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Alec Dempster explores roots via images and words

Ontario artist Alec Dempster was born in Mexico but moved to Canada with his family when he was five years old. He recently came out with a unique two-fold expression of his heritage with the book Lotería Jarocha: Linoleum Prints, published by The Porcupine’s Quill, and with the CD, Nuevos Caminos A Santiago (New Roads to Santiago), produced by Anona Music. Lynne Van Luven talked to Dempster via email, after listening obsessively to the CD and reading his book.

Alec, I’m a bit confused about the “birth order” here: which did you do first, the book or the CD, and how did one give rise to each other?

First, in 1999-2000, I did the prints which appear in the book. Then Kali and I released our first CD in 2006. We released our second CD, Nuevos Caminos a Santiago, in May 2012. Around that time, I had already started writing the texts for the book. Composing, arranging and recording was very absorbing. I wasn’t able to think about anything else. The same occurred with the writing of the texts. I didn’t stop playing, but I was not creating much new music–although we were working on eight new compositions in the same period with support from a Popular Music Grant from the Ontario Arts Council. We were a bit late submitting our grant report because I was so involved with the book project and then promoting the launch.

I have been to Vera Cruz, Mexico, and to Xalapa as well, so I did know a little bit about “son jarocho,” but I was totally ignorant about the role Lotería plays in Mexican and Latin American social life. Can you explain it a bit more for this gringa? It seems to have a vital cultural importance.

I was attracted to lotería because the graphics are so engrained in Mexican popular culture, even though most of the images aren’t very “Mexican.” The loterías I have created have more Mexican iconography than the traditional lotería. It does raise the question of what and who is Mexican. I am like that in a sense: born in Mexico but not brought up with lotería by parents who are not Mexican. However, I was exposed to a broad range of Latin American and Spanish culture, mostly through my father’s friends. The cultural importance of lotería has to do with the fact that most people in Mexico played lotería with their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters and cousins. I have seen people really enjoy the playing of the lotería but I think the pleasure lies as much in the fact that the family is doing it together as in the playing of the game itself. I have also seen it in more public social events such as church fundraisers in outdoor venues. There are certainly places where more importance is given to the lotería as a past-time like Cosamalopan in Southern Veracruz. I have heard that Campeche has a unique version of the lotería. I am not sure about Northern Mexico. In order to do my loterías, I  did not do a lot of research into the game itself. I did some but my focus was on the themes I had chosen for my loterías.

As you just mentioned, you have a fascinating background: you were born in Mexico City, came to Canada as a young boy, and then were raised in Toronto. How old were you when you returned to Mexico to live, how long were you there, and what were you looking for?

I must have been about 20 when I returned to Mexico for the first time, and my Spanish was quite basic. I went to see the film Danzón which takes place in Veracruz, and enjoyed it but didn’t understand much of the dialogue. I knew enough to get around and stay out of trouble — it seems I was there on two occasions for a month each. The second time I think my grandfather had given me some money to take driving lessons but I spent it on a plane ticket, and I still don’t know how to drive.  The first trip I had no expectations but planned to visit a small town in the hills called Quetzalan, because I had a vague recollection of the place . . . there where some striking photographs my parents took when we went there and I must have been about three. Other than that, I spent time in Mexico City visiting museums, markets and also Tepoztlán, where I eventually lived for a year. Although I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I was extremely happy being in Mexico. It helped that my hosts where my padrino and his wife, two of the most generous people you could imagine and extremely connected with diverse aspects of Mexican culture. Good cooks as well. I ended up very taken by Mexican artists such as the muralists, and Tamayo as well as Toledo but Mexico City is also a place where you are likely to see exhibitions of contemporary art of all kinds from all over the world.

The linocuts in Loteria Jarocha are beautiful, and the descriptions you have created of them teach a reader a great deal about this aspect of Mexican culture. Are these stories and images in danger of being lost as the great wheel of Americanismo grinds away at your birth-country’s traditions?

The word “Americanismo” has a different connotation for me. I  know you mean USA which is definitely imposing itself on Mexico as it does all over. Canada also is exploiting Mexico’s mineral resources. A Canadian project to do open air silver mining close to the Port of Veracruz has been put on hold due to grass-roots resistance. Stories are always in danger of disappearing without the pervasive influence of foreign cultural domination. However, stories and traditions also have the ability to resist, as well as absorb new elements. Good things have also come from the US, such as the remarkable interest in son jarocho from people living in California to name just one state. The result has been culural exchange, economic growth for instrument makers, and musicians who are constantly travelling to the USA. to teach and perform. This year, three different groups that use son jarocho as an important part of their music were nominated for awards. That said,  there are languages disappearing, ceremonies being forgotten and many stories  are no longer passed on from one generation to the next.

You sing with your wife, Kali Nino, on Nuevos Caminos a Santiago. Is your musical group Café Con Pan something new, and how does it tie in with your artistic self?

Our musical collaboration goes back quite a few years, but Café Con Pan became something quite different and more ambitious since we moved to Toronto in 2009. We had performed here before that but it is only recently that we have made such an effort to forge our own identity within the framework of son jarocho. We continue to play the traditional repertoire but are also playing our own songs which we want to be recognized for. I feel like two different people, the musician and the visual artist, but they complement each other because my visual art often adorns our CDs, posters and even clothes that we wear on stage. I fell fortunate to be able to jump from one art form to another while I also realize that sometimes one discipline will require complete attention. It is not always possible to juggle the two.

When wool and words entwine

FictionKNITstas Reading Series
Dede Crane, Gillian Campbell, Nicole Dixon and Stella Harvey
Monday, May 27, 7 pm
Beehive Wool Shop, 1700 Douglas St, Victoria

Reviewed by Liz Gusul

“Colourful place, isn’t it?”

Surrounded by hanging skeins of cotton and baskets of wool, a chatty group gathers and mingles at Beehive Wool Shop in downtown Victoria. Some members of the group are knitters, and some are not. Some buy yarn and patterns, dreaming of their next project, while others stroke the knitted samples around the shop. All are readers and literature enthusiasts, gathered for a knit-related literary event hosted by Victoria writer Dede Crane.

Since 2006, FICTIONistas has organized annual events such as this evening at Beehive Wool Shop, which will include readings from three books by Canadian women writers. The events were conceived as a way to promote works by female authors, and this year’s event, titled FictionKNITstas, focuses its attention also on knitting.

Each of the authors involved in the FICTIONistas tour has been paired with a local knitter, who read and had time to reflect on the written work before embarking on another sort of creative process. Whether an existing pattern was used, or the knitter chose to create her own design, a hand-knit garment was created for each book. The inspirations for these knitted pieces could come from any aspect of the book. Some knitters focused on concrete images, textures, or even colours of the book, others on thematic imagery or cultural context.

Gillian Campbell, author of The Apple House wore a bright red shawl, matching the colour of the novel’s cover. The outline of a boxy farmhouse and two trees on the shawl set the scene for the passage Campbell read from her novel, a book, she says, about a girl with big feet who happens to marry a shoemaker, about a widow, about a life.

Reading from Nicolai’s Daughters, Stella Harvey describes how the textured stitches of her shawlette reflect the mountains of Greece, where sections of her book are set, and how its brilliant blue hue is an iconic colour in Greek culture. She hints at a tragic and not much remembered event in Greece’s past, but reads tender and amusing passages about cultural separation in families, and inter-familial relationships.

After a cancelled flight in Cape Breton, Nicole Dixon hadn’t had the chance to connect with her knitter, and was without her knitted garment. She explains however, that it is a cozy wrap sweater, as the knitter felt that the characters in High-Water Mark, Dixon’s collection of stories, needed a hug, and she wished to create something that would offer both comfort and warmth. Dixon reads the story High-Water Mark which, although bitingly funny, does evoke a blustery cold feeling.

Blue-grey light filters through the windows, and buses roll along Douglas Street as the readings conclude. The books which were sampled tonight are available for sale. The group lingers, fingering the brightly coloured skeins of silk, mohair, and merino.

“Will you sign my book?” I overhear. “And are you a knitter?” someone asks, as the writers autograph copies of their books for patrons. Whether leaving Beehive Wool Shop with a new book, a ball of yarn, or both, all of tonight’s patrons are inspired to spin a yarn, whether literary or literal. The event kicks off a Canada-wide tour, visiting eleven locations over the next week and a half. To view additional tour dates and locations, or for more information about the FICTIONistas, please visit fictionistascanada.wordpress.com.

Liz Gusul is an avid reader and knitter who lives in Victoria.

Six Tudor roses open after death

Til Death: The Six Wives of Henry VIII
@ The Uno Festival, Intrepid Theatre
Written and Directed by Ryan Gladstone
Starring Tara Travis
May 29-June 1

Reviewed by Leah Callen

Tara Travis performs a theatrical feat in Til Death as she channels seven ghosts: Henry VIII and his six wives. The former queens of England, now stripped down to their skivvies, fall into purgatory. Poor Anne Boleyn is bodyless while the shameless hussy Catherine Howard somehow coaxed St. Peter to return her body (there is sex in Heaven, folks). The British bureaucratic angel informs the women that only one of them will be allowed to spend eternity in Royal Heaven with Henry. They must vote amongst themselves: who did their precious patriarch love the most? Let the irony begin as women who were divorced, abandoned or chopped up by the man fight to win his heart

The grandiose drama queen Catherine of Aragon slurs the feisty Anne Boleyn as being a puta, and the horsey Anne of Cleves becomes the naive butt of all their jokes. Catherine Howard is the oversexed valley girl of the group, missing a few gemstones upstairs as she flirts with St. Peter by swooshing her skirt. Katherine Parr remains the most stalwart and patient, having survived four husbands.

I marvelled at how one woman could emote such varying voices and I bought it, sometimes forgetting this was one actor. Each character has her idiosyncrasies; each even reacts uniquely to finding herself in underwear–from indignant to self-indulgent. This individuality carries through to physical gestures, accents, and nicknames. Catherine of Aragon demands her formal name Caterina while childlike Catherine Howard prefers to be known as Catie, Queen of the Fairies. The play is peppered with modern slang, which spices up the farce and makes this otherwise historical harem more human. Alongside the laughs are some poignant confessions from the Tudor roses as they open up to each other on the other side. We hear their romantic regrets and secret hardships.

Though these queens and their rivalries are familiar to anyone who knows the history, the ending is anything but. Things are not in Heaven as they were on earth. I think I was most pleasantly surprised by the prim Jane Seymour. The physical way in which she explains childbirth to Anne was too far-fetched for me, but I loved the courageous thorns she grows. The six ex-wives bond in unimaginable ways with uplifting results.

Personally, I was gobsmacked that the nymphet Catherine Howard wasn’t Henry’s first choice as a companion for all eternity. The kitten-in-heat seems like a philanderer’s paradise. Though the queen whom Henry once called his rose without a thorn was one of the most strongly developed characters, her superficiality robs us of hearing her pain about dying so young. Her ghost is said to scream to this day, so that seems an oversight. Still, Catie was the star of this show for me.

This Anglican Heaven is full of red tape, but open-minded about sex and gay marriage. As an Anglican, I had to laugh out loud at the religious pokes. Though the angels seem very forgiving, I still think Henry VIII should go to hell.

Leah Callen is a budding poet-playwright-screenwriter at the University of Victoria.

Third-person narrative distances reader

Caught
By Lisa Moore
House of Anansi, 304 pages, $29.95

Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

Lisa Moore roots her readers firmly in 1978 Canada in her new novel–problem is, reading this book often felt like being stuck, then trying to run through mud.

Perhaps this is fitting for the beginning of the book as the protagonist, David Slaney, escapes from prison on the east coast, where he’s been held for four years after trying to smuggle marijuana from Colombia to Newfoundland via boat. Slaney runs through the muck and woods in search of a logging road, where he has been told a driver will come for him. He will either escape, or be caught. But he has to go. “There are mistakes that stand in the centre of an empty field and cry out for love.”

Slaney hasn’t escaped to live a quiet life in hiding. He needs to get to his friend and accomplice, Hearn, in Vancouver. He wants to try again, to go back to Colombia. The marijuana will make them millionaires. But it’s not just the money that’s at stake: 25-year-old Slaney wants to get Jennifer, the love of his life, and her daughter back. He wants to be free.

Readers follow Slaney across Canada, down to South America, then back again—with many stops and starts along the way. I often felt like there were many false endings, while the starts felt glazed over. It seemed as though Moore was planning the route as she was writing. She would leave Slaney in a place for a while, in which nothing would happen, and then in the next chapter we were on the road again. As I read, I felt as though I was always missing the middle of things. There is also a great emotional distance from the reader and Slaney, as the story is written in third person. I wanted to be rooting for this character and, even though he’s an anti-hero; I didn’t want him to get caught. But I felt a little too distant from him to care.

But the novel is worth reading for writing like this:

He whispered to himself. He spoke a stream of profanity and he said a prayer to the Virgin Mary, in whom he half believed. Mosquitoes touched him all over. They settled on his skin and put their fine things into him and they were lulled and bloated and thought themselves sexy and near death.

Moore’s characters are fascinating and full of flaws you can’t help but love as soon as you’re introduced to them.

‘Nice to meet you, sir,’ Slaney said.

I was in Korea, the old man said. I saw an arm on the ground. Just the arm. Not attached to nothing. Just lying there in the leaves.

Pops is decorated, the girl said. He got a few medals in there he could show you sometime.

We were marching, he said. I just saw this arm. It was lying on the dirt. Wet leaves stuck on it. That was one thing I saw. I saw a lot of things. You’ve done some travelling, have you?

Yes sir, Slaney said.

Caught is a story about loss, love, risk and betrayal. It tries to redefine innocence and it makes the reader question what is inevitable and what isn’t, and how a person chooses to move forward in order to get what he wants. Moore’s prose is meditative, but the story is about a chase. Whether the two can work together, I’m still unsure.

Jenny Boychuk is a reader and writer who lives in Victoria.

Swept off my feet by a lady and an iron horse

SPIN
May 25, The Metro, Uno Festival, Victoria
Written and performed by Evalyn Parry

Reviewed by Leah Callen

SPIN is a fun trip through time and metaphor on a three-speed steed steered by the talented Evalyn Parry with Brad Hart as back-up. I can honestly say this was the first time I’d ever heard someone play a bicycle like a musical instrument. That alone is worth hearing. The play uses song, spoken word, and monologue in an ode to cycling and ingenuity. As we ride through the scenic past, we are reminded how important it is to keep on trailblazing.

Though I am not a bike lover (yet), I enjoyed the obscure stories of these biker women; SPIN really spoke to me. Annie Londonderry teaches us a lesson in guts: the first woman to cycle around the world taking only her courage, a pearl-handled revolver, and a change of underwear with her. She left her children and husband behind–all thanks to an alleged bet. And a song about Amelia Bloomer, an early pro-pants activist, encourages us to fight for our political legs.

Parry’s wordplay is both bright and dark; the word spin means progress and propaganda, freedom and commercialism. She shows us the front and back wheel of every story, the good and bad with ironic bitter sweetness. Parry keeps it real. Steampunky costuming was a spunky sidekick to her monologues. She stepped visually in and out of characters, helping us travel a few miles in other women’s pants. Film also added visual poetry and joie de vivre to the staging.

Overall, it was fascinating watching Brad Hart bowing spokes and thumping away on a bicycle seat as if it was the most natural drum kit in the world. Many of the duets featured Parry taking the low vocal roads while Hart took the higher harmony. Even the music had an unexpected, feminist twist. The rhyme and repetition of the poetry evoked the circular motion of a bike brilliantly. I was happy to tag along on this joyride in the audience.

There is humour and honesty here. As Parry says, the heart is the motor. SPIN moves through the outer spokes to the hub as her performance travels from the historical to the personal–and what you get is inspirational. Though the old adage saying, “It’s not the destination but the journey that counts,” is a touch clichéd, this was a heart-opening performance which reflects back on the past with fresh eyes, and compels us to carry forward with bravery. Parry asks us: why settle for friction when you can choose momentum? This show is about the female quest for autonomy, but it’s also about the magical freedom we all experience when we take off life’s training wheels and fly down unknown avenues under our own steam.

Uno Fest runs until June 1st. Full calendar available on their website.

Leah Callen is a budding poet-playwright-screenwriter at the University of Victoria.

Journalist launches debut novel

Journalist Cathi Bond divides her time between the streets of Toronto and the fields of rural Ontario.  With her lively focus on contemporary culture and the Internet, Bond was a columnist on Definitely Not The Opera (DNTO) with Nora Young, and is a regular contributor to Spark, both on CBC Radio. She also does movie podcasts for Rabble and, with Nora Young, has created The Sniffer, a podcast on “New Directions in Trends and Tech.” Bond’s latest project is her first novel, Night Town, published by Iguana Press. The unstoppable Bond is now writing its sequel.  She recently answered questions from Lynne Van Luven.

Cathi, most listeners and viewers know you as a journalist, from TV and especially from CBC Radio. What precipitated your move from cultural reporting into novel writing?

I haven’t completely moved from cultural writing or broadcasting. As you’d know, the number of print jobs in Canada has diminished significantly in the last decade. And landing a steady gig as a cultural columnist at any of the big papers is nearly a miracle. In fact, many columnists who had that security have lost it and now have to get in the pit and compete for every column they write. I’m extremely fortunate to be able to work part time at Spark and have the privilege to write about shifts in technology that truly excite me.

In part, this new employment reality steered me towards taking a shot at fiction, but Night Town was a story that had been percolating inside of me for years. So I saved some cash, decided to live relatively poor and took the time to write it. I guess you could say that Night Town was always close to number one on my bucket list, and now it’s completed and I’m very happy with the result.

Night Town has been optioned by Back Alley Films. Do you think being a media personality helped the process at all?

Absolutely. It’s really unfair, but I think it’s true. Having any kind of name recognition, any kind of brand makes you instantly more attractive. It makes the project easier to sell to the funding bodies that hand out the money.

That said, having a feature film credit makes you worth more. That credit proves that you can do the work. I was very lucky that Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik, the story editor behind Back Alley’s award winning series Durham County, edited my novel. Yet another brand, or seal of approval, attached to the project.

Maddy Barnes is a captivating and credible character. I know this is a work of fiction, but I cannot help feeling there is a little spark of personal experience at the heart of this novel. True?

Good instincts. I think most writers, whether they admit it or not, do create from personal experience. Especially on a first novel. When I was very young, an absolutely horrible thing happened to me and my family. It was “the moment” that defined my life. So I took that moment and fictionalized it. I don’t think I’m letting the cat out of the bag if I tell your readers that the novel takes place, in large part, at the corner of Yonge and Dundas on the mean streets of Toronto during the early 1970s.

I wanted to write about that period in Toronto’s history. Toronto is one of the biggest cities in the world and, other than in  Ondattje’s “The Skin of the Lion” and by Atwood (a wee bit in her early work), it has never been mythologized in any significant way. I tried to change that by making Toronto a character. In fact, Night Town is the first in a trilogy of novels that follows Toronto and a single family from the dawn of the Great Depression, through to the arrival of the new millennium.

People call you a “podcast pioneer” and now you have a blog, so I wonder if it’s not a bit “retrograde” for you to become a novelist who’s now working on a sequel to her first book. What about all those “books-are-dead” prognostications?

I thought about this a lot, but I refuse to believe that reading is dead. The telling of stories is built into our DNA. It’s how we carry our history; it’s how we instruct; it’s how we delight. But is the book as we know it dead? I think we’re right in the middle of a big technological/business transition as to how our stories will be told. Personally, I think that eReaders are still clunky and not where they need to be, but they’re getting closer.  [Given] the speed at which technology is moving, I think the next device is right around the corner. That’s why I took the chance and went with a digital house. I wanted Night Town to be ready.

Can you talk a little bit about The Sniffer, the audio podcast you and Nora Young started? 

Nora and I started  The Sniffer in the summer of 2005, the summer when the word “podcast” had just appeared on computer screens . . . We do it primarily for fun, and as a way to sniff out sometimes wacky and really interesting new trends in technology. We’re both wool-gathering geeks and most folks don’t get all revved up talking about the stuff we do. But early subscribers heard about trends like Facebook, Second Life and YouTube first. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s something we do for ourselves and for you.

Collection’s stories are sharp and true

The Green and Purple Skin of the World
By paulo da costa
Freehand Books, 208 pages, $21.95

Reviewed by Yasuko Thanh

Born in Angola, raised in Portugal, paulo da costa won the Commonwealth First Book Prize in 2003 for his collection The Scent of a Lie. In The Green and Purple Skin of the World, his first book of short fiction in 10 years, language and its power form a thread through many of the stories and words are highlighted in entertaining characters such as Dona Branca, who collects newspaper clippings of disasters and glues them in an old photo album.

In “Those Who Follow,” a tale of hunter and hunted, a cougar reminisces, “Perhaps my mother wrapped me in words of hope to help me tolerate the immense body of pain she understood was coming.”

Language acts as a kind of saviour. In the title story, da costa explores the world of love and loss through a tale told in letters. The epistolary device works because the letter writer never gets a reply and, as such, her longing is more keenly felt. The narrator, Shana, writes, “Home is any language I speak.” Yet as hope bleeds into disappointment, she also concedes, “There are sounds in my mother tongue your throat will never set free.”

The one-sided love affair is underscored by the recurring, transient image of a bubble blown from a bubble wand. The story unfolds through a thoughtful, poetic treatment (not surprisingly, since da costa is also a poet). Every sentence feels carefully controlled, aiming for its effect.

In “Not Written in Pencil,” my favourite story in the book, we learn about the dissolution of an auto mechanic’s 13-year marriage to a cheating wife. Her new-age justifications spur his anger. The narrator’s self-deprecating voice is tempered by a wry humour and a sarcasm he employs to shed light on his own tragic upbringing. The voice here is strong.  Authentic.  His heartbreak and raw shock is perfectly captured in blue-collar fashion as he tries to explain his current failure with his own dealings with his son. Voice carries this piece. This is the best story in the collection because it allows us to enter the narrator’s heart, in lieu of the omniscient perspective da costa favours in other stories.

In “Table,” a man does what needs to be done for his young family and is defined, as are other men in the collection, by those moments of quiet suffering. He chops off his own index finger to save himself from the draft. “He offered his finger to the officers, asking them if that ‘qualified as sufficient proof he could not pull the trigger or did they require his whole arm?’ ”

Da costa seems to imply that real heroes don’t die for others but live for others. My own heroes are those who sacrifice themselves quietly, without reward, day after day, heading to a crappy job, riding home on the bus, looking after loved ones. Da costa nicely blends both types of heroes in “Table.”

The stories are tightly written, sometimes with seeming thematic agendas. Imagine the beam of a flashlight shining onto a vast landscape. The focus is often so spot-on that many of the stories function almost as proverbs. The light might be perfect for some readers, though others may find the beam too singular. If you have a preference for stories that aim sharp and true, with few loose threads about them, then this collection might be for you.

Yasuko Thanh’s short story collection, Floating Like the Dead, was recently nominated for a BC book prize.

Russell Books expands into vintage

Russell Books Vintage Grand Opening
with readings from Esi Edugyan, Steven Price and Marita Dachsel
May 14, 2013

Reviewed by Jenny Boychuk

In a time when many independent bookstores are closing their doors, Victoria’s Russell Books has expanded yet again with the addition of Russell’s Vintage.

Russell’s Vintage (located beneath Russell Books in what was formerly Fort Street Café) held its grand opening recently, featuring readings by local authors Steven Price, Esi Edugyan and Marita Dachsel.

The space filled up quickly as people drank wine and browsed the shelves for vintage gardening guides, cookbooks, magazines, volumes of the Guinness Book of Records, poetry, children’s literature and nearly ancient copies and first editions of their favourite classics. The atmosphere was warm and friendly, and it seemed everyone met someone they knew.

Every seat was filled with many people left standing as event organizer and Russell Books employee Vanessa Herman kicked off the night. She announced that Russell’s Vintage will begin holding a monthly reading series. Next, manager Andrea Minter talked about her family and the history of Russell Books, which was founded by her grandfather in Montreal in 1961. The store (now relocated in Victoria) is Canada’s largest used and new bookstore.

“Books are my life and we are so excited for this,” Minter said.

The space is perfect for a reading, with a small stage at the front of the room, set against a backdrop of antique books. The readings proved fitting for the occasion as each of the authors read about history or the making of it.

Marita Dachsel launched her new collection of poetry Glossolalia, which is essentially a series of monologues written from the point of view of each of Joseph Smith’s 34 polygamous wives. (Joseph Smith was the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)

“You always hear about people launching books,” said Dachsel. “But you hardly ever hear of people launching bookstores.”

After an intermission and the cutting of a fabulous cake (an unreal replication of each of the authors’ books stacked on top of each other), Steven Price talked about his and wife Esi Edugyan’s history and love of Russell Books.  Apparently, the couple visits so regularly that the staff is set on adopting their baby daughter.)

“We don’t get out much,” joked Price. “But when we do, we go to three places. Russell Books is one of them.”

Price read from his poetry collection Omens in the Year of the Ox, and from Into That Darkness, his novel about a massive earthquake hitting Victoria.

After more wine, cake and door prizes (orchids, t-shirts, winery tours, books), Esi Edugyan ended the evening with a reading from her novel, Half-Blood Blues, much of which is set in pre-war Berlin.

I expect Russell’s Vintage will see many more nights like this one.

 

Jenny Boychuk is a local writer and reader.

 

Mormon wives “speak” through poems

Poet Marita Dachsel is the author of the new collection Glossolalia, and of the previous collection All Things Said & Done. Glossolalia is a re-imagining of the lives and voices of the 34 wives of Mormon founder Joseph Smith. Julian Gunn interviewed Daschel at the end of April for the Coastal Spectator. See the poet’s blog at maritadachsel.blogspot.ca.

Glossolalia is a long-term project. What was its genesis?

I’ve always been interested in fringe religions, and in 2006 the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints in Bountiful was in the news again. BC has long been home to strange sects and cults, and for the most part they are left alone. I thought that if the FLDS would just give up polygamy, then they could live in peace. I wondered why they practised it, and soon learned that it was a vital part of their faith that had been introduced by Joseph Smith back in the 1840s.

Did you always see Glossolalia as a book about all of Smith’s wives? (Or some version of all, since you mention that the exact count is unknown.)

I could understand why modern women born into Mormon Fundamentalism would choose polygamy—it’s their culture, it’s all they know—but I wondered about those women who agreed, who started it all. I read biographies on Joseph’s wives and began to write poems inspired by their lives. It was perfect timing, as I had finished my first collection, All Things Said & Done, and wasn’t sure what I’d do next with my poetry. I soon knew that I wanted to a whole book on them. At the time, I had no idea it would take six years, but I quickly fell into the rabbit hole of research and obsession.

Often, you have only one poem with which to evoke some aspect of each woman. How did you know what would do justice to each one?

Some were definitely easier [to capture] than others. Some came immediately. I’d “hear” their voice in my head and I knew what they’d disclose. Others took a long time of trial and error—the voice, the form, the story all had to click. “Emma Hale Smith,” for example, was the very first poem I wrote for this series, but it wasn’t right. It was really important to me to do her justice and consequently, it took six years of writing her to finally get her poem work the way I wanted it to.

Despite all the research that I did on the women and early Mormonism, not all the poems are based on biography. In the early years of the project, I was a little too tied to the truth, but learned to let that go. I’m not a historian; I’m a poet. My main goal was to write engaging poetry. Sometimes that meant skimming from the women’s lives; sometimes it meant making things up completely.

You use many different formal techniques in the collection. Was there a process by which you decided what techniques you would use, or was it done by intuition and experimentation?

My process was pretty loose. I’d start by reading about the woman, noting ideas or phrases as I went. I’d write a rough draft or two to see if I could get her voice right. If could, great! Then I’d work on the content and form—one usually informing the other. If I couldn’t get her voice right, then I’d either read some more about her, or move on to another wife. Repeat as necessary.

Like “Emma,” “Lucy Walker” is another [voice] that took a lot of trial and error. A few wives had told their own stories during their lives and I was particularly struck with hers—so full of heartache, confusion, and manipulation. I tried to capture it, but the poem always fell flat. Finally, I realized that I didn’t have to do what she already had done, that I could use her words. I played with her text a lot, but nothing was satisfying. Then I came across Jen Bervin’s amazing Nets and it was like a revelation to me. (She ‘erased’ many of Shakespeare’s sonnets into beautifully spare poems.) What I loved about her take on erasure was that we could still see the original poems, just in lighter text. For Lucy, I wanted her real story to still be available to the reader, but I liked the idea of it being deliberately crossed out, as if she were editing her own story. The private truth versus the public record.

How do you find blogging as a medium, as compared to poetry and conventional essays?

I really enjoy reading other people’s blogs, but I’m a terrible blogger. I don’t make the time to do it properly, so lately my blog has become not much more than a place for shameless self-promotion. A few years ago, I did an interview series with writing mothers that I really enjoyed and it still brings the most readers to the blog. I think that when I find time, I’ll revisit that form—return to interviews and discussions. When done well, blogging is an immediate conversation. It’s topical, yet focused. It creates community. I think I write too slowly and have too many interruptions to do the form justice right now, but I am so thankful that others do.

Novel connects Budapest and Toronto

Under Budapest
By Alisa Kay
Goose Lane, 256 pages, $19.95

Reviewed by Judy LeBlanc

Like ghosts surfacing from Budapest’s fabled subterranean regions, lives from the 1956 Hungarian uprising breathe anew in post-soviet times. Alisa Kay’s debut novel raises many questions about history. Is there really a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the city, once used as both prisons and storehouses for Soviet loot? No one knows for sure, Kay seems to suggest.

In Under Budapest’s densely woven plot, as serpentine as these tunnels, a myriad of characters confront their past. The present is 2010 in a right-winged Hungary, a time of fomenting nationalism spurred on by hatred for Jews and Romas. Within the large cast of characters, the fast-talking hoods, an historical intellectual revolutionary and his passionate youthful lover are a little too stock for my liking, though they make for a page-turning read.

Instead, bland historian, Tibor Roland, his mother Agnes and her memory of her mother, give this novel its psychological complexity, taking it beyond the genre of a decent crime thriller. Tibor, reeling from an affair ended largely because of a deception on his part–deception is a recurring motif throughout the book–signs up for a conference in Budapest. His mother, born and raised there, fled to Canada after the uprising. Recently she has learned that her missing sister may have escaped through the mythical tunnels. During their visits, mother and son separately encounter acts of violence and deceit that ultimately intersect in a tangle of past and present. Agnes’s mother, in 1956 Budapest thinks, “But no change has ever held. It always turns back, turns bad.”

In clean, often insightful prose, Kay’s narrative moves seamlessly between past and present. While her sister embraces the fervour of the uprising, Agnes runs away, repulsed by the violence. After witnessing a horrific murder in Budapest, Tibor, fearful he will be framed by the corrupt police force, also flees.

Watching TV back in Toronto, Agnes and Tibor are decidedly unheroic, which is possibly what lends this novel its greatest interest. They are safe, reflecting a choice many immigrants to this country made. In spite of his reluctance to revisit the horrific event he witnessed, Tibor agrees to meet with the dead boy’s Canadian father. It’s as if his experience in Budapest has enabled him to see beyond violence as merely academic, as simply a subject of study, and to accept it as near at hand: in his mother’s history, in his own life.

In contemporary Canadian literature, there is a preponderance of stories unearthed from the past by a generation of writers distanced from the heat of revolution and yet wrestling with its residual effects. In the end, Agnes shares her personal history with Tibor, and he thinks, “He was a child of these circumscribed facts, of all she’d left behind. And he felt, well, he felt it added something to him.”

Judy LeBlanc has her MFA from UVIC and writes fiction from her home in Fanny Bay.