NUIT BLANCHE NUIT BLANCHE NUIT BLANCHE

i haven’t spent a great deal of time in front of my own computer this week as i’ve had a torrent of activity around me.

• tagaq and kinnie starr played lula lounge monday night. tagaq was such a powerhouse of inspiration, deeply connected to a palpable sensuality in sound and movement. zoilus has a spunky review of the event. i attended with jason and conor, met up with sandra and meighan. we’re so in love with tagaq.
• did i mention jason? yes, i did. jason christie’s in town for a week! tremendous. he’s stayed with us a few days, and it’s been so lovely to see him. he’s performing slumber with conor and me tonight; we’re spending the day gathering pop-o-matic lights and mosquito netting.
• i finished the two-week northview heights teaching gig on wednesday. an emotional good-bye! i have two instant anthologies as a memento, and the most beautiful card with comments from many students. i know i’ll see many of them in the future, so that is heartening.
• books veering towards printers at mercury! so busy! new intern! woo!!
• read at live poets series (ryerson) with sandra alland on thursday evening. i’m so glad i’ve met sandra and that i have the chance to hear her read her work so frequently. i have a visceral reaction whenever i hear her poem, “at the party.”
• after having susanna hood’s work recommended to me by three separate, wonderful people, i finally caught her new piece “loveloathing” at dancemakers. YES! resounding and shivery yes. if you’re into sound poetry, you need to see susanna’s work.
• the discovery of david khang, aural ecstacies of tagaq, and animorphic bodily collisions of susanna hood = a week of seriously wonderful a.raw research.
• TONIGHT: nuit blanche!! will this grand tdot experiment work? will folks attend? i’m in zone a, u of t’s school for continuing studies, 1am, as part of NIGHT BULB. do come!

self

“On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.”

Waking Life

david khang’s "mediamorphosis"

larissa lai posted about a fascinating art project by david khang called “mediamorphosis.” i’m sensing a kindred connection between his project/performance and wide slumber. i located an artist statement online. compare david khang’s statement –

“How do we experience the sound of butterfly wings flapping when it is mediated? How does this sound transform into a visual language? Or into music? Does the transformation of a butterfly from one state to the next parallel our communication process? In this performance, live monarch butterflies become prosthetic aids to ‘perform’ language that is perhaps at once sound, image, and the medium itself.”

with a recent statements of mine regarding wide slumber –

“What happens when a person, obsessed with a subject, dreams at night; does the subject matter affect how she thinks, how she dreams, how her body processes information? If a poet writes poems during sleep, how might a lepidopterist work while she sleeps? What effect does intimate examination of insects have on long-term information processing and subconscious behaviour? Wide slumber for lepidopterists explores these questions through a dynamic combination of sound, movement, and visual art.” and “How can sound translate into text, text into movement, movement into text? How can a page act as a stage for words?”

i am so excited to be introduced to his work! ::: buzzbuzzbuzzbuzzbuzz ::: there’s a lot of documentation about his other projects (all of which are hella intriguing! google him!), but i haven’t been able to locate contact info. if you know david, or know of a good way for me to send him a letter, i’d be grateful for tips…

belladonna*

earlier this week, i put together twelve pages of poetry for belladonna* books, an awesome chapbook series complementing writers’ participation in the belladonna* reading series (i’m reading there with margaret christakos on october 10). check out belladonna*’s list of publications; exciting discoveries.

for my belladonna*, i compiled w i d e r, a series of b-sides, remixes, and rarities from wide slumber. these texts aren’t (fully) in the coach house version of the poem; some were excised shortly before the book’s printing, while others disappeared years earlier. i had great fun browsing through the twenty or so drafts of the manuscript, rediscovering these moments in wide slumber‘s development.

i reworked the b-sides for coherence, and corralled them into six short segments:

• O A FIELD GUIDE (for matt ceolin)
  
• C~ MIL (for alixandra bamford)
  
• ~ CHRYSALISTALIZATION : HYPERHYPNOTRANSLATION (for lori nancy kalamanski)
  
• ~} REMnants (for conor green)
  
• {#} SOMNOPTERA (for ciara adams)
  
• >{}< DON’T SAY THE YOU THE YOU THE YOU SAY THE WE (for alexis milligan)

can’t wait to see the belladonna* book! can’t wait to see what margaret’s submitted (fingers crossed for material she read at “her poetics”)!

imperative

wandering through my archives, i found “IMPERATIVE,” a brief text i’d written for the 2004 OCAD student handbook. the epigraph is from a pac-mondrian t-shirt. i forgot i’d written this! so, in honour of neil hennessy’s brief visit, here’s the text.

IMPERATIVE

“Let’s play art!!!” – Prize Budget for Boys

Act. Animate. Apply. Aspire. Assert. Attend. Bind. Blow. Blur. Break. Breathe. Build. Burn. Carouse. Carve. Cast. Challenge. Chisel. Choose. Climax. Critique. Code. Collaborate. Collage. Collate. Collect. Comment. Compose. Conclude. Conduct. Conspire. Continue. Convey. Convince. Cook. Copy. Create. Cull. Cut. Dance. Define. Delete. Demonstrate. Derive. Describe. Design. Destruct. Develop. Diffuse. Direct. Discover. Display. Dissect. Distort. Do. Draft. Draw. Dress. Dye. Edit. Elicit. Emboss. Engrave. Erase. Etch. Evoke. Examine. Execute. Exhibit. Experience. Experiment. Explore. Express. Extrude. Fill. Film. Filter. Find. Focus. Form. Frame. Gather. Give. Glue. Hang. Hew. Illuminate. Innovate. Insert. Install. Interact. Interpret. Introduce. Invite. Iron. Jump. Knit. Layer. Learn. Light. Listen. Make. Manage. Map. Measure. Melt. Mimic. Mix. Model. Mold. Move. Nail. Narrate. Note. Operate. Opine. Organize. Paint. Parody. Participate. Perform. Persevere. Perspire. Pinch. Pixelate. Photocopy. Photograph. Play. Plié. Point. Portray. Poster. Pound. Practice. Print. Produce. Promote. Proofread. Protest. Provoke. Publish. Qualify. Read. Rehearse. Remove. Render. Repeat. Respond. Restore. Rewind. Risk. Rock. Roll. Sand. Screen. Sculpt. Shake. Shape. Sharpen. Shoot. Select. Sew. Share. Shuffle. Sing. Sketch. Spatter. Speak. Spin. Spray. Stipple. Stitch. Strike. Strum. Study. Suggest. Tap. Teach. Tear. Tell. Think. Trace. Translate. Trim. Typeset. Utter. View. Watch. Water. Weave. Whittle. Work. Workshop. Write.

events: WOTS, ryerson, nuit blanche

WORD ON THE STREET
Sunday, September 24, 11am-6pm
Queen’s Park, Toronto

• 11:30am: I’m participating in the young adult tent’s teen-publishing panel.
• 1:30pm: I’ll read from Wide slumber for lepidopterists in the Great Books Marquee.
• 5pm: I’m sitting on the “Ask an Author” panel with Ray Robertson and Ken Alexander.

RYERSON POETRY SERIES
Thursday, September 28, 7:30pm
Oakham House, 63 Gould St., Room 34B, Toronto

• I’ll read Wide slumber. The fantastic Sandra Alland (Proof of a tongue, McGilligan Books) will read from her forthcoming collection, Blissful Times.

NUIT BLANCHE
Sunday, October 1, 1-2am
University of Toronto, School of Continuing Education, 158 St. George St., Toronto

• Join Theatre Commutiny for a late-night meditation on all things lepidopteral and somnambulant.
• Of this event, organizer Margaret Christakos writes, “Ah hoosh a ha. Flock to SCS for a once-in-a-blue-moon group sound poetry performance by a.rawlings based on her new book Wide slumber for lepidopterists, a gorgeous and innovative text rawlings composed over many years in answer to the question, ‘What happens when you breed the vocabularies and ideas of two disparate subjects – lepidoptery and sleep/dream studies? What does the spawn of incompatible bedfellows resemble?” From that perverse breeding, Wide slumber for lepidopterists flutters to us with arresting and truly enchanting images of the self and voice attaining cocoon-busting presence.’”

do we have plans for us

another long, exciting day with northview students and then a visit to coach house books to make two corrections to wide slumber before it undergoes a second printing. on my walk home, i popped into soundscapes and treated myself to concert tickets for tagaq and kinnie starr (sept. 25, lula lounge), and matmos (oct. 8, new music gallery).

this weekend’s jam-packed with activity. neil hennessy’s in town from NYC. jason christie’s launching his charming must-read i robot (poems to snuggle to!) at test reading series (sept. 23, mercer union). and then there’s the all-day literary marathon also known as word on the street. i’m participating in the young adult tent’s teen-publishing panel (11:30am), reading 20 minutes from wide slumber in the great books marquee (1:30pm), and sitting on the “ask an author” panel with ray robertson and ken alexander (5pm).

i need to plan a nap.

artists in ed.: 1/6

…automatic writing, ear-cleaning, erasure, substantive editing, find/replace, neologism creation, translation, performance, cut-up, instant anthology…

the reason for blog silence: my first “artists in education” project is underway. i’m 15 hours into a 25-hour creative writing workshop for grades 11 and 12 at northview heights secondary school. there are 60 students, and we’ve had a rigorous, text-filled adventure so far. fascinating people; i feel fortunate to spend two weeks with them.

last friday, i carried twenty books to school with me. the students spent friday reading through the books, locating vocab and phrases they found intriguing. everyday, the books accompany me to class. we read aloud our favourite moments and discuss them. a few students have borrowed books overnight. some have written poems using vocabulary they’ve discovered in the poetry (all smiles with one line from yesterday: “he broke up with her because she had bruxism”).

titles include fun w/ pataphysics, proof of a tongue, lemon hound, hello serotonin, fractal economies, straunge wonder, truth: a book of fictions, organic furniture cellar, hey! crumbling balcony, and blert. next gig, i’ll switch up some of the titles to see what intrigues everyone.

yesterday, i created an on-the-fly exercise to respond to in-class discussion that ended with some amazing results. in honour of steve venright’s overlapping compound-word neologisms, each grade 11 student spent time creating one new word and its definition. some of my faves: “carrotten,” “noodleaf,” “falsense,” and “paperaper.” we also had “numbringler” pop up, which is turning out to be a pretty useful word describing the lock mechanism of a filing cabinet.

i just spelled students ‘stridents.’ i need rest badly.

interview: kicking wind

kate greenstreet’s interviewed me for kicking wind, where she has spoken with nearly 35 authors about their experiences publishing their first books. the interviews are a great resource, as kate’s taken great care to display book covers and typeset an excerpt from each poet’s book. for my interview, she also scanned a few pages from wide slumber to provide a glimpse of how matt’s artwork plays with the pages.

kate’s own first book, case sensitive, is hot off the press; congrats!!

believe

“I can’t believe THAT!” said Alice.

“Can’t you?” said the Queen in a pitying tone. “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”

Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One CAN’T believe impossible things.”

“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass