Gatherings | Issue 34

Vancouver Launch of Anecdotes, Real Vancouver Series, Mosab Abu Toha, Corinna Chong, Freedom to Read, Farzana Doctor, Shashi Bhat, Balanced Creative, Reesa Tessa, and more!

Feb 25, 2024

Gatherings

Gatherings is a recommendation list of what I’m reading, listening to, and watching. Gatherings will now be sent out separately from the monthly newsletter.

Visit the About Section to learn more about Send My Love To Anyone!

My News

Doctors Without Borders Canada Fundraiser

A couple of weeks ago, I created a FB Birthday Fundraiser and raised $500 dollars for Doctors Without Borders Canada. Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Vancouver Launch

I’m getting ready for the Vancouver launch of Anecdotes on February 29, 2024! Hope to see you there!

‘Anecdotes’ Launch: An Evening with Kathryn Mockler & Friends

Virtual Reading!

On March 3, 2024, I’ll be reading at the Real Vancouver 14th Anniversary Showcase with Alicia Elliott, Steffi Tad-Y, Jess Battis, Joseph Kakwinokansum, and Adrienne Leung!

Hosted by

Dina Del Bucchia

and Sean Cranbury

Sponsored by BC Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts

Join us for this free online event!

Thanks to

Rebecca Davey

and

Natalie Davey

for inviting me to chat on their wonderful

Reframeables Podcast and Newsletter

Thanks to Michael V. Smith for including my first book Onion Man in his 49th Shelf list of “Experimental Approaches, or How to Find A Poem”

Gatherings

blackliturgies

A post shared by @blackliturgies

Poems for Palestine from Publishers for Palestine

“It is difficult to find maftoul in Egypt, and Leila’s was good. I felt lucky to taste it with my wife and kids. But, lately, hearing about unprecedented starvation in Gaza, I have felt a sort of hatred for the food in front of me. As I eat simple meals of chicken, rice, salad, and olives with my family, I think of the hunger in my homeland, and of all the people with whom I want to share my meals. I yearn to return to Gaza, sit at the kitchen table with my mother and father, and make tea for my sisters. I do not need to eat. I only want to look at them again.”

Read “My Family’s Daily Struggle to Find Food in Gaza” by Mosab Abu Toha, The New Yorker

“Rich people need life content just like you and I do. Our content is art, poetry, music, film, family time, walks in nature, conversations, food, pets, and so on. Rich people require the same content, believe it or not. But the difference is the relationship to the content. I have seen rich people attempt to express themselves creatively, but the effort is either laughably self-conscious or delusionally narcissistic. Picture a millionaire dancing, rapping, or making a painting. The way they express themselves is both confident and contemptible. Unless they have made their money through the arts, a rich person does not know how to properly express themselves and that is why they look and sound grotesque when they attempt to do so. Because of this, rich people need to live vicariously through artists.”

Read “The Aesthetics of Complicity” by Jay Isaac

A poem by E. D. Watson:

eeedeewatson

A post shared by @eeedeewatson

Corinna Chong in conversation with Alix Ohlin aat University of British Columbia, School of Creative Writing, March 21, 2024 at 7:00pm (PST)

I am loving this Tik Tok series by Reesa Tessa “Who TF Did I Marry?” about her relationship with a pathological liar.

Also this series is a great lesson in life and storytelling.

@reesamteesa Who TF Did I Marry- Introduction #reesateesa #fyp #series

Tiktok failed to load.

Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser

“Bleeding” by May Swenson, Poets.org

Congrats to

Robin Pacific

whose collection of personal essays, Skater Girl, is out April 1, 2024 with Guernica Editions.

Publisher’s Description

Skater Girl is a collection of intensely personal essays, an archaeology of the self. Robin Pacific sifts through the midden of consciousness to find shells, potsherds, a broken piece of mirror. Themes of art, spirituality and social justice run like a current through otherwise disconnected pieces and fragments, many as short as one paragraph. Further, ideas about aging, loss and mortality colour many of them. The book is about the formation of Robin Pacific's many selves, about creativity, spiritual seeking, and the dream of a more equal society.

“She unfollowed her ex a long time ago, but this morning she’s drinking coffee and scrolling Twitter when she sees a retweet from a mutual friend. *Book cover reveal *. Her ex’s name as the author. A link to the book’s page on the website of a major publishing house. The cover is apple green, featuring an elegant drawing of a thin, pale man with hair as moulded as a Ken doll’s, gazing out of a window. But there’s something glib about its tone; it reminds her of him. The book’s description takes care to point out that it is a work of literary fiction. She wonders if he suggested they mention that. She wonders if he wrote the copy himself.”

Read “Her Ex Writes a Novel” by Shashi Bhat in Hazlit

Advice Column: ‘I Think My Husband Is Trashing My Novel on Goodreads!’, by Emily Gould in The Cut

Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition - Deadline February 26, 2024

RIP Lyn Hejinian

Watched Ministry of Fear (1944) by Fritz Lang on Criterion: