Streetpieces

I got the idea a couple of years ago to set a poem on every street in Hillsdale. Alphabetical order backwards. Arbitrary, for sure, but the last street would be Anderson, an avenue, where my parents moved us in 1961.

Enter here the notion that I could dedicate the poems to mom, who's 97 but in '61 was moving into the only new house she and dad ever owned.  Four kids, three at home. We moved on their anniversary, August 3. I remember in Herbert on moving day reminding mom and dad what day it was. They went inside.

Streetpieces has just been published in chapbook form by The Alfred Gustav Press, run by David Zieroth out of North Vancouver. 12 pieces, the rest to show up in the book, scheduled for the spring of 2014 from NeWest Press. David chose other than reverse alphabetical for the sequencing but I okayed it.

In the book I'll end the section with "Anderson Streetpiece: for Mom" (which isn't the title but could be). She spent more time in Hillsdale than the rest of us put together, I'm guessing (thinking of Betty Friedan's notion of the "matrilineal compound" that was any suburb post-war). CKCK used to show movies on weekday afternoons, not to suggest mom spent much time lying around, though she may have seen a movie or two (think Greer Garson).

The book will cover all this. For now, Streetpieces is fun to read and hold, I admit it, and so beautifully produced by David. Buy it and the other fine work at his press! (The exclamation point, normally banned, here signifies my shame at evoking "buy" in December.)