Reflection is Fun!

Navel-gazing... My favourite Tarot site no longer offers readings, so I just found a new one: Lotus Tarot. I've been getting back into Tarot lately-- took some cards with me to Sage Hill and did a reading for myself and a couple of other people. These images are from Aeclectic Tarot.

Call Me "Teach"

I'll be running an 8-week poetry workshop at the Alexandra Writer's Centre this fall:

3.00 Poet! Get Thee to a Publisher

Instructor: Jill Hartman
Fee: $110 members $140 non-members
Day: Thursdays
Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM
Date: Commencing Thursday, September 28, 2006

Intermediate and advanced writers with a body of unpublished work; what are you waiting for? This weekly workshop will help you pull that overwhelming pile of paper on your desk together and shape it into a neat and tidy manuscript with guidance, critiques, and feedback from the instructor and other participants. We’ll also discuss publishing options suitable for each person's project. Participants should approach the course with a body of work (at least 15-20 pages/poems or more) and expect to write enough new material to end the course with 40-110 pages.

I'm also running a Saturday Seminar, on November 18, out of the same super little organization. A repeat (yet new and improved!) of last spring's chapbook/small press workshop. I'm hoping it'll compliment the 8-week course nicely.

Alberta Welcome-Wagon

Within a day or two of being back in Alberta, Paul and I went on a little hike in the Kananaskis. Pictured above is the Sandwich-Seeking Not-So-Big-Horned Sheep. No, we didn't feed him any sandwiches, but some unscrupulous humans obviously had before, the way he stuck his head right into the car.

We hiked "Ptarmigan Cirque." I really wanted to see a Hoary Marmot (I couldn't make that up!), but those Hoary Marmots were probably off in their Hoary homes. We did see ground squirrels (of course), a pika, and ptarmigans! Below is an image of them. They sort of blend in-- but I swear, they are there, ptuttering and ptecking.

Jul-August Backdate!

Alright, I am back from Sage Hill, I've been spotted 'round the town so I can't lay low any longer.

Q. How was Sage Hill?

A. It was great! Friars, 100-year old Birthday Party for everyone, Northern Lights as I have never seen (half the sky, or er, half the hemisphere, so the quarter-sphere? and green and red!) Film screenings, Experient Readings, Nicole Brossard! Laundromat afternoon during which I read Mauve Desert! bpnichol pome poem recital by a spontaneous group of non-sound-poets! Tarot cards and Scrabble games and labyrinth walking, humid heat wave and thunderstorms and strange prairie birds, clouds of yellow butterflies and even some sage...

Q. But did you get any writing done?

A. Yes! I wrote 20 pages of new material and with Nicole's help felt brave enough to cut about 50 pages of failed attempts to finish the book that I'd written before I ever got to Magical Wonderful Sage Hill! I wrote new CONCRETE poems! And prose poems! Weird! In a couple of weeks the manuscript will be well and truly done and I will send it to be (hopefully) published! Hooray!

Q. A cell? Really? Like a monk?

A. Yep-- sometimes one needs a cell of one's own. It was perfect!
I met so many talented and cool people and I have lots of new books to read. It is a great program-- so well-run and such a great setting. The person who makes the magic happen, Steven Ross Smith, is taking a year's sabbatical from the program that he has been director of for 17 years (!), but he's got a temporary magic-maker doing his job for that year. You writers reading this should go! You'll love it!