Listen to THIS!

In conversation with a friend the other day, it was asked why I didn't make audio recordings of my poetry, as she preferred and 'got more out of' my poetry when it was spoken. And so I told her "I do!" and "I have!"

That said, I haven't done a new audio recording in quite some time (partly because the mp3 player I was using to make them was stolen, and partly because I got more into the video poetry), however, her comments encouraged me to, at least, pull out the ones I'd previously created and post them here, if not do some more in the not too distant future.

Anyway, for the time being, here are two mp3s of me reading my poetry that used to be on my old site, for your listening enjoyment. (Both these poems are found in Poetaster)

Mall Thing

McMohawk

A Party in my Tummy

This has nothing to do with my writing. I just thought this was an awesome video!



And if you're really feeling masochistic, check out the 'launch party' vid for Windows 7!

More videos coming soon

I hope to get not one, but TWO videos out for October. That should make up for the 1+ year of nothing. I'm pretty excited. One will be halloween/psychobilly styled, and the other a poem that I included in Poetaster - one of my oldest poems, actually.

I already filmed the footage for the second poem tonight. All I need is time to edit it, so you may see it sooner than later.

My publisher loses Federal Grant funding!

Ack! That totally sucks. The publisher of my last book, Ekstasis Editions (in fact, the ONLY publisher that's seen enough value in my work to publish an entire collection of my poetry), has, for specious reasons (apparently, the 'quality of authors they publish has dimished' over the last year - that hurts!), been denied ANY funding for the 2009-2010 year. As you can imagine, for a small Canadian publisher of poetry, that's practically a kiss of death!

Anyway, I'll have more on this later, but in the meantime, if you'd like support a (suddenly!) struggling press, please have a look over their catalogue (a good time to pick up a copy of my latest, if you've been planning on it) and consider buying something (get Christmas shopping for your favourite indie book reader done early this year!) - I'm sure they'd appreciate it at this time.

I'll write in more detail when I get a chance.

What am I working on these days?

A friend of mine reminded me that, on my old site, I had a little box that listed projects I was currently working on, and asked if those had changed at all. Yes and no. I'm always working on multiple projects - some rise to the fore, some fall to the back. Some get completed, some get dropped, some never get out of the state of being worked on. Here are the ones that are receiving top attention lately:

1) Zues and the Giant Iced Tea: A new collection of Poetry, tentatively titled, for a local press. They've only asked me to submit something, so no promise of publication at this point, but I'm 97% done the manuscript and I'm pretty damned excited about it. It's a collection of narrative poems (ie, poems that tell a story, either individually or collectively) and, in a lot of ways, is a more mature collection than Poetaster

2) Newborn - my graphic novel. I haven't been able to work on this in almost 2 years, due to the craziness of my life. But in the last few months I've managed to get back on the wagon and am having a blast with it. I'm about 22 pages in right now...will probably be a couple hundred pages long at least. It's slow going, due to my work life, but I'm hoping to start revealings parts of it here as I proceed. Keep posted!

3) The Last Days of Naomichi Onada: I'm hoping to have time to finish my first final draft of The Last Days of Naomichi Onada, a full length narrative poem about a Japanese soldier stuck on an island in the Atlantic, who still thinks WW2 is going on, based on a poem I included in Poetaster, The Lost Orders of Onoda Hirou, based on a real story. For quite some time this has been my anticipated 'next publication', but invitations to put together poetry collections for publication keep trumping it. An embarrassment of riches, really, but this project edges closer to completion.

4) Other stuff. Other high priority projects that I'd like to, but aren't necessarily being worked on right now include another couple collections of poetry, a full length novel, and my father's novel, which is quite good, but just needs to be put into a final draft.

So...that's what's going on right now*.

*valid until September 2, 2009