Hey there,
A couple of young upstarts named Laura and Margot at St. Thomas have started a literary magazine called “stuart.” I am honored to be in the inaugural issue of this STU version of QWERTY with my long travel poem “Everything Is Coming Up Rose Blanche.”
The book launch is on Sunday, April 25, at 8 pm at the Garrison Ale House in Fred.
See you there, JT
English grammar and spelling are funny to me, because there isn’t just one set of rules that you’re supposed to follow, but rather a few suggested usages. Some people get really anal about how the English language is used. Sometimes I’m one of those people, but usually only with native speakers who don’t understand how they’re misusing the language. So I get bothered by people who have been speaking English for most of their lives but can’t differentiate between their, there and they’re, or who spell a lot as alot.
Now, before anyone calls me out for doing so in the title of this blog post, I’d like to note that it was intentional there. I want to share “The Alot is Better Than You at Everything” from the Hyperbole and a Half blog. This is a blog post in which the author is talking about having invented a creature called an alot to imagine every time someone types that word instead of a lot. It’s a coping mechanism for the author.
It’s worth noting that while I think this sort of thing is cute, and I have a similar grievance, I’m not so anal about English usage that I can’t accept changes to the language. It doesn’t bother me at all that people use u in place of you in text messages or on twitter. Likewise, it doesn’t bother me that gamers talk about pwning n00bs. I like that English is so adaptable and that it can evolve. I like that there are English language usages that I don’t always get right away, like Cockney rhyming slang. I’m pedantic, though, and I really prefer it when deviations from accepted usages are informed.
We’re going to be having ourselves a reading at Scheherazade Books in St. John, on Saturday the 24th of April at 2PM.
We had a pretty good turnout the last time we read at Scheherazade, and it’s a helluva nice store. I’m told they moved across the hall, and the store is looking even better now. So, basically what I’m trying to imply here is that this could be the best reading that you’ll ever get a chance to go to and you’ll feel really bad if you don’t show up.
If you’re like me and you can’t remember to attend things, or invite other people to come with you, without a Facebook event, you should totally try using this one.
Hey all,
Just dropping a note to let you know that the online, Alberta-based poetry magazine blueskiespoetry.ca is publishing two of my poems this National Poetry Month: Checkout Girls and The Butcher and the Baker. I’m stoked!
-CC
Yesterday I spent the afternoon wandering the halls of the GeoSciences building on campus, forms in hand, here at ye ole Institute of Higher Yearning. Made me reminisce for the simple, respectable historic landmark that is the Geology building at UNB. There, one can expect to find geologists. In the GeoScience building at U of C, one can expect to find the Graduate Studies Scholarship office. It’s so logical: I wince.
My point: On every other wall were posters for ‘funded field expedition!’. In the sciences - where innovation, ingenuity and invention are as encouraged and respected as they are in the Arts - the idea that one must venture out in the world in order to interpret it/experiment with it IS the norm . . . but in the Literary Arts we are encouraged (and content) to lock ourselves up in libraries, archives, bedrooms and offices to write.
We need to shift perspectives on what is necessary for writers to engage, and endure.
Your thoughts?
Keep writing wild,
CampEye
PS. I am tickled by this blog program, it is telling me it is 6am though in my frontier it is 11pm. This means I am writing to you in the future. I love the idea that y’all experience everything half a day before me.
Remember to send a telegram when the world ends.
