A note for the times: Gratefully, my life goes on in this strange Time of Corona, as one friend puts it. I want to wish you and your loved ones much wellness, energy, solace hope and safety for this difficult period.
Art is process… and sometimes web sites too! So I’m catching up with you here with photos and the highlights of enjoyable process, exhibits and performances in 2019 – which I had intended to be a quieter period – and winter 2020.
Early Winter 2019 I hunkered down on a long-term multi-disciplinary project (poetry performance-with-installation that I’d been needing time for. Part I of Steady. Against the Absurd. Kinship at the Core was born and in April 2019 at Casa del Popolo, the heart of Montreal Spoken Word, I performed a 20 minute excerpt accompanied by the wonderful jazz musician Pierre Tanguay.
September 2019 the same project allowed me to be artist-in-residence at Maine and Station in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, but with more of a focus on research for the installation.
The Fundy Geological Museum, the Carboniferous cliffs near Parrsboro, as well as Joggins Cliffs and Black Rock beach were all perfect – at low tide of course!! – for my intended study of fossils and documenting them for material for the installation that would create a timeless “place” for the poetry scenario’s performance in exhibit settings. On horseback with Bill Gilbert or on foot, the upending of the earth, fossilized raindrops and ripples, cyanobacteria fossils (the first bacteria on the earth!), and a dragonfly fossil are all powerfully inspiring material! much of which I have brought home to my Montreal studio.
The colours of the Bay of Fundy itself and some of its seaweed found their way into the new painting, “Gifts from the Bay” exhibited in November. Given Hurricane Dorian and 2 tropical storms, the gathering of installation materials in the woods was prohibited.
However, in spite of the hurricane and being evacuated (from cliffside cabin to apartment in town), the month at Main & Station was wonderfully rich! As well as being my “research sites”, the beaches of the Bay of Fundy offered themselves as perfect sites for two readings, the first on First Beach then on Partridge Island beach where the intention of finding kinship with the earth and each other was confirmed and nourished. I remain deeply grateful to the residents of Parrsboro who walked the shores with me for the performance! That time in town also gave unexpected possibility for interviews with two dedicated women whose work gives them insight into both violence, healing and kinship between men and women. I so appreciate their willingness to share their thoughts so relevant to my work on “Steady.”
In Montreal, before borders closed, 2020 began with a lovely event, Poetic Notions, joining painters and poets for a collaborative exhibit. Painter friend Kathryn Kroo and I joined in. Again, the Bay of Fundy motivated me, this time for a poem, Tracing Time which inspired Kathryn’s powerful piece, “Myriads of Stones.” The beautiful exhibit took place with colleagues at the Centre d’art E.K. Voland in Montreal.
Earlier in Quebec City, the exhibit Patchwork brought together 50 of us with small works to celebrate Galerie Articho’s 5th anniversary. My first insect painting was shown there and I am still thoroughly enjoying making paintings of insects and their habitats for the exhibit Beasties and Marvels/Bestioles et Merveilles at the Olde Blacksmith Art Gallery in Stanstead, Quebec. Initially planned for July 2020, due to Covid 19, it will happen at a later date. See my Facebook page for updates.
Another significant moment in June 2019 was the trilingual event Three Lands, Four Voices, One Planet. It was a total pleasure producing the event with Veena Gokhale, journalist and writer at Montreal’s welcoming Librairie Bertrand. We invited Laure Morali poet and cinematographer, and Brian Campbell, musician, to join us. And Rita Mestokosho, Innu poet and elder graced us with her presence and an Innu song for the earth. Following our readings the public shared enriching insights and life experience related to our relationship with the earth.
Other activities of note, I totally loved learning to play the “loop” during a wonderful 2019 Soundtrack Workshop given by Moe Clark and Ian Ferrier! And shorter readings at Lapalabrava and LOGOS multi-lingual reading series where I am always happy to be invited to read. Series that, like others in Montreal, Quebec City and Santa Fe, gather and sustain the literary community.
Thanks to Wi-Fi, Skype and Zoom, the pandemic has not interfered with some of my poetry currently, now in spring 2020, being translated into French! I’m thrilled with this, a first!
Happily as well, magazine publications are going ahead, albeit with launchings on-line: The admirable Montreal Serai, arts magazine has published my essay “The Root of It” in their issue 33, Climate Change and the Commons.
Again in Montreal, both Vallum magazine and Kola, A Black Literary magazine published other of my poems in English, and the Journal POSSIBLES welcomed both the original and the French version of my poem Occupation Sacred for their Fall issue.
On Zoom and *YouTube in 2020
December. Mitra. Revue d’art et de littérature. Excerpts from Steady. Against the Absurd. Kinship at the Core with Jean-Pierre Pelletier for the translation.
November. It was a joy to read my poem Love Song for What We Are Losing for PEN International Women Writers Committee’s Day of the Dead Poetry Program: We Grieve and We Celebrate.
In the spring, I offered a video for the multi-lingual on-line reading for the 2020 World Festival of Poetry for Peace.