Brad Van 2011

This is one mother of a poetry conference. I'm very grateful to organizer Brad Cran for inviting me and making room for Linda Besner and Christopher Patton.

Also nice to spot some Signal alumni on the bill: Stephanie Bolster and Elise Partridge.

Signal Round-Up

Please check out new reviews of

• Susan Briscoe's The Crow's Vow ("In her finest poems, Briscoe demonstrates the poetic art of saying what is meant without really saying it")

• Michael Harris's Circus ("the seamlessness with which Harris vacillates between the profound and the comic...makes this book uniquely effective and poignant").

In other news, Asa Boxer (his Skullduggery was reviewed in The Gazette last month) was awarded one of Arc Magazine's Critic's Desk Awards for his review of Brent MacLaine’s Athena Becomes a Swallow.

Tick Tock

The $50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize has extended its deadline to midnight, Monday 11 July 2011.

Sunday Poem

THINGS THAT MIGHT PREVENT YOU FROM HANGING

the clothes out to dry: sore arms. A shortage
of pegs. High winds. Underwear trimmed
with lace. A snapped line. That feeling of unease

that arises when you see acrylic sleeves (yesterday
they held your own arms) emaciated, unable
to contain their nervousness. Mud. An absence

of nostalgia in your veins. You are shy and under
five feet. Tattered underwear, waistbands drawling. Bylaws
that forbid colourful displays of household chores. Fear

of stiff joints. Fatigue. Nightmares of being
dismembered. An addiction to the feathery smell
of fabric softener. Airborne pollution (orange, clinging

to cotton). Drizzle. Some misunderstanding with Sabine,
your cat. Lightning. Laziness (an automatic dryer
in the basement). Age. A lost button. You believe

in the roundness of the planet but don’t
trust it. The Wham! decal on that t-shirt you wear
only beneath other clothes. Freezing rain. Nightmares

about boys stealing your clothes off a rock
while you swim in the limestone quarry
at Hagersville. Sunburn. An unwillingness

to venture outdoors: You are nude, all your clothing
in the wash. A broken pulley. Squirrels. An inability to appreciate
old-fashioned labour. You eat corn chips and salsa

on Mondays. You hate to see the faithful upended in one long row,
fluids rushing, airheads pounding. It makes you want to cry.

From Out To Dry in Cape Breton (2006) by Anita Lahey.

Saturday Poem

THE FIST-PUPPET'S SOLILOQUY

You have to look past my felt-tipped eyes,
my lolling tongue drawn by the granddad
or uncle who has talked too long at lunch
and knows he must entertain the toddlers
with his jabbering, magic-markered fist.

I am the last item on your list, the puppet
that costs nothing to make: the bogeyman
couched between worn index and thumb,
my snarl converted to a hayseed's guffaw.

Admit that I bear traces of inbreeding,
that my face and body must always be
an abomination to children of any age,
that it twists me up inside to hear them

clamour for more of my troll's antics.
If you like hearing cracker bromides,
say that I also favour arenas, imperial
banquets involving human sacrifice,
oblations to the god of spewing lava.

Demand for me rises as I'm washed off
another hand in another suburban sink.
Others are waiting in need of laughter.
It is time I dusted off my Punchinello
and swam out into a little sea of faces

with my disfigurement at stage center:
winded, bleary-eyed, yet discovering
after each pratfall, a dropper's-worth
of the bile which keeps me going.

From Sympathy for the Couriers (2007) by Peter Richardson.

Saturday Poem

TROIS-PISTOLES

Parliament of seals
lounging on the stones
deep gurglings of ocean
cormorants roosting to dry
fly-catchers and wild cranberries
the sand-pipers of Trois-Pistoles
diving loons and yellowlegs
flights of ducks
skimming the waves
harvest of leeches
from under the stones
and the setting sun
spreading its sheets upon the sea
Saguenay of the banner and pennons
jagged Laurentians
and the house we called
La Renardiere home of departures
and of returns
mon vieux Marcel
please save me my hammock
on the second floor

From Evenings at Loose Ends (1991) by Gérald Godin, translated by Judith Cowan.

Sunday Poem

THE END OF THE AFFAIR

We arrange the Meissen between us
(tundish for you, tureen pushed to my side),
dividing the final rags of a marriage
from an affair several years dead.

Our hands shepherd transparencies
one by one to light to view
until birthdays and vacations fall
like sheared fleece upon the hardwood floor.

The books fall more readily
into rank, soldiering stiffly
for what we used at night
to keep from one another's sight.

And records – call them music
if you will – we add contempt
to each release. A hurried trade
speeds some last knick-knacks on their way.

And two more, aged twelve and eight,
we consign to weekends, holidays;
ourselves to minutes parked in driveways
watching parentage slip away.

The bed, old scarred four-poster,
hides like an embarrassment upstairs
because after many turns and twistings
it will not squeeze through the bedroom door.

From Morning Gothic (2007) by George Ellenbogen.