Lie Down Within the Night: Behind My CBC Longlisted Poems

Last spring, and earlier, in the previous winter and fall, I wrote some poems about my brother. One came in the night, in a tent, camped on the rocky shore of the arm of Simonhouse Lake that leads into Second Cranberry as J. and I were pushing into wilderness on a canoe trip. The next […]

Alberta Adventure

J. and I took our show on the road last week and went to Alberta. We drove through crazy weather – freezing rain interspersed with blizzard – before popping out into sunshine. At a hobby farm outside Edmonton, we hunkered down and did a whole lot of reading, cooking, walking, and watching movies on a […]

Planes, Trains, and… Polar Bears

It’s been a week since my mom went home. I ended up driving her to Flin Flon – along with another woman stuck in The Pas because the plane couldn’t land on last Thursday’s icy tarmac  – in order to catch her flight to Winnipeg, then on to Toronto. She made it home okay, if […]

Five Weeks

I’ve been busy all week working on my book and assorted other projects; the grief comes and goes. It’s been almost five weeks, but I think actually that part of me is still in denial that my brother is GONE. But they say that, don’t they? That it takes a year of passing through the […]

Life and Art

Remember last week? When I talked about irons in the fire? Well, I’ve been busy, busy stirring the flames this past week, so much so that my planned post isn’t actually ready to go up. That’s the bad news. The good news is that said post is by my friend Rea Tarvydas, whose new book of […]