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Poems flare with precise intensity

New Theatre
by Susan Steudel
Coach House Books, 95 pages, $17.95

Reviewed by Karen Enns

A short, untitled poem in the first section of Vancouver resident Susan Steudel’s New Theatre seems designed to look like a typewritten, anonymous message. Words are cut and pasted across the page, slightly off-kilter, but the images are clear and the phrases crisply articulate: “a study of channels”, “the coal bird”, “Grace in the/ noon water.” This sense of shifting ground under precision-tuned language runs like a fine thread through Steudel’s striking debut collection.

From the opening “sound list” translated into russian using both cyrillic and roman alphabets, Steudel invites the reader to listen hard and manage the grand leaps, not only between language and meaning, but between things themselves, the stuff of them. A meditation on time uncovers surprising (and delightful) aural and imaginative connections:

“Noon. A grumble. A black currant.”

“Tea. The stain in the iris.”

“Evening. River ice clinking into water.”

“The hour. Graphite on paper, a blunt guide.”

“Bath. Giant, silent elk.”

Central to the book is the section called Birch, inspired by Robert Payne’s biography of Vladimir Lenin. Steudel gathers points of illumination and lays them out, side by side, to form a kind of collage. Found poems, lists, quotes from Lenin’s own notes, and word games become the “multiple foci/ through which sunlight tapers to flint sparks.” Mayakovsky, Kandinsky, Tolstoy, and Akhmatova make brief appearances in this series of historico/political poems that bears the chiselled starkness of a siberian plain:

he saw in forests the hardness and purity of
a styled movement,
a lone person in a birch forest

closing his stride;
‘organization of professional revolutionaries,’
this one thought like circling wolves.

Scenes, a more autobiographical long poem, focuses on eleven different domestic settings. Stage directions offered in square brackets create a flickering focus; the reader is urged to step in and out of the poem to reconsider, listen, look again as “loose regattas of dark capsize and drift.” The question of what is real or solid is never resolved. Even clarity is fragile: “But here is the tree, bright as limes/ and the pure call of glass owls.”

In the end, Steudel’s committed vision crosses the spaces she creates. We are left with images that are tightly wound and visible, moving toward us from the outskirts:

I wake beneath dark lamps,
my window fractions into deeper darkness.

A flooded road,
faces of the brown deer and limping buck.
From an antler
grass trails by the roots.

 In Theory and Practice, love is “the magic of intersections: street crossings,/ intersecting lines/ converge momentarily then go streaming off.” This may be the most fitting description of Steudel’s poems that flare with intensity as they negotiate enormous distances.

 

Karen Enns is a Victoria musician and poet.

Debut EP Saltwater sure to set sail

Ghost Lights
Saltwater EP (2012)
Produced by James Finnerty

Reviewed by Jennifer Louise Taylor

Ghost Lights is the debut musical project of a former west-coaster now living in Montreal, Noah Cebuliak, who sings and plays most of the parts on the EP.  He’s supported by a wide cast of equally talented folks, including producer James Finnerty. The result is a well-produced and artfully arranged collection of songs that reflect a wide variety of influences. Saltwater has elements of folk for the folkies, R&B for the soul-minded, stimulating lyrics for the intellectually curious and enough ambient sound and jazzy bass riffs for those just wanting to sit back and enjoy the ride.

The album is inspired by Cebuliak’s west coast wilderness travels: if you have ever found yourself with feet in sand, a hot cup of coffee warming your hands as you watch the fog roll in off the water on a “soft” west coast morning, then you already have a sense of what this album evokes in the listener. Saltwater works because the lyrics, instrumentation and vocals are thoughtfully crafted, giving the listener a cohesive,  intriguing musical experience.

In the second track, “A Train is Coming,” smooth vocals offer a musical onomatopoeia of an oncoming train; the song creates an R&B/old-time feel, applied to sentiments of love and loss that leaves you feeling joyfully lonesome. The album’s fourth track, “Babble from a Beehive,” reminiscent of California artist Brett Dennen, has a fabulous acoustic dynamic with plucked strings and breezy horns contrasting with the rich, soothing vocals of Cebuliak. The only track on Saltwater that left me sitting musically confused and lyrically dusty, was Thundercloud with its retro 70s rock feel. For me, it does not hold the same rich, ambient, melodic feel of the other five tracks. That being said, five gems out of six songs, is stellar for any album, let alone a debut EP.

Cebuliak says his melodies often come to him “while walking or sitting outside in nature.” As a songwriter, he has the unique ability to melodically distil the essence of the outdoors without lyrically watering down the complexity of human experience. What is more, the lyrics are clearly enunciated and beautifully presented for the listener–always a boon, but particularly with lyrics worth hearing.

Ghost Lights’ Saltwater is a musical example of a journey well taken– like that memorable summer spent with your wisest and most eclectic elderly uncle. In this case, the purveyor of the experience happens to be at the beginning of his journey. If this is just the start, then I truly look forward to seeing where Cebuliak’s future musical musings will take him and us.

A Train is Coming:

Jennifer Louise Taylor is a Victoria-based musician and former world traveller who enjoys the sound of west-coast rain on a cold tin roof.

Films Worth RE-visiting: The Illusionist (L’illusionniste)

The Illusionist (Lèillusionniste)
Directed by Sylvain Chomet
Original screenplay by Jacques Tati,
Adapted by Sylvain Chomet.
2010

Reviewed by Joshua Zapf

The Illusionist is beautiful for many reasons, but most of all because it is believable.

The story takes place during the 1950s. The protagonist, Tatischeff, is an illusionist and a master of his craft.  We follow him, and a handful of other entertainers, as they struggle to make ends meet. In desperation, Tatischeff travels to Scotland and, after a small performance in a local tavern, he settles into his room. A young maid becomes so perplexed by Tatischeff’s abilities that she is convinced he is magic. She follows the illusionist to escape the humdrum life of her village, a place that has seemingly just seen its first electric light. Tatischeff, awash in her admiration, shows fatherly affection for her. He attempts to give her everything her heart desires but cannot prevent the slow disenchantment that comes with time.

The film does not incorporate hard dialogue. You might suggest, if you had to explain it, that there are no spoken lines. That’s why I nearly overlooked this film; I figured the premise too lofty, the design too avant-garde for my liking. Nevertheless, The Illusionist is one of the finest films I have ever had the pleasure of watching. I predict that after just twelve minutes you will be enchanted.

The Illusionist is a cartoon of the highest quality, drawn to the grandest scale. Scenes sprawl like photographs. The music, originally pieced together by the director Chomet, guides you seamlessly through scenes. No spectacle is spared as background characters move with their own accord giving life to every scene–more life than most live action movies could ever hope to attain.

At times the movie is like rolling artwork. The trip from Kings Cross to Scotland is outstanding. You could review that segment a dozen times and continue to discover new and wonderful details (the advertisement on the bus, the gulls meandering near a cliff, the Border Collie managing his flock, the change of passengers, the name of the Scotsman’s boat.)

Chomet has done a masterful job. The music, the sentiment, the novel characters, the idiosyncratic movements of the lead are all threads woven into a touching storyline. The Illusionist is a resounding achievement–a film that that should not be missed, no matter how old or young you are.

 

Josh Zapf just committed himself to Co-op Studies in Writing at UVIC; he  was mesmerized by Star Wars and Indiana Jones as a kid. 

Young adults attain untidy denouement

Whitetail Shooting Gallery
by Annette Lapointe
Anvil Press, 220 pages, $20.00

Reviewed by Emily McGiffin

Whitetail Shooting Gallery, Giller-prize nominee Annette Lapointe’s second novel, opens with a shotgun blast that reverberates throughout the book. It launches cousins Jason and Jenn, positioned at either end of the blast, into the middle of adolescence and into a sexual turbulence that will follow them into adulthood.

Set in Bear Hills, a small town on the peri-urban fringes of Saskatoon, the novel places a contemporary coming of age story against a rural landscape in transition. Its characters struggle with the tension created by the expectations and stereotypes of rural life while grappling with tumultuous task of finding oneself in the contemporary world.

The story follows the entwined lives of three central characters: Jason, Jenn and Donna, Jenn’s close friend and, eventually, lover to both cousins. Around them, the cast of secondary characters includes Jenn’s parents, Jason’s father Garry, and Sarah, his semi-estranged mother who left the family and moved to Saskatoon following a car accident brought on by a whitetail deer.

As the novel progresses, Jason spends greater amounts of time with Gordon, a mysterious sculptor from the west coast whose activities become increasing sinister as new truths emerge. As their friendship grows, Gordon evolves into a caricature of Jason: both men are marginalized, queer, confused about the shooting incident and, in their own ways and for their own reasons, fascinated by Jenn and Donna.

Far from a bucolic story of prairie romance, the novel tells the story of outsiders excluded from mainstream small-town prairie life by their physical characteristics (throughout their high school years, Jenn, Donna and their friends are “the fat girls”) and their sexual identities. While the family (with the exception of Sarah) lives in neighbouring houses on the family farm and remains united through Jenn’s high school years, the world of the novel unravels as it becomes clear that Jennifer and Jason—both irreparably damaged by the pivotal event in the book—are mired in misunderstanding of the event that prevents resolution and forgiveness. Despite the strong and supportive family that surrounds them, both drift into adult lives marked by an inability to establish real intimacy, which they seek instead in small animals and transient lovers.

An up-front, no-nonsense look at young adults developing their identities in small-town Saskatoon in the 80s, Whitetail Shooting Gallery develops a realistic set of scarred characters, explores their complexities and, finally, arrives at a complex, untidy denouement.

 

Emily McGiffin’s non-fiction and award-winning poetry has been widely published. Her first book of poems, Between Dusk and Night, was published by Brick Books in 2012.

Memoir brilliantly captures real life

Human Happiness
by Brian Fawcett
Thomas Allen publishers, 288 pages (paperback), $24.95

Reviewed by Norbert Ruebsaat

In his 2011 memoir, Human Happiness, Brian Fawcett puts the story of his parents, Hartley Fawcett and Rita Surry, at the centre of the action. It takes place in Prince George, in the middle of British Columbia at the edge of the northern resource-rich frontier in a time when local cultures and regional economies had not yet been bulldozed away by transnational corporations. We’re in the post Second World War “Golden Age” of North American progress, prosperity and dreams of perpetual happiness that begins in 1945 and ends in the late 1960s. Rita and Hartley raise a family, create “a Business Empire” (as Hartley, a self-made-man of his time who likes to speak in capital letters puts it) and capture “The Good Life,” a condition no longer available to post-war boomers and Xers who might, says our author, “lead a but never the good life.”

Hartley’s in the soft-drink bottling, meat-packing and milk-delivery businesses. Rita is, as were most women back then, a housewife who devotes tender and intelligent time to her four children. She offsets the loneliness of being at home in a small testosterone-driven resource extraction town, where her husband’s at work all day and on weekends golfs with his buddies, by starting a women’s group with other local mothers. When it becomes apparent that Hartley’s a great salesman but bad accountant, she adds keeping the company books to her duties.

Hartley’s neglectful and self absorbed: when Rita contracts cancer and needs to go to Vancouver for treatment, he doesn’t accompany her; it becomes clear that their marriage is troubled, sometimes dysfunctional, but held together by a shared dedication to everyday common-sense living and no false hopes about the nature of happiness. Son Brian defines this happiness as “something glimpsed in flight,” that requires “an ability to live with ambiguity and tolerate a certain degree of physical humour,” a state of being he contrasts with the permanent compulsory happiness proffered by consumer culture and advertising.

When, in the mid 1960s, city-based corporations begin to descend on northern B.C., business-suited executives walk into Hartley’s office and announce that if he doesn’t sell his ice cream operation their consortium will dump product into his marketplace below his cost until he is bankrupt. A&W, Dairy Queen and Macdonald’s and their ilk make similar attacks on local stores and eateries. Timber multinationals, backed by the B.C. government, force local logging operations out of business to the extent that, by 1972, 600 locally owned mills and many more portable “gypo outfits” have been replaced by eight supermills and two pulp mills. Hartley, who’s thrown enough city suits out of his office to realize that he “can’t beat progress,” decides, in 1968, to sell his business and moves with Rita to the Okanagan, where he lives happily for his remaining thirty years.

Human Happiness is the best memoir I’ve read about the BC Interior during a crucial period of its history. I know of no other accounts that put personal, family, social, and economic history together so well that I understand how daily lives, family relationships, local politics and economics work together to create a unique culture. And the bonus here is that Fawcett takes the next step, which is to write a memoir not only about life but also about an idea. Happiness stands at the centre of his parents’ story: while giving us intimate news about their lives and dreams and doings, he gives us also a philosophical investigation of a key North American, perhaps universal, real-life value.

 

Norbert Ruebsaat has published in The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, Literary Canada Review, Geist Magazine, Vancouver Review and Dooney’s Café.

Steam-punkish humour sparks Musgrave’s novel

Given
By Susan Musgrave
Thistledown Press, pp. 298.

Reviewed by Arleen Paré

Given is the second novel in a trilogy by Susan Musgrave. Musgrave is a poet, a novelist, a writer of children’s books and of non-fiction with over twenty-six books to her name. Cargo of Orchids (2001) was the first in this trilogy. However, while some of Cargo’s characters people the pages of Given, this time around they are not quite alive. Which is a clue. Another clue is the cover. Decidedly ghoulish, it depicts a mechanical model of a human body sans left leg and right forearm. The model hangs from chains, head flopped forward at an awkward angle. Pieces of electrical wire protrude from the openings the limbs once occupied. Coiled springs and empty limbs strew the dark background. A steampunk sort of image. I don’t necessarily judge a book by its cover, but steampunk stayed with me as I read.

The narrator has just escaped from death row in an American prison. Her crime: murdering her own child. Her two death-row friends, Rainy and Frenchy, have already died on death row — for the murders of their children. Death and death images, grief, addiction, ghosts, pain – these fill the book. Humour too. Susan Musgrave is a very funny writer even when her focus is on death. The story follows the narrator as she makes her way to a West Coast island with the help of her slightly estranged husband, Vernal. The names are clever. The penitentiary is called Mountjoy. The pet cat is Aged Orange. Vernal drives an old hearse. And throughout her escape, her arrival on the island, her sojourn to the city, the narrator notes with fitting irony an amazing number of odd and amusing events, signs, sayings in the surrounding world in which she is now a stranger. A radio caller asks Jesus for help losing weight; Rainy (now a ghost) wonders if it hurts flowers when you cut them; the drugstore is called Drugs R Us.

Steampunk is a variety of speculative fiction that appears in a number of literary, theatrical and cinematic forms. Historical steampunk generally situates a narrative in the Industrial Revolution, the Victorian era before the advent of electricity when steam power was pervasive. But steampunk also refers to a literary variety of “gas-lit” horror and fantasy that includes supernatural elements. This is how Given affected me: a melancholy narrative of grief and regret with a fantastical, almost horrific understory. Intriguing, compelling, imaginative. And real. It all depends where the spotlight lands. I had no question that the events described fell more within the range of reality than the fantastical. The descriptions of prison life, the punishments, addictions – all believable. That the child ghosts arrive in red mist – also understandable, under the circumstances. That the narrator speaks with ghosts – of course. Nonetheless, as a whole, Given is fantastical. It is funny. It is literary. It is a most unusual read. I look forward to the third in this trilogy.

 

Author Arleen Paré is a frequent reviewer for Coastal Spectator

Skidmore tells story of child migration

Patricia Skidmore (left), who lives in Port Moody, British Columbia, has written a moving book about her mother’s experiences as a child migrant to Canada in 1937. Marjorie Arnison was from Whitley Bay in northeastern England. She lived in Birmingham for seven months before being sent to the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School in the Cowichan Valley when she was just 10. She could never properly explain her past to her children. The “mystery” caused Skidmore to write Marjorie Too Afraid to Cry: A Home Child Experience, published by Dundurn (295 pages, $30). Coastal Spectator Editor Lynne Van Luven read Marjorie’s story with great interest since her own grandfather was also sent to Canada as a “Barnardo Boy.” Skidmore’s book will be launched at the University of Victoria Bookstore on March 14 at 7 p.m. 

Can you remember the catalyst that set your mind to writing about your mother’s story?

After spending much of my childhood fighting my mother for her story, in an attempt to find out who she really was and why she was in Canada while most of her family was in England, I concluded that she was keeping some horrid dark secret from me. At 17, I gave up and left home.

It took another eight years before I faced the question again, when I was a mother myself and feeling overwhelmed. My father had died in 1957, leaving my mother with 5 children between the ages of three weeks and 8 years. My bout with one sick baby helped me realize that I was not stronger than my mother, as I had always thought. I began to see her in a different light and I wondered who was this “superwoman” who single-parented her little family and kept them together against all odds?

And I realized that I needed to find my way back to her–although I would still need to try to figure out who she was. I feared that I couldn’t be a good daughter without knowing her deeper, and if I couldn’t be a good daughter, then how could I be a good mother?

In June 1986, when I saw the Fairbridge Farm property for the first time, I was dumbfounded by the beautiful countryside. I had expected a gravel pit. It hit me that the stark image I had in my mind came from my mother’s emotional distress at feeling so alone and bleak when she was removed from her family and sent to a new country.

By this time, I had been single parenting my three sons for many years–so finding time to pursue this research was challenging. After my 2 older sons were through high school, I returned to Victoria in 1996 to complete a degree that I started there in 1969. And I found my way into Women’s Studies.

In 1999, Professor Christine St. Peter led us to the BC Archives, which opened an avenue for research that I had no previous knowledge of. And the archives are where I found my mother’s past (in the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School records). I found a personal file for my mother, and together we discovered her immigration landing card, then her birth certificate, sent by her mother in 1948 when she wanted to get married, along with a couple of photographs. My mother seemed pleased as the research progressed: “Well they didn’t just throw me away, they kept records of me,” she said.

You have referred to your 20 years of exhaustive research on your book. What advice do you have for others who might be considering writing a family memoir?

For me, making my mother go back to that place she had buried all those years ago was a tricky business. I told myself I would stop if she became distressed. However my desire to understand the truth was so great, I wonder if I really would have.

My advice to anyone searching for a lost past is: don’t give up but don’t expect things to happen overnight.  Patience is important.

A number of factors enabled me to rediscover my mother’s past, but the most important thing was that she was with me while I did this research. I wrote my mother’s story because it was important to me to know about my past.

I am working on a sequel, which takes Marjorie through her years at the Farm School until early 1943. She was removed from the Farm School at 16 and was placed as a domestic servant in a home in Victoria. The working title for this sequel is Marjorie: The War Years. Today, my mother is offering her memories. The door is open to her past. The shame has dissipated. Marjorie now feels strong and proud about how she navigated her life and survived.

Have you or your mother heard from many other child migrants since your book was published?

Yes. I keep in regular contact with a number of the Former Fairbridgians sent to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, as well as several from the Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) Fairbridge Memorial College, which ran from 1946 until 1962, and I keep in touch with some of the Old Fairbridgians from the Australian Fairbridge Farm Schools.

Since the publication of my book, I have had numerous new contacts, which include email  from offspring of former Canadian child migrants, now living in the United States and in Australia.

In a recent CBC interview, you said many of those transported as children, including your mother, felt “shame” about their history. Do you think Gordon Brown’s apology and the slow growth of books and stories about child migrants helps to dissipate that feeling?

Yes, but it may be that each personal journey differs – so I cannot speak for others. I saw my mother transform during her visit to England in 2010 for then-prime minister Gordon Brown’s apology. If you were not directly affected by the events that lead up to a formal apology, then that act would hold little meaning. But I will never again question the validity of a formal apology after witnessing the healing firsthand.

When Gordon Brown looked into my mother’s eyes and said, “I am truly sorry,” that formal recognition allowed for more healing than all my years of research. I believe a lot of the shame stemmed from an inability to talk about her past and what brought her to Canada. So much was hidden, she found difficult to speak openly.

 Do you think Britons and North Americans have learned anything useful about child migration since the practice first started, even since your mother’s time?

Child migration went on for so long: Britain first started “transporting” children in 1618, and child migration to Australia continued until 1974.  So many well-read people tell me that they have never heard of British Child Migration. I too was surprised to learn that child migration had a 350-year history, with the first group of children being sent to Richmond, Virginia, at the request of King James I.

I feel at a loss to understand why its history has not become better known. Perhaps the main reason is that the full history is not taught in the public schools. The Canadian government’s attitude may also be a factor.  In 2009, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said there was “no need” for Canada to apologize for abuse and exploitation suffered by thousands of poor children shipped here from Britain.

Writers on Music: This album is the Bad Boy

It Might Take Long
Mindil Beach Markets (2013)
Produced and engineered by Sean McLean Carrie

Reviewed by Yasuko Thanh

Five guys.  Energetic, solid, toe-tapping rhythms. This music swaggers.

If this CD were a person, he’d be the “bad boy.” Shock of hair covering one eye. Tough guy. But with something else about him, too. In the way he moves. Something that says, I drink alone. And when he does, he sometimes cries.

Fans who’ve come to appreciate this band’s diversity won’t be disappointed. Track 7 starts out like a lullaby.  Almost as sweet as chocolate kisses with those little foil wrappers.  But the band’s website accurately warns that “light-hearted danceable jams” are tempered by “dark rock” including “a song about the zombie apocalypse.”

I can imagine playing this CD while driving in my car with an elbow out the window. Hanging at the beach, sand in my toes. Or cleaning empties off the kitchen table while clouds roll by outside dirty panes of glass.

There’s some great guitar work here. An I-mean-business style of playing that forces the listener to sit up and pay attention. Do not be fooled by the feel-good innocence of some of these songs. Tracks like those of a roller coaster switch quickly and the next thing you know you’re being taken on a wild ride through other sounds. Good ol’ fashioned rock, sunshine-reggae, even glimmers of punk.The songs flow into each other.  And as they do so, they inform each other. They add to the story to create a new whole.

In the past, I’ve stumbled by accident on great bands. Wandered into a gig, wet from the rain, looking more for shelter than music. This CD reminded me of those times  when I’ve not anticipated much but discovered something unexpected.

 

Yasuko Thanh’s short story collection Floating Like the Dead (M&S) was a Quill & Quire Best Books of 2012 selection.

Award-winning folkies do it again . . . beautifully

Long Gone Out West Blues
By Pharis & Jason Romero (2013)
Recorded by Ivan Rosenberg; mixed and mastered by David Travers-Smith

Reviewed by Jessica Benini  

Long Gone Out West Blues is an authentic folk, roots and bluegrass album uniting traditional classics alongside timeless songs written and performed by Pharis and Jason Romero. This down to earth duo has made a home in the wilderness near the hamlet of Horsefly, BC, home of Pharis’s family for five generations. Not only do they make beautiful music, they also work as a team custom building J. Romero Banjos, a company Jason started in Northern California where he originates. Their music reflects their hard working and organic lifestyle, welcoming you with a laid-back sound of blended harmonies combined with Jason’s smooth banjo licks and Pharis’s thoughtful lyrics.

Traditional songs such as “Across the Bridge,” “Wild Bill Jones,” “It Just Suits Me,” along with Jason’s banjo version of the classic fiddle tune, “Sally Goodin,” are gracefully honored with their renditions. Pharis and Jason’s own songs such as “Long Gone Out West Blues,” “Sad Old Song,” “Come On Home, The Little Things Are Hardest In The End,” acknowledges loneliness while finding inner strength when life brings you down and leaves you with a positive feel. Escaping the weight of the world, your own fears and prisons, and finding rest in the stillness where there is nothing else but you and your thoughts.

One of my favorites is “Lost Lula,” an instrumental and tribute to their dog Lula that never came home, lost to the wilderness on some unknown adventure. It echoes a haunting call into the sunset.

Their previous album A Passing Glimpse, won New/Emerging Artist of the Year at the 2012 Canadian Folk Music Awards, as well as Americana Album of the Year at the 2012 Independent Music Awards. Long Gone Out West Blues is just as strong and fantastic for any occasion–whether you are sipping on homemade iced tea on a hot summer afternoon or in a cozy cabin drinking whiskey in the middle of nowhere. And it will most likely inspire you to buy a J. Romero banjo in support of this genuine couple and their passion for music.

 

Jessica Benini is a West Coast Folk singer/songwriter and voice, guitar & harmonica teacher based in Victoria, BC.

Victoria author bares more than her soul

By Will Johnson

Yasuko Thanh is not afraid to take off her clothes.

The Journey Prize-winning Victoria author, who published her debut collection of short stories Floating Like the Dead last year, is slated to appear as Miss July in a calendar of nude Canadian authors due in 2014. The project, titled “Bare it For Books,” will raise funds for PEN Canada.

But Thanh may be the only author in the calendar who already has experience working as a nude model.

“I’m trying not to tie those two worlds together as a deliberate decision,” she said. “In my wild-child days, or whatever you want to call it, I did modeling and it was certainly of a different texture. That was working as a part of the sex industry. And that’s not necessarily something I want to relive.”

“I think I have a nudist streak in me,” she said. “Anaïs Nin has this wonderful line, in one of her stories or journals, I’m not sure. ‘As sexless as a child who thinks nothing of his nakedness’. I think of it kind of like that. It doesn’t need to be provocative in that sexual way.”

“When we do the photo shoot that’s coming up on March 3, we have some interesting ideas that are going to stay away from that. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be tongue-in-cheek,” she said.

The project, which is the brainchild of author Amanda Leduc and classical music producer Allegra Young, will feature 12 nude authors and will raise financial support for PEN Canada.

When Thanh was contacted by Young and Leduc, she eagerly accepted the invitation to participate. Victoria photographer Anastasia Andrews volunteered to take the photos.

“I said any way I can help, I’m there. I think most people have heard of PEN, and I certainly support the work they do.”

Thanh enthusiastically agreed with author Vincent Lam, who will appear alongside her in the calendar and was quoted in a recent story in The National Post as saying that it’s much more personal to publish a book than to expose your body to the world.

“Putting a book, putting your soul out there, that’s way more personal,” she said.

But she also emphasized it’s important to keep her experiences in perspective.

“Yes, it’s a little soul-baring to have a book, to put it out there and to have people saying things about it. Oh, poor me. But there are places where you’re not just putting your soul out there, you’re actually putting your life on the line or you could be looking at a prison sentence,” she said.

This is why Thanh felt so strongly about supporting PEN Canada.

“The fact that there’s an organization out there, fighting for people’s freedom of speech, well that’s great. And I want to support that any way I can.”

When asked why she thought of Thanh for the calendar, which also features a diverse selection of authors such as Miranda Hill, Angie Abdou and Daniel MacIvor, Leduc’s answer was simple: “because she’s hot stuff.”

“The point of BIFB, in addition to raising funds for PEN, is to introduce Canadians to writers they might not have encountered,” said Leduc. “Yasuko is a great writer, a young writer, and maybe not as well known as some of the others in the calendar.”

When asked how she feels about appearing alongside Yann Martel, bestselling author of Life of Pi, Thanh beamed happily.

“It feels friggin’ awesome,” she said.

 

Writer Will Johnson is back in Victoria after stints in Vancouver and Nova Scotia.