Please join Nomados Press for a poetry reading with Kim Duff and Larissa Lai at 1067 Granville Street, lane entrance.

“The world beneath the world” is what Dionne Brand called it, when she was here reading for Play Chthonics last fall. The world we’d live in if Columbus hadn’t sailed the ocean blue, if Lenin not Stalin, if Mao without the Cultural Revolution, if Kennedy not Nixon, without the Viet Nam war or the war in Iraq…. She says that world still exists beneath the surface, that it has a language, that we can go there. Roy and Slav say there are signs all the time, if we pay attention.

Yesterday I went there, for a few moments– dinner hosted by the gracious Jeff Bear for his sister Shirley Bear, and us– her friends– out at Jeff’s house in Musqueam. Such food! I tried kaaw for the first time, ate oysters, chunks of smoked cod, salmon, halibut. Shirley and Roy remember the possibility of the 60s before the disillusionment of the 70s, hang on to hope, justice in the cells. That world is still possible, if we can figure a way through this one, churning out students like human widgets. My friend Margot calls it a chicken factory, grade ‘em by size and quality, so the corporations can pick their minions.

I had to leave just as the fish was arriving. Me and the little dog Decker, we salivate… But left for a good reason– to attend and read for the launch of Fist of the Spider Woman, edited by the lovely and amazing Amber Dawn. There are women out here on the east side actively making that other world, and I am grateful to be able to go there sometimes.

I’m kicking myself for having missed Shirley Bear’s reading at the On Edge series last Wednesday. She’s been an important figure to me in the last few years as an elder, artist and writer. I’m looking forward to having a visit with her later this month.

I’m also really looking forward to the launch for Fist of the Spider Woman, an anthology of horror stories (and other genres) by queer and transgressive women, edited by writer,  performer and editor extraordinaire, Amber Dawn. It’s a huge honour to have a few pieces from my long poem “Nascent Fashion” included.

GLBTQ community has remained so supportive all these years, through the transformations and transmutions of both my person and the community itself. I’m headed to Ghent later this month for a conference on queer literary kinship, organized by Katrien DeMoor. I’m really looking forward to meeting Emanuel Xavier, Robert Gluck and especially Sarah Schulman, and to seeing Anna Camilleri again. And, so serendipitously, it turns out that the lovely and talented Angela Rawlings is hanging out in Ghent for a while. Check it this cool clip of her and Jaap Blonk. I always get excited when my communities collide. I’ll stay on in Ghent for a bit after the conference to spend time with Angela, rest my head, and, with any luck, meet local poets. I may even get some writing done.

And speaking of “Nascent Fashion,” that poem is coming out in my first solo poetry book, Automaton Biographies, which Arsenal Pulp Press is publishing later this fall. “Rachel,” a long poem based on the Ridley Scott film Bladerunner and the Phillip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, will also be in that collection, for those of you who are interested.

For now, it’s the last week of class. I’m looking forward to the end of term, though I will miss my students. Papers are due on Wednesday, and the Canadian Studies class has an exam on April 17th. Study hard, my friends, but don’t forget to ask yourselves why you do so.