| Leaving town for a few months is a good way to be reminded that nothing stands still for long in Calgary. So much happened in the past five months and I’m grateful that Jason Hammond could step in to chronicle, announce and reflect on some of it.
Some recent changes have been of the kind that make you wish time’s arrow could be less relentless. The loss of Cathy McKay on April 13 was sad news for readers and book lovers in Calgary and across Canada. Her proprietorship at Pages was only the last in her long series of contributions to the Canadian book world. She’ll be missed every day.
Fortunately, there was happy news during the past few months as well. You’ve read about Paolo da Costa’s fantastic Commonwealth Prize for Best First Book – Canada and the Caribbean. His book The Scent of a Lie reflects years of dedication to writing – not just his own – and love for the places he writes about. Bravo Paolo.
Time and tide in the book world wait for no one. But book-time has traditionally progressed in kind of a backwards fashion. In the unnatural world of books and publishing, summer, rather than winter, has been the time to hibernate and store up energy for the robust flowering of new titles in the fall. Autumn is really springtime in bookland (you can supply your own images of twittering authors returning in their flocks at book festivals). Yet even the summer slowdown isn’t as slow as it once was, as the arrival of two poets from the East demonstrates.
This weekend, Winnipeg-based poet Jill MacLean launches her first book, entitled The Brevity of Red. (The colour red sure gets a lot of poetic attention. I guess I’m thinking of Montreal poet Anne Carson’s 1998 book Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse.) MacLean comes to Winnipeg by way of the Atlantic provinces, and has been a student of both biology and theology. After that, poetry is really the only possible next step.
MacLean’s guest reader at the launch is Sue MacLeod. Now, you could put together a pretty good anthology filled with East Coast poets named Sue – Sue Sinclair, Sue Goyette and Sue MacLeod are a poetic power trio in themselves. All three are, of course, singular poets regardless of their identical names. And as the first Poet Laureate for the city of Halifax, MacLeod is now irrevocably distinguished from all other Sues (and all other Maritime authors named MacLeod, as well). You’ll be able to hear Jill MacLean launching The Brevity of Red and Sue MacLeod reading from That Singing You Hear at the Edges at McNally Robinson Booksellers on Sunday, July 20 at 1 p.m.
All this talk about time and (recent) history reminds me of a current writerly exchange on the subject that you can follow on the Web. Irish-American author Colum McCann and Aleksandar Hemon, formerly of Sarajevo but now based in Chicago, have been e-mailing back and forth on the subject of writers, history, politics and memory. Their conversation is archived on the great Books Web site run by the Guardian newspaper at www.books.guardian.co.uk. McCann’s Dancer and Hemon’s Nowhere Man are both on my list of books to read this summer.
One final note: Alberta Theatre Projects has announced the 2003 recipient of its Bob Edwards Award, given annually to a Canadian writer who exemplifies the spirit of freedom of expression. Jane Urquhart, award-winning author of the novels The Whirlpool, Away, The Underpainter and The Stone Carvers, will accept the award at this year’s Bob Edwards Luncheon, October 29 at the Hyatt Regency hotel downtown. Tickets are available from ATP at 294-7433, ext. 1130. |
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