Half the Sky, May 12

http://www.shopparkroyal.com/campaigns/half-sky-day-park-royal

I met some wonderful people at Park Royal South today. They are NGOs who support girls and women around the world; girls who have been trafficked for sex in Cambodia, women in Bangladesh who live in abject poverty, African grandmothers who are raising their grandchildren because the parents have died of AIDS, girls from Ukraine, India, Afghanistan, Sudan, Rwanda. The list is long, and the support groups are determined. Just what I needed for Mother’s Day.

Writing on architectural plans

Today at Thursdays we wrote on actual architectural plans! So cool how the design of a house can affect my writing. I wrote down the hallway and into the kitchen, wrote through the dining room and living room and out onto the patio. I wrote a whole garden around the house, the landscaping in text, shrubs of latin names and hedges of evergreens. I put the bed words in the bedroom and bubbles of text in the bathroom. Then I hung the wet laundry words on the line, and lay body words down on the couch in the den. A word I have rediscovered is “threshold.” Look for it in future poems! These sheets of designs and text will be scanned and sent to Marc in Belgium. He is the architect. Then we await his new drawings based on our writings!! Virtual space, poetic space, physical space. Mmm-mmm.

It was such a great party! We launched Vancouver V6A, Writing from the Downtown Eastside, at the Waldorf last night. It was packed with happy people, happy writers and readers. Elee and I carried the heaviest chocolate cake in Canada, but it was delicious. We celebrated Peter’s birthday, and he had a few beer to get him through the poetry part. Ha! For a physics nerd he is coming around! Fred Wah was there, chatting to everyone. John Asfour and Elee Kraljii Gardiner deserve all the credit for compiling and editing our work into a book to be proud of. There will be more readings in Vancouver and an opening in Montreal.

 

Off the Page – Toastmasters for Writers

I admit I’m a little nervous before my first speech to the Off the Page Toastmasters group. Surprising, as I know them to be positive and supportive listeners. It must be because I have to talk about myself, and we rarely do that at work, in interest groups or at social events. If you do talk about yourself for 6 minutes you go directly to the “people to avoid list”! I’ll recite a poem too, and sell chapbooks for Thursdays Writing Collective – is that tacky? They are only $5, and proceeds go to the DTES writers. I’ll put them out on my table and wait for someone to ask. Subtle, Anne.

February 28 at Windsor School

Fifteen young writers showed up today for our first writing session, 2:45 t0 4:00 on Tuesdays. They were loud and goofy, cell phones ringing, some pushing, until I put the prompt on the board, “You wouldn’t dare … I would too!” then all we heard was the sound of pencils. Most of them dove right in and wrote freely. A few looked around or erased the first phrase. but soon everyone was writing – I was so happy! This is their free time, after school, when they’ve been “classroomed” all day, but there they were writing like there was no tomorrow. They like that there is no wrong, no spelling corrections, that they don’t have to read aloud if they don’t feel like it. Some excerpts:

I’m afraid to lose the people I love. I ‘m afraid of being alone.

She fell down in the humid darkness, down into the deep where she was lost.

I’m afraid of poisonous snakes and horror movies, but most of all I’m afraid of failing.

He dared her to stand on the edge of a cliff over the river, but she wouldn’t do it.

W2 Media Café January 24

Zsuzsi Gartner knocked us off our seats with her deadly satire. A foolish Grade one teacher put “not yet meeting expectations” on a little girl’s report card comment for ART. Yes – ART!!! This gave Zsuzsi free rein for her savage sense of humour. Excellent. Intelligent. Funny as hell. I’m buying “Better Living Through Plastic Explosives,” her new book, a collection of short stories. And I think I’ll write a rant too, a real bust the buttons off rant, a la Zsuzsi Gartner. It will be an extreme rant that starts off at the irritation level and builds, through examples and quotes, to a full-out verbal barrage. It has to be clever, and it has to be important, and it has to be genuine. Oh, now I really appreciate her skill.

This is why I haven't done much writing lately.

Kauai Coastline,

The breeze allows me to hike in full sunshine. It’s cool and strong, and it feels as good as I know the turquoise water will when we reach a beach. You’ve got to watch your footing though – there are holes right through the lava rock where the surf breathes through, and you can see that one little trip would toss you down in the sharp rocks and big waves. Dark green crabs scuttle up the cliffs and red crested cardinals bathe in spray pools. Turtles float below if you are brave enough to inch toward the edge to look down. Always there is the boom of undercutting rollers beneath the lithified sandstone. It’s harsh and beautiful. It’s where Pirates of the Caribbean was partially filmed. It’s where you come to feel the power of the ocean against a small hard island.

Sheer Beauty

It’s the cliffs and steep canyons that take my breath away in Kauai. Oh the coast of lava and golden beaches is idyllic, and the lowland taro farms and lanes of tropical trees are lovely, but to really feel the knockout punch of Kauaian beauty you must go up. I love helicopter flights, especially ones to inaccessible coastlines and the centre of volcanoes. Kauai is so green, so watery, so sudden. We dipped down to see humpback whales, curved over green ridges and tilted into waterfall canyons – Jurassic park and the Hawaiian Grand Canyon in full gasping colour and contour.

Fiona Lam is an incredible Vancouver poet who recently edited The Bright Well, Contemporary Canadian Poems about Facing Cancer, and also writes for The Tyee. Read her article on the Montreal Massacre, Dec 6. I am proud to have my poem included in it. She uses the word “targeted” to describe women of the DTES who were victims of Willie Pickton, and women missing along the Highway of Tears in northern BC. The fourteen women at the École Polytechnique in December 1989 were targeted too – separated from the men and gunned down by Marc Lépine who gave as a motive, “I was fighting feminism.” The ones who really should have targeted these vulnerable women were the police who made an indifferent if not incompetent investigation, allowing further unnecessary deaths to occur. I love that Fiona writes about powerful, vital topics. She does not flinch from the hard stuff.

Toastmasters for Writers

On Saturday I went as a guest to a Toastmasters for Writers meeting. Robin Spano and Charlotte Morganti, writers from my Mystery Writers group,  encouraged me to go. They attend and are finding it boosts confidence on panels, doing pitches to agents or publishers, and in general speaking about their books. So I’ll go again in two weeks for the improv session – now that sounds like fun! I always was pretty damn good at running at the mouth. Ah, but perhaps you are expected to SAY something too. we’ll see. I like their supportive manner.