Shy in person, bold on the page

Shy: An Anthology

Edited by Naomi K. Lewis & Rona Altrows

The University of Alberta Press

171 pages, $24.95

Reviewed by Senica Maltese

Shy, An Anthology battles the stigmas and assumptions that surround what it means to be shy with a collection of poems and personal essays. As someone who has always self-identified as shy, regardless of my peers’ boisterous disagreements, I approached this anthology with a combination of weariness and curiosity. I found the foreword, which described, with great spirit, the crippling effects of shyness and social anxiety, nerve-wracking. It did not seem true to my experience, and I became worried that this anthology, though full to the brim with good intention, would dramatize shyness, making it feel less real, less important. I was afraid that shyness would become a caricature.

Luckily, by the end of the book, this fear was assuaged. I found the personal essays particularly interesting and engaging. Some of the contributors recounted childhood experiences much like mine.  For instance, Naomi K. Lewis describes French Immersion in her contribution, “Say Water.” Primarily, the essays recounted childhood experiences, though some did discuss shyness in adulthood. For this reason, I couldn’t help but think that these stories would make powerful guest lectures at elementary or high schools. As someone who has already worked through the shyness of childhood, these stories did not carry as much weight for me as they might for someone in the midst of these feelings.

I appreciated  those essays that focused on shyness in early adulthood, and even late adulthood. I particularly enjoyed Jeff Miller’s “Common Loon,” which recounts his experiences with shyness in a foreign country after a disastrous break up. Debbie Bateman’s “Amongst the Unseen and Unheard” reminded me that the “most damaging part of shyness isn’t the embarrassment,” but rather “the missed moments” and all the meaningful connections that we fail to make due to our own fears.

As for the poetry, I really enjoyed Lorna Crozier’s contribution, “Watching My Lover,” which is indescribably beautiful, and Kerry Ryan’s “How to be shy,” which has a refreshingly comedic take on shyness. The first segment of Ryan’s poem, entitled “How to be shy: the hug,” is especially funny, but also reflects how I and other shy individuals feel when confronted with random acts of physical closeness.

Even though Shy had its ups and downs, as with any anthology, I found it to be a  worthwhile read that I would recommend to anyone who has felt some sort of philosophical compulsion to understand her or his own shyness. In many ways, Shy is a compilation of coming of age stories centred on bashful, artistic individuals. And I am thankful to them for sharing their experiences.

Senica Maltese is a BA student focusing on Honours English and Writing.

Poet active on Victoria’s Flamenco Scene

By Garth Martens

Flamenco derives from the south of Spain, a distinctly gitano or gypsy phenomenon with Moorish, Judaic, and Catholic influence. An innovative art form requiring practised improvisation as well as craft, it was passed down through oral transmission rather than sheet music.  In fact, efforts to set it down on paper reduce its complexity. Flamenco’s rhythm structures are assertive, the singing voices rough as salt, and the dancing marked by intensities of emotion, the killer look, and sections of percussive footwork that rap like thunder on the floor. Dancers imitate manoeuvrings of the bull or the matador with dramatic arm gestures and little flores of the hands.Flamenco isn’t about looking sexy, but about passion: a passion inflected with anger, love, dread, cheekiness, grief, and pride. Always pride.

Six years ago, I began as a student with Alma de España, Victoria’s singular water-shed for flamenco dance, guitar, and cante, founded twenty-three years ago by Veronica Maguire and Harry Owen. My priority then was to study the singing and immerse myself in the rhythm as a palmero, someone who supports the basic accents, an articulate clapping, while the dancers or singers are free to weave their syncopations.

I was hooked within my first year of study, but only in the last year have I felt, for the first time, like a dancer.  Some intervening blockage has slipped away so I learn the choreography much faster — my ear and my feet in alignment. As well, this discipline gives me personal sustenance, transforms a troubled emotion into a brightness, not by sweetening it or simplifying it, but through a rightful sweat. Many dancers I know admit to confronting inner obstructions in every new choreography. Some of them, to tune themselves to the particular piece, will draw on archetypes, images that ride within their bodies as they dance. Flamenco cultivates the vast inner multitude and favours the intricate over the reductive.

I’ll be working with Alma de España this winter in preparation for Pasajes, a major production slated for July 12, 2014, at the Royal Theatre. Canadian artists include Veronica Maguire (dancer), Gareth Owen (flamenco guitarist), JoAnn Dalisay (pianist/composer), and me(poet). Among those coming directly from Spain are Domingo Ortega (dancer), María Bermúdez (dancer), and Jesús Álvarez (flamenco guitarist). While this is Veronica’s personal story, it’s also mine and yours, resonant with shared passages of life, death, and regeneration. I’ve been contracted to write original English-language poetry, which I’ll perform live as part of the show. Advanced student dancers and singers, accompanied by guitarist Gareth Owen, will also perform in intimate in-studio shows in February, May, and June. I’ll perform in two of these as a dancer. Alma de España runs classes September to June at all levels in flamenco dance, guitar, and cante. For tickets or inquiries:  1.250.384.8832  /  info@almadeespana.com.

Garth Martens won The Bronwen Wallace Award in 2011, a national prize for the best writer under thirty-five who has not yet published a book. His first book will appear with House of Anansi in April, 2014. You can hear him read his poem Dreamtime here: https://soundcloud.com/prism-mag/dreamtime-by-garth-martens.

Harris wins his second contest

Thorazine Beach

By Bradley Harris

Anvil Press

127 pp., $16

Reviewed by Tyler Gabrysh

In this private-investigator-driven intrigue, dialogue proves hard hitting, wise ass, rarely subtle and never dull. Action isn’t far behind despite events often cloaked in unknowns and half-truths.

Working  in the disparate socio-economic divisions of Memphis, Jack Minyard is a transplanted Canuck who experiences both ends of the economic spectrum, although pretending to hobnob in ritzy clubs is about as good as it gets.

Generally he scrapes by in the trenches of uncomfortably long stakeouts (in car and in thicket), and eking it out in a series of shabby motels with suspect clientele who likewise call such places home. Life for him is an unravelling carpet. And not in red. Now 60,  a recovering alcoholic, and Thorazine user (to ‘even things out’), Minyard has also been ditched by wife Lynette, and that’s not all. His diet is terrible, portliness reigns, and his name is still smeared (innocent or not),  from a money laundering and fraud scandal a while back.

Whether this history is presented in Ruby Ruby, the first of a series based on our lead character is unclear. That book by  Harris won the 21st Annual International 3-Day Novel Writing Contest. What’s even more impressive is that Harris became the only repeat winner with this book in the 2012 competition.

The main characters of Thorazine Beach all chide Jack (thanks in no part to his weakened confidence), but they also care about him in ways more often implied than expressed. Readers witness the sass of Starbucks shift supervisor Nicki Jenks and MacDonald of the Memphis PD, another attitudinal character Jack works for (with promise of nebulous payment). He’s never fully privy to his assignment but it’s one he’s fully counted on for.

Brutish Eileen at Red Line Investigations occasionally throws him a bone, however he’s technically not an employee. And though he receives praise for breaking big on a big bucks insurance fraud, no takers at the office on his ‘my treat’ after-hours celebration offer.

Unknown to him, she arranges a meeting with Barbara Jean McCorkle, a church zealot, casserole-making, uppity, cringe-worthy sort of lady. She already knows Jack, wants his help on her own case concerning sudden money-bags husband Clayton, but becomes unsettled when he presses her for concrete details.

Even though readers will root for Minyard as Minyard finds his backbone, the novel has its weak points. The chapters do not run sequentially (though they provide us a brief heading of calendar date, time, and location). This does unnecessary disservice to the narrative, as one frequently needs to flip back for reference.

Further, the wrap up of characters with plot is hurried and feels inconsistent with the in-depth story line and pacing that preceded it. Still, I’m curious to find out what’s next for likeable Jack Minyard.

Tyler Gabrysh (www.tylergabrysh.com) is a writer living in Victoria.

Play refuses easy solutions

Armstrong’s War

By Colleen Murphy

Directed by Mindy Parfitt

 Revue Stage,  Arts Club Theatre Company, Vancouver

 (World Premiere, Oct. 17 – Nov. 9/13)

Reviewed by Joy Fisher

When 12-year-old Halley Armstrong comes to the hospital room to read to a convalescing Afghanistan veteran, he tries to send her away. But she won’t take no for an answer. Thus begins an unlikely relationship that eventually enables each of them to reveal hidden secrets.

Halley, brilliantly played by 14-year-old Matreya Scarrwener in her theatrical debut, is determined to earn a community service badge as a Pathfinder. She has picked Michael off the “readers wanted” list because they have the same last name. But Michael, played by Mik Byskov, a recent UVic graduate, just wants to be left to his imaginings about his friend Robbie, with whom he shared a traumatizing war experience.

As it turns out, Halley and Michael have much more in common than just their last names. In different ways, the usual routes to conventional lives have been disrupted for each and they have both become “pathfinders” groping toward an ill-defined future. Halley is in a wheelchair and, when the play opens, Michael is under his hospital bed re-living his war trauma. As they read Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage together, they gradually confront the face-saving narratives they have each invented as a means of survival and admit to each other the truth of what really happened.

Both actors responded to deft direction by Mandy Parfitt, Scarrwener catching perfectly the delicate balance of a 12-year-old between childish fantasy and brave confrontation of real life, and Byskov sending shivers down the spine when he voiced the pleading of a wounded buddy: “Killl meee.”

The play isn’t perfect. Too much time devoted to reading aloud interrupted the dramatic action, and the decision to have Halley read the dialogue of union soldiers with a Southern accent and to depict Michael as a poor reader added to the tedium because the words and meaning were difficult to understand.

The most unsatisfying aspect of this play, however, may be the fault of unrealistic audience expectations. We want transformation, to see the characters rising whole and perfect out of the fires of devastation. But life isn’t like that, and playwright Colleen Murphy won’t let us kid ourselves that it is.

At one point, in a rage, Michael tears a book to pieces. When he gives it back to Halley, it is a patchwork of taped pages. Halley is shocked, but later reports that her teacher has accepted her cover story and assured her that there is a “replacement fund for books,” That may be true for library books, but not for the books of our lives. When our lives are destroyed, Murphy seems to suggest, all we can do is patch them up and move ahead as best we can.

Neither of these characters is transformed; they both cling to whatever they can of the conventional rules of life. By the end of the play, Michael is back in uniform, ready and willing to return to war despite the horrors he has experienced.  Halley is no doubt making plans for acquiring her next community service badge.

“That’s your trouble,” Michael says to Halley toward the end of the play. “You hope too much.” So do we all, and sometimes it leads to disappointment. But Halley has the final rejoinder. She reminds Michael of the family motto she tries to live by: “I remain unvanquished.” May it be so for us all.

Joy Fisher is a Victoria writer.

David A. Jaffe’s Music at Open Space

Lafayette String Quartet, Andrew Schloss, Scott Macinnes, Trimpin, and guests present: the Music of David A. Jaffe

8 p.m., November 8, 2013 

Open Space

admission $15 general/$10 students, seniors, members 

Related event: 

November 9, 8 p.m. Uvic Faculty Concert Series: Guitarworks. Alexander Dunn with David A. Jaffe and guests. Phillip T. Young Recital Hall, University of Victoria

YA novel limns graffiti complexities

Burning from the Inside

By Christine Walde

Cormorant/Dancing Cat Books

240 pages, $14.95

Reviewed by Kirsten Larmon

Christine Walde’s second book for young adults, Burning from the Inside, is a richly complex, often lyrical novel that portrays the rarely addressed graffiti artist community.

The perspective shifts between Thom, an eighteen-year-old graffiti artist who has been on the street for three years, and Aura, an artist with strong beliefs about art, politics and the rest of her world.  I found these shifts, Aura’s terse narration, and a lack of dialogue indicators,  at first more jarring than engaging. However, as I persisted, I found myself hooked into Thom and Aura’s world and their mysterious quest.

Thom has just been caught graffiti-writing for the third time, a serious offence. However, rather than be handed over to his parents, Thom cuts a deal with the police. He agrees to help find a notorious graffiti crew who call themselves the G7 and who have been defacing billboards all over the city. By day, Thom will be serving his community time “buffing” graffiti off walls; by night, he will be free to graffiti those same walls, posing as an artist named TNT and searching out the G7. However, when he meets the group and Aura, a dedicated member, Thom begins to question everything he has been told. Together Thom and Aura begin a search for the truth behind the G7’s leader and a missing young female graffiti artist, Story.

Burning is a book about growing up and finding one’s way, populated by teens trying to sort out who they are, what their world is, and how they intend to inhabit it. Unlike many authors who write for teen audiences, Walde allows her characters some bad behaviour without punishing them for it: pot, alcohol and ecstasy are all consumed (in moderation) without wrecking lives. Her teens are strident in their beliefs and full of certainty about the alienation and corruption of the corporate adult world. Though it is set in the present, real world, there is a touch of mysticism to the novel – a hint of fate and prophesy that runs through dreams, visions, and substance trips.

Thom and Aura are compelling characters, and the mystery which overtakes them is well-paced and suspenseful. A poet, Walde’s prose is precise and often beautiful, if sometimes elevated beyond language typical of the YA landscape: obscure words like “elegiacally” pop up from time to time. However, the novel is not without weaknesses: there are plot points that fray on close inspection, characters whose actions feel overly piloted by the author and movie cliches that skim over difficult plausibility issues. In particular, one character’s motivations are barely comprehensible and culminate in a final scene that feels like a derailment of his portrayal throughout most of the novel.

Burning from the Inside is not a simple read. It is a complex book for the inquisitive, the dreamers and the literary – a perhaps small, but certainly important, segment of the young-adult reading market.

Kirsten Larmon is a Victoria resident

 

 

 

 

First Nations voices powerful

We are Born with Songs Inside Us:

Lives and Stories of First Nations People in British Columbia

By Katherine Palmer Gordon

Harbour Publishing, 2013

246 pages,  $24.95

Reviewed by Margaret Thompson

As its publisher suggests, Katherine Palmer Gordon’s sixth book, We Are Born with the Songs Inside Us, is particularly timely. Regrettably, Canadians have grown accustomed to finding First Nations issues in the headlines. The long litany of grievances—poverty, inadequate housing, addiction, disproportionate suicide and imprisonment rates, abuse of women, not to mention the toxic legacy of the residential schools—has created a sad and negative climate for Aboriginal people. This is where Gordon’s book is most timely, for it challenges those negative stereotypes and offers a truly optimistic view of First Nations people.

Gordon interviewed hundreds of individuals, but presents profiles of sixteen in her book. Their backgrounds and occupations are as varied as you would expect in any group: they are teachers and artists, entrepreneurs and politicians, doctors and actors, athletes and councillors, lawyers and chiefs. Some have seen their way clearly from the beginning; others have struggled to overcome disadvantages. What they have in common is success and a powerful belief in the value of their cultural heritage.

In her Introduction, Gordon  describes the role of father birds in teaching their offspring the full range of their characteristic songs. “A baby bird that does not have the opportunity to hear its father sing will never learn its proper song. It will remain bereft of its complete identity, and the single most important characteristic governing its ability to take care of itself, be independent, communicate and relate—not only to members of its own species, but to all other creatures.”

The analogy with First Nations people is persuasive. The residential schools set out deliberately to erase that identity. Many of the individuals profiled in this book are the children of the generation so damaged by that policy. They see clearly that they need to go back to first principles; as Trudy Lynn Warner says, “I know we have been and continue to be guided on our path by our ancestors,” and Clarence Louie states firmly,”My basic mantra is: make sure you keep your cultural identity.” Some strive passionately to preserve their languages, seeing in them the key to that identity; “After all,” says Mike Willie, “if you don’t know who you are, you’re just roaming this world, lost.”

The individuals whose voices are heard in this book are quick to point out that there is no stagnation involved in returning to ancestral ways. They see that the strength acquired by knowing exactly who they are enables them to move forward, whether that involves creating a business, perfecting new art forms or negotiating a treaty. Clarence Louie added to his basic mantra: “…if you want to prosper, get an education, work hard and throw everything you can at economic development.” None of these individuals stands still; all of them share Beverley O’Neil’s strategy for marathon running, aiming not at the finishing line, but past it.

Gordon’s subjects know they have a long way to go, but their conviction and enthusiasm is impossible to downplay. The voices of these young, articulate First Nations people convey boundless optimism for the future. How astute Gordon was to get out of the way and let them speak for themselves.

Margaret Thompson’s new novel, The Cukoo’s Child, will be published in Spring 2014

Contest-winning novel still kills

Small Apartments

By Chris Millis

Anvil Press

127 pp., $16

Reviewed by Tyler Gabrysh

Meet Franklin Franklin, a short, fat, forty-something with a few eccentricities and one fantastic problem. Chris Millis’ winning entry in the 23rd Annual International 3-Day Novel Writing Contest (2000), which also received major motion picture treatment last year, is fresh off the press again in a second edition.

Somewhat similar in plot and, to a degree, sensibility with Hans Keilson’s “Comedy in a Minor Key,” “Small Apartments” opens with:

Face up and smiling lay the warm, dead body of Albert Olivetti on the cracked, linoleum kitchenette floor of Franklin’s small apartment on the west side of Buffalo.

From here we experience our protagonist’s comically deranged (and at times naïve and sarcastic, we’re never sure) personality, to go with his odd habits and awkward physical self, juxtaposed with a host of colourful minor characters.

There’s brother Bernard who sends him envelopes of fingernail clippings from a psychiatric centre, the lovely mother-teenage daughter tandem across the street who warm up his binoculars, and the two other tenants in the 100 Garner building.

Tommy Balls is a prototypical lazy stoner with a family-disassociated father and a bible-thumping mother who’s devoted herself to the teachings of one author-TV celeb psych doc, Sage Mennox; a man name-checked throughout the book and indeed pops up at one point. The other tenant is Mr. Allspice, a no-nonsense retired marine who detests Franklin and the wall-shaking bellow of his Swiss Alphorn (yes, that’s right!)

Millis employs linguistic ease with deft wit in writing about circumstances just real enough to be plausible and yet uneasily intriguing. It’s akin to viewing a gruesome accident as the paramedics scramble about the highway. He’s fittingly chosen an array of unique names (Burt Walnut, anyone?) and the setting choices of Lackawanna and Buffalo (over, say, Brooklyn) isn’t per chance either.

Having lived with his brother for twenty-two years, Franklin has become even more the hermit in the four years after Bernard’s confinement. But he does cradle his lifelong dreams of the heaven he’s built Switzerland up to be. His abode is modest, and we intermittently find him ruminating on what to do with the corpse inside it. The urgency is there, sort of, and at one point we experience his funny pontificating of alternatives. as if he’s selecting items at a buffet.

The strengths of this book, such as this absurdity, are utilized well in the mere two days of the entire fiction, and like “Seinfeld,” not all the laughs and attention are entirely protagonist-focused. Tommy, Allspice, Walnut, and Bernard all have their own little brief spotlight (though Allspice’s feels misplaced, disjointed, and briefly out-of-character).

Within hours of a barn going up in smoke, a triptych of proficient fire and police pals begin their investigation. Coincidentally Bernard also dies, though he still has surprises in store for Franklin.

As the short chapters fly by in this wonderful, and often humourous read, the narrative gets neither cheesy (in a bad way) nor obvious as the authorities close in while their suspect heads back to his small apartment.

Tyler Gabrysh (www.tylergabrysh.com) is a writer  living in Victoria.

 

Gateway expose shows inaction no option

The Oil Man and the Sea:

Navigating the Northern Gateway

By Arno Kopecky

Douglas & McIntyre

264 pages, $26.95

Reviewed by Aaron Shepard

Part rousing adventure and travelogue, part exposé, The Oil Man and the Sea follows journalist and travel writer Arno Kopecky and photographer Ilja Herb as they sail from Victoria up B.C.’s central coast. They travel not just as reporters but as activists, hoping to raise awareness about the environmental risks the Northern Gateway pipeline poses to one of the world’s last great wildernesses.

As with most books of this sort, we begin not with big themes, but the adventurer-writer beset by anchor mishaps, engine failure and an overwhelming array of nautical charts and equipment. At times in the first few chapters, their quest seems not just quixotic, but forgotten altogether. But the fumbling of these novice sailors is an intimate, effective way of immersing readers in an unfamiliar landscape. And their early misadventures dovetail nicely with one of the book’s main themes: the vibrant, hazardous complexity of the coastline and its people.

Kopecky introduces us, directly or indirectly, to the multitude of big names at the centre of the Northern Gateway drama, including Enbridge, the federal and provincial governments, the Joint Review Panel, the Heiltsuk, Gitga’at, Haisla Nations, the Pacific Pilotage Authority (the pilot boats that would lead oil tankers through the treacherous coastline), and Bill C-38, the federal omnibus bill that inexplicably closed B.C.’s oil spill response centre. We also meet a host of memorable characters: fishermen, engineers, environmentalists, First Nations elders and band councilors who offer their different opinions about pipelines, refineries and oil tankers.

But it is the coastline itself – a “labyrinth” of channels, straits, bays and islands – that remains the biggest player on stage, a place both robust and fragile with its turbulent seas, salmon runs and rich wildlife. Perhaps the most vivid evocation of place is near the book’s end, when Kopecky explores Douglas Channel and the humpback whales that may have to share their once-quiet waters with tankers bearing bitumen and liquefied natural gas.

Between conversations with the locals, fishing and grizzly bear watching – the book contains some gorgeous photos – Kopecky pulls the lens back to show the equally intricate web of national politics, science and economics. An adventure that begins with two young men goofing around on a sailboat becomes a story about Big Oil, and the future of a province, its people and its wilderness.

The Oil Man and the Sea is refreshingly current and vital, with a postscript that includes the deadly explosion in Lac-Megantic this past July. Disasters like Lac-Megantic and the Kalamazoo River bitumen spill in 2010 illustrate our complicity: our consumption drives the need to pull as much oil from the ground as humanly possible, whatever the risk. Kopecky’s quest for a tanker-free coast may indeed prove quixotic, but his message is that we should take responsibility, at the very least, for ensuring governments and industry enforce and follow strict environmental and safety regulations. No matter how confusing or paradoxical the issue of pipelines and the economy, our inaction is not an option.

Aaron Shepard is a Victoria writer. His debut novel, When is a Man, will be published in April 2014.