Frankenstein.

You know small communities? Small community of post-office people you run into while getting a stamp; the guy who likes to get a dig-in on the kinda stamp you choose, or the counter girl who shucks your overstuffed-with-chapbook envelope. The small community of your corner store. The boozehound buying cigarettes and googling the ankle skin showing from beneath your long skirt. The small community of your neighbours, watching you park your car crooked, bump into the gate if you haven't unhitched it all the way, and bruise your leg on sharp pokey sticks growing from landlord's The Nightmare Before Christmas-inspired garden backyard retreat thing.

And then there's that small community of writers.

I could swear someone's writing my biography, the way some folks carry on about gathering information.

In other news, Forbidden Planet is soon slated to begin production in my attic. I will be requesting the assistance of local talent to fill in for Anne Francis, Robby the Robot, and of course, Caliban (among others, who will be poked and prodded for the sake of art -- yes, art). And the bugdet is: $0. Looking forward to pulling things from the trash (again).

love.

New XPress Book Review

New review up at the XPress. Good article on Simon Armitage in this week's issue too, who's incidentally coming to Ottawa this Sunday the 29th. Go see him at the National Library.

Small Press Bookfairs

Two things to attend if you're into small press books (and you should be):

This weekend:

The TORONTO Small Press Bookfair
on Saturday 21 May 2005 from 11am-5pm at
Trinity-St Paul's Centre, 427 Bloor St W
email: lindszv@yahoo.ca

AND

The OTTAWA Small Press Bookfair
on Saturday June 18 2005 in room 203 of the Jack Purcell Community Centre
email: rob@track0.com

Come and support local authors, and buy rare books that you may be able to cash in one day for the big bucks.

Poetry International

I'm really quite impressed with the poetry international web site. I'll need to explore more once I have some free time (what is with this busy month of April and May anyway).

A couple I had time to look at:

http://netherlands.poetryinternational.org/ (recent visitor to Ottawa Erik L.'s poems are translated here: http://netherlands.poetryinternational.org/cwolk/view/16195)
http://ukraine.poetryinternational.org/ (Serhiy Zhadan's poem Islam is lovely)

Poem: my heart is

dulcet, soft-soaped
fudged, framed, fake   d

play, stop    ,stop
  play

reset
   test/ed

an escape plan
enough music to drown in

my heart is       an anchor

Poets sound off, or on, depending

And, while scouring the net...

Neat new Web site from PENNsound, and launched by well known L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poet Charles Bernstein -- you can actually hear some pretty fantastic poets read their stuff live : http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/featurd-authrs.html

Also tripped upon Derek Beaulieu's Housepress site with some neat things from him: http://www.housepress.ca/writing.htm

Looks like I'll have to deal with that large collection of bags on my own. Cold down by the water. brrr.

A casual day here at my day job, overlooking things from the 11th floor point of view. And the fire alarms going off, but they are evacuating floors in some off-numerical pattern which I can't determine. 15 was just released. Those folk are now in the open air. If this is my last post, my apologies for writing nothing brilliant or moving you living folk can take with you. I leave behind too many plastic bags in my kitchen. Wanted to do something with those, never got round to it. Maybe someone can do that. Floor 11, up next.