God of Missed Connections Reviewed in Halifax

George Elliott Clarke has reviewed my new book God of Missed Connections in the Halifax Chronicle Herald. Hells yeah. Click here to read the review.

Winnipeg's Thin Air Festival

Image from Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg

Thanks to Charlene Diehl, festival director at Winnipeg's Thin Air Festival, I got to stay in my dad's hometown, Winnipeg, for a few nights and perform this week. I stayed at the Inn at the Forks where the Assiniboine and Red rivers meet. My hotel room overlooked the Oodena Celebration Circle (wow) and also the Winnipeg Children's Museum, which used to be the main stables for the CNR back in the day when my great grandfather worked there as a janitor. The road outside the hotel is paved with the same stones that were there a hundred years ago. My great grandfather would have walked over those stones every day to get to work. It was pretty weird to sit in the hotel lounge with an interviewer with those stones and stables just outside. It gave me the same creepy feeling as sitting in the great hall at the Banff Springs Hotel. The great hall at the Banff Springs overlooks an old quarry site at Tunnel Mountain where Ukrainian prisoners of war quarried stone during WWI for the reconstruction of the hotel. The prisoners made 25 cents a day; my champagne cocktail cost $16. 

I didn't get to see a lot of the festival authors perform while I was in Winnipeg since the festival wranglers kept me really hopping, but I did get to see the headliners on opening night.  Lauren Kirshner read wonderfully from her first novel Where We Have to Go. She was dry, funny, and nervous as heck, which is always delightful, and I bought her novel straight away at the intermission. Jon Paul Fiorentino killed with a reading from his first novel Stripmalling and made me laugh so hard the author actually heckled me from the stage. Rhea Tregebov, my date, laughed so hard she almost choked on her chewing gum. I thought I'd have to give her the Heimlich. On a very different note, my favorite Maple Ridge boy, Gregory Scofield silenced the house with poems from his kipocihkân: Poems New and Selected and Bonnie Burnard made Rhea go for the Kleenex. Burnard read from her new novel Suddenly. I was especially impressed with the way she writes so tenderly and straightforwardly about sex. It was a great reading.

Special thanks to Tavia Palmer who pointed me in the right direction and Michael Van Rooy who got me there. Thanks to you, I was able to chill out often enough to experience  My Winnipeg. It was all over the place.

Come and Do The Geist Poetry Workout with GJ & Liz!

That's right, it's finally time to get your poetry-loving ass totally kicked at a swanky hotel. Thanks to Stuart Ross who inspired me with his awesome poetry bootcamp a couple of years ago, Gillian Jerome and I are leading the Geist Poetry Workout September 19, 1-4pm at the Listel Hotel in Vancouver. We have a great lot of fun, write some awfully good poems, and then Geist gives us all some really nice literary swag to take home. Yeah!  Here's the deets:

The Geist Poetry Workout

A workshop to strengthen your poetic muscles! Poets Elizabeth Bachinskyand Gillian Jerome will put you through your poetic paces in a sweaty, fun-filled three-hour session. Eat a hearty breakfast beforehand because you’re gonna need all the energy you can muster.

Ten exercises. Ten poems. Three hours. Super fun. Wear a sweatband.

(We’re not kidding!)

The Geist Poetry Workout

Saturday, September 19, 2009, 1–4 p.m.
Listel Hotel
1300 Robson St., Vancouver

Workshop: $50 (includes a one-year Geist subscription for yourself or a friend)

Workshop Bundle: Register for two fall workshops for only $75 (this option also includes a one-year Geist subscription).

Register Now Online:

Sign up for one workshop ($50)

Sign up for two workshops in a bundle ($75)

For more information, call Geist at (604) 681-9161 or e-mail geist@geist.com.

Return from Down Under

Hey there. How ya goin'? I'm back from Brisbane and reeling from the beauty and the poetry of Queensland. What a beautiful place! What beautiful people! The Queensland Poetry Festival was a blast. I am particularly in love with the poetry I caught by Aussies Jessica Tong, Paul Magee and Jane Williams, all of whom gave wonderful readings at the festival. UK poet A.F Harrold had us all in stitches (I especially enjoyed his tribute to Leonard Cohen) and beloved Australian folksinger/poet Neil Murray kept everyone in thrall with his perfect voice and  lyrics; Arts Queensland's poet in Residence, New Zealander Hinemoana Baker, opened the festival with a set complete with bull-roarer and delay pedal (think Laurie Anderson meets Jane Siberry meets John Giorno); and Santo Cazzati blew everyone away with a perfect, ingenious, continuous, beautifully rhythmic, twenty minute set that included his own (invented) commercial breaks. Why oh WHY doesn't he have a website or a CD or a clip on youtube? I was also totally charmed by self-proclaimed tough guy Geoff Goodfellow, who also happens to be Australia's best-selling poet of all time (imagine an Aussie Bukowski, and you'll be on the right track). Goodfellow's poems about his battle with throat cancer were down-to-earth straightforward cautionary tales that can, and do, travel everywhere.

So, I came home with a stack of books that nearly broke my back with all the shlepping from plane to plane, but I'm thrilled to have seen and taken home a little bit of Queensland. I miss it already. And to the sweet boys at the Deli New Farm  in Brisbane who told me to go to Noosa after the festival, I went to Noosa. And Peregian. And Coolum. My first sub-tropical beaches, ever. So, there's a beach girl in me after all. Who knew? I loved every minute of lying on the sand and leaping in the sea. hee. Special HUGE thanks to the amazing Julie Beveridge and Graham Nunn who were the kind of warm, hospitable hosts every performer dreams of. They totally rocked the party. 

Liz in OZ

Calling all Australians. I'm reading at the Queensland Poetry Festival at the Judith Wright Center for the Performing Arts in Fortitude Valley August 21-23. Click here for details. 

Northern Exposure in the M-K

Well, I'm back from (and changed by) the remarkable Muskwa-Kechika Artist Camp in Northern British Columbia where I hiked and rode and camped with nine other artists to raise awareness about this unique wild place. The Muskwa Kechika Management Area is the largest untouched boreal forest in North America and is under threat of exploitation by big oil and gas companies. Artists of all disciplines are encouraged to attend the camp. The catch? Once you're out, you've got to create work that focusses on some aspect of the M-K. No problem.

Some notable alum include poets Sue Sinclair, Tim Lilburn, and Don McKay; naturalist Ben Gadd; travel writer and activist Shirley Roburn; and visual artist Brian Jungen. Special huge thanks to Donna Kane and Wayne Sawchuk who brought me out for the camp. And to all of you who were there, don't be strangers.

Want to see me at 6400 ft? Click here.

Want to go and see the M-K for yourself? Download the application form here.

Curio Reviewed at the Globe and Mail

The 2nd Edition of Curio: Grotesques and Satires from the Electronic Age got a glowing review in the Globe and Mail last week. The edition was redesigned and rereleased by Bookthug, Spring, 2009. In addition to a snazzy new cover and some significant rewrites, this edition includes an afterward by delightful avant garde poet K. Silem Mohammad from Ashland Oregon. 

For the love of poetry, click here to buy the book.