Small Stones for January 2016 Week 3 (Part 1) Jan. 15 to 18, 2016

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photo credit: Carol A. Stephen

Week 3  sees the days longer, sun, where it is not hidden behind clouds rises earlier in the morning, and with the sun I begin to rise earlier too.  Before I sit down to write, I first spend a little time reading, goal this year is 75 books, and I begin the week having read 9 so far.

 

Jan. 15 2016

A carrier shoulder strap on a backpack

(Wikipedia)

Each new worry given strength by doubt
builds its own mountain, fills backpacks with
its rocks for me to carry as my burden
Logic never wins this battle, no matter
how I teach myself why each fear is a chimera
always the tiny voice saying “but you don’t really know…”

 

 

Jan. 16 2016

I hear the laughter: his, my own
when I try to plead my case for why worry
holds its sway. One side of me knows it’s foolish
the other has its doubts. Always it is the doubter
that wins out.

Jan. 17 2016
Horizon silhouette against
a purple twilight sky, the song dog
lifts his muzzle to the wind
and his desert dog song soars
skyward in a moon moan to
haunt the coming night.

*song dog quoted from Alice Notley’s Culture of One


Embed from Getty Images

Jan. 18 2016

Missing the words of Rilke or the wisdom
of Anishinaabeg, the teachings of the Dene,
words come slowly or stall in the January sky
finding only weather and the harsher side of winter.
Reading only the indecipherable, the inscrutable,
even the poems are waiting, perhaps for Spring.

CAS

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke (Wikipedia)

Small Stones for January, 2016 Week 2

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IMG_0219

In Week 2, small ruminations on the season, and how it affects mood of the poet and the poem, but also one or two riffs that may become full poems this year.  I decided that 18 days’ worth was too much to post all at once, and have instead chosen to post a week at a time.

 

Jan. 8 2016

Some days no voices breakMODPO TREASURE against
the quiet of the day, but words rush
forth born of lines rising out of books
urgent in their hunger to be heard.
Other days chatter drowns
the sound of syntax, blocks
the flow of couplet or quatrain,
and every page remains its pristine
and lonely white.

 

Jan. 9 2016

When do you stop choosing
to climb up when you reach
the bottom of the dark?
Or is there no choice
but to seek out the light?
What thing inside fights
to survive the dark as
the drowning fight in panic
frantic for the air.


Embed from Getty Images

Jan. 10 2016
LEFT VS RIGHT. JUSTIFIED.

They say that left-handed people are

the only ones in their right minds
to justify the claim of right-thinking
even genius. They list
the actors, the musicians, U.S. presidents
and royalty, but
always begin with genius—
Leonardo, Madame Curie, Albert Einstein.

And what of writers?
Isn’t it easier

to slant to right instead of backhand
or the left hand-smirch of ink—
always the blue-sided fist or even teal.

But even so

they boast their Mark Twain, their Helen Keller

and their artists—

Michelangelo! Escher! Even Klee!
held their brushes slantwise
or suffered paint from wrist to elbow—
muddy umber blend of cadmium, yellow ochre, cobalt blue.

The only fallacies in all the theories

that they’re clumsy, somehow sinister, born of Satan
and on the wrong side of the blanket.

It’s all just jealousy from the run-of-the-mill
righthanders.
Carol A. Stephen

Jan. 11 2016

A month of short days and still-black
skies at morning herald dim hours of winter.
Slow dawn brings chill blue skies: the light
returns. Why is the cost of sunlight
the icy wind of January and what blows in
upon it? The linden sheds more small branches
to delight my neighbour in his not-so-secret wish
to see the tree itself come down.

cropped-p1050590.jpg

Jan. 12 2016
The white world has returned, scourge
of the faint-heart driver I’ve become,
snug and cosy, adrift and surfing
in the virtual world technology inflicts.
My penalty? The guilt at the undone,
the unmade soup, unfinished poems,
and all the unread books I fool myself
that someday I will read.

Christmas lanterns 2009031

Jan. 13 2016

Binder after binder I browse
my life in poems, year on year
the ebb and flow of form, of rhyme
or free-flow and line breaks, found
poems, lost words, rediscovered
and throughout the same themes
same stories: time and the river,
time and the body, the creak and sag
the losses: youth, work, husband, lover
the elusive freedom from fear,
the euphoria of joy.

 

Jan. 14 2016
I wonder why winter
Why it isn’t my season even though
it matches the season of my life
I was born in April, the season of renewal
In a kind world spring children should share
the gift of renewing youth.

CAS

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

Small Stones for January 2016 Week 1

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stones pic for blogEach January for the last several years, I have participated in one way or another with the Small Stones/River of Stones challenge.  This year I have been struggling with inspiration as it always seems like the cold and the snow are uppermost in my mind as January begins, and as winter takes its firm hold.  I was an April baby, and perhaps that is why over the years I have found the darker months of the year difficult. They’ve become a time of hibernation and a depressing season, as it is for many of us. This is perhaps why I have held off posting this year’s Small Stones.

As the days start lengthening though, I find myself striving to find other words to move away from the dead of winter. With mixed results. These are, as always, spontaneous writing, and so very much first drafts, potential discards or lines for mining later and carving into something else when the time comes. Here are the Stones for January 1st to 7th.

 

Small Stone for January 1, 2016

In the air, strains of Auld Lang Syne.
As images of foreign shores fill the screen
with wishes for the year, a bittersweet
memory of someone no longer here
to share the new lingers still.

Among bygones and shadows,
filtered images of yesterday
blur sepia. Another leaf
drops from the tree, buried
in the snowy pages of fallen years,
the new calendar yet blank of story.

Jan 2 2016

Last week the grass still spoke in summer dialect
today the world breathes cold and colder still
Neighbours call thanks over the road
for help with the daily task of digging out from
under winter’s weighted white

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Jan. 3 2016

Sky and snow blur to one,
the sun hibernating this noon.
Over the river the greyness darkens
to promises of fresh white
and cotton wool dreams

Jan. 4 2016
Out from the shadows of the old year,
brilliance of a January day pretends
a warmth it doesn’t own, only the promises
we grasp as if it were the gold ring
we’ve searched for,
always another distance.

Carleton Place on the Mississippi

Carleton Place on the Mississippi

Rivers to cross,
crosses to carry,
we carry
hopes still wished for but
still
just a hairsbreadth more.

 

 

 

Jan. 5 2016
A weight descends out of darkness
muffling the music and I’ve stopped dancing,
stopped singing too, my voice
a silent croak as notes, no longer in my throat,
rise silently out of hearing.

It is not comfortable here.
Somewhere, as the year approached its close
inner strength died too, beneath the long dark hours.
I waver here between the pain of moving forward
and the pain of staying still.

Jan. 6 2016

Heard screams are terrifying, but those unheard
are more terrifying still
– from Odysseus Blinds Polyphemus, The Polyphemus Painter,
Dual Impressions, John Brantingham & Jeffrey Graessley

Unmoving here the silence deafens as only silence can,
yet inside my head, the sound of a voice,
terrifying in its screams.

What is there in the dead of winter that
turns bones chill? As if, like the bounty of summer,
the spirit succumbs to the first killing frost.

Perhaps a child born of spring wilts too
as winds turn bitter when the sun turns its colder face
and the sky bleeds white.

Jan. 7 2016

“The moth’s single thought is light”
– from Notes for a Small Pocket/Call and Response Lorna Crozier

Suppose the world was only about light—
Light as religion, light equals life,
Light running through each artery, every vein.
What, then, of winter, of the dark time, the night?
Would there be a small death each night, not sleep,
but death, and rebirth with the coming of each day?
With each turn of the Earth upon its axis,
each black face of Earth
held away from the Sun, every evening
a new and quiet grieving.

English: Moth attracted by porchlight

(Wikipedia)

 

 

CAA-NCR Biweekly Notices for Jan. 18 through Jan. 31, 2016

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Canadian Parliament, Ottawa

Canadian Parliament, Ottawa (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION BRANCH (OTTAWA)

BIWEEKLY NOTICES FOR TWO WEEKS: JAN. 18 TO JAN. 31, 2016

Need more information on CAA-NCR? Visit us at http://canadianauthors.org/nationalcapitalregion/

TO ALL READERS: Please send all submissions & event notices to Carol Stephen at cstephen0@gmail.com

 

MEETINGS & EVENTS

CAA-NCR MONTHLY MEETING, FEBRUARY

 

TOPIC: Scribing Sex –  Romancing the Page

PRESENTER: Jasmine Aziz
DATE: Tuesday, February 9, 2016
TIME: 7:00 – 9:00 pm
LOCATION:  McNabb Recreation Centre, 180 Percy St. east of Bronson Ave.

Jasmine Aziz will be outlining the differences between erotica and romance – from definitions to delivery. She will give examples of how to craft stories according to the audience you are targeting, giving examples on the difference between mainstream sensual writing versus more explicit content. There will be discussion about the art of writing erotic content to elicit arousal and when this is beneficial to a story and when it is not.

This talk is based on the majority of questions Jasmine receives from authors asking how to write in various styles, eg. erotica vs. mainstream romance, and how they can tell the difference.

NOTE: This presentation contains explicit content and language due to the nature of the topic.

BIO: Jasmine Aziz is a retired vibrator seller.  She worked as a consultant for four years doing in-home party presentations selling adult novelty toys. In that time she met many amazing and diverse women who inspired her to write a novel that would help both men and women navigate the subtle complexities of the modern woman’s life. Her first novel, the comedic Sex & Samosas, straddles the genres of women’s fiction, self-help and erotica while taking a humorous look at cultural and social issues. It has recently been optioned for a movie. Jasmine is currently putting the finishing touches to her next novel, a memoir, based on the wild and unconventional four years she sold adult toys entitled Bring Your Own Batteries.


29TH ANNUAL NATIONAL CAPITAL WRITING CONTEST

 Short Story • Poetry $300 • $200 • $100 NEW! Open to all residents of Ontario and Quebec. NEW!

  • Short Story, max. 2500 words. Poetry (not Haiku), max. 60 lines including title & blank lines.
  • Must be the original, unpublished work of the entrant.
  • In English, typed, double-spaced (but not for poems), on 8 1/2 × 11″ paper, one side only, page-numbered consecutively on bottom right of pages. No extra-large type, please! Indicate category and title on top left corner of every page.
  • Contest is blind judged which means the Contest Coordinator will assign a number to your entry that will correspond to what she sends off to the judge. (Don’t put your name on it anywhere!)
  • Don’t forget to include your entry fee.*
  • Please understand that we can’t acknowledge receipt or return your entries.
  • CAA–NCR reserves the right to withhold any prize should entries fail to meet expected standards.
  • We will need a separate page with your information on it: category, story/poem title, name, address, phone number, e-mail address. Cheques payable to Canadian Authors Association–NCR.

I’m in! How do I do this? Entry fees* are $15 per story; $15 for up to three (3) poems. Poems will be judged individually.  

MAIL ENTRIES TO: CAA National Capital Writing Contest, 163 Bell St., N., Box 57081, Ottawa ON K1R 7E1. Attention: Sherrill Wark

Awards Night: We hope that all finalists and their friends and families will attend the always-exciting Awards Night, Monday, May 9, 2016, 7 PM, AUDITORIUM, MAIN BRANCH, OTTAWA PUBLIC LIBRARY. Finalists may be invited to read their entries. Winning entries will be published in CAA–NCR’s e-mag Byline. (Copyright will remain with you.)

Deadline Midnight FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2016. (Get it postmarked if you’re close). QUESTIONS? Contact Sherrill Wark, Coordinator, NCWC at ncwc@crowecreations.ca  

*“One Free Entry” for CAA–NCR members no longer available.

 

CAA NATIONAL NEWS:

 CANADIAN AUTHORS 2016 LITERARY AWARDS

Entries are now being accepted for the Canadian Authors Association’s 2016 Literary Awards. Criteria and submission details are available in the  CAA 2016 Literary Awards Guidelines

Complete the CAA 2016 Awards entry form online, print it and send it to us along with your submission and entry fee. The deadline for submissions is EXTENDED to Jan. 30, 2016.

Now in its 41st year, the CAA Literary Awards program honours writing that achieves excellence without sacrificing popular appeal. Past winners have included Margaret Atwood, Timothy Findley, Leonard Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, Carol Shields, Patrick DeWitt, Nino Ricci, Michael S. Cross, Don McKay, Charlotte Gray, Joseph Boyden and countless other literary stars – some relatively unknown at the time they received the award. For more information about past winners, shortlisted authors, and awards events, visit our website at http://canadianauthors.org/national/awards/

 

OTHER WORKSHOPS

 THE BANFF CENTRE SPRING/SUMMER PROGRAMS: Banffcentre

Our 2016 poetry faculty within The Banff Centre’s Writing Studio  program. 2016 sees three amazing poets – Karen Solie , Lisa Robertson and Michael Dickman – work intimately with twelve participants on poetry manuscripts. Karen, associate director, poetry, is author of the Griffin Poetry Prize-winning Pigeon. Michael Dickman is the author of The End of the West, Flies and Copper Canyon. He teaches at Princeton and is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, and Lisa Robertson is the author of Magenta Soul Whip and the long poem Cinema of the Present. She is a poet, essayist and translator and her practice also straddles the visual arts.

Spring/Summer 2016 programs Deadlines https://www.banffcentre.ca/programs/all/literary-arts

 

  • Jan. 20, 2016       Digital Narratives
  • Jan. 20, 2016       Writing Studio
  • Jan. 27, 2016       Frontline: Environmental Reportage
  • Feb. 10, 2016       Banff International Literary Translation Centre
  • Mar.16, 2016 Literary Journalism
  • Apply Now         Self-Directed Writing Residency

 

2017 – 18 CANADIAN WRITER-IN-RESIDENCE 

University of Calgary Logo

University of Calgary Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

The Calgary Distinguished Writers Program (CDWP) encourages submissions from promising Canadian writers for the position of Canadian Writer-in-Residence, a ten-month residency at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Arts from September 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018. This is a unique opportunity for early to mid-career Canadian writers to devote their time to writing and to advancing their writing careers. Applications for the position are encouraged from writers from diverse genres-including literary fiction or nonfiction, poetry, scriptwriting, and playwriting. Candidates will have one to four published and/or performed works to their credit; community engagement experience, such as teaching or mentoring writers; and are expected to propose a project or projects that they will undertake during their term as Canadian Writer-in-Residence. They will preferably, but not necessarily, hold a university degree.

Further information can be obtained by contacting Caitlynn Bailey-Cummings at 403.220.8177 orcdwp@ucalgary.ca Deadline: January 31, 2016  Details:  https://ucalgary.ca/cdwp/writer-residence/apply

 

SPALDING UNIVERSITY MFA IN WRITING PROGRAM 

Spalding University

Spalding University (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 Spalding University is ranked one of the top 10 low-residency MFA in Writing programs, celebrating creativity and community, not competition. Residencies in Louisville, Kentucky or abroad bring together outstanding students and faculty for 10 exhilarating days of workshop and serious craft study. Back home, students read, write, and revise during one-on-one independent study sessions with a prize-winning, publishing mentor. Our program offers the following areas of concentration: fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, writing for children & young adults, screenwriting, and playwriting.

Details: https://spalding.edu/academics/mfa-in-writing/


OTTAWA SUBMISSION CALLS AND OPPORTUNITIES

 BYWORDS.CA SUBMISSION CALL

                        
DEADLINE: The 15th of every month for the following month’s issue

Bywords.ca considers previously unpublished poetry from emerging and established poets for our online monthly magazine. We consider work by current and former residents, students and workers of Ottawa. We also publish poems by contributors to our predecessor, the Bywords Monthly Magazine. FOR SUBMISSION INFORMATION VISIT www.bywords.ca and click on Guidelines. Amanda Earl, Managing Editor. Bywords.ca’s literary events calendar here: http://www.bywords.ca/calendar/index.php with up-to-date info on NCR readings, book signings, writers’ circles, literary festivals, spoken word showcases & slams. Event submissions can be sent to events@bywords.ca

 

RESOURCES FOR SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITIES

 For those who prefer the ebook version of the Canadian Writers’ Contest Calendar, the 2016 version can now be purchased via White Mountain Publications’ website. Here is the update from their newsletter: “CWCC Update: The ebook versions of the 2016 Canadian Writers’ Contest Calendar are now available from our website.”

 

 

  • Tree Press Chapbook Contest: contest is for regular attendees at The Tree Reading Series, the Seed workshops, or read at the Tree open mic readings. Prize $250 and 10 copies of your chapbook! (Winner may order more copies if he/she wishes.) No fee to enter. See link for more info. DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JAN. 31, 2016.

 

 

·        Arc Magazine Contests: see links for details on each contest

·        Archibald Lampman Award deadline March 31, 2016

 

 

  • The Goethe Glass: An Anthology of Canadian Fiction About Climate Change. Are you concerned about Climate Change?  The Goethe Glass: An Anthology of Canadian Fiction About Climate Change. Last April, Margaret Atwood gave a very important speech in Barrie in which she said that the greatest crisis facing Canada and the world is climate change. As Margaret Atwood declared, “it is time for writers to respond with all the power of their creativity to the greatest threat of our age, climate change.” I am calling on all Canadian writers to put on their thinking caps, pick up their pens, and contribute to this anthology. The political climate has changed, but the physical climate is still in decline. Deadline: February 15, 2016 Details: https://exilepublishing.submittable.com/submit

 

  • The Masters Review Anthology – Judge Amy Hempel $5000 awarded. $20.00 USD Ends on 3/31/2016. Submissions are open from January 15, 2016 to March 31, 2016. This year stories will be selected by author Amy Hempel who will select ten winners from a shortlist of forty. This category is open to ALL EMERGING WRITERS. Anyone who has not yet published a novel at the time of submission. We are looking for today’s top emerging writers. Send us your best! Details and to submit: http://mastersreview.com/anthology/

 

  • Dr. William Henry Drummond Poetry Contest Deadline: Monday April 4 2016 Entry fee: $10 per poem Prizes: $1600: $300 first place, $200 second place, $100 third place, 8 honourable mentions of $75, 8 judge’s choice of $50 complimentary anthology, trophy, and award ceremony during the Spring Pulse Poetry Festival. Details: www.springpulsepoetryfestival.com Enquires: Send to David Brydges mybrydges@yahoo.ca

 

OUT AND ABOUT IN TOWN

 

MEETINGS, BOOK LAUNCHES AND POETRY READINGS ABOUT TOWN
10616147_719512231476757_4644385450363778813_n  Wednesday, Jan. 20, 7:00 pm  The Wednesday, Jan . 20, 7:00 pm The Sawdust Reading Series Presents Deanna Young and Rusty Priske, Pour Boy – 495 Somerset St W Ottawa More info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1485277571780841/ 

 Tuesday, January 26, 8:00 pm. Tree Reading Series, Black Squirrel Books, 1073 Bank St. Ottawa, Jessica Hiemstra + Rachel Rose 6:45 pm Workshop – Hard Editing with Susan McMaster 8:00 pm Readings – Open Mic and Featured Readers More info www.treereadingseries.ca

 

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