Celebrating young writers & artists in Montreal tonight

Tonight at the Jewish Public Library several hundred Montreal-area young writers, musicians and artists (grades 7-12) will be fêted at the 25th annual publication of the Firstfruits anthology. Firstfruits is an incredible program, encouraging creativity in high-school kids (and hopefully getting them away from the tv and computer screen, except of course, to write poetry, essays or stories.) I've enjoyed an almost twenty year association with this program which was founded by visionary (and National Post editorialist) Barbara Kay. Tonight, I have the privilege of acting as MC as the kids are called up to accept prizes and read from their works. I'm especially excited to hear the evening's guest speakers Nancy Marelli and Simon Dardick, co-publisher's of Véhicule Press, one of the best independent publishers in Canada. It's been a particularly good week for Véhicule whose books have won a couple of prestigious awards.

Kind words for A Dream of Birds

From Bywords

A Dream of Birds by Seymour Mayne and B. Glen Rotchin, illustrated by Sharon Katz.

Reviewed by Megan McGrath.

So agile in their expressions of birds, Seymour Mayne and B. Glen Rotchin pluck the most beautiful words to associate with our feathered friends. A Dream of Birds is a collection of word sonnets so lyrical and humorous, poignant and elegant, thoughtful and sad. Mayne and Rotchin's word sonnets play off each other in easy dialogue, comparing birds to musical notes, speech, angels, and women. In "Fire," Rotchin proclaims the birth of a cardinal from a log's flame. Mayne inserts a quaint "Canadian-ness" in his mention of birds perched on maples in "Day Off." In the title poem, Rotchin stretches beyond birds but the connection remains. A truly beautiful collection, these word sonnets are the perfect conversation between two gifted poets, illustrated boldly by Sharon Katz.

Maxwell Bodenheim

Memorial Day in the States seems like a good day to draw your attention to the forgotten American bohemian poet and novelist Maxwell Bodenheim on his birthday. With thanks to The Writer's Almanac.

Milton Klonsky once recalled being in a bar in Greenwich Village in the early 1950s and suddenly hearing the owner and many of the drinkers shouting and jeering at someone. When Klonsky turned to see what was happening he noticed "a tall, glum, scraggly, hawknosed, long-haired, itchy-looking, no doubt pickled, fuming and oozing, Bowery-type specimen" standing near the door. People were calling to him to read a poem or even make up one on the spot. The man turned and glared at them and wrapped his "old dung-coloured horse blanket of a patched overcoat" around him in a way that reminded Klonsky of Marc Antony drawing his toga to him as he faced the Roman mob. And then he said "Pimps! Patriots ! Racetrack touts !" in a contemptuous voice, and swept out of the bar. It was, as Klonsky said, the kind of exit that stays in the mind, and it gave the victim of the sneers of the crowd a kind of nobility.

Testing my blog PH balance

Well, if you are one of the dozen folks who regularly reads this blog you may have figured out that the last entry was strictly a test. I couldn't care less about Paris Hilton. A colleague in my office who fancies himself a maven on all things computer and internet said that if I mentioned PH it would send visits through the roof. I told him he was full of crap but decided to test out his theory for 24 hours as a lark. He was wrong. The number of visits have reversed. The mention of PH has begun to suck interest out of my blog like the black hole that she is. So for those of you who may have abandoned me because I posted on PH, I didn't mean it, please come back!

Paris burger

Is there any difference between Paris Hilton and a cheap rubber sex doll?

No wonder I was always so bad in math

In a 2003 study at Harvard, Dr. Carson and other researchers tested students’ ability to tune out irrelevant information when exposed to a barrage of stimuli. The more creative the students were thought to be, determined by a questionnaire on past achievements, the more trouble they had ignoring the unwanted data. A reduced ability to filter and set priorities, the scientists concluded, could contribute to original thinking.

Inability to focus. Attraction to other things. Mind-wandering. Love of the world. The desire to drink it all in. It's all the same to me. Well, I may be pushing it. But this NYTimes piece raises some interesting questions, not just about the aging brain, but the nature of wisdom and the way it's been so completely undervalued in our day and age. We live in an information age. Which means that the ability to assemble and parse data, categorize, sift, mathematicize and monetize has gain ascendency over more ephemeral, intangible and experiential forms of information. We have devalued and undervalued wisdom. Shunted aside our elders. Taken the short view over the long. Either ditched the repositories of human experience completely -the sacred texts and ancient myths and traditions that make up our civilizations - or chosen to fiercely embrace them in superficial (read: literal) and dangerously fundamentalist ways. It's a perilsome and, in fact, dehumanizing enterprise. Yes, religious fundamentalism is a product of our technocratic, information age.

If you happen to be in Ottawa tonight... (sixth in a series)

If you missed us on Ottawa radio, catch us live and in person! I'll be reading with Clayton Bailey and Glen Dresser at Collected Works bookstore at 7:30 pm, 1242 Wellington St. (at Holland). Come for the thrills, the entertainment, the intellectual stimulation, and if not, apparently they make a mean cup of java.