WordWorks Winter 2014

WordWorks / Winter 2014

WordWorks / Winter 2014

Editorial Notes

I can’t think of a better gift for WordWorks to offer this holiday season than the selected stories from the 2014 Literary Writes contest. So not only have we devoted Literary Writes a 17 page section for you to curl up with by the fireside, we’ve also included interviews with the three winning authors, and we will be posting short-listed stories (with authors’ and poets’ permission) at bcwriters.ca/literarywrites.

This issue has also turned out to be our opportunity to feature a triumphant triumvirate – no less than three Fed members who have received major honours from prestigious sources. We had to hold our breath so many times these last few weeks, waiting for the outcomes of selection processes, that we were in jeopardy of fainting before the announcements were made. Join us in congratulating: Arleen Paré for winning the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for her collection Lake of Two Mountains.

M.A.C. Farrant for winning the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for her collection of shorts The World Afloat.

Patrick Lane who received the Order of Canada at the hands of Governor General His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston in November.

We can all aspire to such heights, and two seasoned Fed writers have offered additions to our Craft of Writing file that can help us get there. Jocelyn Reekie delves into the confusing world of self-publishing, pointing out the potential gains and drains of going it alone; Lois Peterson offers pointers on boosting the wattage of your stories through ‘new beginnings’ - fresh looks and perspectives on works in progress.

Finally, we close the circle with the winning selections for the Federation of BC Writers Youth Writing Contest. These are the writers of our future – the ones who will hopefully vie for and earn our own Literary Writes contest, and eventually aspire to the red carpet treatment offered writers who have achieved a level of fame that celebrates hard work and courage as well as great talent.

Craig Spence, Editor communications@bcwriters.ca

WordWorks / Winter 2014

Publication of the Federation of BC Writers PO Box 3887 Stn Terminal, Vancouver, BC V6B 3Z3 www.bcwriters.ca / communications@bcwriters.ca Editor Craig Spence | communications@bcwriters.ca Business Manager Katherine Melnyk | booktailor@shaw.ca Editorial Board www.bcwriters.ca/wordworks/editorialboard Volunteers Arthur Soles, Mary Gavin, Rosemary Rigsby, and Christina Coleman © The Federation of BC Writers, 2014 All Rights Reserved Submissions Content of WordWorks is, with very occasional exceptions, provided by members of the Federation of BC Writers. If you would like to submit something, or if you have a story idea you would like to see included in WordWorks, contact the Editor via the email address above. Join at bcwriters.ca/membership Advertising WordWorks is pleased to advertise services and products that are of genuine interest to writers. Space may also be provided to honour sponsors, whose generous contributions make it possible for the Federation of BC Writers to provide services to writers and poets in BC. For information about advertising policies and rates contact the Business Manager via the email address above or see bcwriters.ca/wordworks/advertisers Content Editorial decisions are guided by the mandate of WordWorks as ‘BC’s magazine for writers, about writing’, and its role as the official publication of the Federation of BC Writers. WordWorks will showcase the writing and poetry of FBCW members; provide news and feature coverage of writing and writers in BC, with an emphasis on stories about writing techniques and the business of writing; carry news about the Federation of BC Writers and its work supporting and advocating for writers.

Distribution WordWorks is published quarterly for members of the Federation of BC Writers and distributed by mail and email to a broad list of readers interested in literature in BC. From time to time special theme editions of WordWorks are also produced.

Inside This Edition Welcome to Youth Writers from the President Ben Nuttall-Smith...

4

LITERARY WRITES And the 2014 Winners Are...

Fiction, The Stranger

5

Patricia Webb... 7

Interview with Patricia Webb, Craig Spence...

10

Creative Non-Fiction, The Season of Grace Edythe Anstey Hanen...

13

Interview with Edythe Anstey Hanen Chloe Cocking...

16

Poetry, Aubade, Amalfi

Barbara Pelman...

Interview with Barbara Pelman Deb Clay...

18 19

Boosted into high orbit: Interview with Arleen Paré Pamela Porter...

22

Afloat in the world of M.A.C. Farrant Wendy Donawa...

24

Order of Canada honours Patrick Lane Ann Graham Walker...

26

Self-Publishing: Pride and Punishment Jocelyn Reekie...

28

Great things come of ‘new beginnings’ Lois Peterson...

30

YOUTH WRITING CONTEST Secondary Category: Excerpt from Caitlin’s Book Genevieve Knowles...

32

University Category: Geopoliticus Child Aimee Miller...

34

College Category: Things we complain about John White...

35

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WordWorks / Winter 2014

President Welcomes our Youth Writing Contestants Dear fellow Scribblers, What a delight to read the winning entries from our Young Writers’ contest, starting on Page 30 of this WordWorks! I thoroughly enjoyed both stories and poems by youth who offer great hope for the future of literature. Incidentally, we have more writers and poets per capita in British Columbia than anywhere else in North America. Welcome to the writing community.

In a past existence, I would read countless expository essays written by senior secondary school students. Every now and then, among the reluctant entries, I witnessed sparks of genuine creativity. In my educator role, I was also subjected to the many shady limericks and feeble attempts at poetry I was expected to encourage for fear of “extinguishing vestiges of hope”. Throughout those years, I shared my own love of literature and poetry, particularly of our Canadian poets and authors. I was even known to encourage, rather than discourage, doodling during lectures, in the hope of discovering up-and-coming graphic artists.

Members of the Federation of B.C. Writers do what we can to encourage writers by attending book launches and readings and occasionally buying new publications.

Now, thanks to you, I find myself enjoying works written by enthusiastic younger writers.

As I wrote in my last letter, your work is very important and I encourage you to continue writing and submitting stories, articles and poems to contests and publications – including our own WordWorks literary magazine. With perseverance, you will occasionally get to see some of your writing in print, even to the point of receiving remuneration from time to time.

However, I trust you will continue, as so many of us do, to write for the joy of writing. Please encourage your friends to do likewise. Each of you is a beacon to the future of Canadian Literature.

Ben Nuttall-Smith, President Federation of BC Writers Page 4

WordWorks / Winter 2014

And the 2014 winners are...

You, me and everyone else inspired by compelling literature!

Patricia Webb, Fiction, The Stranger; Edythe Anstey Hanen, Creative Non-fiction, The Season of Grace; and Barbara Pelman, Poetry, Aubade, Amalfi.

Those are the writers whose submissions were judged best of the best in this year’s Literary Writes contest. And they deserve every kudo we can muster – so send up a cheer.

But as an association of writers we have to be a little uncomfortable with the notion of a ‘contest’. It’s a word some of us have trouble fitting into the puzzle of what we do and why. So it’s not out of place to remind ourselves how all of us benefit in the process that has selected Patricia, Edythe and Barbara as winners this year – because in them we are celebrating ourselves.

The very act of writing, re-writing, polishing and presenting a piece for consideration in a contest benefits those who go through it.

Then seeing who the judges have chosen in each category – along with short-listed entries this year, which (with permission) will be indexed and posted online at bcwriters.ca/literarywrites – gives writers a chance to study the techniques of their peers.

Finally, this year we have included interviews with the winning writers and poet, offering insights into what makes their pieces work.

We hope you enjoy the prose and poetry of our 2014 winners; we hope you agree that we have made them work plenty hard for honours we all share!

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WordWorks / Winter 2014

Cascadia Headliners

Sam Hamill

Sharon Thesen

Brenda Hillman

Robert Bringhurst

Susan Musgrave

Barry McKinnon

Brenda Hillman, Sam Hamill, Robert Bringhurst, Sharon Thesen, Susan Musgrave, Barry McKinnon, Amber Dawn, Christine Lowther, Garry Gottfriedson, Christine Leclerc, Missie Peters, Peter Cully, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, George Stanley, Joanne Arnott, Yvonne Blomer, Rita Wong, Sebastien Wen, Marilyn Bowering, Sara Brickman, Ann Graham Walker, Naomi Beth Wakan, Kim Clark, Chris Hancock Donaldson, Ursula Vaira, Anastacia Tolbert, David Fraser, Kim Goldberg, Jay Ruzesky, Janet Marie Rogers, Philip Gordon, Stephen Guppy, Harold Rhenisch, Lennée Reid, Graham Isaac, Robert Lashley, Dan Raphael, Paul Nelson, Brandon Letsinger, Nadine Antoinette Maestas, Mary Ann Moore, Leanne McIntosh, Stephen Collis, Paul Manly, Dr. David D. McCloskey.

www.cascadiapoetryfestival.org

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All Access Gold Pass $25

Four Days Cascadia Issues Featured Readings Headliners Featured Poets

The Living Room The After Party Readings Four Workshops National International Poets Marmot Spoken-Word Bout “The Line Has Shattered” 5 Panel Discussions Make It True Anthology Poems from Cascadia

WordWorks / Winter 2014

Fiction

The Stranger

by Patricia Webb

“I dreamt I died last night.”

“I thought you couldn’t dream your own death.”

“Maybe you can’t, Walter, but I die all the time. Ticks mostly, they tunnel through my ears and lay eggs in my brain.”

“I want to spontaneously combust during orgasm.”

“Thermal runaway and ignition…”

“Exactly, but were we killed in an elevator, because….”

“That’s nice.”

“I’m just saying.”

“No, I was kite boarding. I got hit by lightening and fell into the ocean and drowned.”

“Funny, you look like you’d float.”

Sheldon envisaged his body, in a wet suit, drifting like an oversized kelp bulb. “I was on fire. My suit melted and congealed again when it hit water.”

“OMG a giant condom.”

“It was more like a pea pod, and I was trapped inside.”

“Like larvae?”

“I suppose.”

“Tick larvae?”

“No.” Just this once, Sheldon dared to squat nude. He bent sumo style in front of his tenth floor window. The sky above Sunset beach swarmed with colorful kites that hovered like lop-sided insects. The riders tethered beneath, skidded across the waves at break neck speed.

Luck sacks. Sheldon bobbed from side to side, exerting pressure against each thigh in turn. Exhaled and bent over. Forced his body to hold there for a prolonged count of ten and by six he became hyper-aware of his ass. He’d never seen it from behind while in that position and wondered what other angles of himself he might die without ever seeing. Vertebra by

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WordWorks / Winter 2014

Fiction vertebra his body unfolded like an iron hinge. He’d aged prematurely. Had it only been two years since his fingers were drawn like vacant sensors inside his shorts; found a nubby mass on the side of his testes. Begun kneading, rolling, manipulating it beneath the loose skin of his nut-sack. His mind fixed on bubble wrap. How he’d loved to pop it between his fingers as a child. His Mother, ever helpful, wrapped him in a roll of it for Halloween, hung a sign around his neck the mumps. But at the class party he’d been ridiculed, prodded, and surreptitiously popped.

Why had he told Walter such personal things? Damn elevator sucked it out of him, the two of them riding up that hollow shaft in the belly of a building like two sperms after the same egg.

“What’s the verdict, Sheldon?”

“It’s nothing, a pocket of sperm left over from my vasectomy.”.

“Seriously?”

“Walter, I hadn’t been laid for two years. I was overdue, and I didn’t need any accidents.”

“That’s ugly, but I was talking about the lump. So, you’re fine then?”

“I had a D.R.E.” Sheldon, still riding the wave of his good fortune, bent over and allowed the doctor poke around for any further signs of trouble.

“I could have been a proctologist. Burto says, I have unusually long fingers for a small man.”

“I suppose…”

“But you’re okay?”

“He sent me for more tests.” Sheldon ended up naked and clamping down against the pain. The crevice of his ass hoisted atop a mass of pillows while a technician armed with a gun like apparatus shot multiple times into the bulls-eye of his lubed up rectum, drawing core samples from his prostate.

“Oh, I get it. It’s complicated. Here, take my number.

Call me.”

After the initial diagnosis, Sheldon drove home on auto pilot. He felt numb, as if his body belonged

to someone else; someone who disliked him. In desperation he’d called up Walter, who had shown up almost immediately, a flamboyant genie with a bottle of Tequila.

They sat and drank in a foamy silence broken only by flutters of civility. Sheldon, a Tequila virgin, was already finished his second glass when it hit him, a growing wave of emotion almost indistinguishable from nausea.

It lurched against his stomach, his chest, his mouth. “I have prostate cancer,” he blurted out. Continued to spill his guts until every drop of anguish, past and present, was emptied. With nothing left to lose he dared the question of erectile dysfunction. Walter, whose face had taken on the impenetrable sheen of a slack jawed ventriloquist puppet, sprang to life.

“Burto had his prostate removed,” he said, described in terrible detail his most recent encounter with his boyfriend’s resurrected mast. “It’s about the size of your average ankle sock if that helps.”

“Not really.”

“Obviously, this is going to take more than fresh broccoli.”

“What the hell?”

“Strong heart. Strong erection” Walter said with the authority of a specialist. “You’ll need vitamins, a cock ring, Cialis and porn – lots of it. You must be willing to do anything,” but he told him not to worry because there was plenty of hope to be found. Outrageous, painful sounding hope Sheldon could inject directly into his penis and sustain for hours.

“But we are more than the sum of our hoary genitals,” Walter concluded and raised his glass in a toast. “Here’s to a surgeon’s fingers,” he said. And so it went. They toasted and flexed, flexed and compared parts until they’d all but exhausted the long list of their exemplary features.

“Bubble butts,” Walter yelled, and mooned him. Left Sheldon speculating which parts of his own body would be remembered, and by whom. “Low riders,” Walter cried. Spun around, pants at his ankles, and undulated his thighs. Sheldon was appalled. He felt challenged and reached for his zipper but struggled with how Walter might take it. The longer he hesitated, the more urgent

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Fiction it felt to reveal to someone, even Walter, the slightly above average size of his dick. But his fingers wouldn’t budge. He retreated to the kitchen and made nachos with pickles and goat cheese because he couldn’t find the proper ingredients. Or perhaps to exact revenge on this fierce little man, almost a stranger, who seemed to have everything and nothing he wanted.

At three a.m., Walter, sickly white, staggered towards the door. Sheldon tried to shake his hand but Walter yanked him in for a hug. Sheldon instinctively pulled back. Walter stumbled and refused to let go. He righted himself and yanked again. Sheldon surrendered and plunged forward into Walter’s slight chest. There, moored beneath a halo of Tequila, caught up in the biosphere of not unpleasant smelling cologne; anchored in Walter’s willingness, he held on.

harder, but the moment had passed. Outraged, he turned on his penis. He pumped and jerked. Cursed, and beat his free hand against the wall. Not again, he groaned and exhausted, slumped to the floor. Let the water pummel his face. Seven hours of surgery, thirtyone radiation treatments that left his ass burnt on both cheeks. On hormone therapy, he’d gained weight - grown man tits for God sakes - and still the cancer wanted more. It wanted his penis, and it hung like a caterpillar from the thread of his body, flaccid, starved of testosterone. Sheldon scooped the ruddy mass into his palm. Cradled it while what was left of the fire shrank away.

Clam holes dimpled the sand. Watery ducts, Sheldon made a point of stepping on. Slumped down on a log amidst a colony of waylaid kites their owners sprawled across the beach like scruffy haired sea lions. A man, Rain blurred the kites into psychedelic blobs. Sheldon singular, buff stood up in front of Sheldon, groaned, flopped down and pulled his legs into the crossed and stretched out his arms. The wind, as if summoned position then fought to maintain it. The floor vent by his pageantry, arose. It swooped under the derelict clicked on. Warm air surfed up across his genitals. sails and made them flap. It struck Sheldon’s face It occurred to him that he hadn’t beaten off that and swatted at his clothes. Adonis, muscles bulging, morning. He wasn’t particularly horny, but in general, grabbed his board and slapped out into the water. felt compelled to target as many orgasms as possible.

In a single expert movement he was upright. Man In the shower, he cranked the water temperature and board hurtled across the waves, swung wide and so high it stung at first. Bathed in a cloud of steam he veered towards a moored tanker, swiveled sharply and began stroking himself. It might have been the chlorine turned back towards shore. accumulating in his mouth, but he felt weirdly alive, in “Luck Sack,” Sheldon mumbled. “Luck sack,” he a chemically, swimming-at-the-pool-as-a-kid sort of yelled, louder as Adonis flew by once again. “Fuck way. It seemed to take an eternity, but once reasonably you!” he screamed. Felt it in every particle of his hard he slipped out of the shower, knelt down on the being, the silent alarm. He tore off his clothes and bathmat and snapped photos of his almost hard on. beat them against the sand. Charged the ocean and He hopped back in the shower and tried for orgasm kicked and flailed. He dove into the oncoming waves again. Stroked softly at first, then harder, slower, and surfaced again.

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WordWorks / Winter 2014

Fiction Hope, Despair, and everything in between: An interview with Patricia Webb about The Stranger

By Craig Spence The best dramatic fiction is gutsy, real, disturbing, sad and humorous all at once. In a word, human. The best short stories condense the highs and lows of those human experiences and put the reader on the kind of intellectual and emotional roller-coaster that leaves you a different person once you get off from the person you were when you bought your ticket. In The Stranger, which won the Fiction award in the Federation of B.C. Writers’ Literary Writes contest, Patricia Webb captures the emotional turmoil of a man facing death. Asked, if it’s a story of hope or despair, Webb answers “both.”

She might have added: and everything in between.

What is the emotional and intellectual reality you are trying to achieve with The Stranger? How successful have you been in achieving it?

Originally (the main character) Sheldon wanted to talk about his cancer. But the more I worked with the story, the more I began to understand how lonely and repressed he was, how the cancer masked an even greater personal tragedy. Here was a man who might die without fully embracing and releasing himself. As for the second question, I plead the fifth.

You are a woman, writing intensely, and in explicit detail about the male body, men-thoughts and male interactions. How do you get yourself into a man’s head-space, his emotional space?

It was a fairly natural process for me. Sheldon invaded my head space. I just moved out of his way and allowed him to speak. It’s about trusting the voice of the story, the writing process. Characters are largely revealed through their emotions anyways, and emotions are common ground; genderless. I explored Sheldon’s emotional space by exploring my own.

We all collect information and interact with the opposite sex our whole lives, so I had reference points, built in resources. There was the odd time when I asked, how would a man deal with this? But, the more relevant question seemed to be, how would Sheldon respond? He was born out of my psyche, so I knew quite a lot about that.

Author Brian Payton once advised me to take my characters out for a walk – literally – and see the world as they might. What would they notice?

What are they attracted to, or not? What are they thinking? It helps, and so does research. If I felt uncertain, I went to the source and asked for a man’s opinion.

How does it feel, once you get there – inside a character’s thoughts?

I love being inside a character’s world; exploring the attributes inside myself that any particular character demands. It’s a gift to ‘go there’, to don my pirate clothes and swing from the chandeliers. Yar!

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Fiction Why is it important for readers to go into these deep physical and mental spaces?

They lie at the bottom of all human experience.

Leaving them out, or skirting around them, I think, can limit the scope of the story. They help create a three dimensional world, and provide a richer experience for the reader. They help invest the reader in the story’s outcome. The reader gets closer to the character and their journey, and can experience more profoundly the character’s delicious ‘aha’ moments.

Your story delves into layers of detail about Sheldon, depths many men – or women for that matter – would never explore in their own lives. What techniques do you use to reveal character in The Stranger?

A story teller has the luxury of going all over the place.

We’re like the travel writers of human landscapes.

I believe all the details in my stories are inter-related and drawn together by the main character’s journey.

Ideally, the landscape is an expression of the character’s feelings; the friends and paths they take help reveal their thoughts and inclinations. I try to keep that on my radar during the editing phases.

I ask a lot of questions when I’m sitting inside a story. What’s that for? Why’s that there? How can I use that more effectively? Where else does that resonate in the story? If I don’t know, I leave it alone until I do. Or I take it out and see what that does. Shaena Lambert once had me change one of my manuscripts from third to first person. It’s a great trick that forces you in closer to the action. You can always change it back later, with all your new insights in tow. Switching into another character’s voice and head space to see what’s going on with them can be very helpful too. The story itself will reveal all I need to know, I just keep poking at it.

The voice of The Stranger is blunt, colloquial in its references to the body and sex, and in the subject matter it explores. Do you think some readers will find that shocking? Is it important that they be shocked? If so, why?

Sheldon is facing his demons, so the reader has to face them too, and, if all goes well, experience his shock. The colloquial language creates a kind of shell the reader butts up against. It heightens the notion of hidden truths. This is very much a story on the edge. A story of extremes and that contrast creates distances, heights from which things can be dropped, and – as you said – cracked open. The contrast in language helps define those extremes and shines a light on the softer more poignant moments.

The story starts out, and reverts occasionally, to italicized, dialogue segments. How important are those ‘clips’? Why have you included them?

The reader is already listening when they read a story, but when dialogue is introduced, they are listening to the characters speaking directly. It develops a greater level of intimacy between the two, and brings the character to life. Sheldon is closed off, so directing the reader into his head space is a great way of breaching his walls. Also, there’s a dreamlike, surreal quality about the floating dialogue that separates the voice from the body. So metaphorically it reveals Sheldon’s disconnection from himself, while the elevator helps create that closed off space within which he functions.

Is The Stranger ultimately a story of hope, or despair?

Both. I don’t think you can have one without the other.

Sheldon’s body and health are in a state of despair, but his soul is on the mend.

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Creative Non-Fiction The Season of Grace Edythe Anstey Hanen

I’m called by the stillness of a tender summer night. It’s one of the last, I know, before the inevitable drift and slide into the more capricious days of autumn. I open the door and step outside, bare feet against the stillwarm deck. The dark pulses with scent and sensation, a soft green jungle: rust-coloured chrysanthemums, trailing orange nasturtiums, the last of the purple heather, the sticky brush of a spider web against my cheek.

I feel my way to the old green wicker chair and sit down. The moon has not risen yet and the sky is black.

Down in the dry creek bed, in the tall grasses, and under the rocks in the back garden, I hear the crickets.

This sound, I know, heralds summer’s end.

Each turn of the seasons brings the bittersweet, the losses, the gifts. Spring, with its eternal optimism always unleashes in me an unbridled coltish delight, a soaring of blood in the veins: the soft green of new beginnings, the first delicate blooms, the purple flash of hummingbird wings. The sound of the creek as it tumbles through grasses and ferns, spills over rocks and stumps, finding its way to the sea.

As the landscape shifts into summer, the creek becomes a splash, a trickle, then is silent. By this time the sound of moving water has drifted from my consciousness and the silence is replaced with the rasp of the crickets that sing all night in the hot, dry grasses.

A young doe wanders through the garden, noses the low hanging impatiens, nibbles on my newly-blooming asters.

Soon the winter birds will arrive, pecking at the bright orange mountain ash berries. Cool evenings, as August creeps into September. Then the rains and the smell of wood smoke haunt the air. Endings become palpable.

But there is a slow, sweet time before the end, a time not quite at the end, but when all my senses are Continued next page Page 13

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Creative Non-Fiction contemplating endings. This is the time of letting go.

The season of grace.

When I was a child, my family moved from Winnipeg to the home of my grandparents on the coast.

We drifted away from our flat, predictable prairie life to this coastal flux of shifting tides and restless seas. I hated that first fall and winter: the foghorns bleating their two-tone call from the harbour; the North Shore mountains hijacked by a veil of mist. The dark maw of a granite sea.

I was thirteen. I lay alone in my bed in my upstairs room listening to Red Robinson’s Platter Party on a little transistor radio I kept under my pillow; the program always ended with the same song: The party’s over/It’s time to call it a day/They’ve burst your pretty balloon/and taken the moon away. It was all so sad, I thought. The foghorns, the dark, fretful sea. That wall of mountains that cut us off from the rest of the world.

And it rained. And it rained. And it rained.

Sometimes I’d put on my boots and duffel coat and walk over the bridge to English Bay where the last of the popcorn vendors held his post, rubbing his rough, chapped hands together, his collar pulled up against the cold salt wind blowing in from the sea. As fall leaned into winter and the first of the autumn storms swept in, he was the last holdout, with his steamy glasswindowed cart, the little Sterno stove where he melted butter in a tiny tin pot, the grease-stained brown paper bag, the gassy-tasting popcorn.

I think of these things now as I sit alone in this late summer dark. Then I hear a sound, a foreign sound.

The sound of singing. A frail voice rises and falls.

Sometimes the voice is sad and quavering, sometimes strong and clear. I realize then that it isn’t singing. It’s praying.

The words are mystical, alien to me. Hebrew, maybe. It’s Max, who lives next door on the other side of the creek. His wife died last year and he has been inconsolable. If you ask him if he’s happy here, in this beautiful place in the woods, he will say that he couldn’t be happy anywhere. So he sits in his chair late at night, under this starry sky in the woods by the

creek and he sings his prayers.

Max’s voice fills me suddenly with the image of my grandfather. This memory is like a faded black and white photograph stored away in the back of a bureau drawer, not meant to be looked at again. The image unfolds as though it happened just yesterday. My mother stands at the kitchen sink, her hands in soapy dishwater as she watches my grandfather from the window.

“He’s at it again,” she calls out to my grandmother. “He still can’t tell a weed from a delphinium.”

My grandmother says nothing. The angry click of her knitting needles is the only sound in the room.

This is how they see my grandfather. A foolish old man, barely worth the cost of his feed, the roof over his head. Gran was the undisputed monarch of the house, my grandfather a reluctant visitor. They rarely spoke to one another, torn apart by old arguments and hurts and long-buried secrets that had grown between us all like gnarled old roots. I never understood the anger that my parents kept honed like the sharp cold blade of a knife. “He did things,” they told me. “Unforgivable things.” That was all they ever said.

In the picture in my mind, my grandfather digs in the garden, leans heavily against the shovel. Sweat glistens above his upper lip. He’s a small man, but wiry.

Grey hair falls over his face like a curtain. His arms are taut, veins standing out like thin blue highways.

I remember his room, a place I visited on occasion against my parents’ wishes. His Bible lay open on the small wooden table next to his hymn book and his reading glasses. A thin knitted orange and brown quilt was thrown across his bed. He’d always lived in exile, in the basement below my grandmother’s rooms which smelled faintly of violets and lemon polish and which did not invite company.

I tried to hate him the way they did, the way they wanted me to, but I couldn’t. I knew he was broken.

I knew that his soul had been killed long before he found Gran and her God. He played the role, read his Bible in his room at night, sang hymns in his rusty old voice, but I don’t believe he ever found God. He was too wounded in too many places to ever have been able

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Creative Non-Fiction to claim that he held God in his heart. And surely he must have thought that of all the betrayals in his life, the greatest was God’s.

To me he embodied the stories he told. He grew up in an orphanage in Quebec, was taken away by a stranger when he was just a child, a man who took him to his farm, worked him to the bone, abused him in every possible way. My grandfather escaped in a small wooden boat that he found in the reeds by the water’s edge, then made his way south and signed on as a Gatineau logger driving the booms down the Ottawa River.

I picture him now: ill-fitting boots clamped to the wet rolling log, his arched body young and strong as he fought to outwit the temperamental river. I imagine him bucking the wild currents and surviving through sheer will and grit. Perhaps it was the only time he had power over his own life, a power he long ago surrendered or had torn away.

As I child I needed to believe that my grandfather was the hero of the stories he told me as we walked together through our leafy neighbourhood streets.

The desperado who flew on the wings of bravado and glory, a range rider who rode shotgun on a stage travelling through Sonora in old Mexico, all buckskin and dust, that he had pounded the hard dirt trails through caliche hills, bunked down by a mesquite campfire, its small glow the only warmth in the desert night.

He was my grandfather.

After a while I hear Max pad across the wooden deck and go back into his house. His lights go out and the night is still again. Perhaps he waits for some peace, an unfolding of the mystery that his life has become as he prays for the arms of night to enfold him, to keep him safe.

I think now, sitting here in the dark, that my grandfather was waiting too. As am I. All of us contemplating endings and beginnings, mining thoughts like highways on a map that weave their way into memory, touching us sometimes with a small ache, especially now in this time of summer’s end.

This season of grace.

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WordWorks / Winter 2014

Creative Non-Fiction I love hearing other peoples’ stories: An Interview with Edythe Anstey Hanen

by Chloe Cocking Edythe Anstey Hanen’s short piece Season of Grace, winner of the Creative Non-fiction prize in the Federation of B.C. Writers’ Literary Writes contest, is a poignant, bittersweet reflection on memory. It explores grief, loss, and the beginnings of endings. WordWorks recently asked Hanen about Season of Grace and her winning or the Creative Non-fiction prize: Can you describe your creative process? Do you have any habits or techniques for story germination?

My ideas simmer for a long time. I find that crossover time between sleeping and waking a rich and fertile place for mining images and ideas. As soon as I wake up, before I open my eyes, I start thinking about whatever it is I’m working on. I write down what comes to me on whatever I have lying on my bedside table – the edge of a crossword puzzle, the inside cover of a book, a piece of Kleenex, if that’s all I have.

I try to remember to transfer them onto something more permanent as soon as possible because they can easily get lost or forgotten – especially if I fall asleep again. I’m always writing down interesting words or thoughts or ideas – mine or somebody else’s , anything that carries a ghost of something that could be used in some way later. Eventually they may find a place in what I’m writing. Or not. When they do, they come into being usually quite transformed from their original context.

I begin to write on one of those big yellow lined

pads until I have a few paragraphs, then I start working on the computer. I do that first, writing propped up against pillows on my bed, beside a big window looking out into the garden. I like public transit, looking out the window from the SkyTrain or a city bus, daydreaming and thinking about whatever it is I’m working on. I’m not particularly prolific, but in my head I’m always writing. I write both creative non-fiction and fiction and occasionally poetry. They often overlap.

When and how did your writing career begin?

I’ve been writing all my life. From early childhood I had a deep need to chronicle my thoughts and experiences, to make them into something I could see in black and white on paper. That somehow made everything more real for me. I love hearing other people’s stories.

Years ago I started interviewing some of the oldtimers on Bowen Island and writing their stories. That was back in the ‘80s. Most of the stories have ended up in the (Bowen Island) Historians’ archives so it was a useful enterprise, though originally I just did it for myself. I did a lot of historical research for the GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional District) and out of that I wrote the text for a coffee table book Bowen Island: Reflections published by the Bowen Island Historians.

I started to take writing more seriously once my kids were grown. I joined writers’ groups and studied novel-writing at UBC; I was editor of the Bowen

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Creative Non-Fiction Island community newspaper for 17 years, covered meetings and wrote the occasional op-ed piece. After quitting work in 2007, I started writing full time. I pushed myself to send stuff out to magazines and enter contests and – surprise – I began winning prizes.

How did “Season of Grace” come about for you?

A slightly different and much longer version of The Season of Grace was first written a few years ago when my mother was dying. She was in a hospice and although it was a beautiful place with a rose garden outside her window, she did not get to enjoy any of it.

It was February and the garden was dead and grey and sad looking, and she was dying. I started thinking then about the seasons and how she wouldn’t see another spring or summer.

I’ve always been deeply connected to the natural world, the changing of the seasons, and this awareness in the context of my mother’s life ending had a profound effect on me at that time. The new story that emerged, however, became something very different and not about my mother at all. I wanted to add another layer to the story as well, so I added the grandfather and created a window into my own youth.

What are the important features of the story from your point of view?

I have recently begun experimenting with adding layers to my stories, ‘under’ stories that may not at first appear to have relevance to the original story. I like the surprise. I like stories to have a texture that manifests in unexpected ways. I write for Mexconnect, an online travel magazine on Mexico, and my stories are never just simple travel stories. I look for the story under the story, the twist that makes it more than a travelling story. Something that makes the reader think about it a bit longer. I like to do that in both my fiction and my non-fiction.

I’m interested in women ‘telling their lives,’ whether those stories are fictional or non-fiction.

I believe women’s stories are unique and powerful and call out to be told. Puerto Rican writer Judith

Cofer Ortiz says of family stories being passed down through the women: “The aroma of coffee perking in the kitchen, the mesmerizing creeks and groans of the rockers, and the women telling their lives in cuentos (stories) are forever woven into the fabric of my imagination, braided like my hair that day I felt my grandmother’s hands teaching me about strength, her voice convincing me of the power of storytelling.”

(Silent Dancing: A Partial Puerto Rican Childhood).

What does it mean to have “Season of Grace” win the Creative Non-fiction Literary Writes prize?

Winning prizes is all about feeling appreciated, getting that pat on the back from your peers. It’s the icing on the cake. Getting published and winning prizes has kept me on course, kept me writing and kept me believing in myself as a writer. It’s a huge honour.

Do you have any advice for new writers?

Advice to new writers: Read. Write. Join writing groups, take classes. Edit, edit, edit. Put your work away for a few days and go back over it again. Do that many times. If you find yourself uncertain about something you’ve written, especially if your mind stumbles in the same place more than once, fix it or get rid of it. Don’t be afraid to cut. Be ruthless. You don’t have to throw anything away; you can keep a file for cuts. It may be perfect in another story. Keep believing in yourself, no matter what. But most of all, keep writing. ~~~ Chloe Cocking is a board member-at-large with the Federation of BC Writers. Her first novel, Blood Rain, will be forthcoming in 2015. An excerpt from Blood Rain was anthologized in the 2014 collection Saving Seeds: A Collection by New West Writers. She has lived her entire life in the Vancouver rainforest, and is remarkably enthusiastic about all forms of caffeine.

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Poetry Aubade, Amalfi The boat has long gone my friends wondering where I am, making up stories I am not in.

I am here with the jasmine and lemon, you serve me rigatoni with clams and artichoke.

Your feet against mine, the intimacy of toes! Your shirt hangs at the back of my chair.

We drink moments, we stretch time, as if we could unwrinkle its curves and shallows, its bells and buzzers.

You play some Elgar, the slow Nimrod, and then, a tarantella. And I dance for you.

How you made me do it I don’t know, a red shawl around my hips— and the weight of the armour I wear every day— the hauberk, the gauntlets, the tabard— now discarded at my feet, heavy on the tiled floor of the patio.

When the sun rises, we will take the stairs slowly, through the tunnels of the city, the blue doors still asleep, and I will ride the dawn to Naples. You will return to your cello, strum each note I danced to, the red shawl across your shoulders.

Barbara Pelman

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Poetry As long as we’re human: an interview with Barbara Pelman

by Deb Clay Poets Deb Clay and Ann Graham Walker put their heads together and came up with some questions to ask Barbara Pelman, whose poem Aubade, Amalfi took first prize in the Federation of B.C. Writers’ 2014 Literary Writes contest. Pelman has published two books of poetry, and her works have appeared in several anthologies and publications. See the League of Canadian Poets site (poets.ca under Poets & Members, then Full Members) for more about Barbara Pelman.

What moved you to write poetry?

I have written poetry since I was a kid, but mostly ‘occasional’: for family celebrations, for classes – to show students how to write a haiku, sonnet, sestina, etc. I didn’t really write from the heart, out of need, until the separation and divorce in 2000 – other than a six week sonnet I wrote recovering from surgery.

I joined a small group of poets who met once a month. At one time, I brought a poem about my anguish over the divorce, and asked, ‘yes, it was therapeutic to write it, but is it a poem?’ That was the crucial moment. From then on I wanted to write poetry, using craft and skill as well as heart. I have a poetry group now, which began from a retreat with Patrick Lane in 2002, which has met twice a month for the past dozen years. And I continue to attend poetry retreats at least twice a year. “The craft so long, the life so short,” as Chaucer said.

You said “If the poem isn’t working, it is probably because the writer isn’t being honest, hasn’t reached that truth. Poetry keeps me pared down, more essential. I am often surprised by the poem that gets written.” To continue in this vein: Tell us about Aubade, Amalfi and your experience writing It – what was your process when you sat down to write the poem? Did you have a sense of its form in mind or did you just start to write?

This poem has an interesting history, actually. I have been writing a number of poems about the cellist, Marcello, since having a little adventure in Italy – in Amalfi – in 2012 when I went there for a workshop with Lorna Crozier. Then in November, at the Ocean Wilderness Retreat with Patrick Lane, our topic was to write an aubade. I wrote three that time – it’s a lovely form, not a form, really, but a theme. I have gathered these poems into a chapbook that I hope will be published in the spring. There’s a whole other story about Marcello....

I understand you do work with poetic forms quite a bit, or at least you have in the past. What is it about working with form?

It is a really interesting paradox that form frees you – and it does. Somehow, because you know where you’re supposed to go – a certain number of lines, a rhyme scheme, repetition of words, you arrive obliquely, unexpectedly. Your familiar ways of writing can’t keep

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Poetry up. The form forces the writer into different ways of Sometimes prose poetry, sometimes more associative perceiving and expressing the ideas of the poem. Also, kinds of poetry. The retreats with Patrick Lane are the form can get you going and keep you on track. And always a stretch. finally, it’s fun, a challenge.

Were you able to pass on that love of poetry to your Is there any one poetic form you particularly like playing students as a teacher? Do you think poetry will continue with? to inspire and be relevant?

For awhile I was writing a lot of glosas. I once had a lovely phone conversation with P.K. Page about her book Holograms, and my teaching of glosas and demi-glosas to my students. I loved that I had a ready-made last line, and I liked the honouring of four great lines of another poet, and the challenge of incorporating those lines into a poem of my own. I also love sestinas – the difficulty of being able to say something different each time with the same words.

I’ve also written pantoums, ghazals, sonnets, rondeaus, triolets, a few limericks. The latest form I’ve tried is the gigan. I wrote a couple of fugues – one came very quickly and is a favourite of mine. The other is longer and I’m still working on it. As for the villanelle, I’m completely defeated by it. Who can do anything with ‘do not go gentle’ in your head? Or ‘the art of losing isn’t hard to master?’ The iambic pentameter line can get very metronomy.

Does topic influence which form you will use or do you just find yourself within a form while exploring a topic?

Good question! I think I just decide to try a form, then find the topic within it. Sometimes if I’m writing a short piece, I might try to contain it within 14 lines and call it a sonnet of sorts. Whether or not to use couplets or quatrains or tercets depends on content – whether you want the poem to be more organized or more organic. Deciding on end-jammed lines or end-stopped lines, deciding where the stanzas end – all these decisions are a part of form as well.

When you really want to stretch – go someplace new with your poetry – what do you do?

I’m still working on that and not very bravely.

Oh, I hope I did! That was my intent, and it was clear to the students that I wanted them to love poetry. We did a great deal of poetry writing – I used a poem as a model, then had students write using something from that poem. And we wrote form poems, and poems using imagery, and poems using embedded rhyme, and poems incorporating specific words, and found poems, and magnetic poems and poetry games.

At Reynolds, where I taught last, I developed a reading series that lasted a number of years, called On the Road, and that developed into a lunchtime open mic. A hundred students would come to listen, more than a dozen kids would read their poems. When I left the school, the students gathered their poems into a book for me. Yes, I think I passed on my love of it. And yes, I think – I know!

– that poetry will continue to inspire and be relevant. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s been a part of every human culture from the beginning, why would it die out? We have Leonard Cohen. We have Shane Koyczan. We have the rap artists and Billy Collins and Poet Laureates in each city. Poets are writing operas and poems on sidewalks, reading poems on the radio and at presidential inaugurations. P.K. Page’s poem Planet Earth is read once a year on Earth Day at the United Nations. As long as we are human, have emotions, fall in and out of love, care about our surroundings, have children to sing lullabies to, there will be poetry. ~~~ Deb Clay is Poetry Coordinator with WordWorks Magazine and volunteers for the Fed doing web development. She is Area Rep for Sooke and a leadermentor with the Sooke Writers’ Collective. Deb is also a board member with the Sooke Community Arts Council.

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And then some...

As always, the toughest part of Literary Writes has been the choosing – thanks to the judges who have considered all the submissions.

Toughest and hardest are two different things, and thanks are also due in buckets-full to Federation of BC Writers Executive Director David Blinkhorn, who has done the hard work of organizing and running a very complex, time-consuming show.

Finally, as always, thanks must go to the membership of the Fed – your support of BC’s ‘community of writers’ makes events like Literary Writes possible.

As the ink is drying on this page, planning is underway to make Literary Writes 2015 an event that will build on the success of this year’s contest – now that we can use that word somewhat more comfortably.

Keep up with developments by visiting bcwriters. ca/literarywrites from time to time, or by looking for updates in WriteON, the eNewsletter of the Federa-

tion of BC Writers. If you have a suggestion, send it to David at info@bcwriters.ca.

We’ll wind down Literary Writes 2014 with an invitation for you to start preparing for 2015. There’s lots of time, and lots of opportunities for you to get that winning submission ready.

Remember to check out the short-listed entries from this year, which will be indexed with links from the Literary Writes web page. One of the best ways of improving our skills is to read other’s works.

And most important of all SUBMIT! Check out the BC Writers’ Calendar – there’s a button link from the Fed homepage – for writing events and contests. Of course WordWorks itself is a venue that welcomes Fiction, Creative Non-fiction and Poetry submissions (see our ad on Page 12).

Ben Nuttall Smith President, Federation of BC Writers

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Boosted into high orbit: An interview with Arleen Paré, 2014 GG Poetry Award winner

by Pamela Porter As writers we work at our craft because we need to, because doing so helps us order our world, make discoveries which we would not have uncovered had we not made the concentrated and lengthy effort to write the words down, just so: on a scrap of envelope as Emily Dickinson was wont to do, or the back of a grocery list, or in a notebook, or on a tablet. The thought of receiving awards for one’s work lies in some far away, unfocused dream. But for Arleen Paré, the dream has been realized. As winner of the 2014 Governor General’s Award for Poetry for her book, Lake of Two Mountains, Arleen and her poems have been boosted into high orbit, the years of quiet commitment to her art suddenly and overwhelmingly rewarded. I spoke with Arleen at her home in Victoria just before she travelled to Ottawa for the GG award ceremony.

How does it feel to win such a prestigious prize as the GG? It feels heady, as in my head is a little too light and can’t quite connect to my neck, and also surreal, as in this can’t be me they’re talking about.

You came to writing poetry after a career as a social worker. You’ve raised children, earned several degrees in disparate fields. In short, you’ve lived several different lives. What drew you, finally, to writing, and to poetry in particular?

I liked to write but my early writing was confined mainly to school composition projects. I started to write after finishing a master’s thesis at UBC, and driving home after the Oral Exam, I thought I would just start a new writing project – a novel – without the need for citations and textual research. I joined a writing group and, because I was working, I could

only produce short pieces for our monthly meetings; of course, these short pieces were poems. Therefore, for reasons of economy I became a poet. For reasons of soul, I carried on – and on and on.

Who are your teachers, and what have you learned from them?

My first teacher was Betsy Warland in Vancouver. She taught at SFU’s TWS (The Writers’ Studio) program.

She taught me spacing, how to leave space, how spacing was like scoring the page, how silence on the page was communication too, part of the poem. My second teacher was Patrick Lane, who taught me through a series of poetry retreats, and who taught me the deep meaning of poetry and also the importance of using the conventional poetic techniques, such as cadence, rhyme, rhythm, repetition, line breaks. My third teacher was Lorna Crozier, who taught me in UVic workshops: the use of form, the importance of editing, of learning from each other. And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the amazing Steven Price, who taught two UVic lecture courses, one on form and the other on technique. I have been so lucky in my teachers! I am so grateful to them all.

What poets do you return to again and again for inspiration? What is it about their work that opens you up to your own poems?

I enjoy Don Domanski’s thoughtful mysticism, his use of language, his use of space, his deep resonance with the world around us and in us. Tim Lilburn’s To the River too, for similar reasons. Right now I am in awe of Anne-Marie Turza for her recent collection, The Quiet, so quirky and at the same time so full of meaning and gentleness.

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Was there someone in your earlier years – a teacher, say, or an influential figure – who turned you on to poetry, and to your potential gifts?

Sister Francis Dennis, of the Sisters of Charity was my grade 11 Literature teacher. She was a passionate woman. I will never forget Dover Beach, the thrill, the reach of it, and the fear.

How have the events of your life thus far prepared and influenced you toward writing? What are you grateful for that may have brought you to this point in your life?

My career in health bureaucracy brought me this far.

I wrote a book about it and about escaping it, which came out of the aftermath of the MA at UBC. Then my move to Victoria, where the literary community is so lush and supportive. UVic’s writing program polished me off – and not in a bad way.

What is your writing practice? How did you develop this practice?

I have no serious writing practice, meaning I have no routine. I have projects which contain my writing; these organize me. I just love writing almost more than anything else. That’s my incentive, my love of it, it makes it easy to carry on.

You have a distinct poetic style. What factors helped you to hone and clarify your style?

I’m not sure. I think, to be honest, that I just prefer writing in my own voice; it feels more authentic and satisfying. The factor of satisfying is big. I can tell when it sounds phony and contrived. I can’t stand that.

Because of your GG win, no doubt you will receive many invitations to read and to give workshops in poetry. What do you want to tell others, who, as you have been these past years, are also quietly pursuing the craft of poetry?

Just to keep at it. Just to keep on honouring your own voice, you own style, while at the same time experimenting – so you don’t find yourself bored – or boring. Write and edit and write some more. And edit one more time. I love editing! It’s all so much fun. I would want to tell them just to have fun.

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Afloat in the wondrously quirky world of M.A.C. Farrant

by Wendy Donawa Have you ever sat half-dozing on a bus, lulled by the murmur of two plump ladies chatting behind you when you suddenly hear “... and by Christ I said, the next one won’t miss!” Or a young woman, like the one I overheard wailing into her iphone, “And there was a stain in the crotch…!” But it’s your stop, so you get off with mini-narratives and questions rampaging in your head.

Of course we’ve all had these odd intrusions into our consciousness, but it takes M.A.C. Farrant to turn them into an art form. Author of 10 collections of short fiction, essays, book reviews, and a memoir adapted for the stage, she has been a stalwart literary presence on Vancouver Island for decades. Much anthologized and nominated for multiple literary and theatre awards, she has just seen her most recent book, The World Afloat (Talonbooks) take the 2014 Victoria Butler Book Prize.

Some reviews refer to The World Afloat as a short story collection, but these 75 short fictions seem an entirely different kettle of fish. Farrant calls them miniatures, and most are well under a page in length – collages of humour, sharp observation, brilliant absurdity, and irreverent commentary.

“It gave me a lot of pleasure to write,” she says. “I began the book with the self-inflicted assignment of writing a composition a day for a year, including Christmas, birthdays, other holidays, weekends…. I made it to ten and a half months before I ran out of steam, but by then I had a lot of material to work with.”

If there is a constant in our response to this collection, it is perhaps our astonishment. On almost every page we find ourselves sitting up, pop-eyed, thinking did you just say that? A flaneur – or flaneuse?

– Farrant fixes our attention to the quirky or bizarre in every passing scene: an offhand observation about “the Bay’s Menswear Department…where old men in beige slacks go to die,” is followed by a narrator arranging events for morose zombies, to cheer them with

“wonderful heartfelt elements… to engage with, such as gas-filled buzzards and neck and shoulder massage.”

A prose poem is composed entirely of skewed English subtitles used in Hong Kong films.

Farrant works intuitively, with “a quantity of notes… I seldom pre-plan; I take the ember of a piece and follow where it leads me, all the while trying to stay open and fresh, denying nothing. Then I re-write, re-write, re-write… Couple Sucks Same Candy was a combination of several things: my husband finding an old candy in his jacket pocket, a cashier at Shoppers Drug Mart calling me ‘Lovey’, and a jigsaw puzzle which was given to us for Christmas and which we came to hate.”

The wackiness appears wildly spontaneous, but belies the polish with which each character is made vivid, each event sharp-edged, especially given the slang and clichés used by some of her personae: “Culturally, for Ron and me, Shoppers Drug Mart is all there is.”

Farrant’s humour—oblique, sardonic, quirky—fuels her often dark comments on the human condition, so that we snort with derision or chuckle guiltily while being genuinely moved. She herself noted, in a Coastal Spectator interview, that humour is “the cheerleader gene”. It teaches us survival, “the necessity to live fearlessly, to float above terrible times.” She adds, “I wanted to get at fearlessness, at the flip-side of fear – joy, laughter, the absurd, the expansive, the great, beautiful experience of being alive… Monty Python has said that anyone abandoned by their mother becomes a comedian. This may have contributed to my comic world view, but also the fact that I was raised by people who were in themselves ‘funny’ and, by being that way, taught me how to be comic as well.”

Her ‘flip-side’ does indeed keep her world afloat.

Says Farrant: “I don’t know what is worse, a tumbling marriage, an uplift bra, or a sane experience.” Or, “The

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times are small because we are. Small, then pop, they’re gone.” Or, “A chicken brain is about the size of a man’s thumbnail. Like ours, it’s not big but sufficient for their needs.”

On the progress of time and mortality: “In high school I majored in perkiness and keeping your mister happy and keeping the moment frothy.” And, “…it [aging] begins in middle age when there’ll be no new thoughts… no one will invite us to big sweaty dance parties… Who knew the train was coming? Oh the toothless old!.. the light heading your way isn’t the full moon.”

In The Prayer we Prefer, a list poem near the end of the book, written rather classically in couplets, she petitions: Give us treats such as two bottles of Merlot, or more!

We’d be excited with that. and ends with...

Above all give us a crack in our spiritual helmets so that Leonard Cohen can get in.

“Really, all I am doing is responding aesthetically to the world I find I am living in – using whatever tools in my toolbox that seem to work at the time.”

The World Afloat is quite a gorgeous little book, with a handsome cover, as enigmatic as the miniatures it encloses. I should also mention it is very reasonably priced.

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Order of Canada recipient Patrick Lane with Governor General His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnson.

Order of Canada honours Patrick Lane’s extraordinary work

by Ann Graham Walker Vancouver Island poet Patrick Lane has entered a deserved moment where he’s been honoured over and over in a matter of months. It is not always so with poets, and certainly has not been so in the hard-lived life Patrick describes with unblinking honesty in a sedimentary aggregation of poetry and prose. I have studied with Patrick for many years at the Glenairley and Ocean Wilderness and Honeymoon Bay poetry retreats, so I’m not unbiased. I will say it up top: this is a man who has created a body of work that can only be described as extraordinary and exquisitely made.

Yes, often terrifying – taking us to violent, dark places that are too real and true to be comfortable – yet he is always astonishing. His is a legacy of challenging, beautiful work and we are blessed to have Patrick amongst us, reading his poems aloud, teaching and exploring his craft, together with his wife and creative partner, the nationally-celebrated poet Lorna Crozier.

Patrick and Lorna travelled to Ottawa Nov. 21 to attend the ceremony where His Excellency the Right Honourable David Johnston, the Governor General,

presented Patrick with the Order of Canada. The Federation of British Columbia Writers rejoiced in that moment, happy that lifetime member Patrick Lane’s writing has been recognized as a gift to all Canadians.

Every time a fine writer’s work is properly recognized by our country, the craft of writing wins.

If you attended the Federation of British Columbia Writers Annual General Meeting in Victoria last April, you got to hear Patrick and Lorna (also a lifetime member) read new work and watch them receive the Fed’s own humble recognition of their outstanding lifetime achievement.

Maybe you split your sides laughing at Port Alberni poet Linda Thompson and Victoria writer (and this year’s Governor General’s Award winner) Arleen Paré’s skit, gently spoofing the many awards Patrick and Lorna have been piling up. Linda and Arleen cobbled the title “Doctor-Doctor” which they hilariously imagined Patrick and Lorna calling each other over breakfast. As if they would! But it’s true, they have collected several honorary doctorates over the years. Patrick received a Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from UBC in June 2013 and another from the

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University of Victoria in November of that year.

Now they have symmetrical Orders of Canada -Lorna received her own last year. Familiar with the routine, Patrick described it for me in a cursory email: “You sit on hard chairs. They call your name and you walk over. The GG hangs a bauble around your neck, a photo, and back to your chair. A big dinner, then home. All told, very nice event, the ceremony very gracious.”

That’s Patrick’s modest version of what must be a heart-thumping ceremony, when it’s actually you in the photograph wearing that bauble.

Perhaps Patrick’s mother, Dixie, would put things into perspective. “She would likely tell me not to get too uppity,” Patrick said. ~~~ The Order of Canada is not the only special milestone this season holds for Patrick Lane. He has just released, under the imprimatur of Harbour Publishing, a new book of poems – a book pecked out one-fingered with his left hand while suffering the pain and incapacitation of an injured right shoulder.

The title is interesting and lovely: Washita. I asked him what it meant. “My father had a Washita sharpening stone (mined in Arkansas) in an oiled box,” Patrick replied, by email. “He would not let me or my brothers touch it. He could put a razor edge on a knife in a half second.

It became an emblem of manhood to me. I still have a piece of the stone, the only thing now remaining to me.”

I asked Patrick to pick one poem from the book and tell us what special importance it has for him. He chose Arroyo, the first poem.

“Osip Mandelstam was introduced to me by Irving Layton back in the late 60’s, a Russian poet of Jewish persuasion who was sent into the Gulag

by Stalin,” Patrick explained. “He has resonated in me for many years. I laid his ghost to bed with this poem.” Here are Arroyo’s first three lines: The dead do not come riding dark horses up out of the arroyo.

They do not arrive in dust, grey-shrouded, singing the old songs.

No, they arrive like turnips pulled winter-burned and cold from the soil.

At the recent launch of Washita in Victoria, poet Yvonne Blomer – a student of Patrick’s, now a celebrated poet in her own right and the artistic director of Planet Earth Poetry – introduced Patrick. She shared 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize Winner Ken Babstock’s ‘take’ on Patrick Lane: Considering the vision Lane brought to bear...over five decades – of suffering as a universal determinant, of a pitiless submission to the bedrock of Time and mortality – it amounts to no small miracle that Lane’s poems acquit themselves throughout with such a lucid, generous eye for the unsung and excluded; and such an abiding dignity in their rhythms of blind continuance, cyclic return, and compromised peace. Patrick Lane’s poems walked to the edge of a precipice – in that moment of emergency we might still see the outline of a nation trying to wake up.

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Self Publishing: Is it a case of Pride and Punishment?

by Jocelyn Reekie Why self publish? “You get to keep all the money.

You get to keep all the money. You get to…” one writer wrote. “I can only send my manuscript to one publisher at a time, then I have to wait months for a rejection. Sometimes there’s never a reply. At that rate, I’ll die before this thing gets published,” said another.

Other reasons include: a desire to produce a gift for relatives or friends; having complete control over the creative process; feeling one’s manuscript is too cutting edge for publishers to take a chance on; or that it has only a small, niche market. Sometimes all of the above.

There are also several options for self-published products: books, blogs, scrapbooks, videos, plays... and so on. Our focus here is on books.

single most expensive part of a book project. So eBooks can be sold at a fraction of the cost of printed editions.

But – and this is a big but from the seller’s point of view – Amazon has several million books in its queue, and the Chinese giant Alibaba is poised to join the competition in Canada. So getting your book noticed in the cyber world can be extremely difficult and costly.

What You Need to Know Whatever one’s reasons for self-publishing, there are things you need to know (aside from what you plan on wearing to the Giller awards ceremony): • What is the intended market for your book?

• What is the market potential?

• What form will your book take? Intended market, market potential and distribution factor into this decision.

• What’s involved in the process?

Printed Books • Editing: substantive (content), line-by-line (syntax, A printed book for retail sales is the self-publisher’s structure), copy (grammar, spelling), and proof most common end product. Be prepared, though. You (consistency, typos). need to develop some savvy business skills to succeed • Design (including cover) and set up. at self-publication for the retail trade!

• Printing and Binding.

A print-on-demand book is perfect for a small • Marketing: Pricing (remember, retail outlets print run for family and friends. You’ll get good quality take 40 percent), Getting reviews, Distribution and you can print as few copies as you like. You can (including free copies for reviewers), Promotion create your own design, using the printer’s software, (pre-publication, release, ongoing) and request a test copy before you proceed. Or you can Finally you need to ask: hire a company to do it all.

• How much of the publishing job can you do yourself?

Electronic Books • What will it cost to get the rest done?

An eBook, with your text and an attractive cover, can Cost is partly determined by answers to the questions be placed on the internet for free distribution – or for above, partly by which steps in the process you may choose to skip, and partly by who you choose to do the sale and downloaded from an online bookstore. The advantage here is the savings on printing costs, usually the things you can’t.

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Time for a Word With Yourself Your friends and relatives have read your work. At the very least, they’ve said, your book is the next: Tale of Two Cities (C. Dickens, 200 million copies sold), The Hobbit (J.R.R. Tolkein,100 million), And Then There Were None (A. Christie, 100 million), Lion Witch and the Wardrobe (C.S. Lewis, 85 million), DaVinci Code (D. Brown, 80 million), or some such. That kind of feedback might be encouraging; no doubt it has invaluable worth in boosting an author’s self-esteem, perhaps even one’s love-quotient. However, you can’t take it to the bank.

A cardinal rule for self-publishing a book one wants to sell is to get competent feedback on your work before you have 2,000 copies printed. This can include, but should not be limited to, friends or relatives who work in the field, and members of your writers’ group.

It should also include professional editors. Every book that is published by a publishing house goes through an editing process. If you want to put your best work forward, your book needs to receive the same treatment. Professional editors charge for their work, so it’s a step many self-publishing authors skip. Don’t!

End Products Pride. At the very least, you can say, “I did it.” Even if the book isn’t the riveting story you know you’re capable of writing, or contains errors you (and your proof readers) failed to detect before you printed hundreds of copies, you persevered until the thing was in print. You took the risk. You put yourself out there.

And perhaps it is damn good.

Gifts. If it doesn’t sell, you have birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, Ramadan, and Valentines gifts for… how many copies did you print?

Sales. A friend of mine, who has just released her first self-published novel, said she was told a person needs to have 200 buying friends to even consider self-publishing a book. Let me repeat that: Two-hundred Buying Friends.

If you’re a well-established author with a loyal following, you won’t have a problem with this. For various reasons— technology not the least of them—more and more established authors are going the self-publishing route.

If you’re not established: there are blogs where self-published writers say they’ve sold more books than they ever imagined they would. Others were ‘discovered’ by a major publisher, who then bought the rights to their book and went on to sell hundreds of thousands – and the writer became established and gained contracts with huge advances for other books.

But the more common experience is writers who sell some books in the first few weeks after its release, then have to rely on pride of accomplishment and gift giving to sustain their belief they did the right thing.

So, how many friends did you say you had? Buying friends, I mean. And best of luck. I mean that. ~~~ Jocelyn Reekie is a published author, editor and publisher. Learn more about her by visiting her website: www.jocelynmreekie.com

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Lois Peterson: Great things come of ‘new beginnings’

by Lois Peterson Most of us get excited when a new idea occurs to us, especially if it’s been a while. The energy, excitement and relief (would we ever have an idea for another story, article, poem?) is likely to send us flying to our workspace to start writing.

But it can be a good idea to step back before you even begin. Rather than pursuing that initial germ, however promising it looks, take time to explore and examine it, consider it from new angles, and approach it in a variety of ways. Here are some steps you can take to cultivate and grow your ideas.

Dig deep By beginning to write as soon as you pick up the germ you risk heading down a dead end street. Many writers, once they’ve established the basic premise and voice, find it hard to step back to make decisions that could effect the piece.

Try committing notes of the original idea to paper, either in the form of lists, clustering or using stream of consciousness. Mine all the connections and associations, questions and subtopics that might apply before you start writing the actual piece.

Using index cards at this early stage could prevent you from taking off on long narrative rambles too

soon. They provide a portable system that allows you to jot down notes as they occur, try out titles, phrases, draft character traits, note other books in the genre/ topic. Or use a notebook that lets you create various sections where you can park notes and ideas for story, character, imagery, and research before you open a file on your word processor.

Talk about it Some writers worry about others ‘pinching’ their ideas.

But talking about a current project could yield new leads for further research, referrals to other books on the topic and questions that spur you on to create an even more compelling piece than the idea you started with.

If someone else does ‘adopt’ an element of your original idea, chances are their finished product will bear little resemblance to yours.

Many years ago I was describing to a colleague an article I was working on about the different views of Vancouver from its many bridges. Another colleague interrupted to say that if I was including the Ironworkers Bridge, I should talk to her dad, who had been working on it when it collapsed. I did, and enjoyed an afternoon of great storytelling, and some details that I would not have discovered without that conversation.

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Explore metaphor In a manuscript I am working on my main character’s father – who he has never met – shows up wearing a Superman outfit. The father had been brought up by adopted parents and instilled with a deep sense of morality. I picked Superman as his alter ego at random, but what I now know through exploring the metaphor has provided associations that strengthen the characterization and add depth and detail to the story.

Exploring the metaphorical associations of your setting, character and details of your project – whether fiction, non-fiction, memoir or poetry – may well help breathe new life into it and introduce new elements that might not have been evident when the idea first struck.

Pick one detail or fact to research Even the most fantastical fiction contains some fact-based elements. Take one of them and research the topic. How are geodesic domes made? What’s the basic structure of a fern? What happens to people hit by lightening? With nonfiction, select a secondary detail and see what added slants to your story this research offers.

Useful story elements, metaphor and imagery comes from the strangest places. But you often have to go looking for them.

Start writing It’s no coincidence that this step comes half-way through this ten-step process. It’s easy to back yourself into a corner when you’ve thought an idea inside out and upside down. But eventually you have to start putting words on the page. The process of writing – as opposed to planning plotting, outlining, and researching – accesses subconscious material that might only surface when you are committing something, anything to paper.

The trick is to start writing when you feel ‘pregnant’ with the idea – when you can hardly hold back – rather than when you are just taking tentative steps.

But it is important that you continue to step back now and again to put some distance between yourself and the project so you don’t miss other possibilities.

Change one thing Change a name, setting, or detail and see if that pitches you forward into new territory. It’s very easy to be too

wedded to your original vision; forcing yourself out of the safe zone makes you look at the idea or premise from a different perspective, and offers fresh alternatives.

Set it aside and start over If you feel yourself wandering off track from your original idea or intent, try putting the piece in the bottom of a drawer or filing the document, and starting afresh. Yes. From scratch. Without referring to the past draft.

And/or you can open a fresh page or file with the words, “What I really wanted to write about was…” at the top of the page, then keep writing for at least ten minutes without stopping. Dig deep, and let whatever is buried in your subconscious show itself. You may be very surprised at rediscovering what you originally had set out to do, and gain insight into why you are stalled and where to go from here.

Make connections At a US branding company, which creates names for new car models, team members consider an eclectic and unrelated assortment of materials – recipes and appliance repair manuals, women’s fashion magazines and promotional materials for non profits, novels and short story collections, train and bus schedules – during brainstorming sessions.

They believe that considering a broad range of media and information at the beginning of their process encourages more creative thinking.You can achieve this in your work by keeping your eyes open and seeking out new input.

The first germ of My Alphabet Life emerged during a writing workshop I was presenting to local youth.

Within days I randomly picked up a New Yorker article about high rise window washing company in New York City. A little later I came across Lorna Crozier’s lovely Book of Marvels – a Compendium of Everyday Things.

Then researching something totally unrelated online I spotted a Tyee article about foster children ‘aging’ out of the system. These elements – and others – all came together to provide me with new and interesting connections to explore.

There’s more Continue reading, and access a list of ten recommended resources associated with this article at bcwriters.ca/newbeginnings

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Welcome to our Youth Writers from across BC In mid-winter, we held our first Youth Writing contest, we sought out the best writing from the universities, colleges, and high schools of our province. It was the Federation’s initial foray into improving our opportunities for our young writers. Each winner has received a scholarship to further their education. As the writing in the high school category was exceptional, it was decided that each of our high school writers would receive a book on the craft of writing.

The Federation of BC Writers is committed to

engaging youth in our organization and promoting and encouraging the development of their craft as best we can. There are plans to bring a youth writing retreat in the summer of 2015. We will be actively seeking fund-raising dollars and grant money for this worthy endeavour. Look for an interesting fund-raising event in the months to come.

Thank-you to George Opacic and Mickey Bickerstaff who were instrumental in bringing this program forward.

Here are our successful youth writers.

A nightmare-come-true excerpt from Caitlin’s Book

By Genevieve Knowles Collingwood High School Breathe. Just breathe. I gripped the book tightly, my knuckles turning white. The back of my neck bubbled with perspiration. Breathe. Just breathe. A lock of hair draped across my face as I crouched and peeked through the rusting keyhole from within my dank closet. I could only see a large painting of my uncle.

Of course, he replaced our family’s portrait. I shifted position to see if I could get a better view of the hallway. No use. I slumped, waiting for Ari’s signal. He should have come by now.

I looked down at the object I was clutching. To an untrained eye, it looked ordinary. Shows how little some people know. This book holds the key to

immortality. They say an ancient alchemist wrote it.

Personally, I think it’s total trash.

Suddenly, a loud shout came from down the hall. I peered out of the keyhole. Shadows danced along the walls as soldiers ran into the hall. Their chunky, metal armour banged and clashed together as their tightlaced brown sandals came to a halt in front of the door.

I shuffled silently, hugging the book tighter.

The men circled their leader. For a moment I couldn’t see anything. Then a man was slammed against the wall. The leader squeezed the man’s head under the gold frame of the painting. I strained to see who he was. Scruffy tattered clothes. His arms cut and bruised. This was no slave..…oh god, Ari. More shouts erupted from the hall. SHIIIING. The

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leader’s knife glinted in the torchlight as he raised it to Ari’s throat. I backed away from the keyhole and scrunched down low against the door. Silence fell.

“Where is she?”

I gripped my book. They knew I had taken it. I twisted back into a crouch and studied the soldiers.

There was a time when these men had loyally served and protected my family. In two short days, my uncle had stormed the castle and turned them against us.

Ari’s scream shook my whole body. Now, they were willing to torture their own friends to get me. A tear dribbled down my cheek, and I closed my eyes.

Another wail. I placed a hand on my mouth and began to shake.

“I’ll ask you one more time, where. IS. SHE?” I couldn’t stop the waterworks now. I stood, frozen, watching an innocent, loyal friend being slaughtered. I was powerless.

Then came Ari’s choked voice, quivering with pain.

“You will never find her.” He focused his eyes on the door. I could feel his eyes burning into mine. Did he know I was there? Did he know I was listening? “She is already g—” I finally twisted away at the loud thud of his body against the wall. I clenched the book tighter, muffling my sobs as I backed away from the door and squeezed my eyes tight, hoping they hadn’t heard me.

“Find her. I want every inch of this castle searched by dusk! Start in the servant’s quarters.”

Silence returned. Now I just need to find a way out of here. I slowly stood up, my knees cracking loudly. I felt the door shudder as I swung it open and stepped into the light.

Ari’s body was still, his blood flowing freely from his wounds, his face was contorted and twisted in pain and his arms flopped lifeless across his chest. Oh, Ari. Never again would he lend me his best quill to write a letter or bring me a cup of hot tea on a cold winter’s night.

I kissed him quickly on the forehead and silently prayed for him, before I jumped up and sprinted down the halls. I flew across the thick wool carpets with an intensity that scared me.

I stopped and opened a door.

“THERE SHE IS!” A soldier hollered.

Fear, grief and anger sparked my adrenaline. With one hand glued to the book, I raced down the staircase.

My legs burned and my knees wobbled but I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t give in.

“STOP HER!” I glanced back up the staircase. I ran through the basement corridors, not thinking where I was going.

Tears streamed down my face and my head spun. I stumbled and fell face first onto the stone floor. As I began to get up, pain shot through my ankle. My hands were cramping from gripping the book. I fought through the pain and limped down the corridor, staggering to a door .

“Help me! Help!” No one answered. I shuffled to the next door and repeated my wails, jiggling the doorknob. Again and again. I was screaming as I approached the last door. My hands had grown weaker.

Tears blinded me.

“Help me, please…” The shadows down the hall were growing closer.

There was no way out. I wiped my brow and collapsed against the wall, my tunic sticking to my back like a second skin. So this is how it ends? I closed my eyes as the guards rushed towards me. Their shouts echoed throughout the stone corridor. They gripped my arms and waved their swords. I closed my eyes...I’m sorry, Ari. “Any last words?” A soldier said as he raised his sword to my throat.

I hurled a wad of spit in his face.

He growled in disgust and with an angry cry, he thrust forwards. I watched the blade slice through the air and hurtle straight for my chest — “Caitlin?”

I awoke with start, clutching my chest. The sword, evil elders, the book…spitting? I shook my head.

Breathe, just breathe.

I was back in the testing room. No signs of my recent simulation. The room was quite dull, completely white with modern glass tables and a metal door.

The only proof of our generation’s innovation was the massive machinery surrounding my body--

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WordWorks / Winter 2014

Continued from previous page

Geopoliticus Child

(Inspired by “Geopoliticus Child” by Salvador Dali.)

Change not coming without blood, the new man is born Shrinking the old world to bring room for the new.

This man, who will stretch the shadows of the new people, Struggles for control, for dominance, he ignores peace.

The placenta shields his birth as the old power falls Bringing the new power into focus.

America: man’s greatest child Born from the egg poisoned by currency, power and lust.

This man comes not without a high price.

Pain and suffering, the unnatural being grows strong but bends what is not meant to grieve.

Africa, South America: the third world Growing too, not in strength, but in importance. Their wars are this man’s entertainment, His way to maintaining authority.

Child – accept not this abomination.

Cast away this devil and do not let your shadow grow.

Yours is the future, let your generation not be corrupt By what cracks the foundations.

Turn away from the new age. Go back to what was.

Aimee Miller University of British Columbia Okanagan Page 34

the imadreamXP6, a new treatment for the mentally ill, made-to-measure dream cures. Or, so I’m told.

“Caitlin.”

I glanced at Dr. Corbet’s fake smile. “How was it?”

I rolled my eyes and muttered, “Fine.”

He jotted something down on his white clipboard. “Would you mind if I asked you some questions?”

I shuffled nervously and placed my hands on my lap. I did not want to go through that dream again. I didn’t want to relive my near death.

He sighed impatiently. “Caitlin, you need to tell me for your wellbeing. This is important.”

Oh I bet.

I mumbled an incoherent affirmative. The doctor nodded and flipped through a couple of sheets before poising his pen ready.

“What is your name?”

“Ms. Caitlin Youradumbass.” After a warning look from Dr. Corbet I sighed. “Caitlin Peterson from Milbrook, Alabama.”

After a couple of simple, basic questions, he started picking at the good stuff.

“What were the emotions you felt during your dream?”

Sadness. Anxiety. Fear.

“Contentment and happiness with a touch of sanity.”

“What was your dream about?”

Ugh, I knew he was going to ask this question!

I forced my mouth into a twisted smile.

“It was about princesses and respecting your elders.” Total lie. “Oh, and friendship!”

The doctor looked sceptical yet continued copying down my words. “Were there any objects of importance?”

I tensed. Did he know? Dr. Corbet cocked

WordWorks / Winter 2014

Things we complain about his right eyebrow. “Well?”

“Why do you ask?” God I was bold today.

The doctor shrugged. “Just curious.”

I shook my head, trying to seem indifferent to the whole situation yet, I felt…fear. I had never done this therapy before and hadn’t bothered reading the laws that go with it. Who wanted to read 40 pages of boring rules? I wish I had.

The doctor gave me a tight smile before standing and holding out a hand. “Pleasure as always, Ms. Peterson.”

I gave him the good old peace sign.

Awkwardly, he dropped his hand and glanced at an empty white box beside the bed. “There are your things. Have a nice day.”

I grumbled some rude remark before bending over and opening my bag to get my iPhone 36S. But…something wasn’t right.

When I reached in there was…something else.

I looked down and gasped in terror. No. This wasn’t possible. This isn’t possible.

“Is everything alright?”

I looked at him. Suddenly he looked… rather familiar. Perhaps in a painting... across from a dank closet.

Oh. My. God. “Yes everything is just fine, sir.” Holy crap.

I zipped up my bag and hoped he didn’t sense how artificial my smile was. “Have a good day!” Then I bolted. What was happening? I glanced around the hospital. Did I know these people? Have I seen them before? Then I saw a billboard with photos of employees. I nearly dropped my bag. Was that…Ari? Suddenly I felt feverish. The hairs on my neck tingled again and I looked around. Was someone watching me? Then I saw him. The soldier, the one I spat on.

“Can I help you with something?” He asked with a cold smile as he made hungry glances at my backpack. The book. Breathe.

Just breathe.

I once found myself in a thatched roofed village, dusty bottles, fences of prickly bramble encircled its perimeter, naked children chased old dying dogs.

It was there I met Thomas, the dark-as-night Masai man, who when he smiled, showed an authentic toothless welcome.

His red robe, draped across one shoulder, hung inches above bare calloused feet inside an elderly pair of torn black dress shoes.

He offered what he could, a warm meal, beans, water.

A night’s stay, three men uncomfortably sharing cardboard bedding, too polite to roll over.

My stomach growled something furious.

I lay - still, awake, and embarrassed. ~~~ Back home, several oceans away, a stainless steel spoon stirs sweetened coffee.

The structural integrity of a mattress, the elasticity of a box-spring, is analyzed.

Hopes to cure a revisiting crick, a neck - manifesting irritation every morning it bends down, when delicate feet are sheltered with bleached cotton.

Dear Jeff Marshall: I want to be your friend at school.

I want to be cool too.

But I can’t seem to laugh at the right times, or swear at the right people.

Yesterday I watched you tell Michelle Patterson she had a nice ass; in the same tone as if telling the sky that it’s blue.

I wish I could do that.

I wish I could convince people to buy me those curly French fries, as you do to me, all the time.

I wish people would let me copy their social studies homework, like I let you copy mine, all the time.

If it’s an attitude change you want, I can do that.

I can tie my shoes loose, sag my pants low, cut my hair short maybe spike it in the front.

John White Douglas College Page 35

Annual Non-Fiction Contest $1500 in prizes available, plus publication! $34.95 entry fee includes 1 year of EVENT 5,000 word limit Contest Judge: Andrew Westoll Deadline April 15, 2015

photo by Mark Mushet

WordWorks / Winter 2014

Visit eventmagazine.ca Reading Service for Writers If you are a new writer, or a writer with a troublesome manuscript, EVENT’s Reading Service may be just what you need.

Manuscripts will be edited by one of EVENT’s editors and receive an assessment of 700-1000 words, focusing on such aspects of craft as voice, structure, rhythm and point of view.

Eligible manuscripts include short fiction and creative non-fiction under 5,000 words, or up to eight pieces of poetry. The assessment will arrive in four to eight weeks.

EVENT’s Reading Service for Writers costs $100 (pay online, or by cheque or international money order). You’ll also receive a one-year subscription (or renewal) so you can check out EVENT’s award-winning mix of writing.

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