Shiny bits

The big news of the weekend is that I’ve been selected as a Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies Early Career Scholar. Yeesh, what a mouthful! But the cool thing is getting to work with young profs in other disciplines. The Peter Wall Institute focuses on interdisciplinarity. There will be retreats, talks, gatherings, and I’m hoping lots of cross-fertilization. I’ll know two other people going in– Eric Lagally from the Michael Smith Labs (with whom I’m hoping to develop a course on the science and writing of science-writing), and Jennifer Chun, from Sociology, who works on women and labour, and has become a friend over the course of the past year.

Also, I just got a note from Meredith Quartermain, that Nomados Press will publish my experimental prose poem “Eggs In the Basement” later this year. I’m excited about that. The poem began as a writing exercise done on virtual retreat with Monika Gagnon a few summers ago. I generated a pool of language through an automatic writing exercise, and then recycled it in two permutations of nouns and verbs, reusing them in the order in which they appeared in the exercise until they were all used up. Strangely, it ends up telling the story of Moses and Monotheism! Just in time for the Second Gulf War.

And, the Rachel poems are coming to life again in a class Alessandra Capperdoni is teaching at SFU. Mike Barnholden at LINE Books is reproducing the original chapbook in a very limited edition.

Garry Gottfriedson and Souvankham Thammavongsa gave a great reading last Tuesday for Play Chthonics. There was a very interesting contrast in approach between the two of them– one articulate and verbose, the other minimalist and reserved. Both extraordinary presences.

Backlogged on papers, blurbs, accounting and grading though. Rita says it gets easier.