Leopold McGinnis' Blog

They Hate This

2011-10-23T17:12:00.000-07:00

Just finished participating in the Canzine Hollywood Ripoff challenge where 3 contenders - an illustrator, a 'zinester' and a poet (me) had 30 minutes to come up with an image, a zine or a poem based on a movie. The movie, revealed only at the last minute, was Ghostbusters. I'm pretty pleased with what I delivered (though I sweated a bit!). Here it is:

They Hate This

“They hate this,”

he says

fingers tinkling on the keyboard

“but the ladies love it,”

he thinks.

The charm

His charm

as he lays it on thick

heaps it on

like gravy

spilling over the keys

but she’s not buying it

looks at him like he’s a crackpot

Ha!

She’s the one who called

Ghost Busters

She’s the one who called

Peter Venkman

And Peter Venkman delivers

whether its

attention to lonely old ladies

or attention to lonely young ladies

or even middle aged lady crackpots

who call Ghost Busters…

“What’s your name?”

he asks.

“Dana,” she offers reluctantly

“Well Dana. It seems ok in here to me,”

he says

“But a little messy…”

She seems displeased

Good.

That’s how it always starts

but soon

the charm creeps inside

haunts you

gets inside your bones

like ghosts

in the architecture

and at first you think

you want the ghosts out

that you want

Peter Venkman to leave

but the memory lingers

like the dear departed

and soon enough

who ya gonna call

to haunt you?

to possess you in your body

until you’re writhing in bed

longing for the keymaster

hovering five feet above

your passion

in feverish desire

until who you gonna call?

You’ll call this ghost buster

to bust your ghosts

to make your eggs pop

right out of the carton

and fry on the tabletop

until you don’t know

what’s come over you

until you scream out in lust:

“There is no Dana!

Only Zool!”

“Oh yes,”

he says

fingers tinkling on the piano

“They hate this.”

“But,” he thinks

“The ladies

love it.”

Some Advice on Time Travel

2011-06-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

Wow, I think it's been nearly 3 years since I've bothered to submit and actually got a piece published in a place other than my own cancerously growing hoard of lit sites. This time its in my old favourite Feathertale. I'm really proud of this poem: Some Advice on Time Travel (an excerpt from Philip Roder's Let's Go to the Future, fourth edition, 2095)

Zues and the Sales stats

2011-06-26T12:51:00.000-07:00

Just got the stats: 150 copies of Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea SOLD! Considering that selling 50 copies of a poetry book is pretty impressive, and that my initial (and ambitious) goal was to move 100, I'd say (ignoring all those 2-star reviews I keep getting over at Goodreads) Zues and the Giant Iced Tea is an ALARMING success!

On top of that, I may actually end up having a launch (albeit 6 months late...) in the fall sometime here in Toronto. I'll keep you up to date on that!

Poetaster trivia!

2011-05-07T20:42:00.000-07:00

Made some trivia for Poetaster on Goodreads. Was fun to go through an old book. Poetaster is quite a bit darker and raw than Zeus - kind of a shock to flip between the two.

Anyway, have a go at some poetry trivia! (Any poets out there interested in building a pub-quiz around poetry?)

Encounters with the Underground - a tribute to Steve Kostecke

2011-05-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

It is with great shock and much sadness that I learned yesterday that good friend, fellow indie writer and founding member of the Underground Literary Alliance Steve Kostecke recently passed away.

Steve was instrumental in my own involvement in the underground writing scene and had the distinction (among many more notable distinctions) of being the only indie writer and ULA member I've actually met in person.

When I started Red Fez back in 2002 it was a project born out of total isolation from any sort of writing community (particularly the insular academic/lit journal community) and frustration with the lottery-like publishing process of the status quo. Red Fez, and my writing, floundered for a few years until I came across a lovely little writeup in Broken Pencil on Slush Pile, the Underground Literary Alliance's zine. It was an awakening to the fact that I was not alone in my frustration with the system, and that there were others out there acting against it and being far more effective at it! Slush Pile, amazingly edited and assembled in Asia and then shipped back to the US to be printed, not only published a sort of raw, gripping writing I had never experienced before, but articulated a lot of what I had been unable to put into words. I wrote an email to the zine publisher about my efforts with Red Fez, asking to learn more about this ULA organization. Steve Kostecke wrote back.

A lot of Steve's personality was constructed in my mind, as with most online relationships, from emails. I never could quite get a grip on who he was. His writing was raw and both bashedly and unabashedly macho. He was, somehow, the strong, cocky, unrooted silent type, operating a literary revolution in North America from while teaching English across Asia. Steve, as Karl Wenclas puts it in his memory, had a zen-buddhist personality, straightforward, approachable, honest, unpretentious....combined with the cocky smarts of a fly-boy.

Steve lured me in to the ULA, first as a Canadian correspondent, and then as a full fledged member. In my opinion he was probably the group's strongest writer (among strong writers) - a sort of modern day Hemmingway, but better, in my opinion. (Seoul in Slices is a great example.) There was an elegant, unwashed honesty to it - Steve shared everything as it was, as he felt it and didn't feel the need to explain it. His work was documentary like: "travel writing", as Jeff Potter put it in his tribute over at Out Your Backdoor (who published Steve's novel, Wasted Angels), which is accurate, but Steve's writing far too little credit. Karl Wenclas, another co-founder of the group, states that Steve was the ULA member he least expected to leave this early because of his cool-headed nature. I'd add that his openness and non-judgmental attitude also made him seem like the member least likely to have helped found the outrageous activist group. Steve would associate with almost anybody (a habit that is the genesis of some of his creepier tales of the far-east) and perhaps what frustrated him most about the lit scene was its inability to do the same for indie-writers, it decision to pinch off the water supply and mire itself in a snake-eat-snake's-tail circle of handouts, backscratching and phoney relationships.

Steve was a huge reason why the group was founded and why it lasted as long as it did. Even after the group exploded in the end, spewing out a number of battle hardened writers and spawning groups like the Guild of Outsider Writers and a much stronger Red Fez, Steve declined invitations to join new ventures, believing in the base tenets of the ULA and feeling they were still right. Long after our group relationship had ended I would get updates from him on a number of great back-boiler projects he had going, ready to launch as soon as the ULA got over its squabbling. Pat Simonelli described Steve as the mother of the group and perhaps was too patient with its unruly roost in the end. Steve had the great ideas, the great writing, the smarts...but he wasn't going to bother wrestling anyone to the ground to make them listen. It was a strength and a weakness and it was all Steve.

In the Summer of 2005 I traveled to Japan to meet some friends and had the opportunity to meet with Steve and stay with him a few days in Tokyo. I had always been a bit intimidated by Steve I suppose. His writing was so worldly and macho, but countenanced with that confident, motherly appeal. I spent about three days with Steve and his personality suddenly made so much sense when I met him in person. If you haven't met him, I can't describe it, and it's too late to get a chance to do it now. But he became whole for me in that moment and I was able to finally conclude (there were some doubts!) that Steve was a really amazing guy with a natural love for writing and human expression, particularly in literary form. The world had a lot to learn from Steve, but as the world is, you know, it wasn't really ready to listen. And like Steve was with his writing, he wasn't going to be bothered to smack it around a little to make it pay attention. It was and is the world's loss for it, and a loss for those of us who knew him.

I fell more out of contact with Steve after that, and hadn't heard from him in the last year or two, though I thought of him often, wondering which bar he was sitting at in Japan, or which new girlfriend he was bunking with these days, and always meant to get back in contact with him once things slowed down for me. So it was with a lot of shock and sadness to learn that his travels had ended. But if you weren't out there asking, Steve wasn't going to stand up and slap you in the face with it.

Steve left behind a lot of great work, great ideas, and fond memories. The world lost a great writer and literary thinker this year and doesn't even know it.Rest in Peace, Steve Kostecke. I look forward to hearing about your wild adventures beyond the grave someday.

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea trivia questions!

2011-04-29T08:32:00.001-07:00

Hey...this is cool. I can make trivia questions about mine, or other people's, books! Now that's promotion I can get behind!

Try out the ones I made for Zeus! Never before have questions been so trivial! Can you get 100%? Can you get 5%?

Youch!

2011-04-26T15:00:00.000-07:00

Wow, I never realized how good Goodreads is for stalking your fans! Too bad I found this out by getting my first Goodreads rating for Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea: 2 out of 5 stars! Ouch!

So I did some digging and see that this particular reader has set this book on the quality shelf among such peers as Wrestling Superstars II, I Was for Sale: Confessions of a Bondage Model and The Satanic Rituals: Companion to the "Satanic Bible". Zeus was rated lower, in this person's opinion, than Bomb Queen Volume 3: The Good, The Bad And The Lovely and Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection. Even poetry books by Jewel and Billy Corgan fared better than mine!

Oh well. At least it's nice to hear what people think! The reader is obviously a wrestling fan - I wonder if The Muscle pissed them off?

Onwards and upwards (or downwards!)

Saturday morning thoughts: Poetry as Jazz

2011-04-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

Turned on the good ol CBC radio 2 app this morning and had this revelation:

It seems like contemporary poetry is a lot like modern jazz. Half the time when you turn on the radio or open up some journal you get this this overwrought, overthought construction that only musical theorists could love (and you still wonder if they actually do like it - or if they are just trying to impress themselves), and half the time (if you're lucky) you'll get that something smooth and meaningful, that something you'd actually want to settle down with on the couch on a Sunday.

Anyway it, and this ensuing blogpost, inspired this poem:

Saturday Radio Jazz time

Just looking for something

to waste the morning

reading poetry to

and all I get

is five guys

treating their gear

as an arsenal of noise

and running their fingers

madly

up and down

every key in their possession

like they were paid by the note

while I do the same

with the radio dials

just trying to escape

just trying to just find

something

Heartfelt

and Meaningful

not overwrought

or overthought

or overplayed

just something sweet

smooth

and true

like a girl alone

writing poetry in a coffee shop

somewhere

and not

overwrought

or overthought

or overplayed

like too much poetry is

these days.

From my upcoming comic book...

2011-03-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

My good friend Mav and I are starting up a comic book serial sometime this year called RAILS - the Royal Alberta Illustrated Literature Society. Our first issue probably won't be until later in the year, but we'll be launching issue 0.5 in April and presenting it at the Kazoo Zine & Comics expo on Sat April 16th. Should be about 24 pages and will include some of my work (comics and poetry) and a good chunk of Mav's as well. Come check it out!

Here is a preview from my comic short, The Owl, that I'll have in it:

And check out some of Mav's great work here: http://royalails.tumblr.com/

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea Contest Winners!

2011-03-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

Recently there was a Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea giveaway over on goodreads.com. Congratulations to Lisa, Rachel and Ina! I have sent forth three copies to the three corners of the globe (USA, Australia and India) with your names on it. Hopefully they will find you there to inform you of your mission: enjoy the book!

(Bonus mission - review the book! Extra points!)

Fuck a Poet

2011-03-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

The fuck-a-poet club

Forget

those clubs

mile high or higher.

Any fool

can pay

to ride on an aeroplane

and get bounced around

in a plastic shell.

Forget those

swinging swingers parties

where swingers swing

their swinging bats at any ball

that slings its way

into the park.

How many people

will you ever fuck

that will write a poem

about it afterward?

Schluff off

those other suitors

in their tailored bravado

boring people

fuck boring people

over martinis

between business hours and television shows

Who the fuck orders

a grilled cheese sandwich

in a restaurant?

Who the fuck orders

a grilled cheese sandwich

in a restaurant

when they could

fuck a poet?

Water in the Desert

2011-03-02T09:36:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across this review for Game Quest the other day. It's always kind of delightful to come across reviews for my self-published work. Partly because I had no distribution model other than Amazon and my own site, so the chance of Game Quest being read, let alone reviewed, is very very small. Game Quest has kind of had a life of it's own. One of my first orders was to Abu Ghraib (yes, that Abu Ghraib - insert your jokes about my book being a good implement for torture due to its size, weight or content here) and though I've stopped promoting the book years ago, still sell ~3 copies a year on Amazon and the ebook version sells quite well - about 1 a month. Despite being the most daunting (for most people) of my books in both theme and size, it seems to have found some tenuous foothold in the underculture. Anyway, so it's extra great when you find out that someone read it and actually took the time to review the book. In this case it was particularly nice because I could tell that the reviewer engaged with the book, understood it on a deeper level and had some interesting things to say about the work.

I'm not sure what most author's motivations are for writing. Mine is a desire to communicate. I don't particularly enjoy the editing, the printing and, especially, the promotion that goes into translating a story from something cool in your head to something real on the page. All that effort is a LOT of work and the end goal is to present it to the world and hope to hear back from them on what they thought. I don't really care if it's good or bad (of course, good is preferable), I just like to hear what people thought to see how and if it engaged them. Reviews are my favourite part after coming up with the idea in the first place. It's like getting the chance to reread your book from the POV of a reader...and loving it, or excoriateingly tearing it to shreds. Which, in turn, makes the hardest part about being a small-beans author is you don't get a lot of that. But boy does that water in the desert taste good!

Incidentally, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea also just got reviewed (huzzah!) by the University of Lethbridge Student newspaper, which you can read here.

ZATGIT: The Unveiling

2011-02-10T14:03:00.000-08:00

Zeus Arrives!

Holy Excitement Batman!

Anticipation Builds...

What the crap is this stuff? Where's ZEUS?!?

Oh! Here it is!

I HAVE THE POWER!!!!

Hmmmm. Minimal spelling mistakes. Good, good...

Even babes like it!

Oh, the life of an arteest!

What is Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea about Anyway?

2011-02-05T15:04:00.000-08:00

Baddest cover
for a book of poetry
ever?

You know, in my zeal to promote this book, the effort of nearly two years of my and other’s metaphorical blood, sweat and tears, I may have forgotten to mention what the book is actually about! While ‘buy it!’ is a very important message I want you to take home from me about the book, that is not actually all the book has to say. In fact, ‘what the book is about’ is one of the more interesting aspects of this collection, and one of the hardest things to determine in putting it together.

So what the hell is Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea about?

You know, ‘What’s it about?’ is an unusual question in the poetry world when I think about it. It’s not generally asked. When plugging your new book to potential readers ‘it’s a collection of poetry’ is typically more than enough to put off the inquirer's curiosity in your writing. Cue the “I don’t know anything about poetry” response and glazed over deer in the headlights of Robert Frost’s speedster ripping down the highway in the dead of night with a giant spinning bladesaw reflecting the moon on the front... For those who like poetry (and there aren’t many who believe that they do), the sad triumph of form over content in the poetry world precludes the importance of it having to be (or even actually being) about something.

But the fact is that all collections are about something. Or at the very least, I claim Zeus to be about something. Why? Because I had to put it together. I had to have a reason for selecting, rejecting and aggregating the poems I picked from my treasure trove of gems, gold, fool’s gold, coal and acursed items. Zeus has a criteria, standards, a vision.

I articulate that vision fairly clearly (I hope!) in the short and entertaining (I hope!) intro to Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea, which you can read here (click ebook and read the 'Why Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea?' section). But before I get more into what Zeus is about I’d like to talk more about ‘aboutness.’

That collections of poetry, even random ones, are about something escaped even me until Zeus slapped me in the face with it. My first poetry book, Poetaster, pretty much falls into the random collection category. I was asked to submit something to Ekstasis and so I gathered all my poetry in a virtual pile and started picking out the stuff I liked best. It wasn’t until I started (struggling with) putting Zeus together that I realized Poetaster had a focus. It was an introduction: Hey poetry world – here’s me! It was about me and the best of the stuff I was writing about, thinking about and dealing with from the dawn of my first feeble attempts to Ekstasis asking me to submit. The collection is a bi-product of that era: forceful, sarcastic, bitter, ironic and optimistic. These poems about the death of my father, international travel, office jobs, the lameness of the literary scene portray an author who is alternatively confident, lost, self-assured, struggling and ready to tear the literary world a new one if only to get some fresh air into the joint!

Seriously, is this the part where you tell us what the hell Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea is about? Cause my time at the wash-o-mart is almost up and I gotta pick up my clothes.

So if Poetaster is about ‘me’ in the first era of my poetry writing, what is Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea about? Zeus is a radical departure from Poetaster. It is not about me, but about fiction - or rather poetry's take on story telling. I like to think of Zeus as a love letter from poetry to fiction. The poems in Zeus are complete stories in themselves (The City, or the Muscle), and sometimes they are snippets of stories from a greater, untold story - like peeking through a keyhole in a door: you get a salacious snippet of the action going on, but get to make up the rest for yourself (The Two Xs, Crash Landing). Others are individually sealed poems that, as they are read, build and build into a much larger and complete story (The Sultan Poems). Zeus is an ode to fiction, to narrative storytelling, but from the dreamlike mind of poetry.

The Making of Zeus (It sprung from my forehead!)

To be honest I had no idea what I was going to send to Athabasca Press when I was asked to submit. I thought it would be as easy as Poetaster – spend a few hours rummaging through my poems, put em into categories and ‘voila!’ But I didn’t just want to do more ‘random stuff from Leopold McGinnis’, and I wasn’t sure I had much left after Poetaster. I struggled for quite a while to find a thematic collection when I realized, like the nutty professor, that I had a number of poems that were not similar in theme but in format! Poetic experiments telling complete stories, or teasing us with pieces of them. I didn't have a lot of them, but as I started collecting, and expanding my definition of what counted as 'narrative' I found I had almost enough for a book! Thanks be to god! I fleshed that out with the Sultan Poems (which deserves a post on its own, growing like a cancer from 1 poem to 3, to 6, to 8, to 16 and, finally 19 to take up more than a third of the book!) and I had a unique and interesting collection that was definitely NOT Poetaster and definitely ABOUT something.

Of course, then I forgot to tell everyone about that part in my frenzy to get the world to pay attention. Hopefully this post makes amends!

Anyway, that’s the story, or at the least the story that Zeus is trying to tell, and overall I think poetry does an excellent job telling a story. I hope you’ll check it out.

Note: I hope to write more about the whole publishing process in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

It's a review!

2011-01-28T15:30:00.000-08:00

Sort of. It's a paragraph, at least, by someone other than me telling you to pick up a copy! Check it out!

It's out now! Get your copy quick!

2011-01-21T10:48:00.000-08:00

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea is now out!!

Get it while it's hot!!!!!

Beware the Podcasts, Pod-cats!

2011-01-19T12:40:00.000-08:00

So I just finished my second podcast. The first is about Salvation (perhaps you've heard of it?) and the second about Malls (also known as shopping centers). They were pretty fun to do, and both turned out really well (though they were a lot of work, especially sandwiched between school, a book launch and an upcoming vacation before book launch! yipes.)

So why do a podcast? Well, the simple answer is because my book publicist asked me to. You know, to whet your appetite for more poetry and get you drooling over the delicious release of my new book, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea this March. (I plan on writing more about the publishing process here later as well.) But I hope to continue doing them even after the book, because they are a great forum for reading poetry within a philosophical and entertaining context. Also, I bought this BAD-ASS microphone on Boxing Day and I was eager to use it! If you're a poet interested in doing recordings, podcasts or readings, I HIGHLY recommend you get it. It's easy and does amazing recordings, records straight to mp3 and so much more.

Anyway, I've put up a sample of podcast #2 for your entertainment. It's me reading a poem called On the Trail of Ibn Battuta about a mall in Dubai. That poem also appears in Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea.

I hope the first podcast (Salvation) will be up in the next couple of weeks, with Malls to be out in mid to late February.

Enjoy!

Next up, a new video involving my fridge!

Zeus copy

2011-01-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

Things are ramping up for the March release of Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea (3rd and final proofs to be done today!) AU Press has even got a placeholder up for the book, where you can get a sneak preview of the cover and read some of the promo copy for the book.

http://www.aupress.ca/index.php/books/120186

Even buy.com is excited about it!

I've seen the full cover of the book (just released the other day) and it looks FANTASTIC! But you're going to have to wait until the launch to see that.

A Sequel to a Poem I Haven't Published

2011-01-02T16:23:00.000-08:00

So, I was going through the proofs of my new book (Due March 2011!), which is a rather tedious (but also sometimes fun) process in which you hum and haw over each period and comma and syllable in your work. But as I was reading through the last poem in the book (We Heart Robot) and was inspired to start writing a sequel to it. This is largely unfinished, and who knows if it ever will be, but it was fun to start so I thought I'd share it.

Anyway, some prologue: The original poem (which you can find in my new book) sort of covers how all those girls got into his stomach in the first place. But I kind of wondered, during the review, what Giant Robot and the 1000 Japanese Schoolgirl's lives were like post departure from Earth. (Yes, this is an actual poem...published by an actual press.)

Anyway, here goes, the sequel to a poem you haven't read yet!

Gigantic Robot and the Shortcake Planet

One day

A thousand Japanese school girls

(and a few friends hanging out)

were lounging in the belly-lounge

of Gigantic Robot’s stomach

when he ran out of

Strawberry Shortcake gas

He rumbled

And he trembled

And the thousand schoolgirls

erupted in a chorus

of ‘ohhhhs’

and even a few tea sets

got broken

and beanbag chairs

overturned

Whatever shall we do?

Where can we get more gas?

The girls asked

and then it was decided.

Going back to Earth

was no option

- too dull

for these well-heeled universal citizens

and the tiramisu just wasn’t that great -

they must go to the planet

Shortcake

Strawberry

but first

they’d need to buy

lots of gifts

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea Poster DESIGNED!!

2011-01-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

Ok, I got it together and MAN does it look slick! It's bad that I'm more excited about the book cover at this point than the book in time, but slightly understandable, I suppose, after the innumerable man hours I put in over the holiday season proofing it (just print it already!) Anyway...look for some poster contests soon!

Now I've just got to find a printer...and someone to post them up on street posts ACROSS THE GLOBE!

Letter from a friend

2010-12-18T10:53:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine (finally) read Bad Attitude (when did I publish that, 2007?) and wrote me this little review. I like hearing what people think of my books, whether they like it or not (as in this case.) Anyway, I thought I would share it with you:

I just wanted to tell you that I read your book “Bad attitude”. And…

Well, you really are too much of a communist. I always knew it, you non-catholic, false Irish!

No seriously, that wasn’t my (main) point. But I’ve got to tell you honestly:

Yes I read it but I’ve got to tell you that I wasn’t really content with it (not that I HAVE to be satisfied of it, I’m fully aware that you didn’t write a book for me). I did really prefer “Game Quest”. Maybe I missed something but this one was a bit too straightforward: always in the store, few characters, too much of a good vs evil plot and a very unappealing main character.

What a punk he was, though I have to admit Tom was also an appealing hatred magnet and I’m always for anything that’s against Future Shop.

Anyways, I wanted to tell you that I read it and that I did have a good time reading it but that I was a bit disappointed because you really rocked my world with “Game Quest” and not so much this time.

If there was some kind of superb irony about it, please tell me.

A little Christmas procrastination

2010-12-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

Produced this semi-story. Like most things I write it will probably never go anywhere, or grow much beyond this. But who knows? It was fun writing it anyway, enjoy.

For the Children (not for children)

Santa’s arm tumbled out of bed before he did, knocking over a half-finished and flat-for-days glass of pepto-bismal to the floor. Somewhere in the house the Claus’ cat pricked one ear back and the sound of water trickling off the bedside table stirred yesterday’s breath from deep within the mountain buried beneath the avalanche of St Nick’s beard. Mrs. Claus was nowhere to be seen, but the tale-tale sounds and smells wafting up the stairs foretold her presence in the kitchen, baking as usual. Yet one more day where the sweet fragrance of desert wafted into his nostrils well before he’d even contemplated breakfast...a smell that aroused him due to years of its association with, well, you know...that early morning feeling.

St Nick rubbed his face and didn’t bother to turn towards the clock. He couldn’t face it and had it permanently turned away from the bed. He hadn’t looked at it since last Christmas. Or a few months after. However long ago that was.

It took much effort to roll his hefty frame into the upright position and place his feet – almost – on the floor. The upright pressure on his noggin was the unneeded reminder that he’d been drinking again last night. Guilt radiated out through his toes and he just sat on the bed for minutes, starring at the wood slat wall and a crude painting some kid – Walter or Charlie or something – had left him for Christmas one year. Maybe 30 years ago now. He wondered what happened to that kid. What did he wish for Christmas now? Did he have his own kids? He’d never know. The Dungeon Green kept that.

Mrs Claus, on days when she was irritated, would leave the evidence of the previous night’s debauchery lying around for Santa to clean up in the morning. An empty beer can here, a lukewarm tumbler of brandy there. She was not irritated this morning, he could tell as he slowly took himself down the stairs to the living room. His heart sank at the thought of her cleaning up after him for his favourite morning hangover cure was to take quick sip of the leftover hair of the dog. And then another, if it fancied him. Until he felt better and was waking up the next morning again in search of a cure.

Luckily she’d missed a martini glass he’d absentmindedly left behind the easy chair. The olives were gone, and it was a bit of a stretch to reach down and pick it up, but as he raised with it pinched between his nimble fingers the smell, like sweet ambrosia, of warm gin and dry vermouth caressed his nostrils. He licked his chops, put the glass to his lips and then thought about the children. He struggled for a moment with the rim on his lips...but guilt and the children won, for the first time in months and he put the martini glass down on the hope chest.

Stumbling into the kitchen he found Mrs Claus, fat as ever, bent over the oven in apron strings and oven mitts. For a brief moment he pictured her with just those two articles of clothing, and hair still bedraggled, tumbling down around her shoulders and not up in that asexual bow she insisted on wearing. (Ostensibly to keep it from catching fire, but really!) But stood up with a tray full of cookies and the fantasy was gone (a fantasy was all it could ever hope to be) and he gave her a kiss on the cheek. She paused he duties for a moment, smiled and continued while Santa went to the island sink and poured himself a healthy glass of water.

“You going to the toy mine’s today dear?” she asked, dusting something on the fresh batch.

Was this a trick question? Did she want him to carry something down? Or a subtle-reminder that it was blankity-blank days until Christmas. 5? 4? He had no idea. It was really close. Really, really, terrifyingly close and he hadn’t done anything. He was going to miss it this year. That was it. It was going to be cancelled. Those Christmas day powers the Dungeon Green gave him were spectacular...but they couldn’t save the holiday season from how bad he’d butchered it this year.

Santa mumbled something approximating a yes.

“That’ll be nice. I’m sure the elves will appreciate it.”

Santa laughed to himself. Appreciate it? What world did she live in? The elves were happy about everything. They lived in a lightless cavern, for Christ sakes, clanging and banging all day and night, endlessly singing cheery songs over and over, sweating and breaking their fingers to make toys for other people. And they never complained. Appreciation denoted a change in mood. The elves were too satisfied with anything to appreciate anything. Thank god for that, though. At least some children would get some toys.

But he’d been avoiding it for months. He hadn’t been down there since July. He was going to get his shit together. Today. For the children. He had to at least try. He took a long look at that foreboding wooden door at the back of the kitchen that led down into the caves. Then he looked at the lovely white archway leading back into the living room and that last sip of yesterday’s martini. He thought of the children, he thought of Walter or Charlie or whatever that kid’s name was. He thought of how few days he had and how it would just be easier to just wing it. And then he headed for the washroom.

A Personal Appeal from Red Fez Founder Leopold McGinnis

2010-12-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

My name is Leopold McGinnis and I approve of this message:

Hear the Red Fez!

2010-11-23T09:26:00.000-08:00

Red Fez.net, the beloved and mayhaps crazy literary website I've been running for the last nigh 10 years, has started a radio program! For our inaugural broadcast Red Fez radio host Tim Murray will be speaking with Editor in Chief Michele McDannold.

Don't miss this moment in indie-undie-writing history! Tune in this Saturday!

And if there's anything you'd like to hear on the show in the future (interviews, readings, etc) let us know here, or better yet call into the show.

Two in the bush!

2010-11-20T12:15:00.000-08:00

I just stumbled across 2 poems published in 34th Parallel last year that I had no idea were published...and barely remembered submitting! Going about Their Lives, and How Many Poems is it Going to Take.

Been a while since I put anything up, so I thought I'd share them with you.

Zeus Revealed! (and some publishing fun facts)

2010-11-16T04:43:00.000-08:00

ZOT!

That's the sound of Zeus sending down a wonderbolt and making this the most amazing cover for a collection of poetry EVER!

Although, I suppose you could blame book designer Natalie over at kisscutdesign.com for the amazing cover design and idea, but Zeus probably wouldn't be very happy with that. Either way, I thank them both for their amazing work! If the hip cover makes even one person who wouldn't normally look at poetry pick it up and give it one quick chance, I'll be happy.

Why a giant Mexican, Zeus Word Voltron? The cover was inspired by a quote of mine from the introduction of my book, as listed on the kisscut blog here.

I'm excited to get into the process of ramping up promotion for the book... Promotion is something I've never been particularly good at - I rank it down there with clipping my toenails. It has to be done...but you could probably get away with not doing it for a long time...but you're really only hurting your pride. Wait...was that the metaphor I was looking for? Anyway, I'm not very good at it, and could use all the help I can get (especially yours, if you're excited about the book - tell your friends! Enemies! Local grocer!) Thankfully it's not just up to me this time: I had the chance to meet with the publicist for my book last week and she had loads of good ideas, so expect more on this blog (finally!), especially as I document this little book going from just a cool cover to a real live book out there on its own.

But for now, just imagine that giant robo-zeus shooting poetic laser beams into your eyeballs. Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. Now THAT'S poetry!

Zeus and the Word Voltron!

2010-08-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

Voltron

So after a few months delay things are starting to roll again on my latest collection of poetry, Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea. Just a few days ago, in fact, I got an email from the designer who will be working on my book.

She had this crazy idea about putting a Voltron made out of words on the cover ‘with a zeus-like beard and possibly a mexican-like mustache, holding a beverage. Maybe inside a beverage?’ My first thought was ‘that’s pretty damn cool’ followed by ‘but how the hell is all that going to work together?’ So she sent me a sketch and I have to say it looks freakin’ awesome!

I’m really excited about it. Not only because it looks so damn good and hip, but how many other poetry collections have a giant Zeus Robot on the front with a Mexican moustache? Maybe only 2 or 3?

What I’m most excited about is how forthright it is in presenting what I really hope to say about poetry through my work – that it can be fun, hip, modern, interesting, funny, philosophical. Now this should not come as a surprise to anyone who reads, for lack of a better term, ‘underground’ or ‘alternative’ poetry, but to the general reading public poetry is seen generally as old, delicate and inaccessible. Publishers can get stuck too marketing to ‘poetry types’ because they are the ones that buy the books, however if you don’t break beyond that poetry never evolves, and we continue to accept and published the same poetry that still isn’t resonating with the wider world. I think that’s a disservice to the form, because before I started writing it I definitely fell into the category of ‘poetry is not for me, I don’t understand it, and won’t touch it with a ten foot pole except to mock its pretensions and phoniness.’

My point being, people DO judge books by their covers, and this cover promises to be cool and different enough that even non-poetry lovers will pick it up and crack its cover to see what’s inside. And if they read a couple of poems about Mexicans or robots I feel (hope!) they will see that poetry is bad enough to punch them in the teeth and buy them a beer afterwards. And even if they don’t buy the book that’s a success.

Of course, I could just be another deluded poet waiting for the ‘poetry revolution’. But, you know, we all gotta have dreams!

Look for more news about Zeus as it happens...

My e-books now available on Kindle UK!

2010-08-06T07:52:00.000-07:00

Yep, Kindle isn't just for gringos anymore. If you're one of them euro-stars, you can get in on the hot ebook action RIGHT NOW!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B003EYW1IS
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00368B6YM
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00375LYE6

So Long, Mr. Pekar

2010-07-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

So Mr. Harvey Pekar, much loved (by many, but also by me) for his American Splendor comics (and for the movie, which I highly recommend if you have not seen it) has passed.

I suppose for most, this is sad news. However, aside from the fact that I'll be sad there won't be any new American Splendor comics out, I prefer to take the opportunity of his passing to appreciate the fact Harvey was here, and lucky enough, to bless us with his fascinating and entertaining take on the world.

Enjoy the journey beyond Harvey. I'll look for your books in hell.

Dear Chinese Robots

2010-07-07T21:51:00.000-07:00

Please stop commenting on my blog. I have not transgressed humanoid quarantine law b-34fg. Thank you.

Bombshell

2010-06-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Bombshell...

They don't use that word much anymore
to describe girls like you
As if your kind just disappeared
when excess fell out of fashion
Though how they managed to lose a woman like you
in a sea swell of dainty girls
eating yoghurt in petite pants
I’ll never know.

Bombshell.
the sound of it
Rolling…
Exploding!
suggests ships of steel and gun powder
docked in the port and overpowering the horizon
with bulk and shape...
conjures up the fat arc of depth charges
rolling off starboard sides
and teasing a voluptuous fragroom of fish into the air
scattering the self control of men to the wind like seed
It’s the sort of nickname that causes uncomfortable creases in pants
like images of lingeried girls straddling planes as they fly over base
to the salute of sailor suits
and an extra helping
of thigh and breast and arms and lips and lots of it

Bombshell.
That’s the sort of powderkeg you marry
knowing
and maybe even hoping
it will end up in divorce
and not caring
because bombshells are meant to go off.
That’s part of their excitement
Like curling irons and high heeled shoes
and words you don't really mean
thrown against the wall in a hotel room
Like the sound sex being had in the flat one over
while you curl your finger around a red phone cord
Like you walking into a bar and everybody noticing
but no one saying anything because
lust and hunger
have been tamed by sex on TV
and a burger on every corner
because the war is long gone over and
they just don't make
bombshells anymore

the Thief and the Cobbler update

2010-06-04T22:01:00.001-07:00

Just a quickie.

A while ago I posted about Richard Williams animated film, The Thief and the Cobbler (you can read it here) which I found was a fascinating story about creativity vs profit in the art world.

Anyway, filmmaker Kevin Schreck is looking to put together a documentary on this film and looking for some support. If you're interested in this, I encourage you to check out his project here: http://kck.st/cwepzM

Zeus delayed!

2010-05-30T14:51:00.001-07:00

Yes, he got held up at the airport, and coffee got spilled on his brand new tunic, dammit, and then, well, you know they took issue with him packing his lightning bolts as carry-on. So he’s on the next available flight, which should arrive Spring 2011-ish.

That’s a ways away, sadly, but sometimes books take up to 2 years from acceptance to publication, so I’m still short of that. Its giving me time to work on new stuff, though, which is nice.

But there’s also some good news. A while I ago I mentioned that Zeus got overwhelmingly positive feedback from the reader reviews (Athabasca sends out manuscripts they’re considering to other published authors for their opinions before making a decision) and that I’d share them here if I could. Well, I’ve been given the ok to do so, so from now until the book is out I’ll put up some quotes.

Starting with:

‘McGinnis is funny, witty (he says he’s facetious and thinks he might go to hell for his Gandhi poem(…)I don’t think he will go to hell, at least not for this, and if Gandhi’s there then hell is a hell of alot different than we are given usually to think), but he’s not cynical. He has bite and performs irony right to the end, to a good end, which is to say it’s not all simply irony. The language (..) is crisp and witty and entirely appropriate to the narrative intent, its allegorical or logopoeic purposes.’

Bad Attitude a 'Successful Self-Published Novel!'

2010-05-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

You read it here first. Well, it was actually written here first, but if you didn't read it there before, now you are reading it here now before then!

Yes, Bad Attitude has been recognized as a successful self-published novel, ranking amongst such other novels as Legally Blond (yes!) and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It may not be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and I'm not sure if much of what happens in it is technically legal. But it's nice to make a list nonetheless.

To quoth:

So I went online to identify successful self-published novels. Here’s a starter list of 20 from many I found in a quick search on the web. Measuring success, of course, is subjective, and I’ve not read most of these books, but reviews by way of Goodreads.com, LibraryThing.com, Kirkus and Amazon seem fairly consistent.

Nat, Nat, the Nantucket Cat by Cheryl Barnes & Peter Barnes
Legally Blonde by Amanda Brown
The Kin of Ata are Waiting for You by Dorothy Bryant
One of Ours by Willa Cather
Lord Vishnu’s Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort of) by Will Clarke
Fifth Life of the Cat Woman by Kathleen Dexter
Queenmaker: A Novel of King David’s Queen by India Edghill
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Blinking Red Light by Mister Mann Frisby
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
The First Forest by John Gile
Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
The Last Open Road by Burt S. Levy
Stranger Things Happen by Kelly Link
Bad Attitude by Leopold McGinnis
Mama by Terry McMillan
Temptation by Victoria Christopher Murray
One More Moment in Time by Elizabeth Anne Ryan
Let That Be the Reason by Vickie Stringer
23 Shades Of Black by K.J.A. Wishnia

Thanks http://writersrainbow.wordpress.com!

The Morning After...

2010-04-12T12:46:00.000-07:00

A new poem, Weird, up on YouTube. Check it out!

(Special thanks to Aidan for artistic help and camera work. Read his Traumatic(ly Random) Reviews here: http://traumaticreviews.blogspot.com)

Ok so...
last night
was weird
Wonderfully weird
Beautifully weird
and every awkward moment of it
broke me somehow
Tore the mile high brick wall
of my confidence
down
in one soundless breath

And as you lay there
naked
the taste of my cum still on your lips when we kiss
having unravelled the entire universe
with just the sound of your voice
you stare at me
daring me
with those dark eyes
like two burning constellations
to put it all back together
before you.

As if all this was just a game!
As if the need for oxygen
was just a myth!
You smile at me
nonchalantly
while inside Im Fumbling
Asphyxiating
Burning
in the vast expanse of your bed
clinging to you in the dark
for fear that if I let go
I might just drift away
into nothingness

I love that you break me
into a million little pieces
I love that you can just so carelessly pull apart
the fabric of space and time and
my pitiful little place in it.
Though it scares me
Though it terrifies me

Last night
was weird.
It was exactly everything
I didnt expect it to be
And just when I thought
Id got it all figured out
Just when the world began to bore me
It was something new again
Something Strange
Wonderful
Confusing
Weird
Scary
and awkward...

But wonderful.
Wonderfully weird.
Beautiful.
and beautiful
and wonderful
wonderful in ways
I hope I never understand.

Game Quest on Kindle!

2010-04-05T11:45:00.001-07:00

If ever there was a book meant to be read electronically...this is it!

And that's about all I have to say about that.

Check it out here.

Beware the Edmonton Poetry Festival!

2010-03-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

I will be reading this year (my third) at the Edmonton Poetry Festival. The EPF is a steadily growing festival in this city of festivals and brings out some pretty decent poets. I'm particularly excited about this year for two reasons.

1) it seems a lot more hip and with it this year than in the past (I mean...check out that poster!) Those of you have heard me rant and rave about poetry being boring and inaccessible...well, this is a good sign. Maybe things are spicing up?

2) They're bringing back the Poetry Sweatshop this year! Sadly absent from last year's festival (perhaps due to lack of venue? The Sweatshop was not allowed, in its second year, to return to its first year venue due to rowdiness!) the sweatshop is like theatresports, but with poetry, in a drinking establishment...with punishment. It's pretty wild, and if you ever wondered if poetry could be exciting, naughty and reckless all at once...well come out and find out!

This year the EPF runs from April 19-27th (seems to be getting longer and longer). Check out their site for all the scheduled events.

I will be reading at:

The Blinks (80 poets, poems in 30 seconds or less!) on Monday, April 19 at the ARTery (Edmonton's coolest venue?), 9535 Jasper Avenue. 7pm-10.30 pm.
The Poetry Sweatshop on Saturday the 24th, also at the ARTery. 3-5 pm.
and Three Bananas Café, 9918 102 Avenue, Sunday, April 25th. 3:30 pm.

I hope to see you there!

Bad Attitude now available for Kindle!

2010-02-26T09:05:00.000-08:00

Oh the bittersweet irony! Bad Attitude is now available on a widget! If you’ve read the book, then you’ll savour this quirk of fate. And if you haven’t…well, you need to follow the mis-adventures of Jesse Durnell, world’s most bitter widget-salesman as he tries to navigate the spurious employee policies of Electronics Pit and the nebulous void of wage-slavery in the BRAND NEW KINDLE EDITION!

Yes! Bad Attitude is available in all its digital glory for Amazon’s ebook reader. It’s cheap - $5.99 - and illustrated. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you laugh again, it will make you never look at the world of retail the same again!

But don’t trust me – here is a review from one of the readers on Amazon:

McGinnis has done an astounding job of capturing a sense of alienation from consumer culture, and at the same time providing a dead-on account of working for a mind-numbing corporation in retail. It'd be great to see this find a cult following behind cash registers across the country.

Tim Burton at MoMA

2010-02-24T08:09:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite directors, Tim Burton, whose films I would say have been significantly influential on my writing, has an exhibition on at the Museum of Modern Art in New York from November 22, 2009-April 26, 2010.

I, and most of the people reading this blog probably, live nowhere near New York so it’s unlikely I’ll be able to attend. HOWEVER, you can view much of the exhibition online here and even better, there is also a great behind-the-scenes interview with Mr. Burton over here where he talks about his influences, the correlation between drawing and film, and what’s the deal with his love of stripes?

Definately worth a look-see.

Scientists discover MERCH!

2010-02-17T09:24:00.000-08:00

For the man or woman in your life who has everything...but Red Fez merch!

Yes! Just when you thought poetry couldn't be turned into a t-shirt...or artistic sensibilities into a beer stein...Red Fez has done it! Our secret labs have been at work for months on a very serious question: How do we improve the state of underground and independent poets and authors everywhere, spread the good word of the Fez and maybe even create some revenue stream to support this wild-eyed volunteer run website which loses money every year?

So those lab-coated scientists went away to their cave of science, smashed some particles together, poured some blue liquid into some yellow liquid and then measured their toenails with some expensive caliper-thingy and then hypothesized that Red Fez was drastically short of the chemical element MERCHANDISE!

Emergency action was, of course, needed and so our graphic design/zoology department was immediately set to the task to creating t-shirts, mugs and more. Which are now available at the Red Fez store. We’re hoping you’ll like and buy them, because otherwise we’ll have to let our science staff go.

Sincerely yours,
Leopold McGinnis
Founding Editor of The Red Fez

Athabasca University Press to publish my new book!

2010-02-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

Yes! I have fooled another publishing house into believing my work is ‘visionary’*! Oh frabjuous day! Oh supercalifragilisticexpialidotious!

This is good news indeed! AU Press is a pretty good feather to have under your cap – not only are they one of the few academic presses in the country to publish fiction/poetry, but they are also very well regarded for the quality of their publications. It will be an honour to be part of their list. I’m fairly certain they have good distribution too, so you may even see Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea in a bookstore! Wild.

Actually, I received word sometime last week that the press had decided to publish my second collection of poetry, but knowing the small press, and considering my previous history, I didn’t want to say anything until the papers arrived and I had signed them for fear of jinxing it all. They still need to be signed off by the press, but…well, I couldn’t hold it in any longer.

I have confidence that they will go ahead with my book, though, because of the quality of the assessor reviews. Before accepting a book, AU Press sends it out to two or three experts in the industry (other authors, etc…) and asks for their feedback. Based on that feedback, they either accept the book, or ask the author to respond to the assessments and then make a final decision. In this case, though, they didn’t even ask me to respond…which is something of a literary slam dunk! Both assessments were VERY positive, and it was kind of surreal reading almost full essays on my work - a book that’s not even published yet. Weird, too, because I’ve never even had one essay written about any of my published work. Very cool experience.

Anyway, I’d like to post some of that here, but I’m not sure what I can and cannot share at this point. I’ll be talking with the fine folk at AU Press over the next few weeks to figure out how we go ahead…and give you some updates and maybe a few poems from the collection and what the reviewers thought, if I can.

*Yes, this word was actually used in one of my assessments! I’m going to inflate my head right now to maximize my ego before it gets popped.

The Thief and the Cobbler

2010-02-06T15:46:00.000-08:00

I remember at some point in junior high, not long after Disney’s classic Aladdin was released, coming across advertisements for an animated film called Arabian Night. For me at the time is was a transparent knockoff riding and my initial reaction was disgust. What about producing good original art? It saddened me to see so much money and talent dumped into derivative rip offs. Sadly, at the time I was not aware of the true tragedy of Arabian Night, and I use tragedy in the artistic sense of the word.

Arabian Night, rather than a case of Hollywood screwing up by producing a knock-off, was in fact the very opposite. A rare case of Hollywood taking a breathtakingly original idea, and a man’s life work, and…screwing it up. It was only until I very recently stumbled across the film trailer for The Thief and the Cobbler on You Tube that the true story of Arabian Night unfolded.

To quote the wikipedia article on the film:

Richard Williams' magnum opus, a painstakingly hand-animated epic inspired by the Arabian Nights and with the production title The Thief and the Cobbler, was begun in 1968 and was initially self-funded. As a largely non-verbal feature meant for an adult audience, The Thief was initially dismissed as unmarketable. After over twenty years of work, Williams had completed only twenty minutes of the film, and following the critical success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Williams sought and secured a production deal with Warner Bros. in 1990. However, the production went over deadline, and in 1992, with only 15 minutes left to complete, The Completion Bond Company, who had insured Warners' financing of the film, feared competition from the similarly themed Disney film Aladdin and seized the project from Williams in Camden, London. Completion Bond then had the animation completed in Korea under the direction of animator Fred Calvert. Calvert's product was released internationally in 1994 as The Princess and the Cobbler. Miramax then acquired rights to the project and extensively rewrote and reanimated the film to include continuous dialogue and to add several musical interludes. Miramax's product was released in 1995 under the title Arabian Knight.

Having not seen Arabian Knight, I can’t make any claims to the quality of that film, the (lost) backstory to the film is tragic – but what makes the story all the more magical and, yes, uplifiting is that fans of William’s work have pieced together much of William’s original vision from Arabian Night and the cutting and designing room floor to create a ‘recobbled’ version - a film much truer to Richard Harris’ original concept. A look at the trailer for the ‘director’s cut’ should convince you it’s worth watching. But better yet, the entire recobbled film is available on You Tube in 11 parts.

It’s really a lovely film in its novel and unusual approach to animation and its willingness to spend time experimenting on pain-staking details such as backgrounds, and optical illusional camera pans. The film is all the more remarkable on this front in the land of computer animation - that this is all hand done is really quite remarkable and charming.

Check it out, it’s a great film in its own right, with the added interest of its cematic history, and art vs. commerce narrative giving it that much more artistic pull.

2010-01-31T20:59:00.000-08:00

So first of all, I have a very big announcement to make soon (some of you who are facebook friends probably already know what that might be), but, the way things work in the biz, I’m hesitant to say anything until it’s an actual ‘sure thing’ (if there ever is such a thing in publishing.) Anyway, I’m hoping to have something more to say on that in the next couple of weeks.

But so as to not leave you empty handed, I thought I’d share some other big news! The Red Fez (the book, not the site) is now available for Amazon’s ebook reader Kindle.! How freakin’ neato is that? Now all the intrigue, mystery and moustachio wax is available in e-ink. Habibi would be proud (or more likely amazed since computers didn’t really exist in his time) and steals yours and hide it YOU KNOW WHERE (well, if you’ve read the book you do!)

It’s pretty cheap: $4.99. Not my pricing (my pricing was $2.99, but I guess Amazon thought it was worth more...or not worth selling if it didn’t sell for more...I don’t know.) Anywho, that’s still a steal for this gem of a book - less than a heart-disease inducing burger meal and healthier for you. It’s also good because I’m starting to run out of physical copies of the book and I won’t be printing any more...so Red Fez can live on digitally.

So yes! If you’re lucky enough to have a Kindle, go check it out!

P.S. My other books are (hopefully) not far behind: Bad Attitude (also running out of copies) and Game Quest (not running out of copies.) If and until I get clearance from the publisher, I'll also hopefully have Poetaster up there, but I really have no plans to do that any time soon.

Red Fez Phones Home!

2010-01-21T18:27:00.000-08:00

Picture this:

You're at a bus stop and you just broke up with your girlfriend. You're a strange combination of mad, sad, bad and rad. You're frustrated. You're done crying, you're done punching the pillow, and there's nobody around who wants to hear about your relationship troubles anymore...but you still need something...you need...a poem...about a messy breakup, to make you relate, to make you feel better! But where do you turn?

Red Fez to the rescue!!

You whip out your mobile phone, go to m.redfez.net and skim through the poetry by theme section and skim through the 'love/romance' category. Reading through a few amazing poems on the subject you flip your cell shut and, feeling better, say Bah! Who needs relationship anyway? When you have RED FEZ ON YOUR PHONE?

Or picture this!

You're waiting at the mall for your friend. She's late again. But she'll be there at any minute...you just don't know when. You don't want to just sit there looking uncool, you want to seem cool, like you have friends and a purpose for sitting on a bench. And you've been feeling kind of nostaligic for your childhood lately. So what do you do?

Red Fez to the rescue!!

You whip out your mobile phone, zip over to m.redfez.net and skim through the 'childhood/nostalgia' section of the fiction page. Lo a behold, pages after pages of sweetly scripted stories on childhood. Then your friend shows up out of nowhere. Dammit! Why did she have to show up so soon... I was reading RED FEZ ON MY PHONE!

But wait! Surely such deeply meaningful entertainment at my fingertips costs money!

Bah! Bah, we say to you! This is free! Yes, stop being so cynical! Stuff is still free and the universe has so conspired so that you can have free entertainment at any place where there is wifi or cell reception!

Hell, how great is that? I'll tell you how great. It's as great as m.redfez.net

Sites of Resistance - filmed in Fabulous Poeti-Scope!

2009-11-02T14:48:00.000-08:00

Just when you thought it was safe to go onto YouTube and not see the latest and greatest video by yours truly, Leopold McGinnis, poet, author and wearer of neato eyeglasses...IT IS NO LONGER SAFE TO GO ONTO YOUTUBE AND NOT SEE THE LATEST AND GREATEST VIDEO BY YOURS TRULY, LEOPOLD MCGINNIS, POET, AUTHOR AND WEARER OF NEATO EYEGLASSES!

You've been warned.

*Filmed in fabulous Poeti-scope*

Sites of Resistance (from my poetry book, Poetaster)

In my kitchen
A spoon in the fork drawer
Mismatched chopsticks
A knife operated toaster

In the living room
A painting by nobody important
askew by 2 degrees
Books arranged with complete disregard
for the dewy decimal system
Or any system for that matter

In the bedroom
A drawer full of dead batteries
and elastic bands
Coins in jars taken out of circulation
and stored under the bed frame

In the bathroom
Mold that creeps into the tiles
A clogged drain
A toilet paper roll too far
from the toilet seat

These are sites of resistance.

I can beat-budda-beat my feet
on the pavement one thousand times a day
and make nary a crack
nary a scratch.
I can scream at the top of my lungs
Uptown! Downtown! Crosstown!
and reach nary an ear

But these are my sites of resistance
They may be small
But together we will fight
The Tyranny of Order!
The Hegemony of Structure!
The Fascism of Eternity!
Everyday
In the kitchen!
In the bedroom!
In the bathroom!
In the living room!
These are sites of resistance.

Totally unrelated, but I think this video is amazing!

2009-10-17T20:16:00.000-07:00

Click here to see the much better resolutioned version.

New Video!!!!

2009-10-12T21:13:00.001-07:00

Just in time for Halloween!

Yes, it's been over a year since my last video...but it's always been my goal to another one done. This one looks particularly great. The text is below the video. Enjoy!

Put a flower in your hair

lover

so I can see you at night

as you creep through the graveyard

re-animating the dicks

of the dearly deceased.

Trapped deep in the ground.

they are pushing up more than just daisies

when your black black soul passes by.

If only they could speak!

If only they could sneak a peak

through the dirt

beneath your polka-dotted skirt…

if only they could feel more

than the touch

of your black stilettoed heel

thudding in the overworld

If only they could comfort themselves with more

than the clip-clop clip-clop clip-clop

of you fading away

the sound haunting their memory so long

they’d swear it was their heartbeat

starting up again.

Mama always said to stay out

of dark places

but that’s where you shine

baby doll

Even your dark dark hair

is washed out

in the bleach of that awful awful sun

but at night

let the wolves howl for you

the moon leads the way

to tonight’s show

don’t ever let them tell you no

life lives where the living don’t go

so please

put a flower in your hair

for me

when you pass by my grave.

Zues and the Giant Iced Tea submitted!!

2009-10-03T12:10:00.000-07:00

So I bit the bullet and submitted my manuscript to the press yesterday afternoon with fingers crossed. Here are some wacky stats on the manuscript:

Title: Zues and the Giant Iced Tea

Length: 129 pages (but that's with lots of page breaks - they are poems, after all)

# of poems in the collection: 48

Longest Narrative: The Sultan Poems

Most Controversial poem: A Brief History of Gandhi

# of poems about luchadores: 1

# of poems about arms dealing: 2

# of poems about Mexicans: 3

# of poems about robots: 3

# of poems with an Asian or Middle Eastern flavour: 27

The Artist Worries about the Quality of his work!

As a perfectionist, this was difficult because I felt I could still review, tighten and improve some of the work included, particularly the Sultan Poems, which started off as 3 poems and I hoped to merge into a complete 'story' of about 6 poems. When I submitted it it was 19 poems!! Yikes. Ideally I could put them aside for a month and then come back to do some final tightening up...but at some point you just have to submit, and I was months behind. If they like the manuscript, I'll get the chance to tighten those up at that point.

The Artist worries his manuscript will be a Comedy at the Oscars!

As a worrier, I'm not entirely sure, at the end of this very long journey, that I have put together a manuscript that is right for the poetry series the press is creating. That's probably just me worrying. I really like the concept of the collection - they are narrative poems and I'm very pleased with the quality of all of them. But as such, they are much less personal than those in my last collection and, as most critics and reviewers are want to do, could be considered 'lighter, less serious fare' (although I think that's unjust.) I think I also consciously stayed away from the darker stuff this time around, because I have more range than that and wanted to explore these narrative type works. However, the ultra personal, dark poetry of Poetaster is what made them ask me to submit something. So, essentially, I worry that this is going to be like submitting a comedy for an oscar nod. It could be the most brilliant film ever made...but if it's funny then it doesn't deserve any awards. On the other hand, comedy's are watched by way more people.

The Artist posts a poem from the collection in celebration of its completion!

The Two Xs

Dos Equis

The two exxes

The dirtiest man

South of Al Hambra

And North of it too

He was born

in the desert dust.

No woman’s son

He was foreign to the ways of women

No man’s son

He was lost amongst his brothers

They called him Dos Equis

The two exxes

Nobody ever saw his eyes

under the wide brim of his black hat

His skin was cold to the touch

beneath his black vest

and jeans

and snake black boots

Dos Equis

He was given a life

without direction

without answers

When he signed his name

he signed an X.

Twice.

He was given a life

without direction

without answers

He was only given

Two Exxes.

Listen to THIS!

2009-09-27T09:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-25T07:54:00.001-07:00

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!

My publisher loses Federal Grant funding!

2009-09-18T13:39:00.000-07:00

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?

2009-09-01T15:57:00.001-07:00

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

Done and Done and Done

2009-08-22T17:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the old site is now the new site. Oh yeah...that feels good.

LM.com is dead!

2009-08-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

I've officially decommissioned it. It will still be up for a while until I can figure out how to get the domain name to redirect to the new site, but in the meantime you can see it here: www.redfez.net/leopoldmcginnis

Any idiot can have a blog...and I do!

2009-08-19T08:01:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new blog! I am currently revamping my website. It may just be this blog, or it may be more. I'm hoping to make it more inclusive of the amount and type of work that I do, easier to manage (thus easier to update) and more fun to do. Always full of lofty ambitions. We'll see if I deliver.

Leopold McGinnis' Blog

They Hate This

Some Advice on Time Travel

Zues and the Sales stats

Poetaster trivia!

Encounters with the Underground - a tribute to Steve Kostecke

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea trivia questions!

Youch!

Saturday morning thoughts: Poetry as Jazz

From my upcoming comic book...

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea Contest Winners!

Fuck a Poet

Water in the Desert

ZATGIT: The Unveiling

What is Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea about Anyway?

It's a review!

It's out now! Get your copy quick!

Beware the Podcasts, Pod-cats!

Zeus copy

A Sequel to a Poem I Haven't Published

Zeus and the Giant Iced Tea Poster DESIGNED!!

Letter from a friend

A little Christmas procrastination

A Personal Appeal from Red Fez Founder Leopold McGinnis

Hear the Red Fez!

Two in the bush!

Zeus Revealed! (and some publishing fun facts)

Zeus and the Word Voltron!

My e-books now available on Kindle UK!

So Long, Mr. Pekar

Dear Chinese Robots

Bombshell

the Thief and the Cobbler update

Zeus delayed!

Bad Attitude a 'Successful Self-Published Novel!'

The Morning After...

Game Quest on Kindle!

Beware the Edmonton Poetry Festival!

Bad Attitude now available for Kindle!

Tim Burton at MoMA

Scientists discover MERCH!

Athabasca University Press to publish my new book!

The Thief and the Cobbler

Red Fez Phones Home!

Sites of Resistance - filmed in Fabulous Poeti-Scope!

Totally unrelated, but I think this video is amazing!

New Video!!!!

Zues and the Giant Iced Tea submitted!!

Listen to THIS!

A Party in my Tummy

More videos coming soon

My publisher loses Federal Grant funding!

What am I working on these days?

Done and Done and Done

LM.com is dead!

Any idiot can have a blog...and I do!