Monday 27 February 2017

Remembering St. Peter's Abbey

I notice a dead spot when I meet a face known so intensely years ago. The windmill at St. Pete’s, the crossroads and grid, god-damned chickadees massed like avengers over the graveyard path. Back and to the right, the junkyard, sweet enough for me in ’98 or so, my outdoor office there.












By dead I mean I mean looked-out (maybe lucked out)--something so burned into perception that I shy away from more of it.










Idea attributed to F.G. Lorca, who pinned
a version to his door:

book a sheet of curling 
for those who had never curled,
never split the house,
never hit.  









Lorca showed up in time to join
old-timers hockey in Leroy
Tuesday and Friday mornings in Leroy
10:00 for an hour and half
because the ice here’s no good.
Everybody behaves himself?
Oh, you betcha.
We all know each other.











Where I walked, I'd walked before. 


Sunday 26 February 2017

Watching the Scotties

Homan makes an in-off double for 3 in the second, and the Scotties crowd, mostly Ontario homers, goes nuts.
By the time Homan hits another double to leave Englot a draw for only 1 in the third, it looks uphill for the Manitobans, though Englot's confident draw to the heart of the rings makes a powerful statement.
Manitoba has to take over somehow. They're in it but behind after four.
Englot's steal of 1 in the fifth gives them new life. And she steals another in the seventh for a 4-3 lead.
Honan looked good to take her deuce with last rock in the eighth. After the four tricky skips' shots, a deuce it is.
As action in the ninth builds, both teams demand challenging shots from the other. Englot is left with a difficult pick for 1 but she racks on a guard. Steal of 1 for Ontario and a 6-4 lead.
With last rock in the tenth, Englot has her 3 set up. But by making a much-needed double, Honan leaves Englot a draw for 2 only. On to the extra end.
Englot fights to the end. Honan has to make her last shot--a simple raise take-out to leave the winning point.
Big smiles from everyone, both teams curling so well.

Friday 17 February 2017

Highway 6

I mean it when I say lucky me today, heading up highway 6 from Regina, straight north. 









What choice did I have? The one time I tried to drive where the highway wasn't, I got stuck. Taking this photo.









I called the motor club and got terrific service from the young buy running the towtruck from Southey, about 15 km north of my bog on the north slope of the valley. Needing to winch my car straight back, to prevent it from sliding further into the ditch, he rigged up a pulley system at the back of his truck so that force applied to it translates to force applied perpendicular to my rear axle. 










The diagram is not drawn to scale. The back of the truck was another half-length back. He got me going and I carried on.



Waiting for the truck, I'd begun a piece called "Lorca in Saskatchewan." What he'd find holy here.

Wednesday 15 February 2017

At the Moment

I'm excited about going back into my Cities manuscript, pieces based on travels in Europe and beyond in the last few years. Of course, the fact that I'm composing this blog entry says much about what "excited" means here: a glam opening, the sheer fun of what I'm about to do, before I do it. 
Still, I look forward to breaking down the pieces not so much in terms of language (they've been stripped down) but in terms of stanza and line form. 
Previous intrusions of prose journal-esque entries: delete. 
Remove "City" from name of poem. Bread, instead of City of Bread. 
Remove date and location (though saying so, I feel a shudder). 
Saying all this, I remember A Dictionary of Altitudes in the Dominion of Canada--found in Nelson, somehow, 1981-82--a listing, by altitude and source of survey, of every location in Canada where altitudes had been measured. As if attracted to the look of its pages, I produced poems named after towns, with the rest of the data included in each title. I swung beginnings of lines back and forth. Some of them worked great. Others, well, cut to Regina a year later. Get Paul, Anne, Bruce, or Brenda to tell you how I closed one line with "passing" and opened the next with "wind." 
A few of these--known (as the months passed) as the "better ones"--were published, in Dandelion and places I've forgotten. I felt at home with the approach. I didn't see any reason not to. It gave me a lot of room. 
The only snag was that after the first seven or eight poems, things got a tad repetitive. Neat bits were buried in fussy regularities of form.
So it has gone with my Cities. More than a half-dozen have found homes in print. The rest continue to hover, now that I've brought them to mind again, like aircraft on the fringes of a storm. 
Time to land them, I can't help saying. 

Wednesday 8 February 2017

Ten Reasons To Love La La Land (the movie)

The irresistible vein of its pop hooks.

The good-natured nod to its own traditions in terms of theme (boy meets girl, boy and girl chase dreams) and look and pace.

A slew of non-Hollywood allusions, to boot. Take them or leave them.

Virtuostic performances by Emma Stone, and Gosling's not bad either--a blend of Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant.

That opening number on the LA freeway. First you fear it's a Coke commercial, then WHAM!

Surprise, plenty available.

Courage and artistry to evoke potentially asphyxiating elements of story but develop them freshly.

The devotion to place. LA, obviously. Like everything else, this devotion is delivered cheerfully, with full knowledge of its own impossibility.

That the representation of jazz music isn't any more reductive than it already is.

Lorca would love it.