Gatherings | Issue 5
Recommended readings, events, articles, films, and more!
Hi friends,
I’ve wrapped up my first teaching year at The University of Victoria, and despite some health issues in the fall, world trauma, and the online environment, I had a wonderful teaching experience. The students were engaged and wrote such terrific scripts. I’m excited to see where they take them.
The great workshop experience was due in part to the LIz Lerman’s Critical Response Process. I’ve linked to it in previous issues. But if you teach creative writing or are involved in anything where you have to give critical feedback, then check it out. It’s a consent-focused feedback process where the writer — not the participants or the facilitator — direct and set the boundaries of the workshop.
I know some writers are able to produce creative work during the pandemic, but I was not one of them. I was severely blocked, and thankfully I’m coming out of it. To get focused, I decided to sign up for Sarah Selecky’s self-directed Story Course. The course has been on my radar for a few years, and I was curious to see what it would be like. I’m on Lesson Two and really loving it. I’ve included a link below for those who may be interested.
My recommendations are a random assortment of what I’m reading and interested in right now. How do I come up with these recommendations? My only rule is that I let them come to me either by email, word of mouth, on social media feeds, or when I’m researching something else.
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
Spoken Word: “i miss you much” by Jillian Christmas
I came across this poem from the League of Canadian Poet’s Poetry Pause dispach. “i miss you much” is poem that is apt for this moment wherever you are and whomever you may be missing.
You can subscribe to Poetry Pause here and learn more about Jillian Christmas, the winner of the 2021 Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award, here.
Jillian Christmas is the former Artistic Director of Vancouver’s Verses Festival of Words. An educator, organizer, and advocate in the arts community, utilizing an anti-oppressive lens, Jillian has performed and facilitated workshops across North America. The Gospel of Breaking, a poetry collection, is her first book. She lives in Vancouver.
Short Film: “For Nonna Anna”
Description: As a young trans woman cares for her Italian grandmother, she discovers a tender bond in their shared vulnerability.
"For Nonna Anna" is a Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere. Read more about it here: vimeo.com/blog/post/staff-pick-premiere-for-nonna-anna/
Article: “Dare we hope? Here’s my cautious case for climate optimism” by Rebecca Solnit
The climate scientist Michael Mann takes these people on – he calls them inactivists and doomists – in his recent book The New Climate Wars, which describes the defeatism that has succeeded outright climate denial as the great obstacle to addressing the crisis. He echoes what Carbon Tracker asserted, writing: “The solution is already here. We just need to deploy it rapidly and at a massive scale. It all comes down to political will and economic incentives.”
Short Fiction: “Hansa and Gretyl and Piece of Shit” by Rebecca Curits
This is an excellent story by Rebecca Curtis in The New Yorker.
“Gretyl wakes at 6 A.M., as usual, but her stomach feels crampy. These are not what her mother calls the “normal” cramps, which gnash her abdomen for four days each month. These fissures poke her midsection with acidic fingers as she dresses. She hunches while she brushes her teeth, unloads the dishwasher, and mops the kitchen. She walks down to the cellar, carries up stacks of logs, and feeds the woodstove. She toasts bread, but finds she’s not hungry, so puts it in her heavy schoolbag.
She doesn’t ask to stay home. Her mother’s warned her that she knows the girl feigns illness because she’s unpopular—a loser!—because she’s lazy and unlikable. The girl knows better than to whine about a stomach ache.”
Listen to Rebecca Curtis read the story here.
Literary Festival: The Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD) Magazine
Check out the The FOLD’s 2021 Magazine. In it, my sister Susan Mockler has an essay “On Disability” which was previously published in This Magazine. Other contributors include Adrian de Leon, Samantha Jones, Rowan McCandless, Jane Shi, Jade Wallace, Ellen Chang-Richardson, and many more. The festival runs from May 1-15, 2021. You can register for the festival here.
Writing Resource: Rabbit with the Red Pen
This is an excellent post on the importance of being flexible with grammar rules from the site Rabbit with the Red Pen by Crystal Shelley. I first came across Crystal’s work through her resources on Conscious Language for editors and writers. Her resources include such topics as Ableism in Writing and Everyday Language, The Language of Food and Bodies, Writing Outside of Your Identities and more.
Protecting Trees: Gallery: 1308 Trees & Art
1308 Trees
A showcase of art and letters in protection of B.C trees. Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion (TMX) wants to cut down 1,308 trees in Burnaby B.C without permits. Help give the trees a voice by submitting your artwork and/or letters here.
Quill & Quire’s Guide to Summer Virtual Literary Festivals
A great list of virtual literary festivals.
Online Course: Sarah Selecky’s The Story Course
The Story Course is an online self-paced course. I signed up to get some structure and ideas for a book of stories I’m working on. This is a great course for both new and experienced writers. I’m loving the exercises and the readings. Highly recommend. There is also a guided course called The Story Inensive for those who want community and feedback and to work with an instructor.
Article: “Brain fog: how trauma, uncertainty and isolation have affected our minds and memory,” from The Guardian
The blending of one day into the next with no commute, no change of scene, no change of cast, could also have an important impact on the way the brain processes memories, Simons explains. Experiences under lockdown lack “distinctiveness” – a crucial factor in “pattern separation”. This process, which takes place in the hippocampus, at the centre of the brain, allows individual memories to be successfully encoded, ensuring there are few overlapping features, so we can distinguish one memory from another and retrieve them efficiently. The fuggy, confused sensation that many of us will recognise, of not being able to remember whether something happened last week or last month, may well be with us for a while, Simons says: “Our memories are going to be so difficult to differentiate. It’s highly likely that in a year or two, we’re still going to look back on some particular event from this last year and say, when on earth did that happen?”
Read more here.
Novel: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
I just finished the novel No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. What I appreciate about this novel is it’s fragmentary nature and two storylines. It’s a profoundly moving story of a family tragedy.
Here’s an excerpt from The New Yorker.
Reading: Stephen Collis and Bardia Sinaee, May 11, 2021
Two KFB Selects poetry collections:
Stephen Collis, A History of the Theories of Rain
Bardia Sinaee, Intruder
Hosted by KIRBY
DIRECT LINK knifeforkfork.com (the night of the reading: May 11, 2021)
Poetry Launch: Hoa Nguyen with Lisa Fishman
If you missed Hoa Nguyen’s excellent Toronto launch via knife | fork | book, you can watch it on YouTube:
Recipe: Black Bean Brownies
My latest obsession is black bean brownies!
I made this one. It was great!
Donation: Khalsa Aid International - India Covid Relief
Donations can be made here.
Petition: Defend Old Growth Forest
“One of Canada's natural treasures could disappear in 5 to 10 years if we don’t take action now. British Columbia’s old-growth forests are being chopped down at an alarming rate.”
Defend BC’s Old Growth Forest here.
Watch Your Head: April 2021
We have new work up on Watch Your Head!
“Watery Highways Home,” a poem by Cornelia Hoogland
“Off the Grid,” a story by Adam Giles.
If you have a creative work about the climate crisis or climate justice, submit here.
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