Being trees at Ariel’s launch

This past Monday, I went to the Best Book Launch Ever for my friend Ariel Gordon’s book Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forest.

I laughed, I cried (thanks to Erna Buffie‘s beautiful, generous and true introduction). I ate tree, acorn, leaf cookies made by generous and talented Anita Daher.

I pretended along with everyone else (and the place was packed!) to be a tree with a slight lean (the way the best trees are, J. said recently, after he planted a showy mountain ash in our front yard). It was a fabulous evening.

I agree so much with Ariel that trees are essential to our sense of space and place and self. I love how she talked on the radio this morning about being thrilled that people in Winnipeg are outnumbered 10 to one by the eight million trees in the city.

Yesterday, after a long day, I poured myself a cider and stood under the canopy of lush  blossoms of one of our apple trees to listen to the bees.

Truly, this tree, amongst its community of trees, helped me so much last year when I found myself in the midst of a serious depression (better now, thanks to getting support and doing the things I need to do to help myself).

As I blogged just over a year ago today, I was writing a lot of poetry at the time.

And I’m happy to say that two poems will be published in Spring 2020 in an anthology called Voicing Suicide (edited by Daniel G. Scott, to be published by Ekstasis Editions) – along with a poem by my late brother, Tim.

Slowly, slowly, I’m sifting through the poetry that Tim left behind, amongst all of his other creative projects (films, screenplays, stories, games). I want to share it. I know he would want that too.

In other book-related news: here is a recent interview about the process of writing poems about such tough topics as infertility and considering my ancestors’ role in colonization.

And (so exciting!), the writer Angie Abdou started raving on Twitter about the Advanced Reading Copy (ARC) of my new novel, This Has Nothing To Do With You last week… If you want to read the premise, you can check it out on the Freehand catalogue, right here.

Hope to see some of you in Ontario over the next couple weeks! Be well, and go say hello to your favourite tree.