The Al Purdy A-frame Residency

Tim Falconer

In Residence: April/May 2018

Editors’ Notes:

Primarily a writer of non-fiction and magazine editor, Tim Falconer used his time at the A-frame to work on his upcoming book about the Dawson City Nuggets and Canada’s love affair with hockey and to explore Prince Edward County by bicycle.

A-frame Experience:

Before my stay, I had worried about loneliness because my wife was working in Toronto and I’m a person who craves social stimulus. But my fears were unfounded. I enjoyed my time alone more than I expected and it turned out there were lots of diversions. I have a few friends in Prince Edward County and was able to get together with some of them. For example, I invited two authors – Wellington resident Geoff Heinricks, who interviewed Al Purdy for his book about making wine in the County called A Fool and Forty Acres, and Run Over author Douglas Bell, who lives in Belleville – for dinner one night. Another writer who dropped by was Michael Barclay. I’d gone to his reading in Wellington to promote Long Time Running, his new biography about Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip. At the event, he mentioned that Purdy was one of Downie’s favourite poets. So I invited Barclay and his wife Helen, both of whom I know a little bit, to drop by the A-frame the next day. They loved it, as all visitors seem to.

Weird connections like that kept happening. A few days later, a friend in Wellington texted me to say that Stew Jones wanted to visit. Stew is an artist and a few years ago he’d promised that he would donate a painting of the A-frame that the Association could auction off at a fundraiser. But he’d never seen the place. So he came and took several photos to work with. As it turned out, Stew is also a partner in Wellington’s Midtown Brewery and he brought a growler of beer with him. We sat on the deck and had a long and enjoyable chat.

Final Report Entry:

The smell of old books hit me as soon as I walked into the A-frame. That seemed perfect. Then, like most writers lucky enough to do a residency there, I imagine, one of the first things I did was look at the bookshelves. I’d been tipped off to check out the W.B. Yeats poetry. They were just old paperback editions, but they were full of Al Purdy’s notes in the margins. Then I spotted a copy of The Stanley Cup Story, a 1964 book by Henry Roxborough – a title I’d been looking for because I was working on a book about how Canada fell in love with hockey. That’s when I knew for sure that the A-frame would be a good place to work.

I arrived when there was still snow on the ground and left a couple days after what felt like the first real summer day (spring was fleeting that year, as it often is in Ontario). At the beginning, I spent most of my time in the A-frame portion of the house, close to the fireplace. But as it warmed up, I spent more time in the addition, in front of the big picture window, or on the deck. The writing, reading, ruminating and recharging went even better than I had dared hope and I enjoyed exploring the County on my bike.

Guest Book Entry (excerpt):

This place is a gift for any writer fortunate enough to stay here. … I knew this was going to be a great place to work as soon as I looked at the bookshelf and found a book I needed for my research. … And my fears of loneliness were unfounded as there were many distractions: a few friends in Wellington; other friends visiting the area; a couple radio interviews; a reading in Picton; and a trip to Kingston to visit the Queen’s archives and see a friend’s band. I also enjoyed exploring the area on my bike. Inevitably, it all happened too fast and there’s still much more I want to do. But I leave happy and thankful.

Tim Falconer

April 19 - May 12/18

Biography:

Tim Falconer, born and raised in Toronto, studied mining engineering and English literature at McGill University (Montreal) and journalism at Carleton (Ottawa). He is the author of four non-fiction books and a veteran magazine writer. Bad Singer: The Surprising Science of Tone Deafness and How We Hear Music made The Globe and Mail’s ‘Top 100’ (2016) and was a finalist for the Lane Anderson Award. His previous books are about activism (Watchdogs and Gadflies); our love-hate relationship with the car (Drive); and end-of-life ethics (That Good Night). He is also co-author, with Dr. Alex Russell, of Drop the Worry Ball, a book about parenting in an age of children’s entitlement.

He taught magazine journalism at Ryerson (Toronto) for two decades, was a mentor in the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Non-Fiction program at King’s College (Halifax) and served as a faculty editor in the Literary Journalism program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

The project he worked on at the A-frame in the spring of 2018 is an historical non-fiction book about Dawson City’s 1905 Stanley Cup challenge and how Canada fell in love with hockey. It will be published in the fall of 2021.

A former writer-in-residence at Berton House in Dawson City, he returns to the Yukon as often as he can from his home in Toronto.

Bibliography:

Watchdogs and Gadflies (Viking 2001)

Drive (Viking 2008)

That Good Night (Penguin 2009)

Drop the Worry Ball with Dr. Alex Russell (Collins 2014)

Bad Singer: The Surprising Science of Tone Deafness and How We Hear Music (Anansi 2016)

Links:

http://timfalconer.com

https://hazlitt.net/longreads/how-canada-fell-love-stanley-cup

Photo:

Tim Falconer

Writing Sample:

From Klondikers: Dawson City’s Stanley Cup Challenge and How Canada Fell in Love with Hockey

 

      Just 20 years old, Weldon Champness Young was already a veteran with the Ottawa Hockey Club when he went to the Russell House hotel for a formal banquet in March of 1892. The evening was hosted by the Ottawa Amateur Athletic Club (OAAC) to celebrate the end of his team’s season. More than 75 people had gathered in the hotel dining room to honour that success, and by the end of the night they’d have even more to cheer about.

     At 10 p.m., J. W. McRae, president of the OAAC, began the formal proceedings. Then, Philip Dansken Ross, the publisher of the Evening Journal and past president of the OAAC, gave a toast to the Governor-General, Frederick Arthur Stanley. Unable to attend the banquet, Stanley sent something better. His aide de camp, Lord Kilcoursie, delivered the surprise by reading a letter from His Excellency: “I have for some time past been thinking that it would be a good thing if there were a challenge cup which should be held from year to year by the championship hockey team in the Dominion.” And he’d already asked a former aide, who was now back in England, to order such a trophy.

    The guests at the Russell House applauded enthusiastically. The delight at the promised gift was celebrated by hockey people: players, league officials and other hangers-on. Still, their excitement over a trophy to recognize the country’s championship team was indicative of the growing ardor for the sport. But not even these insiders could have imagined what the Cup would come to mean to Canada.

      By 1890, hockey made it to the prairies. Local businessmen, and an 18-year-old Jack Armytage, launched the Victoria Hockey Club of Winnipeg that year. A multi-sport athlete, Armytage was a trainer and kept himself and his teammates in excellent shape with rigorous drills. In 1895, his Vics toured Ontario, Quebec and Minnesota and won four of five matches. After Winnipeg beat the Montreal Hockey Club 5-1, the teams went to the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association clubhouse for the post-game festivities. While there, Armytage spied the Stanley Cup in a trophy case. He was determined to win it.

      In February 1896, the Vics hopped on an eastbound train, accompanied by a handful of their hardcore fans. They were going to play Montreal’s own Victorias for the Stanley Cup, in a Valentine’s Day match at Victoria Rink. (Sure, two teams named after the Queen meeting each other in a building named after the Queen sounds like a royal parody, but it was just an indication of Canada’s devotion to the monarch.) Few Montrealers gave the challengers much of a chance. Fans liberally placed bets that the westerners would get schooled by the hometown squad. The 2,000 or so in attendance included 25 Manitobans who “gave an excellent exhibition of Western lung power” in a vain attempt to match the volume of the locals.

    The fans back in Winnipeg were no less excited. The phones at the offices of the Manitoba Free Press rang furiously as people called the newsroom to get the score. Hundreds of others had congregated in three of the city’s hotels – the Manitoba, the Queen’s and the Clarendon – to await game updates, sent via telegram.

     Only a few years old, the Manitoba Hotel was the city’s poshest. That’s where John Tait, city manager of the CPR Telegraphs, disappointed the fans by announcing, in his distinct Scottish burr, an early Montreal lead. Unfortunately for the team, the goal was ultimately disallowed. Eleven minutes into the match, the fans cheered: Armytage had scored. A second goal followed nine minutes later. In the second half, there was a long, worry-filled wait when nothing at all appeared to be happening until word came in that Winnipeg cover point Fred Higginbotham had broken his suspenders, leading to a delay until someone could find him a new pair. Finally, Tait announced the final score: 2-0 for Winnipeg. There were triumphant cheers and gleeful handshakes all ’round. Meanwhile, back in Montreal, supporters of the western Vics made their way to the Windsor Hotel to collect at least $2,000 in winnings for their well-placed wagers.

       After the traditional dinner with the host team, the Vics headed home in a private car on the CPR train. As a brass band played “See the Conquering Heroes Come,” the players climbed into open sleighs waiting for them. The Cup sat in full view in the lead sleigh as the procession—including the band and the fans—made its way along Main Street to the Manitoba Hotel, creating the first Stanley Cup parade.

      A crowd of several thousand greeted them at the hotel. After speeches by the mayor and club president, the players and dignitaries made for the Manitoba’s smoking room where they filled the trophy with champagne. Drinking from the Cup would become a ritual that subsequent winners would gleefully follow.

      Losing had been a bitter blow for the Montrealers. A Free Press story claimed the Victoria Rink’s caretaker “was so worked up over the defeat that he shed enough tears to almost fill the big trophy.” The eastern Vics issued a challenge in mid-November and on Christmas Day, the former champions travelled west for a return match scheduled for December 30. Lord Stanley had appointed two Ottawa men as trustees of the Cup: P.D. Ross, the newspaper publisher who’d been at the 1892 banquet, and John Sweetland, a doctor and the Sheriff of Carleton County. One of their responsibilities was to appoint referees. When he wasn’t playing, Weldy Young often reffed matches and was someone both teams could accept. So the trustees asked him to travel to Winnipeg to handle the game.

     He started the match a little after 8:20 p.m. and before long it was hard to hear his whistle above the crowd noise. The play was fast and close and exciting. The home team thrilled its fans by storming out to an early lead, firing the first three goals. But Montreal roared back to go ahead in the second half. When Winnipeg scored late to tie it up at five goals apiece, the eruption impressed even the Montreal seven. “I have played many exciting championship games, but I never heard such a wild burst of cheering as went up when the score was made even,” one member of the team said later. When Montreal scored again, it put “a damper on the crowd but they could not restrain a cheer for the fine work of the visiting team.” The final score was 6-5 and as the Daily Tribune observed, “Winnipeg is in mourning for her lost Valentine, her Stanley Cup.”

      The audience was far larger than just the crowd in the rink. The CPR and Great North Western telegraph companies had arranged to provide detailed coverage of the game with direct wires to the arena – the first time this had been done for a hockey match. The Manitoba Hotel had promised that “every move of the puck will be announced.” Several hundred people made the rotunda reverberate with cheers, and groans, as they followed the play in only slightly delayed real-time through frequent CPR bulletins.

“Merritt has just stopped a hot one.

Grant has just had a run down the rink and made a shot on Winnipeg’s goal, which was well stopped by Merritt.

The play is very fast – and just 8 minutes more to play.

Merritt has stopped several hot ones.

Montrealers are keeping the puck at Winnipeg goal and raining shot after shot.

Winnipeg on the defensive. Montreal is playing the best game.

The Winnipegs are wakening up.

Another shot on Winnipeg goal was beautifully stopped by Merritt.”

 

     In Montreal, the Victoria Rink was hosting the skating club’s first fancy dress carnival of the season and the Daily Star had set up the one-metre square Star bulletin booth in the centre of the ice. A brass gong sounded with each new telegram, which came so quickly that five Star employees struggled to keep up.

     Although Winnipeg’s reign as Cup champions lasted for less than a year, a team from outside Montreal had finally won the trophy and fulfilled Stanley’s desire to create a national honour. Westerners had proved themselves to be just as good at, and just as passionate about, the game. Enthusiasm for the sport was exploding, and Stanley’s gift mattered. Best of all, fans in two different provinces – and anywhere else in the country where people were interested – were able to experience the same game at the same time thanks to the telegraph. These play-by-play transmissions brought Canadians together through their shared love of hockey.

Final Notes:

“In his journey to understand why, exactly, he can’t hold a tune – while having the ears and taste to appreciate great singing and songwriting – Tim Falconer takes us on a deeply absorbing journey into the worlds of brain science, singing coaches, music psychologists, ethnomusicologists, and into his own keening, music-loving heart. Bad Singer is a fun, fascinating, beautifully written, and strangely moving tale of a melodically-challenged man who yearned to sing. And it has much to say about the mystery of how music moves all of us, good and bad singers alike.”

                                                                  — John Colapinto

“[Drive] will be the cheapest – and one of the best – journeys you will ever take. If, as they say, the best reads involve both actual and personal journeys, then Tim Falconer has written a classic on a topic that is a major part of our lives, our addresses, our politics, our literature, our music, our obsessions, our stupidities, our vanities – and even our sex lives. Just turn the page and head out. No key required.

— Roy MacGregor

“…this fascinating survey of the automobile and its effect on society [Drive]… is a fun book about a serious topic…It’s written in an accessible, breezy style, giving the reader more than enough time to check out the scenery as the topics roll by: sex, music, literature, film, brand loyalty, safety, pop culture, racing, city planning, the freedom of the road, road rage and the entrapment of our car culture.”

— George A. MacLean

“Falconer has done right by his readership – provoking thoughtful reflection on a deeply emotional and divisive subject that remains controversial. Anybody who has spent days at a time caring for an elderly relative in a hospital will appreciate this lucidly-written text [That Good Night] which seeks to comfort those facing death with the knowledge that they are not alone.”

— Chris Morgan

“Falconer’s most significant point is that technology has plopped some new problems on a very old doorstep. Except in cases of sudden death, our lives today have negotiated conclusions…He hits all the bases, but focuses on the ethical considerations, alternating chapters between talks with an ethicist and stories of people who have had to deal with death…Falconer shows us, through the stories of five imperfect people’s battles with the ultimate cliché, the value of tackling this particular taboo before it tackles us.”

— Bert Archer

“This [Watchdogs and Gadflies] isn’t a how-to book for activists (though it does include practical examples) so much as a why-to and who-does, and it is powerful not despite but because of the fact that he personalizes the issues and humanizes the activists engaged in them… Ultimately, this is a quietly subversive book, persuasively optimistic and pro-activism, and all the more Canadian for it.”

— Tom Snyders

“The author of this engaging well-written book [Watchdogs and Gadflies] describes a number of sweeping changes in Canadian society that have been inspired, if not actually implemented, by activist citizens who aren’t afraid to fight for what they think is right…while his interview subjects are remarkably intelligent and articulate, he refuses to be seduced or intimidated. Instead, he describes their positions and personalities with understanding, concision and objectivity.”

— David Colterjohn

“Falconer is a gifted interviewer, and his sketches of activists are penetrating… This [Watchdogs and Gadflies] is an informative and entertaining book. It stays with you, provokes questions and inspires respect for the efforts and sacrifices of activists.”

— Tony Dalmyn

In residence: June 2018

Editors’ Notes:

Maria worked on and finished editing her short story collection, My First Friend, while staying at the A-frame.

A-frame Experience:

Many people may be happy to have a famous poet or writer around, but few, if any, would bother with an obscure one. The Purdys, however, invited many then unknown poets such as Ondaatje to stay, to discuss, to exchange, to learn, and to eat with them. During my five-week residency in 2018, I kept thinking whether Al Purdy could have imagined that one day an emerging writer from Iran would stay in the house he and his wife, Eurithe, built with their own hands? Perhaps.

Tiptoeing within his walls, writing in his shed, reading his books and magazines, and watching the spectacular view from his window, I felt such a privilege to be so close to someone so amazing, to experience Canadian hospitality at its best, and to learn about a remarkable part of Canadian culture and history.

A sense of his presence in the house, a spirit watching over me, reassured me to organize my thoughts and to keep writing and revising until I finished a collection I had been dragging along for a few years. Shortly after, the collection was longlisted for the Iowa Short Fiction Prize. That is why I am convinced that this residency goes beyond facilitating artists’ work, and in some way makes it possible for Al Purdy to continue to contribute to Canadian literature.

Final Report Entry:

I don’t have a specific story, only praises. The A-frame experience was a one-of-a-kind experience. It is not everyday in my life, when a dream I didn’t know I had came true: to be invited to live and create at the house of a great poet. It made me consider how I can make this possible for others.

Guest Book Entry:

June 2018

I am in his house.
Whose house?
The poet’s.
I sleep in his bed
Write in his shed
Drink from his cup
Very kind to me, they are, almost too kind,
The poet & his wife
His name is Al,
Hers Eurithe.

In my very eventful life, hardly ever have I experienced such kindness & generosity, never from someone so far.

Writer-in-Residence
Maria Sabaye
June 2018

P.S. Kept looking for any poetry from Iran among the books.

Biography:

An Ottawa-based writer, storyteller, and arts educator, Maria Saba was born and raised in Iran. She holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Chemistry (University of Toronto 2001) and has published three books and over a hundred articles, interviews and stories in Canada, Iran, USA, Australia and Europe. Maria’s short story collection, My First Friend, was longlisted for the Iowa Short Fiction Prize, and the title story, published in Scoundrel Time won the Editor’s Choice Award and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize (2017). Her novella, The Secret of Names, was longlisted for the 2020 Disquiet Literary Prize. Maria has served on various arts and literature juries and is the recipient of grants in English literature from Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the City of Ottawa. She attended Banff Writing Studio (2016) and residencies at Al Purdy A-frame in Ameliasburgh and Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland (2018). Currently, Maria is working on her debut novel, There You Are.

Bibliography:

Vis and Ramin (Naghmeh-yi Zendegi 2010)
Three Persian Love Stories (Gardoon 2011)
Zar in Iran va Kishvar-ha-yi Digar (Naghmeh-yi Zendegi 2011)
“My First Friend” Scoundrel Time 2017
The Secret of Names (forthcoming 2020)

Links:

Mariasaba.ca
mariasabaye.blogspot.ca
writersunion.ca/member/maria-saba

Writing Samples:

To Set the Record Straight

Reader, I am writing this to set the record straight. So far all you have read is the lies that enemies of our town have spread about us.

We live in the Town of Happiness. We have all we want. Everyone is happy here. We do not tolerate anything that makes us sad. That is the only rule, and it is the law. True, we have guards who watch over our people and report on those who break the law, or seem likely to. We have shot and buried hundreds, who stood in the way of our happiness, but always out of respect for the law. We encourage, we nurture, we provide all that is necessary, but there are those who choose to turn their back on us, and we are left with no choice but to do what is right.

In this town there used to be a poet, who took a year to write a very long poem. During that year the town people fed her and clothed her and overlooked her strange moods, which bordered on despair, in the hope of having a nice, happy poem about themselves and their good lives. After the long year, we gathered in the town square and waited for her to read the poem. On a pedestal, she recited verse after verse about a group of townspeople in chains, who laboured up a hill to turn a huge rock over because of a carving on it that read He who turns me over shall know my secret. After turning the rock, they collapsed from overexertion and anger. They’d found only the same inscription on the other side.

We shot the poet and banned poetry. Taking a year to write a poem, and an allegorical one, is a serious offence. Our people don’t need poetry, which causes confusion. We are honest and straight forward. That is the kind of people we are. Don’t listen to the lies you hear about us. Come and see our town for yourself. You will be smiling, that’s a promise.

Final Notes:

“‘My First Friend’ is the story of Manisa, a young girl living in Tehran. Manisa is visited by a stranger when her parents leave her alone in their apartment for the first time. Their conversation seems ordinary, but the subtext reveals otherwise. The story is a devastating look at the emotional toll of an authoritarian government, and the way innocence and violence sit side by side. The power in the story resides not only in the accurate portrayal of a child’s point of view, and Manisa’s poignant connection with the stranger, but the reader’s understanding of what will come next.”

—Karen Bender

Jeffrey Weingarten

In residence: June/July 2018

Editors’ Notes:

Jeffrey Aaron Weingarten holds an academic teaching post at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, and, among other matters, pursues an interest in the relationship between Canadian history and its literary representation by national and local writers. Immersing himself in Al Purdy’s world was a natural adventure for him.

A-frame Experience:

It has been almost two years since I stayed at the A-frame, and I think of that experience often. First and foremost, I think back to my undergraduate self: the unsteady third-year student in Sam Solecki’s Canadian Literature class, where Sam regaled us with stories of his friendship and work with Al Purdy. Sam introduced me to Al’s writing, and I was instantly enamoured of his work and person. I loved his writing and, after reading Sam’s edition of Purdy’s letters, I loved his life.

To think back to that time in my life – 20 years old and often feeling very small – I don’t think I could have imagined spending two weeks in Al’s house. I couldn’t have imagined pulling up and seeing Eurithe Purdy on the front lawn, planting trees with more gusto than anyone I know. She put her gusto to use, with mud all over her hands (“City boys,” she told me when I offered to help, “don’t usually like getting their hands dirty.”). I couldn’t have imagined giving local lectures and then folding that work into my first book. And I sure as hell couldn’t have imagined reading the last draft of my book at Al’s desk, double-checking quotations using his edition of Lawrence’s Collected Poems and staring at the coffee stain he carved into that beautiful table.

When I was 20, nothing seemed possible, and yet everything was ahead of me. I want so badly to travel back to that 20 year old and tell him how much quiet time he would get to spend with Al’s ghost. Touching his books. Playing his records. Eating burgers on his couch. Going for a jog, only to give up halfway because of a heatwave and no shade, resorting to hitchhiking back to the cottage with the help of a Canada Post driver. Writing at Al’s desk. Drinking his wild grape wine with Steven Heighton. Reading on Al’s couch. Sitting on his deck. Swimming in his lake. Looking at the church spire (God’s belly scratcher) across the water. Or: that embarrassing evening when I would sneak into Al’s closet and see if his full-length coat fit me (it didn’t; way too short on the arms). I wonder what my younger self would say to my older self about all of that. I hope my younger self would listen and catch something everyone should know: we can be hopeful about dreaming and experiencing irreplaceable things in life. No one should learn such a wonderful lesson only in retrospect.

Another thing I wish I’d known: learn to love the quiet. My time in Al Purdy’s cottage was probably the last time I will have so much quiet time to myself for the foreseeable future, because my daughter – our first child – was born the same year I stayed at the A-frame. Clio (appropriate name: the muse of poetry) visited that cottage in utero. My pregnant wife and I attempted to swim across the lake, but we both chickened out three quarters of the way. Later that night, we sat together by the enormous living room window and watched the fireflies flicker while Clio kicked up a storm (Clio still kicks up a storm; not inside of my wife’s belly, but rather at my back, against which she vehemently asserts herself in the middle of the night). But before my wife joined, I had a week alone at the A-frame. It was entirely my own time. Time to think and write. Sometimes, loneliness is nice, though the novelty wore off more quickly than I expected. I wonder if, as a new father, I might enjoy the silence more now. I can’t say for sure. I enjoyed it enough then, but it wasn’t long before I was pining for my wife’s charming ability to furnish every room with words.

A quiet memory sticks most with me: my last morning at the cottage, waking up early (5am). It was not quite light, but the world was very visible, shaded with that vague, shy, gray-blue that fills the world right before sunlight crawls from the horizon. I silently put on my swimsuit, stepped along the deck, the grass, and then the brief rocky shore. The water was so still. A perfect mirror of the entire world above it. I waded and tried to disturb nothing. The only ripples along the surface came from me. Subtle, consequent splashes along the shore. It was all so calm. The only animal moving was me (to borrow a line from a John Newlove poem). I ventured waist-deep, the point past the trees, where I could see the sun starting to rise. I tried to stand as still as possible for as long as possible. This was the quietest, stillest moment of my entire life; the only noise was light resting on water. Who can forget such a quiet moment? (When I asked Eurithe Purdy once, “what was it like to be married to Al?” she laughed and said, “Well, it is definitely much quieter now that he’s gone.”)

All I know now is noise. Colleagues stopping me in the hall to say hello. Faculty meetings. Students talking before (and during, and after) class. My daughter playing and learning to say her first words (“baby,” “bottle,” “broccoli,” “berry,” “butter,” “book”; this alliterative theme plays out every day in our home). Her cries. Her laughs. The “ba-ba-ba!” she exclaims when squirrel spotting. Even her expressions are noisy. And then my wife, furnishing the room. My wife reading to her and trying – patiently, lovingly, and sometimes in vain – to rationalize with a determined youngster who can’t help but kick her father in the back.

And then I always think: thank God for the quiet and the noise.

Final Report Entry:

Week 1 of my A-frame residency was centered primarily on preparing my talk at the Wellington Public Library, where I presented a paper on Al Purdy and his generation’s contributions to the writing of Canadian history after 1960. For much of Week 1, I wrote and edited this talk, which was well attended by members of the P.E.C. community. The talk was presented in Week 2 of the residency (July 4).

When not working on the talk, I made a point of exploring P.E.C. with the hope of finding people who met or knew Purdy as part of my research for my upcoming book, Sharing the Past (UTP 2019), which is a detailed history of Canadian poetry’s development as a historiographic genre since 1960. Meeting locals at the Ameliasburgh pioneer village and surrounding shops gave me a great appreciation for Purdy’s character and his reception by locals from in and around Ameliasburgh. It was informative to find out how largely Purdy’s character loomed in the P.E.C. region—many recalled meeting him or seeing him or hearing about him. To some, he seemed a brash, somewhat withdrawn eccentric, where others portrayed him as a good-natured intellectual.

During Week 1, I documented some of my trip via Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to help draw attention to the A-frame and its history.

During Week 2 of my A-frame residency, I presented my talk on Al Purdy’s poetry and life writing at the Wellington Public Library. Approximately 12 people attended the event, which ran about 2 hours. The remainder of my week consisted of writing and editorial work – I have drafted acknowledgements for the A-frame Association in both Sharing the Past and Ad Astra (the latter book is a collection of letters from the 1960s onward exchanged amongst poets, including Al Purdy). During both weeks, I worked about five or six hours a day on editorial work and writing, and so I was able to complete a substantial amount of work on both books during the two-week period.

The A-frame had some visitors during Week 2. The award-winning poet Steven Heighton stopped by the home over the weekend with Eurithe Purdy, and we shared a morning reminiscing about Al and the building of the A-frame. Eurithe also dug up an old bottle of Purdy’s wild grape wine, which Steven and I sampled. It was surreal to sip something Al crafted himself, and my introduction to Steven led us to concoct an essay he plans to write on his personal library, which will be included in a manuscript about authors’ libraries that I’m co-editing with Dr. Jason Camlot (Concordia University). The brunch with Eurithe and Steven was one of the highlights of the trip.

The time spent in the A-frame was time spent with Al’s ghost. There were many feelings I had while sleeping in what was his and Eurithe’s home; I often found myself wondering what I would tell my younger self, the 19-year-old who first read “Wilderness Gothic” in undergrad, about the experience. I expect it would have floored the younger me to know that, in 14 years, I’d be setting up shop and finishing the final edits on my first book at Al’s desk, next to his typewriter and coffee stains.

Guest Book Entry (excerpt):

Dear Al,

15 years ago I read “Wilderness Gothic” in Sam Solecki’s CAN LIT class. It was, I think, the first poem of yours I read, and now I’m writing this to you with a view of “God’s belly scratcher.” We so rarely get to meet the poets that mean the most to us, and being here is probably as close as I’ll ever get to meeting you. It is little, but it is little enough (I stole that line from John Newlove, with whom you first fought here in the kitchen).

I’ve never grown so attached to a place so quickly, but here we are. Here I am. I could never have imagined 15 years ago that I would be here, spending my mornings sipping coffee from your mugs in your study, while I write the last lines of my first book.

But it is the life I feel in this place that sticks with me. It is so full of life here; I can feel it in every room. Even in the lake.

I’m so grateful to have been here, to have met Eurithe and hugged her and had brunch with her (she says you made an excellent spaghetti sauce). It has been an unforgettable experience to spend time with your space and aura and ghost.

—Jeff Weingarten 2018

PS: Is it true, as the old woman in town says, that you used to cut to the front of the line at the post office? With a beer in hand at nearly every instance?

PPS: I figured out how to best the raccoons at long last.

PPPS: Woke up at 5 AM today to swim in a still lake on my way out of town. You can watch a perfect sunrise if you swim 50 metres out from the shore. This morning, the moon and the sun hung in the sky. Thanks, Al.

So long now—

Biography:

Jeffrey Aaron Weingarten holds a B.A (English and History) from the University of Toronto, an M.A. and a Ph.D. (English Language and Literature) from McGill University; currently, he teaches Language and Liberal Arts at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. His first book, Sharing the Past, was published in 2019 by the University of Toronto Press. He is also the author of over three dozen papers, articles, and reviews, and is currently at work on three new book projects: John Newlove’s Selected Letters, Learning to Learn: A Guide for Students, and The Promise of Paradise: Essays on Libraries.

Bibliography:

Sharing the Past: The Reinvention of History in Canadian Poetry since 1960 (University of Toronto Press 2019)

Links:

twitter: @JAWeingarten

https://otherthanessays.wordpress.com/

https://utorontopress.com/ca/sharing-the-past-2

https://utorontopress.com/ca/blog/2019/10/02/my-odd-case-of-writers-block-or-how-i-spent-six-months-writing-one-paragraph/

https://accute.ca/2018/06/11/tell-yourself-a-different-story-an-essay-on-surviving-the-job-market/

Writing Samples (excerpts):

“My Odd Case of Writer’s Block, or, How I Spent Six Months Writing One Paragraph”

By Fall 2016, I had finished nearly all of the writing for my recently released book, Sharing the Past. One thing remained: I had to complete a paragraph that I’d been agonizing over for nearly six months. It was a deceptively simple statement: I needed only to admit to my reader that I didn’t know everything. Let me explain.

The primary point of Sharing the Past is to show that creative writers – freer and typically more willing than academics to write experimental and deeply personal histories – have found the means to write histories that are (as I say in the book) both “intellectual” (based on factual events and sources) and “felt” (made emotionally powerful by the sharing of intimate, often familial, connections to those events). David Zieroth writes about his grandfather’s experience in Canadian internment camps, Louise Halfe writes about the devastation wrought by residential schools on her family, and Andrew Suknaski writes about the struggle his family faced as it joined the massive waves of Eastern European immigrants during the early twentieth century. The stories are big and small: focused on large historical events, but seen through the affective lens of a familial experience. Many readers have connected to these “big and small” histories in ways that they have not connected to the scholarship of conventional historians focused on “big picture” stories (e.g.: tales of the political elite, memorable policy, large-scale events). I make that distinction with greater care and context in my book, but, for now, let that basic contrast suffice.

One thing many of the writers in my book have in common is that their personal approach to history compels them to acknowledge, in one way or another, that their histories are, by virtue of their subjectivity, open to corrections and/or expansions. “My family’s story,” these writers often seem to say, “is just one of many possible perspectives on history.” In other words, no one can really claim to know everything about the past. It is brave to write as passionately as creative writers do about history and then to acknowledge, simultaneously, one’s limited ability to write the past fully and accurately. There are, I say throughout the book, so many ways to tell a story, and each author I discuss acknowledges that plurality of approaches.

So here was my conundrum in Fall 2016. I was writing a scholarly history of history infused with my own feelings and beliefs, and so it became clear that I was trapping myself in a corner: I was praising authors in my study for their candid admissions that their knowledge about history has limits, but I was not sharing with my reader that same humility. The issue became more complicated as I began to write about experiences far removed from my own: I was writing about leading Canadian authors of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s like Margaret Atwood and Lorna Crozier, and about Indigenous authors publishing since the 1980s like Louise Halfe and Joan Crate. The broader the reach of my book (eras, cultures, figures, et cetera), the more I felt it was necessary to say something about my own limits as a scholar. I began to feel hypocritical because of my omission. Every one of my authors happily celebrated that they could not know everything about the past … why was it so hard for me to write a paragraph that said something so obviously true of my own historical writing? Of course I don’t know everything! Of course my book is open to correction! Of course more could be said than I say! So why couldn’t I just say that? …

“When I started my first full-time job”

When I started my first full-time job, I was really struggling to imagine how I’d teach courses and content about which I cared very deeply. My big loves as a teacher are history and literature, and these are sometimes pretty easy to teach in a university English or History department: really, you’re just preaching to the choir of students in the room, many of whom are already interested enough in these disciplines that they’ve chosen them as majors, minors, or specialties. In the college system [as it exists in Ontario, Canada—editor’s note], though, my students are rarely “English” or “History” students (in fact, in five years of teaching, only one student identified as a humanities student). Instead, they are vocational learners pursuing expertise in a craft, trade, or business. How do you teach or motivate a business student to make a sophisticated and passionate argument about Virginia Woolf or the Magna Carta? I think the answer is: you don’t. You help them teach themselves about the importance of such things.

I’ve worked with many faculty at various institutions who privilege essays above all other evaluative tools. Even some colleagues in vocational institutions have been drawn to the essay; perhaps the draw is the consequence of habit (they have traditionally used essays), example (essays were used to evaluate them), or any number of other factors. Regardless, the essay is a lovely and powerful assignment, but it doesn’t always click with vocational learners.

Why? …

“Tell yourself a different story: an essay on surviving the job market”

The first story I told myself about my career was also the only story I told myself as a graduate student. The story went like this: I belong in a tier 1 university, tenure-track, where I’ll be a star academic and the first academic working in my field to achieve a broad reading audience. While this felt like it was just my story, I also knew how familiar it sounded to other graduate students in my program and elsewhere.

It was easy to stick to that one magnificent story, because it seemed to me at the time like there was no alternative to it. For many graduate students, it often feels this way partly because of how frequently they see, modeled right in front of them, only one image of success: their mentors and colleagues. Some of us went to grad school, in part, so we could emulate the lives and careers of professors who got their jobs decades or even just a few years ago, when the stories available to them were much different than the ones available to the new generation of PhDs entering the market. And so I couldn’t help but tell myself just one story: their story.

Now, though, I know that surviving the market means becoming a better storyteller – or, at least a more flexible one. Imagine many different versions of yourself, your career, and the best use of your expertise. Tell yourself a different story.

Tell yourself a different story about what you deserve and where you belong.

Maybe I needed a healthier perspective during grad school. Okay, I definitely needed one. That is to say, maybe both then and now I didn’t and don’t deserve anything specific or belong anywhere in particular. Maybe the story I should have told myself back then is that, once finished with my Ph.D. in English Literature, I’ll possess skills that are essential to achieving success in any market. Not just teaching and academia, but any place of employment.

How many of our students and friends coming out of Ph.D. programs know that a vast majority of employers agree that their three most desired qualities in every job candidate (in any market across North America) are the ability to write well, communicate effectively and professionally, and show the capacity for innovative creative and critical thinking? At the very least, communication skills are almost always considered a universal asset.

Remember this: while many companies will concede that their recent hires offer field-specific expertise, those same hires tend to lack the ability to communicate clearly and effectively, and, for those employers, that ability is far more useful than field-specific knowledge. Hence, humanities-based Ph.D. graduates have become increasingly desirable candidates in most workforces. I always caution my students (especially those who seem hesitant to take my communications courses), that their superiors can certainly help them with workplace-specific knowledge, but statistically it is a near certainty those superiors cannot help them become a better writer.

You have other skills. No one in job markets outside the academy will care all that much that you discovered some obscure passage in an archive, but they will care that you can work under pressure, fearlessly speak in public, co-ordinate large-scale projects, establish and stick to long-term plans, and act as mentor, leader, and the authority in large and small group settings (i.e.: as a teacher or teaching assistant must do).

And so here is where [sic] the story can change for humanities’ students. Do you see this new narrative budding? You’re not just one of many brilliant Ph.D. graduates vying for tenure-track jobs; now you’re quite possibly one of the only effective communicators catching and holding the attention of an employer who values your unusual potential and promise.

The more time that passed after completing my Ph.D. in 2013, the more I realized something important: the story where I belonged in a tier 1 university was a destiny story. It was comforting, at first, to believe I was meant for something. Destiny, I later realized, is a narrative bear trap. And it prevented me from considering, until much later, the possibility of working outside of the university. …

Final Notes:

“Sharing the Past is an unprecedentedly detailed account of the intertwining discourses of Canadian history and creative literature. When social history emerged as its own field of study in the 1960s, it promised new stories that would bring readers away from the elite writing of academics and closer to the everyday experiences of people. Yet, the academy’s continued emphasis on professional distance and objectivity made it difficult for historians to connect with the experiences of those about whom they wrote, and those same emphases made it all but impossible for non-academic experts to be institutionally recognized as historians.

Drawing on interviews and new archival materials to construct a history of Canadian poetry written since 1960, Sharing the Past argues that the project of social history has achieved its fullest expression in lyric poetry, a genre in which personal experiences anchor history. Developing this genre since 1960, Canadian poets have provided an inclusive model for a truly social history that indiscriminately shares the right to speak authoritatively of the pa

—Publisher’s blurb

“I teach many of the poems discussed in Sharing the Past. With impressive readings of Al Purdy and John Newlove, in particular, J.A. Weingarten’s arguments are lucid, careful, and persuasive.”

—Neil Besner

“Weingarten contrasts Canadian poetry since 1960 with the fiction that usually dominates our understanding of this era. While novels often use the parodic strategies of what Linda Hutcheon calls ‘historiographic metafiction,’ many Canadian poets take a more personal and partial approach, finding in ‘the familial past’ a way out of uncertainty. Weingarten begins with Al Purdy and John Newlove, who ‘demonstrate to centennial-era writers that a sophisticated history obliges their admission of epistemological limits.’ After discussions of both canonical (Margaret Atwood and Lorna Crozier) and unrecognized poets (Barry McKinnon and Andrew Suknaski), Weingarten concludes with an account of the ‘subversive potential’ of Joan Crate’s Pale as Real Ladies: Poems for Pauline Johnson”

—Tracy Ware

“Sharing the Past answers a series of essential questions about the most important cohort in Canadian poetry since the Confederation era: Who were they? Why was history so integral to their project? How did they help to invent Canadian history with their poetry? Weingarten’s survey of this transnational generation presents a sophisticated model of excellent research, sharp analysis, and thoroughly contemporary methodology. This book represents a major step forward in bringing twentieth-century Canadian poetry into focus, effectively calibrating ongoing discussions with new considerations of decolonization, skeptical historicism, and new media theories.”

—Gregory Betts

 

Laura Clarke

In residence: July 2018

Editors’ Notes:

Laura Clarke spent much of her time at the A-frame engaged in writing and revising some new poems and short stories and in the early stages of writing her novel Luciferins.

A-frame Experience:

It’s been a few years since the residency for me, and my various records of my experiences have vanished. I remember writing quite a bit in the cabin logbook and taking photos of the pages, but they have been lost to time/the cycle of constant broken phones, along with any photos taken there. I also wrote a daily log of my experiences on my computer, but those files were also lost when my old computer crashed. Here’s what I remember: night swimming in the lake with my poet friend Phoebe Wang when she came for a visit; visiting Al’s grave at the nearby cemetery and being greeted hello and goodbye by swarms of fireflies; being fooled by the bronze bust of a woman in the graveyard for the entire duration of the visit, to the extent that I waved at her and kept wondering what she was up to; sitting outside on a deck chair and writing with my morning coffee during the prime days of summer; two foxes trotting along the empty road at dusk.

Final Report Entry:

I really enjoyed the physical space of the cabin itself – the protection and privacy of the trees in the backyard, the nearby lake to go for a swim when I needed a break, the smell of the writing shed, the many different places to work throughout the cabin and the property. Not to mention the living history of the cabin itself, being able to putter around each room and look at the books and knickknacks and everything else that makes up a life lived by writer [sic]. I enjoyed exploring the history of the Purdys’ life through their objects and the space they created. I didn’t make much use of the writing shed because I prefer to work outside when the weather is nice, but I can see it being the perfect place in the spring or fall.

This is from my original report on my stay from two years, wherein I describe working on both the poems I came to the house to work on and a then-untitled novel. I talk about how moving between two projects, and specifically two genres, allowed me greater productivity than I had ever experienced before. The report was particularly interesting to read because I was in the beginning stages of the novel I’m currently knee-deep in right now (now called Luciferins), and I can see how helpful it probably was to be surrounded by nature while beginning a novel about rewilding! Many of the poems I wrote while at the cottage no longer exist in their current forms, though some do. Most have been expanded into short stories for the collection I am currently close to finishing.

Guest Book Entry:

July 28

Animal interactions/sightings:

• • many robins hopping on the lawn
  • 3 foxes on the road at dusk
  • 2 horses by the side of the road
  • rabbits, also at dusk
  • herons & Canada geese, the goslings growing up before my eyes
  • & raccoon & squirrels! & skunks!
  • something lying flat on the lake that disappeared as I swan closer – hopefully a turtle!

I was here for 3 weeks, a stay short but probably just right given I don’t have a car or the ability to drive. I will miss sitting out on the deck chair writing & reading – as I am right now. I found myself working outside often, swimming twice a day, trying to run down Salem Road once a day too. Thank you to the books, birds and records that kept me company while I was alone here; to my writer pals Chrissy Mirnery [###] and Phoebe Wang, who each made the trek to visit me here; to my dad, who drove me here and back even though I’m a 33 year old adult woman; to Al, for making this a magical, productive place. AND a place that instantly feels like home; to Eurithe for creating and maintaining such a sanctuary; and to Michele & Jean & everyone who works so hard to keep the A-frame going. I was very productive here, working on both my novel and new collection of poems, while also reading about 6 books! I’ll miss drinking a coffee and sitting in the green chair looking out at the lake every morning. I visited the graveyard 3 times, left my offerings for Al, and was only fooled into thinking the bronzed bust of a woman (near Al’s gravestone) was a real human being once. I didn’t go on too many trips, but I enjoyed going to the bookstore in Picton and Sandbanks Provincial Park when Chrissy visited with her car.

            Don’t leave the screen door open for even a second or you’ll be tormented by mosquitos and flies (in the summer, that is). I had one local writer who hadn’t been here in years – Chris – drop by, along with a group of pilgrims from Guelph.

            Farewell A-frame – hope to visit again – perhaps one of my friends will do this residency & I can be the one to visit (this is my second time here – I visited Ben Ladouceur w/ Catarina Wright & Ted Nolon – all poets – last fall).

                        Don’t make me leave!

OK, time to go. Thanks

for everything

Laura Clarke

Biography:

Laura Clarke, who lives in Toronto, is the author of Decline of the Animal Kingdom (ECW, 2015), which was included on the Globe and Mail and the National Post’s Top Books of 2015. She has published poetry, fiction, interviews, book reviews and criticism in a wide range of newspapers, magazines and literary journals, including the National Post, Hazlitt, Toronto Life, PRISM International, The Antigonish Review, Riddle Fence, Grain and The Puritan. In 2013, she was honoured with the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers’ Trust of Canada. She will be the writer-in-residence for the Tartu City of Literature International Residency Program in Estonia in 2020. Currently, she’s working on a novel and short story collection.

Bibliography:

Decline of the Animal Kingdom (ECW 2015)

Links:

lauramclarke.com

Twitter: @lauramaija1

Instagram: @halfawolf

https://ecwpress.com/collections/vendors?q=Clarke%2C%20Laura

Photos:

Laura Clarke (photo credit Britney Townsend)

Writing Sample (excerpt):

This is the intro from the novel I’m currently working on, which takes place in a near future where the City has begun an aggressive urban rewilding program – lush mushrooms overrun parks, owls hunt during the day, and hawks leave strange gifts of dead rabbits on sidewalks. After a memorable tarot reading she receives as a child, the depressed narrator becomes obsessed with the devil, tracking his appearances across historical accounts, art, culture and religious texts. Her interest in religion and mysticism draws her to one of the futurism cults emerging that promise immortality and happiness.

I knew I was born with the devil inside me because nothing I did could ever fill me up. When the devil gets inside you, he doesn’t cause your head to spin around or compel you to vomit up pins and speak in tongues. He just sits there, his emptiness seeping out everywhere, into your bloodstream, into your hair follicles. Sure, you might devour pins and a whole range of household items to try to fill the bottomless pit. You might speak in tongues in order to hear some sort of echo in the void.

Demons were once considered physical entities that dwelled in the body, not spirits that afflicted the soul. Their favourite place to live was the bowels. The record of items vomited up by possessed people is astounding: hair, stones, coals, feathers, pins, small creatures. Martin Luther claimed to be tortured and tempted by Satan most when on the toilet. Tortured, tempted, afflicted, though not possessed. Nuns were more likely to be possessed, while monks tended to be obsessed – in deep tumultuous conversation with demons who did not breach the skin. Women’s bodies were brewing with more fluids, were colder, wetter and moister than men’s, their skin membranes more easily breached by an intruder – more porous, more receptive.

This sounded right to me.

I was 30 and my extremities were almost always cold. Like Martin Luther, I spent a lot of time on the toilet.

I regularly abused laxatives and Adderall and Ativan, along with every socially acceptable street drug available. Socially acceptable meant no meth on purpose and no heroin. I snorted whatever was passed to me under moonlight, sunlight, fluorescent light. Party drugs were cut with worse and worse shit year after year. We carried our overdose kits in our beach bags and backpacks diligently, but each month the doses were stronger, the tranquilizers crushed into the mess of chemicals intended for increasingly larger exotic wildlife. I’d try to tell myself to say no to drugs from strangers, but most weekends I’d find myself in someone’s apartment snorting a thin white line of something while thinking oh well they’re not a stranger anymore. For those brief moments, I would be released from my uncontrollable bad thoughts, which were focused primarily on a) my fear of vomiting; b) how much better my life would be if I hadn’t had the operation when I was 12; c) the inevitable total environmental destruction of our planet that would happen within my lifetime despite the microcosm of sanctuary the City had managed to create; d) all the repulsive sexual encounters I had ever partaken in; and e) stabbing those I loved with a kitchen knife while sleepwalking. I didn’t trust myself even though I had no history of sleepwalking. For this reason I refused to carry a pocket knife for protection, even on Wednesday nights when dead animals littered the sidewalks and streets and parks in huge quantities, when the whole city smelled musky and fungus-y and like sweet rot, when the human energy reached its most feral point of the week.

I grunted through 75 pushups a day. I meditated. Weekly acupuncture. I learned to bench press my father’s exact weight from around the time he was dying, my secret memorial to him. I formed muscles I didn’t know were possible. Weightlifting, according to the philosophy of the boutique gym I joined, was the perfect activity for people who suffered from a Sisyphus complex (they enjoy lifting incredibly heavy things and putting them back in the exact same place for no reason at all).

I ran half-marathons, diligently completed indoor rock-climbing exercises, jumped rope while my best friend from high school who was now a fitness instructor yelled at me to jump higher. All my friends from high school were fitness instructors or motivational speakers or drug dealers. I was a librarian. I often wondered why I myself didn’t choose any of these lucrative paths, all of which were highly sought out positions in the burgeoning new world order, since I did drugs, exercised and stared in the mirror yelling motivational slurs to myself for at least five minutes every morning. For some reason, I had failed to parlay any of these practices into a career.

The extremes of healthy and unhealthy didn’t cancel one another out as one might imagine; the result was more of a doubling or tripling of the self. My body became increasingly wiry and cold and porous to the outside world – that said, I still felt more obsessed than possessed. The lifestyle and exercise blogs I read urged me to turn my routines into ritual, but how did one spearhead such a transformation?

I used to contemplate whether my body or mind was the greater prison. With the assistance of the organization, I realized it was the balancing act that wore me down. Always self-flagellating the physical container to sharpen my mind towards holiness or dulling my brain with pharmaceuticals to live briefly within a hotly radiating temporary reality. My whole life all I really wanted was to be was an animal rolling in the mud.

Final Notes:

“Equal parts love letter, death threat, elegy, and inter-office memo, Laura Clarke’s lush, zoological debut [Decline of the Animal Kingdom] recalls us to the feral darkness at the heart of our daily transactional order, as we stream, google, multi-task, and “live-tweet (our) way to extinction.” At times comically direct, at others torqued by the pressure of spiraling syntax, her language bristles throughout with an ardent intimacy laced with dread. “I don’t eat meat,” confides the speaker of this snarling twenty-first century bestiary, “but I love to wear it / and wrap it around blue cheese for shark fishing at dawn.”

— Suzanne Buffam

 

“Clarke’s mischievous, fabulist debut collection [Decline of the Animal Kingdom] blurs the lines between the literal and allegorical as she employs a lens of anthropomorphism, an edge of misanthropy, and the slow unravelling of personae into disparate states evoking something between grace and madness. The stark, spare language of her poetry, which utilizes a variety of forms, belies its complexity . . . Clarke’s successful balancing of calculated loathing and euphoria makes for a fierce piece of performance art.”

— Publishers Weekly

“Decline of the Animal Kingdom investigates modern constructs of domesticity, freedom, wilderness, and artificiality to paint a portrait of what it means to be human, animal, or both in a society saturated with dog boutiques, trophy hunting, retro taxidermy, and eco-tourism. With brief forays into Algonquin Park and the heart of the 1980s jungle, the book largely draws its energy from the urban landscape, where the animals that interact with the environment have permanent effects on the land and human psyche. A wild deer wanders into the downtown core; the Galapagos and the ethics of conservation invade our Xbox; a mule grows weary of his unrewarding office job and unfulfilling relationships. Exploring the victories and defeats of an urban existence complete with 9-to-5 office angst, the claustrophobia of domestic partnerships in bachelor apartments, and party-and-pick-up culture, Decline of the Animal Kingdom is Laura Clarke’s love letter to the city of Toronto, and to extinct animals and office misfits alike.”

                                                                 —Publisher’s Blurb

Jeff Latosik

In residence: August 2018

Editors’ Note:

Jeff Latosik came from Toronto for his residency in the A-frame and liked the place well enough that he decided to stay in Prince Edward County. He now resides in Picton.

A-frame Experience:

The night is very different from the day at the A-frame. For people used to city life, the quiet and space appeals very much, but then suddenly you’re there realizing you haven’t had much experience with being that separate. It gets dark gradually and then it is very dark. Al’s jacket hangs in his bedroom as well, and a sideways glance is really all you need to feel that his presence is there.

On one of the first nights I spent at the A-frame one of my blue tooth speakers ran out of battery power. It was in my duffel bag. I didn’t realize that the speaker talks when it’s low on batteries (“critical battery, please charge”). So I was sitting in the dark reading and a “human” voice perked up in the other room. I had no idea it was the speaker. I froze.

Is this not the exact type of thing that would happen to a poet staying at a residence for poets? The speaker was not merciful and only spoke its directive once every minute or so, so I spent a lot of time walking around the house, freezing, and then building up the courage to continue trying to figure out what was going on.

Final Report Entry:

The A-frame was great! I actually couldn’t believe it when I got there and Michele showed me around. It was a beautiful day and drive. I hadn’t been to a cottage for many years and hadn’t gone swimming anywhere for several summers. As many people have noted as well, it was something else to see a life devoted to poetry fully realized.

I had gone there with the idea to read a lot, but I found myself writing more than I thought I would. Al’s writing room was a great space to sit in and once you’re sitting in it, it’s not too many more steps to trying to start a new draft of something. The place brings writing out of you, whereas most places tap it down or pat it on the head.

Since I’ve left the A-frame, the experience has stayed with me in many ways. I see Al’s example as being this thing you can turn to as a potential – for a life writing poems to be fully lived on its own terms. Because the world has so many other ideals that it’s hard to measure a life writing poetry against, it’s good to have one to then measure those others against as well [sic].

Guest Book Entry (excerpt):

Aug 24, 2018

Writing this on a beautiful evening. Neighbour has a large fire going that makes loud sounds, but other neighbours compliment the fire.

Talked to Norm today and learned he built many of the houses in Ameliasburgh. Ha, I can spell that now. My regret is that I didn’t go to the car show (not a car guy) but Norm explained they basically had this polo/jousting (I know that’s not how you spell it) thing that sounded amazing.

Lots of kids sang in the karaoke that weekend that moved across the lake very well, it almost seemed like it was in front of us. Sounds move so well across Roblin, and I don’t really care what they are – this is a far cry from Toronto.

I learned a lot about Al from the pilgrims/neighbours/Norm/Paul Vermersch/etc. but mostly from looking through his books. They were Al’s internet.

If you’re reading this w/time here, take a look through the books. We’re not any kind of writer particularly – we just find our own particular writing room and work from there. Thanks Al …                                                                           —Jeff

Biography:

Jeff Latosik has published three collections of poetry and one chapbook. Tiny, Frantic, Stronger won the 2011 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and was a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Recent work has been published in The West End Phoenix, Poetry Magazine, and Arc. A native of Mississauga, Latosik grew up in Toronto and now lives in Picton, Ontario – a short distance from the A-frame. In Picton, he spent time working in a local market (Agrarian Market) and frequenting the lumber yard and various hardware stores. He now works as an online Writing Instructor at Humber College and Instructional Designer for SafeStart, a training company in Belleville. Having moved into a century home, he had to learn to become handy and renovated the house to include a guest suite. This required a year of continuous work as well as asking many friendly neighbours for advice. He hopes one day to complete his degree in Counselling.

Bibliography:

Tiny, Frantic, Stronger (Insomniac 2010)

Safely Home Pacific Western (icehouse 2015)

Helium Ear (Anstruther 2016)

Dreampad (M & S 2018)

Links:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/jeff-latosik

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/authors/2157043/jeff-latosik

http://open-book.ca/Columnists/An-Interview-with-Jeff-Latosik

https://muckrack.com/jeff-latosik/articles

https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2014/10/old-ideas-of-air-travel/

Photos:

1. Jeff Latosik at rear-deck doors
2. Jeff Latosik at laptop

Writing Sample:

There’s A Cool That August Keeps

You have to stand

in seaweed

in a lake

in a town that happens quickly

 

and sink down

beneath the gossip of the currents

where the clam

just hasn’t spoken

and all that’s left is root or sand or stone.

 

When your legs are halved by seaweed

they’re no longer your own.

 

This last half-frozen bit of December

Summer won’t say it is

how all seems so bright

and visible.

 

The town has stories.

They reach down

and pass sugars to each other

otherwise it’s just some wood

collapsed and filled with the holes

of well-meaning intentions.

 

I was told something that I should believe.

 

And it was clear and that meant true

often someone died for it.

 

But it had a seaweed life

and carried what it wasn’t

all that we said we’d never do

but then we did.

 

I wonder what would happen if you knew

how cool

and how it really was a mercy

while the flowers were out.

Final Notes:

“The tender, humanistic poetry of Jeff Latosik can feel deeply refreshing at this particular moment. It houses an optimism that isn’t interested in naiveté, but rather wiping away the casual cynicism and pessimism that often sets the tone for so much of the discourse that surrounds us. This wiping comes as forgiveness: forgiveness of former selves and of each other; forgiveness not as denial of past or present problems, but forgiveness as acknowledgement that most of us are just trying our best day-to-day, and forgiveness that no one knows what that means. Reading Dreampad, his latest collection, I found myself rooting for team Humanity and for the first time in a while being able to imagine how it was possible for us to not fuck this all up.”

—James Lindsay

“This is a mature book [Dreampad] (and a long one) marked by its unity both of voice and of persona. The writing is consistently strong, and I mean that pedantically. Latosik constructs poems that would have made every stereotypically gruff newspaper editor happy with their economy. The voice seems colloquial, but he punctuates familiarity with diction that reflects the technical language of his subjects. Similarly, while the voice is generally discursive, bursts of rhyme or elevated sound disrupt the illusion of conversation, like the unexpected end-rhyme in “The Home Checklist”:

‘No powerline static
Minimal landscaping of the greenery required.
For that matter, no attic.’

Stylistically, it’s an interesting parallel to the book’s themes. The language is transparent until it’s not; a peripatetic, associative series of thoughts is allowed to wander until it finds its mark, as in these lines from “The Natural”: ‘When we think of the place we’re meant to be / doesn’t it all seem to unfold so effortlessly?’

—Chris Jennings

“‘With a poem, you’re trying to say the unsayable.’ As poetic manifestoes go, this one is fairly typical of Toronto’s Jeff Latosik: the language is straightforward, but the statement contains layers of meaning and ambiguity, and is conveyed in a concatenation of apparently opposed ideas. It’s an approach Latosik has been honing since his 2010 debut, Tiny, Frantic, Stronger (which won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry), and extends through his third collection, Dreampad (McClelland & Stewart). His work has an ability to surprise, both in its depth of implication and surface oddness (those moments, in the poet’s own words, when a squid appears in a poem about baseball). Or, as in “Cats” from Dreampad, in the juxtaposition of ‘porcine diarrhea and condo developers, / two things that wouldn’t have otherwise / explained each other, but in this case they did.’ Unlike other media, Latosik contends, poetry is perfectly situated ‘to bring things that are strange into the realm of understanding.’ It’s a heady project he’s set himself: a poetics predicated upon notions of ambiguity and complexity, yet with the ultimate goal of drawing his material in stark relief, while simultaneously communicating something essential about the human condition.”

—Steven W. Beattie

In residence: September 2018

Editors’ Notes:

While residing in the A-frame, Mark worked on several short stories and a young adult novel; as well, he encountered at least one of the ghosts who seem to dwell about the space.

A-frame Experience:

While working in Al’s office, the once-soggy outbuilding which is just desk, bookshelves and muted lighting, I heard a sound. A knocking on the walls. I had been typing furiously, descended into a moment of unconscious go after a long stretch of dumb staring (I decamped to the office each afternoon for a motivating change of scenery), and the sound almost broke my concentration. But I ignored it.

More knocking.

Had something tipped on the bookshelves? Was a tree branch rattling against the outside wall, despite the lack of wind?

At a third round of knocking – one that caught me waiting for it – I stood and peeked into the office entranceway, assuming by then that squirrels or birds must have got inside. But the only thing there was the enormous framed print of Al Purdy’s face leaning against the wall. (Moved there in anticipation of making the entranceway a sort of mini-museum.)

So it was just Al.

When I returned to the desk and the knocking resumed, I understood. I didn’t deserve to be here, was an imposter, and Al was calling me out on it. I apologized. Aloud, to no one. (No one I could see.) I explained my situation. No published books but years of toiling at it. And now so close. And this opportunity would get (and has got) me over the hump.

It was a strange and sincere confession to a ghost I’d never met in person, only through the conversations I’d read in books and his poems. The poems were saucy but welcoming. The conversations had one thread: carry on, believe, but don’t bullshit. I guess that’s exactly what I was doing, and once I’d explained as much to Al Purdy’s ghost the knocking quit.

Final Report Entry:

My three weeks at the A-frame were productive, welcoming, and memorable. While at the A-frame, I was focused on drafting a YA novel, completing three new chapters and polished four others. I also took the time to do final edits on the drafts of several short stories which have been in the works for some time. At least four of these stories were completed and two others received new frameworks for completion.

The A-frame facility is truly a homey, idiosyncratic source of creative inspiration. To wake to the misty lake, to wander evenings under the watchful gaze of Al and Eurithe from their many photographs – it was to feel the pull of the work. It is unique to spend three weeks alone in an abode that really feels like someone else’s home – that still holds in its walls the spirit of the Purdys – and therefore the A-frame will stay with me, just as its timbres have found their way into my writing.

Guest Book Entry:

Sept. 20/18

I’ve been writing a kids novel – and the spirit of the place has been absorbed into the narrative & the built world. When I say spirit, I mean it. One night, I was in the writing shed & and deeply focused on the task at hand; and I heard a persistent knocking on the opposite wall. It may have been the late hour or the weeks of isolation but I had a little chat with Al about my path here & many thanks for the chance. It’s like being in someone’s home, a caretaker – though in this case of an idea is a pretty special one. Steve sums it up best in his entry – I’ll just say that for me being able to do the work is a privilege & the rest is a bonus.

I endorse the secret beach, the Acoustic Grill in Picton, & frequent chats w/ the horses on the corner. Plus the beavers & the herons Company, along with D.N. & Al’s copy of Vineland.

Best wishes to those who come after.

& thanks to Al, Eurithe, Jean & Michelle.

—Mark

Biography:

Mark Jacquemain is a writer of short fiction and novels for both adults and young readers. Born in North Bay, Ontario, and with a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick, his work has been published in numerous magazines and journals in the USA, the UK, and Canada. In 2015, he was featured in Oberon's Coming Attractions, an anthology showcasing top young writers. His work has won the Timothy Findley Award and been nominated for the Prism International Fiction Award, the David Nathan Meyerson Award, and a Pushcart Prize. Since his time at the A-frame he has completed a YA novel slated for publication in the coming months.

Selected Bibliography:

“The Ghost.” (Prism International 2010)
“Porcupine.” (The Fiddlehead 2015)
“Friday the 13th, Port Dover.” (The Fiddlehead 2016)
“Angels.” (The Fiddlehead 2016)
“Immortal Jellyfish.” (Southwest Review 2016)
“The Habit.” (Litro 2017)
“Island.” (Electric Literature 2018)

Links:

markjacquemain.com

electricliterature.com/el-author/mark-jacquemain/

 

Writing Samples:

“Lockdown”

Coming in to freshman year the thing we were told about Mr. Lesnick – Homeroom, Science – is that there’d been an Instagram account a few years back called “Mr. Lesnick is a pedophile.” Supposedly, a Grade Eleven did it, this kid Matt. He was expelled, obviously. We never saw the account, it got taken down like right away. But we all heard about it and knew exactly why someone would do it. Like the fact that Mr. Lesnick always wears shorts, even in winter. Or how he jams his thumb between our shoulder blades on our way out of class and says, “Stand up straight!” or “Heads up!” or “Wimp!” There’s also his licence plate: “L. Nick.” And once during Track and Field Mr. Lesnick picked up Jake Grey and threw him over his shoulder, like he was roughhousing, just one of the boys. Except the whole time Jake Grey, from where he was bobbing in mid-air, was mouthing, “What the whaaaa?” and all the other Grade Nine boys’ jaws hit the floor.

And there’s his name: Lance Lesnick.

But he is a super easy marker. And at the end of term, with all our assignments done, he let us go into the woodshop – this tiny room at the back of his class with a band saw, scroll saw, sander, and drill press and do what he thinks is the funnest project, for no marks: mouse-trap race cars.

It is pretty fun, actually.

The problem is, even though some of us are sort of into it, some of us aren’t. Jacqueline, who’s supposed to be in our group, is just sitting on the desks at the back of the class with Sara Wu and Cheyenne – their own group – talking about a selfie Sara Wu got from this boy “Cute Kyle” she met on March Break in Niagara Falls. Which we’d already talked about all day yesterday. And it isn’t really fair that we’re doing everything and Jacqueline’s doing nothing. And Yasmin – who’s the kind of a person who’s like boom boom boom, wants to get stuff done (she’s a highland dancer), she keeps sending us over to be like, “Uh, Jacqueline?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” Jacqueline says. “I just need to get my shoes from my locker.”

This is her excuse: she can’t wear her flip-flops into the woodshop. But, really, she just wants to keep talking about “Cute Kyle,” and it takes us going back three times before she finally actually goes to her locker. And when she finally does Cheyenne comes over and says, “You know, you should maybe go easy on Jacqueline. She’s kind of going through some stuff?”

“What does that mean?” we say.

“I can’t tell you. It’s not my place,” Cheyenne says.

It’s so a Cheyenne thing to do. Why bother saying anything? But Cheyenne likes having it over us. She’s always dying to know something we don’t so she can brush us off like, “It’s not my place.” It’s why she’s so big on inside jokes – like this time she and Destiny ambushed Paige. Cheyenne doesn’t like Paige for some reason. There’s this thing Paige does where someone says a word and she right off starts singing a song that has that word in it? So Cheyenne and Destiny kept sort of casually saying the word “uptown” until Paige started in with the “Uptown Funk” and then the two of them laughed their faces off, while the rest of us were going, “Okay, what?”

It’s not one hundred percent Cheyenne’s fault. She has OCD. She’s like actually on medication for OCD. And her family’s weird. Her dad’s super creepy. Like L. Nick level creepy. He’s this short guy with a buzz cut and he loves hunting. He has these guns. One time we were in Cheyenne’s basement and he came downstairs and he was literally carrying a bunch of guns. We were like, “Oh my God, this is where we get shot.” There’s a cubby under the stairs where he keeps the guns; the door’s locked, but there’s this other, mini door that you could get into, if you really wanted to.

Plus her mom has this weird monotone voice.

So, you know, she doesn’t have it great or anything.

But even if that explains it, we were still irritated when Cheyenne said what she said about Jacqueline “going through stuff.” So we go back into the woodshop and tell Yasmin. And Yasmin’s like, “Yeeeaaah, okay.” Cause the thing is Yasmin and Jacqueline used to be close, but aren’t anymore. Jacqueline would get in these moods and, at lunch, Yasmin would hurry her off to the bathroom, and they’d come back acting all mysterious, and never talk about it. It seemed like they really understood each other; but lately Jacqueline was pretty much talking to everyone, and making Yasmin feel like chopped liver. So Yasmin says, “Yeeaaah, okay, I guess she’s writing her notes, again.”

And then, all skeptical, she says that Jacqueline’s been writing these suicide notes.

We weren’t shocked, or anything. Jacqueline’s a pretty insecure person. She has body image issues, for sure. She’s been dress-coded for tube tops and cut-offs cut to the back pockets and she always jokes about how fat she is. All of us do, but you can tell Jacqueline really thinks she is fat. But she isn’t.

So when Jacqueline finally gets back with her shoes, Yasmin acts huffy, but the rest of us say nothing. We let her stand there looking at our mouse-trap race car going, “What do you even want me to do?”

Then Mr. Lesnick shuts his laptop and says, “Okay, let’s see what you got.” He comes over and has us test our cars on the floor. Ours goes halfway across the room. “Okay, okay,” he says, in his nasally voice. Yasmin stands there slouching, sort of proud but not wanting to make a thing of it. And Mr. Lesnick sticks his thumb in her back and says, “Get that chin up!”

Period two is gym, with Mrs. Janetti. Mrs. Janetti’s this tiny blonde lady who always has her hair in pixie-dos. She’s the kind of teacher parents think is “good for us,” cause she talks sweet and won’t let us stand around. But she has a dark side. The day after her husband dumped her she turned up to school in stained jeans (she should’ve been dress-coded) and when the Grade Eleven boys started setting up the volleyball nets on their half of the gym, she made a gun with her hand and picked off Mr. Van Schubert and his student teacher, who we called “Mr. Handsome.”

Plus she never gets tired. She has us do laps, burpees, squats, and bends, and does them with us every time, and chirps us after. Once, just to prove she could, she did the whole warmup again, by herself, in double time, and, after, chirped us again, not even short of breath. Usually, though, if we’re looking droopy she makes us do the warmup again. Which is why so many of us get our parents to write us sick notes.

In the change room we always talk about how much we hate Mrs. Janetti. Except on Fridays, when Mrs. Janetti lets us choose between basketball and dodgeball, and we talk instead – sort of lobby each other – about which to do. It gets pretty ugly.

Today, Sara Wu and Cheyenne are trying to get everyone to pick dodgeball cause then they’ll get knocked out and just stand against the wall, cause they’re exhausted. (Plus, you can’t fail dodgeball.) And all this time Jacqueline just sits on the floor by herself, staring at her phone, letting out these sighs. We look over but ignore her. She sticks her phone in the rip in her jeans and lets out this even-more-dramatic sigh, and we ignore her even harder. So she says, “Maybe I’ll write another note.”

Sara Wu, trying play it off like a joke, says, “Same.”

But the rest of us are uncomfortable cause Jacqueline’s notes aren’t just a joke. Kids make that joke all the time, like when they say something stupid or drop their phone. “Oh my God, I’m going to kill myself.” Then there’s the girls who say it for attention; but at least some of these girls say it for attention cause they’re sad. And then, obviously, some mean it. Jacqueline’s probably somewhere between just wanting attention and wanting attention cause she’s sad. But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to know what to do about it.

So after Sara Wu says, “Same,” some of us ask if Jacqueline’s okay and all she says is, “Who told you? Was it Yasmin?” And because we insist no, she assumes it must have been Cheyenne and turns and gave Cheyenne this die-stare

Cheyenne says, “No…I told them it wasn’t my place.”

But already Jacqueline’s up and out into the hall.

We vote for dodgeball. After warmup we all try to get hit so we can stand at the wall and talk about Jacqueline and Cheyenne. (Cheyenne keeps hissing from down the line, “What are you guys saying?”) We are so “lame” that Mrs. Janetti pairs us with the Grade Eleven boys and does boys vs. girls. The boys are like joyful about it. Scrambling around, all sweat-shiny and b.o.-smelling in the pinnies they’d been wearing for floor hockey, snatching up the dodge balls. At one point that kid Ryota has so many he has to hold one in his teeth. And some of them – like Sam Couvrette and Jordan Kloostra – are taking these huge run-ups before they launch them at us. And, yes, we want to get hit but not pelted in the bare legs. Or to have to listen to Sam Couvrette and Jordan Kloostra’s hyena laughter. A couple of us try to fight back – Destiny tells Sam Couvrette to quit being a “dickhead” – but this just riles the boys up more, gets them strategizing “Come on, girls!” Mrs. Janetti shrieks. “You going to let these dummies win?”

“Who’s the dummy?” yells Jake Grey.

“You are,” Sara Wu says, from the wall (cause they used to be wheeling but weren’t now).

And even though she’s out, Jake Grey crosses the line and throws his ball at her. It comes in on the bounce and she has to do a little tap step to avoid it.

By lunch, Jacqueline has already posted an unflattering pic of Cheyenne on Instagram that says, “Thanks a lot, FOUR BY FOUR,” referring to Cheyenne’s kind of chubby thighs, which she’s super sensitive about. We fill Paige in on the way to the caf, and Paige – who’s a big girl, and fun, but also very temperamental – says, “I’m so sick of that bitch.” And even though Cheyenne hadn’t really done anything wrong this time, it did feel like a last straw. So we come up with this plan. At our table, beneath the mural of PM Diefenbaker (that makes him look like an old cat), we space ourselves out just enough that it seems like there’s no room for anyone else to sit, and wait for Cheyenne. (Sara Wu says she went to find Jacqueline and apologize, but Destiny saw her in the upstairs bathroom talking to Sara Zilinski.) There is room. Any of us could squeeze a little closer to let Cheyenne in. But when she gets there we don’t budge. She goes around to the other side of the table and Paige makes a face at us like, “Don’t any of you let her,” and says, “There’s no room. You’ll have to sit over there.” Cheyenne checks her phone for a sec, like delaying, like maybe there’s been a mix-up; and some of us start making faces like, “This is mean, let’s let her sit.” But still no one budges so Cheyenne has to go sit with Sara Zilinski and the purple-haired manga-reading girl, Emma Raskob.

It’s the most drama we’ve had in a while. But, since Cheyenne isn’t sitting with us, there’s no drama at all for the rest of lunch, which is nice. Even though that can get kind of boring.

Third period, speaking of drama, is Drama with Mrs. Lahay-Hopkins.

This is when it happened.

If it had to happen, we were glad at least to be with Mrs. L-H when it did. She’s basically our favourite teacher. She’s rounder than Paige and kind of crazy. She’d make a very embarrassing mom. But she cares about us. Not in a fake way so our parents think she cares, like Mrs. Janetti. And not in Mr. Lesnick’s bully way. Mrs. L-H may not know what our elementary schools were or how many siblings we have or what our parents do for work. But she makes us do scenes that sort of pull out our feelings. Most of the boys want to turn it all into a joke and Mrs. L-H knows how to give them some rope on this. She can laugh her face off with the best of them – she has one of those bouncy, silent laughs that turns into wheezes when it slows down. But she also got Jake Grey doing a scene about his dead labradoodle and got Sam Couvrette so fired up he admitted in front of the class he wished he was back at his old school in Windsor, where his dad lives. She also, almost every class, makes us lie on the floor of the stage and then does this thing where we imagine a blue light coursing through our bodies, healing us, making us beautiful and powerful, which gets us so relaxed we almost fall asleep, but not quite.

The only thing about Mrs. L-H is she’s a tree-hugger. Which is fine, except sometimes she gets sidetracked into these mini-lectures, like, “You realize the mess the world’s in is really your problem, don’t you? We’ll all be gone and you’ll have to deal with all the hurricanes and Florida being underwater” and blah blah. Which can be a huge downer. During mime, she wants us to “bring the beauty of nature to life.” During tableau, she keeps suggesting we create waterfalls or rainforests or, like, the Painted Desert. So, just to kind of get her going, we did a tableau of an iPhone. It was brilliant, really.

When the lockdown announcement starts we’re doing monologues so we’re on different parts of the stage and there’s a lot of random scurrying out from behind curtains, Mrs. L-H meeting each of us with her mom-eyes to keep us calm and thinking it’s probably just another drill.

That’s what it feels like, at first, squeezing in the costume room – which is windowless and smells like dried glue and dust – another drill. Twenty-four of us, huddled in there, the ballroom dresses and pirate cloaks tickling our necks. Twenty-four, plus Mrs. L-H, plus a Grade Twelve who’d been hanging up his paintings in the hall outside the theatre (for Art Night that night), plus his parents. Mrs. L-H whistles at us to shut up, but it’s awkward being cramped in there in the dark, so close together, breathing on each other. It makes us giggly and claustrophobic and eerie-feeling. Everybody’s face blue from their phones. The secretary Mrs. Martell’s voice repeating the lockdown chant over the PA: “Emergency, emergency, initiate lockdown.”

It doesn’t feel real. It’s like our fourth lockdown of the term. It feels no worse than the time Mr. Shackleburg – English – moved us into the middle of the front row where anyone could see if we were making spelling mistakes. It feels no worse than that.

So some of us are trying on hats from the hat bin. And Jake Grey and Ryota, who are sitting at the back near the swords, are staring at their phones and laughing. A joke goes around that if this is a long one we’ll die of carbon dioxide poisoning (if there’s even such a thing), or b.o. Even twenty minutes in – way too long for a drill – we’re all, more than anything, just annoyed. We’re used to being annoyed at school. Or stomach-pain-hungry. Or so bored we’re like dead. Tests that are freaking simple. Lame assignments we’ve already done before. Having to ask permission to go to the bathroom – and, if Jake Grey or Sara Wu or whoever’s already gone to the bathroom, having to wait. Even if we have an actual emergency, with our tampon.

Then, on top of all of that, now we’re in a closet in the stuffy dark with Jordan Kloostra’s farts. That Ryota kid’s weird soy sauce breath (not supposed to say it). Legs all rubbery from standing. Mouth dry, back itchy. Running out of stuff to look at on our phones. A text from Yasmin, who’s not in Drama and is on the second floor in Math: Why is it taking so long? From Emma Raskob: Hear anything? And kids whispering and wondering the same stuff. What’s happening out there?

So it’s kind of a relief when Yasmin texts she heard someone attempted suicide in one of the portables.

Who?

?

Some kid tried to kill himself. Portable 7.

Who was it?

Heard it might be Chris Sneyd.

I hate that guy.

A relief, even though we feel bad about it.

But the lockdown chant keeps going.

And a few minutes later Sara Wu sees a Tweet that says there’s a gun on the property. Or at least a knife. Then we all see this, except Jake Grey and Ryota.

Mrs. L-H shushes them.

We text Yasmin: Hear anything about a weapon?

Sara Z says air rifle.

Some of us know an air rifle’s different from a real rifle and tell the ones who don’t and calm them down. It’s just an air rifle. It’s just a suicide.

Then – all of us calm again, annoyed again – someone sends a screen shot of cops in SWAT gear walking by what looks like the smoking area near the portables.

Sara Wu shows the picture to Destiny.

Cheyenne shows it to Jacqueline.

Somehow Cheyenne and Jacqueline have ended up squished together. They seem sort of in a truce. Maybe cause it’s the only way to be right now. Maybe cause Mrs. L-H’s “shut ups” have gotten actually angry and the “Emergency, emergency” is starting to claw into our brains. Maybe all the suicide talk.

“What’s SWAT doing here?”

“‘Cause of the gun.”

“I thought it was a suicide.”

“Suicide attempt.”

“They’d come for that, too.”

“Would they?”

“I just got a text that says it happened in the football field.”

“Then why were the cops by the portables?”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe they came around that way.”

The Grade Twelve, says, “Quiet.”

His parents – a badgery-looking man with a beard and a pretty woman with a shaved head – seem confused. Like thinking this can’t be happening and if it is this can’t be the best way to deal with it.

Paige leans close – her chin all fuzzy the way the light from her phone’s shining – and shows us texts that say:

A woman cop yelled ANOTHER ONE IS RUNNING BACK IN THE BUILDING.

Not a lie.

My friend heard it.

“Shit,” says Sara Wu.

“What does it mean?” says Paige.

And then all of us are thinking maybe it isn’t just a suicide attempt.

Maybe it’s more than that.

And wondering how sturdy the costume room door is. And worrying – but also super thankful – that Mrs. L-H’s big body is leaning against it.

And thinking about our moms, our little brothers.

Thinking about crashing out of there, running out the side doors.

“What’s it mean?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

“Jesus, shut up!” the Grade Twelve says.

Mrs. L-H muscles into the middle of us knocking Jordan Kloostra into the Grease rack. “All right, everyone, we’re going to try to keep quiet,” she says, in that voice that makes us drop our guards during improv. And we do quiet down.

For a minute there’s just the chant and the hard-to-breathe air and our phones.

Then Cheyenne whispers, “Uh, guys?”

“It says shooters,” we whisper.

“There’s no shooters,” says Mrs. L-H. “We don’t know that.”

But the texts and Tweets say: Five shooters.

“That can’t be right,” Mrs. L-H says, staring at her own phone.

“Shit, guys, we’re on the news.”

“What are they saying?”

“Nothing. ‘Diefenbaker in lockdown.’”

“God, I can’t get through to my mom.”

“No, phone calls right now, Cheyenne.”

“Oh my God, Ray Jon is tweeting about us. The rapper.”

Stay strong, Diefenbaker, his Tweet says, help is on the way.

Instead of making it sort of cool, though, this just makes it way more real.

“Oh my God,” Jacqueline says, but she doesn’t say why.

But soon we all read it: Shots in the guidance office.

Then, from Sara Zilinski upstairs: Someone says a math teacher was shot.

“Oh my God,” Jacqueline says again.

That’s when the chant stops. The silence is horrible. This horrible not-silence.

“Is it over?” says Jake Grey.

“Shut up!” says the Grade Twelve.

“It’s not over,” says Mrs. L-H. “It’s on a loop. It must have stopped on its own.”

“Unless someone stopped it,” says Sara Wu.

“Like who?” says Paige.

“I thought it was a suicide,” says Cheyenne.

Without the chant, we can hear things. Noises through the vents, bodies shoved against the costume racks, voices leaking from phones. We listen for someone coming.

“Jesus,” says Jacqueline.

Paige says, “Do you hear that? Do you hear that?”

There are other sounds muffled by the door. Faint poppings, scattery footsteps.

“Let me out of here,” says Sara Wu, maybe not sure she wants it.

Destiny cries, “Let us out!”

“Just quiet!” barks Mrs. L-H, all her cool gone. “Quiet now!”

Other sounds: wild thrown voices, slapping steps approaching fast, a crazy rattle like someone’s working the theatre door.

“Now, now!” cries Destiny, meaning we don’t know what. And Paige staggers to the back of the room and Jake Grey whines, “When’s it going to be over?”

The chant starts up, ten times louder.

Jake Grey asks again, raising his voice over it.

From the back, where she’d fallen into and sunk right down in the hat bin, Paige hisses at him, “FUCKING SHUT UP!”

She looks insane. She’s wriggling to climb out of the hat bin, face flushed like a bawling baby’s. She gets to her feet finally and shushes us all like a freak. “Shush, shhhhh, shush-shush-shush, shhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

We all shift to one side of the room, away from her.

“What?” she hisses. “What? What what?”

And then, so quiet it’s almost a mime: “ARE YOU FILMING ME?”

Things might have got weird then. Weirder. We might have broken out into who knows what. We might have shoved each other against the door like shields.

But the chant stops again. We listen, like holding our breaths. It’s one of those times when you’re fully, truly, you know, there. Like wide awake. The principal, Mr. Hardwick, speaks into the P.A. saying it’s over this time for real. Still no one moves.

Then we’re sort of laughing and shoving hard against each other to get out.

“Be safe,” Mrs. L-H says as we pass into the cool air of the theatre, “be safe.”

We burst into the hall, all of us as one. Cheyenne, too. The school pouring out around us, gathering in groups, sharing theories.

Later, we get another version: some kid – maybe that Chris Sneyd – shoplifted from the convenience store across the street, got caught, and ran back into the school. That’s it.

But when we come out from the dark we don’t know any of that. We’re getting it wrong, and sort of guess it, and stop talking. We go looking for friends, call our parents. We’d been stuck in the costume room so long we’d missed Fourth Period altogether and the home bell’s gone and some of us run to get our buses. But some of us just walk, to nowhere really, maybe wondering what it would have been like.

This is how it is. Near Guidance we see Owen Mawbey and ask how he’s doing. We don’t know Owen Mawbey that well, we’ve never really given much thought to him being happy or sad or anything. But we stop when we see him standing there by the water fountain ‘cause he looks sort of dazed, and say, “Hey, Owen, you okay?”

He looks up like he doesn’t recognize us and then shakes his head. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I’m okay, I’m good. But that was crazy. I heard one of them had a glock.”

Final Notes:

“Jacquemain’s language is poignant and economical to the point of being heartbreaking. When Joe [in “To the Island, Once More”] describes his mother’s “lazy breaststroke,” or how she chats about lemonade but not his father, or the graceful way she laughs while leaning away, we feel his love and admiration for her, but also his frustration. Though they are not given a word of direct address, what we imagine to be the callouses and the tender spots of Joe the adult inform how we read Joe the child. We can imagine him remembering this place, and these summers, with an exhilarating and immediate sting, as if, as for White, there had been no years.”

—Halimah Marcus

Mark Jacquemain’s foreboding tight stories remind me of Denis Johnson or David Foster Wallace, deft voices and serious pleasure, whether covering fathers and wives, motorcycles and taverns, baseball and beach towns, or a mouse in an oven mitt that causes a kitchen fire. The writing and tone is matter-of-fact and fascinating.

—Mark Anthony Jarman

Emily McGiffin

In residence: September/October 2019

Editors’ Notes:

Among the notable events during her stay at the A-frame, Emily McGiffin journeyed to nearby Tyendinaga, enhancing her perspective and enlightening the meaning of her stay in this region of Ontario.

A-frame Experience:

I spent most of my time at Al Purdy’s A-frame working on my third poetry manuscript, Into the Continent, which is now very nearly complete. Between focused stints in Al’s writing shed, I spent quite a bit of time biking around the county. Near the end of the third week of my stay, I biked the 40 kilometres out to Tyendinaga to meet with Amy Brant, Research Manager at the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte office, to discuss the history of the area. Amy told me that as allies to the British Crown during the American Revolution, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte were offered unsettled lands in Upper Canada in recompense for the loss of their homelands in the Mohawk Valley, which was ceded to the Americans at the end of the war. On May 22, 1784, some 125 Mohawk people arrived at the Bay of Quinte to begin their new lives on the chosen lands. Yet almost immediately, the Crown began granting parcels of this land to colonists, including those who squatted illegally throughout the tract. The MBQ website describes this history:

“Although the Crown had promised the lands to the Six Nations the year before, our ancestors found some of the lands had been occupied by Loyalist families. After nine years of reminding the Crown of promises made at the close of the war, the Six Nations were granted a tract of land, although smaller than originally promised. The land came to be known as the Mohawk Tract, about the size of a township, approximately 92,700 acres on the Bay of Quinte.  A deed to this land – known as the Simcoe Deed or Treaty 3 1/2 – was executed on April 1, 1793, by Lieutenant Governor John Graves Simcoe.

“Not long after the Mohawks made settlement, many United Empire Loyalists continued to come into the Bay of Quinte area.  Within a span of 23 years (1820-1843) two-thirds of the treaty land base under the Simcoe Deed was lost as the government made provisions to accommodate settler families. Today, the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte have approximately 18,000 acres remaining of the original treaty land base, and the current membership numbers over 8000.”

Over the 200 years since the Simcoe Treaty was signed, the steady erosion of land has left the Bay of Quinte with only a fraction of their original tract. I’d known none of these details before my time at the A-frame.

Final Report Entry:

The importance of my visit to MBQ was brought home to me in early 2020, when protestors from Tyendinaga made international headlines for rail blockades in support of my Wet’suwet’en neighbours. Having some knowledge of the Crown and Canada’s sordid history with respect to the people of Tyendinaga helped me understand the depth of grievance that found expression in these blockades, and I was profoundly moved by the trans-continental solidarity of nations who have suffered different but similarly devastating theft of their lands and colonial betrayals.

Into the Continent investigates the origins of Canada and the iterations of violence that were the foundations of our nation, our institutions, our colonial culture. My stay in the A-frame, in that golden autumnal landscape of our colonial origins, across the water from the stolen Mohawk tract, was a key part of the process of wrestling with these ideas as I pieced together my manuscript.

Guest Book Entry:

Oct 27

Dear Al,

Thanks for sharing your favourite chair. And the writing shed – it was awesome. See you on the other side.

Emily McGiffin

Biography:

Dr. Emily McGiffin, who makes her home on Gitxsan territory in northwestern British Columbia, is a writer and researcher who, over the past several years, has lectured in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, and held fellowships at York University and the University of Edinburgh. Her poetry collections include Between Dusk and Night, which was a finalist for both the Canadian Authors’ Association Poetry Prize and the Raymond Souster Award, and Subduction Zone, winner of the 2015 Association for the Study of Literature and Environment Book Award, creative category. She is also the author of a monograph, Of Land, Bones, and Money: Toward a South African Ecopoetics, an ecocritical discussion of Black South African poetry, which received Honourable Mention for the 2020 Alanna Bondar Memorial Book Prize. Currently at work on another poetry collection and a second monograph project that examines arts, extraction, and environmental injustice in Guinea, past accomplishments include being awarded the 2008 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers from the Writers’ Trust of Canada, and being a finalist for the CBC Literary Awards in 2012.

Bibliography:

Between Dusk and Night (Brick Books 2012)

Subduction Zone (Pedlar Press 2014)

Of Land, Bones, and Money (U. of Virginia Press 2019)

Links:

http://emcgiffin.ca/

{Editor’s note:] For further information on the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte (Tyendinaga), consult the following:

https://mbq-tmt.org/

https://deserontoarchives.ca/category/tyendinaga-mohawk-territory/

http://www.tyendinagatownship.com/history.php#:~:text=It%20was%20created%20in%201820,Indian%20name%20was%20%E2%80%9CThayendinagea%E2%80%9D.

Photos:

1. Emily McGiffin [ed. note: somewhere with a mountain, likely not Ameliasburgh!)
2. Field of oats

Writing Samples:

Selections from Into the Continent

long hours on the tenuous and simple tracks appearing and receding in the heather | our feet in heathered depths expanses undertaken fleetly | all greenery bestowed the hilltops overburdened blooms and handholds in the flowered nooks, what truer kindnesses what openings and softnesses what tender whispers trail

*

then down the glade and trembling the tall grey-fluted sky a goshawk wheels and here that inkling of the preyed-upon and how, drifting up, flanked morning upon wing lifting then spear, snatch passerine in razored paw and in the strath blackhouses burn two hundred | circling, light falters, winks, strikes raptor’s wings and curled smoke

unwanted here, the manufactured poor

*

what thrust open and shadowing the golden of a fleetest tide? arrival

is a perilous grey and slapdash shallows break

upon the gunwales, keel burnishes the reef and dips | a tender

lapstrake ferrying the banished through this stricken league of tide

awash and buckling | each purple-turbaned snail drags a hind foot

rockward dash of spume engulfs all pools of sinewed blistered

weed and cresting now the froth licks under air freighted

with the heavy damp that sweet and cloying scent of fish and twisted wrack

the gulls clamouring the whistle and the grunt

of oarlocks feather dip and draw | opening and fanning sea-soft flowers

in their pools take my fingers kiss them lurching

hermits in their whelkish homes sidle curious

then smashing how the waves blast in! toss sand toss weed

toss splintered elementary flash | kelp too, serpentine

and lashed splotched corraline and nodding

how the salt tide heaves and thrusts | hauling

from the shallows wetly glisten we emerge on foreign shore

Final Notes:

“The cover of Emily McGiffin’s first collection is a horizon photo set vertically on the page: the world set on end. It’s an appropriate image for the personal journey the collection documents. The book deals with relationships between individuals and between humanity and Nature, insisting that connections are two-way, that we are interdependent within our shared ecosphere. Such a thesis will not arrive as news to anyone; however, as with all stories, its value is in the telling. … Along the journey, we are treated to some excellent writing. As Air is McGiffin at her laconic, plain-spoken best. Insects in Lamplight After Rain provides variety in the form of a compelling short story, in which the writer is humbled by the grace and generosity of the poor in Guinea, Africa. Negative Space inverts the way we might see an evening horizon (appropriate, considering the cover). And Homesteading returns us all to our collective memory of freshly baked bread, honey and delicious butter – the aromas of home. These poems shine.”

—Rod Pederson

“These deeply resonant poems are perceptive, visceral, and steeped in lyrical wisdom. The linguistic orchestrations of this work inhabits a fully-engaged intelligence and sensibility. There is heart-seeing here, expressed with an authentic strength and a luminous eloquence. This is poetry linked firmly to the invisible labouring of a raw faith, which has grown out of body and mind. The vision here is one aesthetically grounded in the world, a world that in turn is replenished by these poems, by this poet`s beautifully cadenced work.”

—Bronwen Wallace Award, Jury Citation

(Don Domanski, Jeanette Lynes, Anne Simpson)

“McGiffin sets out to fill a serious gap in South African literary criticism, particularly that of ecocriticism, which has largely ignored indigenous forms and productions. Local ecocriticism still generally is attracted to writing that is recognizably ‘nature’-oriented or ‘environmentalist’ along the lines of (mostly) North American ecocritical models – that is, mostly ‘white’ writing. McGiffin’s exploration of Xhosa praise poetry challenges the appropriateness of these approaches. She also answers a call among postcolonial ecocritics for a more politicised ecocriticism, one concerned less with preservation of natural resources than with social justice, as well as a sturdier valorization of indigenous modes of being and thought.”

—Daniel Wylie