It’s been hot here in Manitoba. Forest fires are already raging north of us and the birds regularly stop by to take sips out of our birdbath. Meanwhile, down in the U.S., the government recently decided to do away with all the regulations that were put in place following the subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent […]
Day after day of dazzling sunshine has lately lifted my spirits. It helps too that I sent off my poetry manuscript to the publisher this week and that the birds are back. Purple finches and dark-eyed juncos at our backyard feeder. White pelicans crowding the Red River. Hawks, eagles, and, of course, robins. A multitude […]
Despite the Arctic airmass that’s been hanging over us, plunging temperatures into the minus double digits, spring is coming. The snow is ever-so-slowly receding towards the forest shadows, the geese are returning, and the other day I saw a seagull soar over our house. Mowat is also fully spring fevered, visiting Gus, the golden retriever, […]
For the past few nights I’ve been waking up at 1:13 a.m. In the spare room, I’ve kept a sort of vigil – reading, thinking, crying, making lists of things I have to do, trying to make plans. If I’m lucky, I’ll write. On Saturday night, I re-wrote the whole plot line of my current […]
I’ve been returning to the roots of writing practice lately. To the book I bought and cracked open as I was crossing the Georgia Strait between Tsawwassen and Vancouver Island on my way to Salt Spring Island, circa 1993. Back then, as I read the first pages of Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, a pair […]
I’m stuck on Chapter Four. Partly because I’ve spent the past five days working to eradicate some of the beige that covers every wall (well, except for bathroom’s combo of ’80s aqua and stark white and the kitchen’s half-and-half neon yellow and, again, stark white) in our new-to-us home. All the while, my mind’s been […]
The ground is under my feet. Snow turning soft, ridged snowmobile trails collapsing into black earth in the fields where we run our dog. In the early morning, the blue jays show up to eat the sunflower seeds that the red squirrel has knocked out of the feeder. Chickadees and nuthatches flit around, and a […]
Coffee in a blue and orange pottery mug. The indigo sky pushing at the cold window glass. J. emptying the dishwasher. The dog dozing at the top of the stairs, waiting for his first walk. A dream drifting on the morning peripheral: a goat pestering me, persistently biting and tugging the sand-coloured wool sweater I’m […]
Create a character, I said last night, during a class I’m teaching called Write Your Heart Out! (from Joyce Carol Oates’s advice to writers). A picture of feet was up on the screen. Red converse sneakers, legs in jeans, gender-neutral. Paint what you can’t see. Follow the pen into backstory, emotions, relationships or simply a […]
Seven skeins of Malabrigo Rios, luxurious merino yarn, in shifting shades of indigo, copper, violet and deep greens. That’s what I bought myself for Christmas last year, with a gift certificate my sister gave me. As any knitter knows, seven skeins is a lot of yarn. It’s a sweater amount, which is what I wanted. […]