snow falling on lumber

Eventful events of the week:
Read at Special Collections SFU last Thursday– some stuff from Nascent Fashion, and a new novel-in-progress, or should that be novel-in-messiness. Hosted by the lovely Tony Power and introduced by the beautiful and ever-supportive Sophie McCall. Thoughtful questions from the audience about research, process, structure. Coffee and cookies in the back room afterwards. I really want to explore the papers there when I have time.

Consultations with some interesting writers– a young girl in Grade 9 writing brilliant science fiction, a bio-chemistry prof writing very strange and fabulous things about octopi and automata. This week, I also paid a house visit to an elderly woman with an extraordinary story of three marriages and much migration. I took Andrea Actis with me, a very bright young poet who came to see me earlier this term. We need to think through how this might unfold.

Also this week, a most enjoyable and satisfying reading and chat at the SFU Women’s Centre, organized by one of the most thoughtful, deeply committed (to politics, to creative practice) people I know, Nadine Chambers. We sat around on couches and drank tea and ate delicious brownies and poppyseed lemon cake baked by the younger sister of a woman called Halima who volunteers at the Centre. It was great to visit with women in such an intimate setting, and find out about their own thinking and writing practices.

Last night, went to SFU Segal Centre to hear Jackie Stacey give a paper entitled “Do Clones Have Feelings?” She looks at two films– Code 46 and Teknolust– in order to think through what she calls the “rebiologization of the body” through practices of science in conjunction with filmmaking/viewing. The body that is returned to us through the process of rebiologization is not the body we began with.

Tomorrow is my big gala reading at the Western Front, for those of you out there who might like to come. Starts at 7. Must go now, and plot my course.