My Five-Year Anniversary

I've joined the Board of the dANDelion Magazine Society as a "Director at Large." I've been involved in some capacity or other with dANDelion since the English Department at the University of Calgary took over the operation of the magazine in 2000. At that time, I was in a creative writing course run by Fred Wah, and along with the other members of the class including Trevor Speller, Lindsay Tipping, Natalie Simpson, Tillie Sanchez and Darren Mathies, we made up the "Editorial Collective" for the first U of C-produced issue. Truth be told, Fred did most of the selecting. I solicited artwork from Tomas Jonsson and it ended up on the cover, though-- Tom is now curating at The New Gallery.

Trevor, Lindsay, Natalie, Tillie, Darren and I were the "PHU Collective" at that time, and published two issues of Phu Online. Our activities consisted mainly of staging science-themed poetry readings, wearing jumpsuits and drinking beer at Ming or the Grad Lounge.

Anyway, my involvement with dANDelion resumed in 2002, the summer I returned to Calgary to begin my Graduate Degree. I helped then-Assistant Editor derek beaulieu with a reading featuring Chris Dewdney, Wayde Compton, Ryan Knighton and Prize Budget for Boys (a bit of a sausage party, but a good time). In the fall I became Ass Ed. The following year I was Editor. In those two years, we had some amazing readings and put out issues I am really proud of, especially the "Disaster!" issue, which was a collaboration with TRUCK and won an AMPA Award for cover design. I also started the proud now-tradition of publishing dANDelion chapbooks featuring members of the Editorial Collective, which current Editor Natalie Walschots is, I am glad to see, continuing.

I love editing, and I miss doing that job, but I am looking forward to doing some of the more administrative jobs for the magazine as a Board member. We'll be applying for a Canada Council "Flying Squad" Grant, and you know, after three years of writing abstracts, proposals, and grant applications for myself, I think I am getting pretty good at writing that kind of document. It's all bullshit-and-fluff-- and requires a lot of creativity. Kind of like writing blurbs, I think. There is a funny bit in the new Matrix magazine, an excerpt from Brian Joseph Davis' Portable Altamount, called "Jessica Simpson's Grant Application" that makes use of phrases like "notions of fate and mortality" and "a new language of material skills." Ha ha ha :)

Well, dANDelion is supposed to have a new website up soon. That'll be nice. Since this whole post was kind of about me practicing putting links in my text, it would've been a nice end to the post to have a link.