Odd Sundays, Fredericton

Poetry reading: Featured reader Joe Blades, at the next odd sundays at molly’s event (and special guest with tv camera, Kirk Pennell, Rogers Television, Channel 10).

sunday, december 3, 2006
2pm Molly’s Coffee House
554 Queen Street, Fredericton

Featured reader, Joe Blades, Joe Blades has been giving readings and publishing his poetry for over a quarter century. Writer, visual artist, publisher (Broken Jaw Press Inc.), and member of the editorial board of ellipse magazine, Blades was born in Halifax. Graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, he is also an alumnus of the Banff Centre for the Arts and the Simon Fraser University Book Publishing Immersion Workshop. Based in Fredericton, he has also lived eleswhere in Canada, in New York City and in Senta, Serbia. He gives readings, lectures and workshops across Canada as well as in the eastern USA, Scotland and Eastern Europe. Also, Blades exhibits bookworks, photographs, and objet d’art primarily in Canada and Europe. From 1995 to 2006, he was a community radio producer-host at CHSR 97.9 FM with the award-winning Ashes, Paper & Beans: Fredericton’s Poetry & Writing show. Blades curated Videopoems: a screening for the Tidal Wave Film Festival (2003), and is the editor of nine books and chapbooks including Some Stuff on Canadian Spoken Word & Indie Publishing (NCRA/ANRÉC, 2004). His poetry and art has appeared in over 50 trade and chapbook anthologies, and in numerous periodicals. Blades has authored 28 poetry chapbooks and limited editon artist books. His four full-length poetry books are Cover Makes a Set (SpareTime Editions, 1990), River Suite (Insomniac Press, 1998), Open Road West (Broken Jaw Press, 2000, 2001), and Casemate Poems (Widows & Orphans, 2004). Serbian translations of River Suite (as Reècna Svita) and Casemate Poems (as Pesme iz kazamata) were published in 2005.
Open Set: Bring lyrics, drama, fiction, drama, or music, to present in the open set. If it is created from words, we want it. Be advised that there will be a television camera on hand, and some footage from this odd sundays event may be televised on Trevor Doyle Live on December 4.

Join us at 2 pm on Sunday, December 3, at Molly’s Coffee House, for an afternoon of poetry. For
information: acalcern@nbnet.nb.ca or
459-1436. Yay New Brunswick, Canada’s poetry province!

Good Times in Saint John

The WFNB Fall Fair happened this past weekend at the Arts Centre in Saint John. What a wonderful time! The staff at the Arts Centre really need to be commended for making us feel most welcome and attending to our every need. They were lovely! All smiles and kindness. We couldn't have asked for a better venue.

The day began with Alistair MacLeod's talk. I have only ever seen him on television before. He is more humorous in person. He spoke of journalism's limitations for the writer--always having to tell the truth, restrictive word counts, being assigned a subject to write about and having to meet strict deadlines. None of this applies in fiction, he said. You can do anything you want. Coming from a journalistic background myself, I think I may have got more out of this simple concept than some of my peers. Perhaps without even realising it I have been limiting myself in my fiction writing, trying to tell the facts rather than finding the story's truth within my imagination. For me, this was a powerful and freeing realisation--that none of his fiction is autobiographical, yet his characters and stories are so true, so real, that many find it difficult to believe they are not based on his real life.

He spoke about geography and universal themes and Shakespeare and how our everyday lives are all very dull. All with the ease of years of practice leading classes and a humorous natural style that was very warm and welcoming. I could have listened to his stories all day and perhaps the next day and the day after that and never grown tired. But for this day our time was limited as there were other workshops to attend. I came away from Alistair's workshop with a very clear sense of what is wrong in some short stories I've been working on for awhile now and exactly what I need to do to help them reach their full potential. It's wonderful when that happens!

For about five years a particular story has been floating around my brain. I've tried to write it many times, as a short story, as a novel even, but it never seemed to gel. Finally, I decided it needed to be written as a play, and suddenly characters started to emerge onto the pages of my notebook. Since I know nothing about playwriting I decided to attend the afternoon workshop with Decima Mitchell and get an introduction to the form. Wow! What a powerhouse! We created characters and allowed them to interact in a few different exercises, ping-ponging back and forth in dialogue that created stimulus and response in a progression of linked chains. I went into this workshop basically knowing very little about how to get my idea onto the page in dramatic format and I left feeling confident that I know how to write a play. Could anyone ask anymore than that of a workshop? What an amazing day! Looking forward to seeing you all in April at the AGM weekend in Sackville.

Writing/Publishing Workshop, Attic Owl, Sunday Nov. 26

Moncton author Lee Thompson will be conducting an interactive, for-writers-only workshop on Sunday, 1PM, November 26, at the Attic Owl Bookshop. There will be two parts to the workshop, part one dealing with the ins and outs of publishing, submitting to publishers, how to prepare a manuscript, what publishers are looking for, and part two dealing with the art of writing.

Participants are asked to submit their work (under 3000 words) and each will be provided with a thorough, and helpful, critique of their writing.

Cost of the workshop is $65, $50 for students. Seating is limited so you must register and pay in advance. If you wish to attend the workshop without submitting any work, the cost is $35 ($25 students).

Writers of all of levels are welcome!

Please contact Lee Thompson by email - thomlee@nb.sympatico.ca - or by telephone (506) 382 9044.

Biography:

Lee Thompson is a Moncton native whose short fiction has appeared in such literary journals as The New Quarterly, Lichen Arts & Letters Review, The Dalhousie Review, The New Orphic Review, The Nashwaak Review, Gaspereau Review, and in the anthologies New Brunswick Short Stories (Neptune Publishing) and Victory Meat: New Fiction from Atlantic Canada (Random House Canada). He has been a prize-winner in the WFNB Literary Competition and has twice been awarded creative writing grants from the New Brunswick Arts Board. He is also editor and founder of the fiction journal Galleon (www.galleonjournal.ca).

Fall Fair Coming Up in Saint John

WFNB Fall Fair
Saint John Arts Centre
20 Hazen Ave
Saturday November 18th

12:30-2PM Alistair MacLeod, Transforming Personal Experience
2- 2:30PM Coffee & refreshments
2:30-4:30PM Jeanette Lynes, The Poem as Argument
2:30- 4:30PM Decima Mitchell, The Play’s the Thing: An Introduction to the Form


Registration fee $25 for members, $30 for non-members.

Author Alistair MacLeod’s workshop is “Transforming Personal Experience, how the writer uses various techniques to transform personal experience into fiction.” MacLeod spends his summers writing in a clifftop cabin in Inverness County, Cape Breton, where he was raised.
In the spring of 2000, MacLeod retired from the University of Windsor, where he was a professor of English.
He published two collections of short stories: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986). In 1999, MacLeod’s first novel, No Great Mischief, was published to great critical acclaim, winning numerous awards, most notably, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

In the workshop “The Poem as Argument,” Jeanette Lynes will focus on the function of argument and statement in poetry. Participants will consider, for example, how the ‘argument’ of a poem can provide its structure, and how statement, woven through the poem in concert with imagery, can sharpen the speaker’s stance towards his or her material.
After considering sample poems and discussing aspects of rhetoricity and writing poetry, hands-on exercises intended to sharpen awareness of argument and tone will be given. Some source material will be provided.
Lynes is the author of three collections of poetry. Her most recent, Left Fields, was short-listed for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Her fourth book of poetry is forthcoming from Wolsak and Wynn in 2008. She is an Associate Professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia.

In “The Play’s the Thing: an introduction to the form” Decima Mitchell uses a hands-on approach. Through a series of exercises, Mitchell will guide participants through characters, description, action, conflict, exposition and all the parts of a successful play.
Mitchell has been writing plays since 1992. Subjects have included conjoined twins, the trials of family members of a gifted child, a convenience store hold up, and an alien visitor. This past summer, she was a winner in the NotaBle Acts One Act Playwriting Contest with What You Can Do, which revisited a NB murder trial of the 1930’s.
Most recently, she has collaborated with a musical composer to produce Shards, a one act Operetta, focusing on the contrast between public and interior expressions of emotion among characters involved in a domestic crisis.