Gatherings | Issue 6
Recommended events, reading, calls, writing tips
Alicia Elliot: “The racist legacy of Canada’s residential schools is still reflected in current policies,” Washington Post
Alicia Elliot: To be clear, the 215 children found in Kamloops were victims of racist policies that supported the residential school system — a system that was, according to the 2015 report, less about education and more about separating Indigenous children from their families in order to weaken cultural ties and indoctrinate them in what the first Canadian prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, called “the habits and modes of thought of white men.”
Read more here.
Support the Indian Residential School Survior Society here.
Please consider donating to the campaign to support the 9-year-old boy orphaned by a Hate Crime in London, Ontario.
Hello friends,
Welcome to the Send My Love to Anyone June Recommendations.
In this issue you’ll find submissions calls, recommended readings, a writing tip for dealing with rejection, and a link to an excellent writing prompt by Roxane Gay.
Also my experimental video This Isn’t a Conversation is playing in the Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival this week. There’s an artist Q&A June 9, 2021 that I will be participating in. Sliding scale tickets can be purchased here.
And I recently wrote a profile on Rita Wong for Quill and Quire. Rita and I discussed her early writing, poetry, public action, and her forthcoming selected Current, Climate: The Poetry of Rita Wong, Edited by Nicholas Bradley.
Hope you enjoy.
If you have something cool you’d like to share, post it here, and I may include it in the next month’s recommendations.
Hope you enjoy.
Kathryn
Onion City Experimental Film + Video Festival
I’m excited that my short experimental video This Isn’t a Conversation is screening in the 31st Onion City Experimental Film which is streaming online from June 9 to 13 and the artist Q&A is June 9th at 9:00pm (CST).
Review from Cine-File Chicago:
"Given the state of the world, why would anyone want to be a human being today anyway? That’s the implicit question of Canadian filmmaker Kathryn Mockler’s THIS ISN’T A CONVERSATION (2020, 6 min), which opens the program and introduces the overarching concerns. Over medium-closeups of birds, Mockler presents the text of a sobering conversation between two friends about the ongoing ecological crisis that threatens much life on this planet. The conversation is more emotional than rational, focusing on the speakers’ dread over looming catastrophe and their guilt over having done nothing to stop it. The birds, ignorant of the issues at hand, appear blissful, providing a sense a serenity amidst the all the doomsaying." (Ben Sachs)
Read full review of the program which includes works by Drew Durepos, Ann Oren, Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby, Heehyun Choi, Liyan Zhao and Milton Secchi, and Jaakko Pallasvuo and Anni Puolakka: https://www.cinefile.info/cine-list/2020/06/04/061021
PROGRAM 1: MASS EXTINCTION PSYCHODRAMA
Artist Q&A on Wednesday, June 9 at 9:00 pm (Central)
Sliding scale admission.
Order tickets here:
https://chicagofilmmakers.org/.../mass-extinction...
Get program tickets here.
Program 2: Mass Extinction Psychodrama
Artist Q&A: Wednesday, June 9 at 9:00 PM CST.
Register for the Q&A here.
Will our podcasts save us? Can we internet our way out of the climate crisis? Can moving images connect us with other species, or are they just another way of asserting human dominance over a shared world of biodiversity? Surprising twists and humor arise as the filmmakers exorcise the ecological hierarchy from their worldview - and discover what remains.
Participating artists: Drew Durepos, Ann Oren, Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby, Heehyun Choi, Liyan Zhao and Milton Secchi, and Jaakko Pallasvuo and Anni Puolakka.
This year’s festival includes several in-person screenings and installations.
Check out the full program at Onioncityfilmfest.org! Admission is a sliding scale suggested donation.
Rita Wong: A poet’s call for environmental action
I wrote a profile on Rita Wong for Quill & Quire
These days Rita Wong isn’t writing poetry. Poetry has come to her in waves at different points in her life – fitting for a poet who has written so much about water.
Her forthcoming selected works, Current, Climate: The Poetry of Rita Wong (Wilfrid Laurier University Press), edited by Nicholas Bradley, presents more than two decades of Wong’s love, celebration, grief, and gratitude for this vital but very much at-risk element.
Read more here.
Rita Wong: The Land Keeps You Honest: Ada’itsx/Fairy Creek Wake-up Call
Each of us carries different gifts that we can contribute to the land and to future generations, be it a song, a meal, an arrest, or whatever skills you want to offer.
Read more here.
Direct Action for the last Ancient Rainforests
Launch of the Ampersand Review!
Sheridan’s Writing and Publishing Program has launched a new literary journal! The Ampersand Review!
Check out Issue #1
Launch Wednesday June 23, 2021. Register here.
How Rachel Cusk is Remaking the Novel
Excellent profile on author Rachel Cusk by Steven W. Beattie in Quill & Quire.
The novel is dead.
At least, that’s what readers have been told for pretty much as long as novels have been around. Will Self, writing in The Guardian in 2014, proclaimed grandiosely that the novel “should have been laid to rest at about the time of Finnegans Wake, but in fact it has continued to stalk the corridors of our minds for a further three-quarters of a century. Many fine novels have been written during this period, but I would contend that these were, taking the long view, zombie novels, instances of an undead art form that yet wouldn’t lie down.”
Read more here.
Waubgeshig Rice: Overcoming Imposter Syndrome, Open Book
I have felt like an imposter. There have been times throughout my writing career when I’ve asked myself do I belong in this space? Do I deserve this opportunity? Am I skilled enough to call myself an author? If you’ve felt this way and asked yourself these questions, you’re not alone. Imposter syndrome is real, and it’s unfortunately common in the writing world. It’s the internalized notion that you’re not as talented as others in your field despite your accomplishments. While it arises for different personal reasons, there are industry eccentricities and pressures that perpetuate imposter syndrome, especially in newer writers. But whenever it’s crept into my head, I've always reminded myself that my writing journey is my own, and my experiences are valid.
Read more.
The 60-Year-Old Scientific Screwup That Helped Covid Kill, WIRED
A great article that clearly explains one reason we got conflicting info about droplets versus aerosols.
All pandemic long, scientists brawled over how the virus spreads. Droplets! No, aerosols! At the heart of the fight was a teensy error with huge consequences.
Read here.
What I’m Reading:
Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman by Cathy Wilkerson
Me, You, Then Snow by Khashayar Mohammadi
Call for Submissions
Room Magazine: Ancestors Issue
Deadline: July 31, 2021
Submit here.
No matter who we are or which lands we come from, we all have ancestors. Their (his)stories are interwoven throughout time and space, and their futures live on in us and all we do.
With the theme of ancestors in mind, Room Magazine invites unpublished writing for our issue 45.1, edited by Serena Lukas Bhandar, alongside Shadow Editors Holly Lam and Jane Shi and assisted by Jessica Johns.
We invite you to interpret our theme in the way that resonates most for you, whether that includes connecting with your ancestors, honouring the legacies you are a part of, setting out on a different path from those who came before you, or something entirely different.
When we think about ancestors, we think about diaspora, not knowing who you come from, being part of a creative lineage, mentorship, being a future ancestor, the Seventh Generation Principle, finding ancestors in unexpected places, intergenerational relationships, conversing with your ancestors, and reclaiming your ancestry from white supremacy, colonialism, and the heteropatriarchy, among many other interpretations.
In talking about ancestors in these difficult times, it’s also important to reflect on who we’ve lost in the last year, considering life and death, the known and unknown, and potentially even imagining what could have been. We’re grateful to be able to create space for writing on this theme, and look forward to reading your submissions.
In addition to unpublished writing, we’re interested in receiving art that responds to the theme of ancestors. Some possibilities we imagine include works that engage with archival materials (whatever that means to you) and artistic renderings of photographs.
Call for Submissions
Prism International: Prism’s Annual Non-fiction Contest
Deadline: July 15, 2021
Submit here.
Calls for Submissions
TIFF Filmmaker Lab 2021
Each year, 20 Canadian and international directors receive an exceptional artistic development experience, and an introduction to the global community of filmmaking. Participants interact with and learn from internationally acclaimed filmmakers and guests. The four-day, feature film–focused programme will take place during the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival. Mentorship will be led by four acclaimed practitioners, who will provide inspiration, encouragement, and guidance.
Applications for directors closing June 11
Writing Tip
Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year by Kim Liao
Writing Prompt
An excellent writing prompt from Roxane Gay.
Newsletters
Here are a few Substack newsletters that I’m enjoying!
Heated by Emily Atkin
Writing Exercises from Matt Bell
The Art of Flash Fiction by Kathy Fish
The Audacity by Roxane Gay
Sweater Weather by Brandon Taylor
Watch Your Head: April 2021
We have new work up on Watch Your Head!
MAY 2021
Mona'a Malik
Liz Harmer
Robert Hogg
If you have a creative work about the climate crisis or climate justice, submit here.
On Sunday, Dave and I had to put our cat BJ down. He was 18 years old. Missing him very much.
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