one cover, with an introduction by Peter Watts. The stories are Lost Jenny, Island of the Moon, Those Graves of Memory, Father Time, Day's Hunt, Wasps at the Speed of Sound, What Goes Around, Blue Train, The Abbey Engine, The History of Photography, and a story original to the collection, Summer's Humans.

All of these stories fall under the banner of environmental science fiction, although some more loosely than others.

For purchasing online: Wildside Press; Amazon in the US; and Amazon in Canada. See Derryl's Site for more inofrmation.

The Northern BC Rules -- Brian Fawcett et al

(As of March 20, 2005)

Fawcett invites any and all contributions to the list of
"Northern BC Rules" . . .

For more Fawcett go to Dooney's Cafe.

Life rules:

1.) Only things designed in the north work in the north. Everything is designed in the south.
2.) Don’t even try to say anything good about Northern B.C. during breakup. People complain for a reason, and don’t deserve to be humiliated.
3.) Never get beaten up for the same thing twice. If you do, people will know you’re stupid.
4.) If you can make that big sonofabitch laugh hard enough, he might not beat the crap out of you.
5.) If you say ridiculous things with a straight face, 50 percent of people will believe you.
6.) Speed, agility and calculation are more important than strength—except when you’re changing a truck tire without a jack.
7.) The wrong person always gets caught or killed.
8.) Once you discover where the smoke is coming from, it’s more important to discover where it is going than to douse the fire. Sometimes it really is a forest fire, and knowing where it’s going will tell you where to run. Other times, the smoke may be blown at you by someone is trying to put one over on you, or on themselves.
9.) Always be polite to the police. They have guns, and it isn’t their job to care about why you’re so drunk or angry.
10.) The furnace only dies when the temperature is below -30. The first repairman never fixes it properly, and the second repairman doesn’t come for ten days because he’s fixing all the other furnaces the first repairman screwed up.

Bush Rules:

1.) Never pretend you know what to do if you don’t. In the bush, pretending will get you one of two things: lost or hurt. In the larger world, this is true, too, but the penalties take longer to arrive.
2.) Learning to fall down in the bush without hurting yourself is slightly more important than finding ways to get where you planned to go. Both are more important than standing tall, which is most helpful in getting your head taken off by a flying choker cable or a dead branch up your posterior when you slip on a log.
3.) Don’t assume that those hunters know you’re not a moose.
4.) Never go brushshooting when you’re drunk. (No one brushshoots unless they’re drunk).
5.) Never hike for the fun of it. If god meant us to walk long distances, she wouldn’t have invented motor vehicles.
6.) Never rest anything heavier than a pack of smokes on a tree branch. (This applies specially to axes and loaded guns.)
7.) Never try to talk to wild animals. They can’t talk. Neither can trees.
8.) Never be the first person into the water. Water is cold, and it can harbour bloodsuckers.
9.) Never wear blue-jeans or other fashion items in the bush. Standing out in the bush is the same as making yourself an attractive target, except that you attract blackflies and moisture, not hunters with poor eyesight. After one hour in the bush while it is raining, an average pair of denim pants weighs roughly the same as a grand piano, which you don’t want to be dragging around the bush, either.
10.) There’s no such thing as scenery in the bush unless you’re inside a 4x4 pickup truck. Keep your eye on the trail.
11.) Whistle while you walk—or sing “Stairway to Heaven”, if you have to. Bears don’t Really like to shit in the woods, which are filled with sharp brambles and devil’s club spines. Sensible bears prefer to use the edge of a logging road or a hiking trail or a carpet of moss in a moose meadow, and they expect privacy. Pretending that you’re the Last of the Mohicans is a good way to end up necking with an angry bear.
12.) Never take mugshots of standing moose during the winter with your new digital camera. Those moose are standing by the side of that road because their shins are barked bloody, and they’re hungry and irritable. They don’t want to be 1500 pound Supermodels.
13.) Never eat bananas while you’re working in the bush. Aside from attracting blackflies and mosquitos, it’ll tell everyone you’ve just arrived.
14.) Always remember that everyone who works with choker cables is either incompetent or deranged.
15.) Don’t chat with fallers while they’re working. They have short lives because there’s no reliably safe way to cut down a tree taller than an adult human being.
16.) Don’t decide that you’re out of the woods when you get to a road or clearing. You’re not out of the woods until you’re inside your pickup, and it starts. Until then, you’re just another moose to those drunk American hunters.

Bar Rules:

a. Looking people in the eye means you’re willing to fight. Holding eye contact means you want to fight right now.
b. Bumping people in bars after 11 P.M. reduces you to two options. Hit the person you bumped as hard as you can, or hit the floor face down.
c. Never look at anyone’s private parts while you’re standing at a urinal because it’s likely to start a brawl. This is because the male penis, viewed directly from above, appears smaller than it actually is—the other guy’s is always bigger.
d. Wearing T-shirts from other B.C. towns is equivalent to wearing a T-shirt that reads “Beat Me Up.” Best not to wear hockey jerseys unless they are size XL and you don’t need shoulder pads to fill it out.
e. Always be prepared to walk home. You don’t have to get into the truck with those crazy bastards.
f. She’s married to a faller, and he’s 6’4”.


Snipe Hunting Rules:

1.) Standard equipment for a snipe-hunting expedition: 1 blanket; one axe (to chop firewood, not to be used for clubbing snipes); waterproof matches; one fishnet; at least one bottle of Canadian Club or 18 bottles of beer per
hunter.

2.) Chainsaws and leaky cans of gasoline are not advisable due to injury risk. Flashlights are permitted, but not batteries.

3.) Don’t take poor people snipe hunting. They may be hungry. The optimal novice snipe hunter works for a multinational corporation and makes in excess of $100,000.00 annually.

4.) Never take a gun on a snipe-hunting expedition.

5.) Optimal snipe hunting grounds should offer: a.) clear sightlines for no more than fifteen feet around the fire. B.) natural hazards known to the experienced hunters but not the novice; C.) at least one stand of mature timber within 20 metres.

6.) Optimal weather conditions for snipe hunting: a.) wind speed
of at least 20 KPH: to attract snipes, the blanket needs to move, and
the trees need to make noises. b.) light dusting of snow to aid in finding lost snipe-hunters.

7.) It is sadistic to snipe hunt during black fly season unless you
share the mosquito dope.

8.) Do not snipe hunt during hunting season. You never know who’s out
there, what they’ve been drinking and what they’ll mistake you for.

The Writing Way Up North, March 29-30

-------
Brian Fawcett
“The Northern BC Rules”
Tuesday, March 29
8:00 p.m. UNBC Room 7-150

-------
The Writing Way Up North:
A Symposium on Northern BC Writing
Wednesday, March 30
all panels in UNBC Room 6-205

9:00 – 10:20
Lynda Williams--
Reflections on Water: Seven Years of a Northern Experiment in Creativity.

Si Transken and Jorge Kelly--
Prince George Writing: Creating Community Differently

Kelly Wintemute--
The Three Ecologies: Environment, Society, and Psyche in Fawcett's Virtual Clearcut.

11:30 – 12:45
Jeremy Stewart--
"An Architecture, However Crude": Crumbling Form in Barry McKinnon’s BOLIVIA/ PERU

Betsy Trumpener--
Frozen Ink: Northern Writers on CBC Radio

Michal Latala—
Barry McKinnon and George Stanley in the Face of the North

Mark Peil--
Spirituality and Blackened Lungs: The Religious Third Space in Eden Robinson's Monkey Beach

1:30 – 2:45
Earson Gibson--
Richard Krueger’s aries: Poetry from the Fringe

Ken Belford--
Lan(d)guage writing: post language writing in Northern BC

Rob Budde--
Central Disturbances: Ken Belford’s Ecologue Writing the Outside In.

Robert Creeley 1926-2005

Robert Creeley died Wednesday, March 30 at 6:15 a.m. of pneumonia in Odessa, Texas. He was active and ferociously alive up until the end.

Full biography

Robert Creeley was born in Massachusetts in 1926 and graduated from Black Mountain College where he befriended Charles Olson and edited The Black Mountain Review. Publications include: For Love (1962); Words (1967); Pieces (1969); The Finger (1970); St Martin's (1971); A Day Book (1972); Thirty Things (1974); Away (1976); Later (1978) and Memory Gardens (1986). He has also written prose, including The Gold Diggers (1954/65) and The Island (1963); as well as essays A Quick Graph (1970) and Was That a Real Poem (1979). He was awarded the Horst Bienek Lyrikpreis from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, two Guggenheim Fellowships, a Rockefeller Grant and was New York State Laureate from 1989-91. He is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters and lives in Buffalo, New York. He held the poetics chair at the State University of NY at Buffalo prior to Charles Bernstein.

"Why poetry? Its materials are so constant, simple, elusive, specific. It costs so little and so much. It preoccupies a life, yet can only find one living. It is a music, a playful construct of feeling, a last word and communion" (selected Poems 1945-1990).

For over 50 years Robert Creeley has given shape and breadth to a unique form of verse. Lee Harwood writes: "he has an amazing intensity when he reads. Every 'and', 'the' and 'but' matter. No superfluous words or literary pirouettes. Just trying to get to the heart of the 'matter'".

Click here for readings etc..

transparencies by Jeremy Stewart

not having spoken for along while flood of words in mind
recedes to leave    pure                    colour



that night the northern lights: green          evergreens
black along the side of the highway. Silence that can sing    a song
whose echoes can be heard from far
             away    as here

        to make a record of the season       
           precipitate decisions on the page

headlight rhythms         or the all-time high for this date


early winter rains get into clothes and won't go
"least I don't have to shovel this stuff" 
                                  says the wide-eyed taxicab driver
as he arrives. As he arrives           he leaves   falling
water on coat sleeves  sounds of no thing     & resounds.   She plays
the electric bass   to a smiling Jesus who cannot be seen. Sings loudly 
or softly into a microphone  rejoicing. A weightless grace is on the room
 traces              the line              level hum



surface texts & textures / pine bark    paper birch    road dirt
diffuse day    automotive yawn    disremembered elder    hwys. 16 & 97
    telephone poles:    numberless

gutter disperses all drops down into the drainage as the lungs
heave & ask what can be expected



disappearing takes  children out of no field  here is where you 
imagine the nearby park   Carrie Jane Gray   perhaps

transparencies scatter light very little
over time      over time            over time      over time

the law came to me
    in a dream      I answered (then was answerable--

"you love me"   I can't feel   so cold
 until until.    "I am in love with you"      interminable moments.

Raked leaves together in my yard
    the pattern    the veins     the words

teleological text    seasonal narrative           not to be repeated
        except as fractal mis en abyme

photograph croons into a microphone
  listen          

  holds musical housekeys
  jingling in the pockets

sees a man return to the river
and not return

lower pressure above us: continuous 
inhalation / exhalation exchange changing 
channels and rivulets exhaust clouds / forms cloud

naked without a clear mirror; fog breathing
forget   nothing             draw parallels            face   up

shower in the dark of winter being
         born


when you are gone   you will smile. I will
sing circularity   feedback / ground loop   sonic fire

here is a fadeout movie. Now walk into a snow-covered
parking lot   a fadeout movie. Now walk in

two dissolving frames   burn in the projector
beam   cry if you want to cry. I laugh and cry

        to a snow
parking lot. The downtown buildings need rustproof paint.

You are not gone. You are happy. You are
starting to see the frames   become ashes and still

know the names of streets   of trees
   I hold hands with you & see the projector

want to tell you about the movie   but when
will there be time for us   talking?

GAIA UNBC Student Creative Writing Anthology SawDust

SAWDUST the annual UNBC student anthology of creative writing is now available. You can purchase a copy at the UNBC bookstore or at a local reading near you! $10 of great local writing. Email Earson Gibson for more information.

inversions of faith by Rob Budde

for P.G.


a high pressure press
the poetry of socked in and breathing hard

sunk, dumped on, and developing
symptoms, the air an irony;
worker’s compensation sucked back

a microbrew fermenting, sweet
resistance in merely looking around

parts of speech a fine
particulate i assume daily, take it
on faith, wondering too
if eskers are real

the language of servitude is an aggressive one
piled up against the spare in the back

being used is a foregone
illusion, fiscal pride spray
painted in orange on the back of each load out

wooden blood, the arteries a single lane
bypass and seasonal pacemaker—seizing

but this is
about faith, about inhaling
and admitting it—
being here, looking up at the press of sky and
staying


Dec/2004