Came across this today CanLit blog hopping. It’s quite a riot.

Thanks to Greg Betts for posting this first in Oct ‘08.

The new issue, Canadian Special, of ActionYes is up online, curated by François Luong. The issue features a lovely assortment of Canadian poets, including five poems my newest crop with the working title ‘the reality series’.

Other Can poets in the issue include:

Daniel Canty, Angela Carr, Jason Christie, Sarah Dowling,  Darren Wershler-Henry & Bill Kennedy, Ray Hsu, Sonnet L’Abbé, Chantal Neveu, A. Rawlings, glenN robsoN, Hector Ruiz, Jenny Sampirisi, Jordan Scott, Angela Szczepaniak, François Turcot.

This:

text rain

The recent circulation of Paul Zukofsky’s threat to graduate students and his philistine, preposterous, name calling of intelligent people who work in the arts has generated a substantial uproar—one can only hope he recognizes that his demands aren’t legal.

But in case he hasn’t, here is another response:

As you wish Mr. Zukofsky

This blog is fantastic. Harper Valley: http://harpervalley.wordpress.com/

Check it out if you have time.

Some ass-wipe came into 112 Hastings before the KSW workshop a couple of weeks ago and claimed he invented the word “Influency.” He threatened to take legal action. I don’t think he had a case. First of all, the word was InfluencyWest, not “Influency” in and of itself. And second of all, you can’t copyright a word. Series, books, movies and songs can recycle the same title until writers turn blue in the face, there’s nothing you can do about it. I suspect Jason and Jordan didn’t want to deal with it. So the name has been changed to RespondencyWest.

Here is the website: http://respondencywest.wordpress.com/

The man is clearly insane. What the hell does he think he’s going to get out of this? His precious little word. When he croaks we can write it on a little piece of paper and put it in his palm so he’s buried with it. That way he can have his little word, all his, to no effect, forever and ever.

And since I’m on the topic of non-reality-based legalities, check out Paul Zukofsky’s philistine threat to stop grad students from quoting Louis Zukofsky in their disserations, followed by his attack on literature, the humanities and academia at large: http://www.z-site.net/copyright-notice-by-pz/

And check out this awesome response (it’s a bit long, but try to watch the first 10 minutes at least): http://zenslum.googlepages.com/ezpz

Short Line Reading Series

Fall ‘09 Edition

Join us on Thursday, October 22, 2009 at the Railway Club (579 Dunsmuir) for the next installment of the Short Line Reading Series.

6:30PM – 8:30PM
Admission: FREE

Readings by:
Ken Belford - Lan(d)guage: a sequence of poetics (2008)
Glen Lowry - Pacific Avenue (2009)
cris costa

CBC News – British Columbia – Anti-Olympic signs could mean jail: rights group

Shared via AddThis

This is appalling. I believe this law officially disqualifies BC from any status that resembles democracy.

If you haven’t heard the buzz, the BC Liberals have sucked all the money out of arts and culture, cut education and social services, while making taxpayers pay for leaky Olympics athlete’s condos (where we can never afford to live even with the mould that will grow because of deficient construction) among other Olympic expenditures (900 million worth!).

Below is a circulating letter by Donato Mancini to the Liberals. Feel free to pass on.

****

Honourable Gordon Campbell
Honourable Kevin Krueger

The Liberal government’s recent announcement of extreme cuts to the provincial arts and culture budget is a test of BC public sentiment. That test, if designed show that arts are considered an expendable luxury, has failed. As each day passes, it becomes clearer that BC voters consider public arts funding a vital part of our social infrastructure.

It is not necessary for me to rehearse the sound economic logic of public arts funding, since your government repeatedly justifies its policies on fiscal grounds. We know, from your own studies, every dollar invested in arts produces at least $1.36; a solid return from any perspective, even before we factor in lucrative spin-offs in stimulating commercial activity. If your policies were honestly grounded in financial logic, as you repeatedly claim, we should expect your decisions to be based on that logic. Instead, we find evidence to the contrary both in the announcement of cuts and in the opportunistic shift of fiscal rationale to a more vulnerable site.

To say it bluntly: your transparently false claims of budgetary competition between essential social services and the arts are morally appalling. Your rhetorical aim is apparently to aggravate the very wounds opened by your own government’s cuts to essential services and to use that aggravation to stir animosities that are to your advantage in realising a cultural agenda. It is reassuring that so far the BC public has been unmoved by this blatantly manipulative strategy.

We hope the public will see instead that the real competition is with the dramatically over-budget Winter Olympics. Go no further than quoting grotesquely disproportionate figures: $900 million to be spent on Olympics security versus the $47.8 million budgeted for the arts in 2008. The Winter Olympics will mortgage Vancouver for a generation. Social services and publicly-funded arts and culture create no such debts, but rather help alleviate entrenched social problems, beautify the province and distinguish Canada internationally. If your policies were in fact motivated by financial reasoning you would increase public arts spending.

Like all BC cultural workers, I am sincerely grateful for the support the BC government has provided our activities in the past. That gratitude is, however, always symbiotic with a robust confidence in the social importance of arts and culture. Our extreme hard work attests to both. Let it be noted that the workweek of the typical cultural worker averages above 60 hours, time spent creating, promoting, consuming and facilitating culture in BC. We are devoted, productive members of society who take our civic responsibilities seriously. In that capacity, we are justly angry when the government makes policy decisions clearly against the long-term interests of residents of this province.

No cogent argument, fiscal or cultural, can be made for reducing public arts funding. Any policy other than of generous, arms-length arts funding demonstrates disregard of economic facts, contempt for public opinion and hostile indifference to the province’s long-term well-being.

Speaking, I hope, for many cultural workers across BC, I ask you to abandon these destructive plans. Restore public arts funding permanently.

Sincerely,

Donato Mancini

Should be doing some reading, working on yet another paper, so I’ve decided to browse the internet looking for concrete poetry instead. Came across this website called Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the 60s. It’s a fantastic site, hosting poetry, visual art, concrete stuff, critical papers, and etc etc. 

Also, this was recently brought to my attention: Michael Turner’s blog on the recent “The Line Has Shattered,” a one day colloquium  about the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference (where even Ginsberg showed up!), hosted by SFU and the Kootenay School of Writing.