95 challenge update
February 26, 2009
You may recall my earlier post on the 95 challenge, which is not a real “challenge” but something I made up. Or, perhaps, it is my challenge to you? A few people have asked how I’m doing, so here is the update.
23 Books
1 – Looking Awry (Slavoj Zizek)
2 – circuitry of Veins (Sylvia Legris)
3 – Iridium Seeds (Sylvia Legris)
4 – I, Tania (Brian Joseph Davis)
5 – Powers of Horror (Julia Kristeva)
6 – The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, Vols. I & II (Alan Moore)
7 – Nerve Squall (Sylvia Legris)
8 – This is Not a Pipe (Michel Foucault)
9 – The Sublime Object of Ideology (Slavoj Zizek)
10 – Thinking Like Your Editor (Susan Rabiner & Alfred Fortunato)
11 – Doomsday Patrol: The Painting That Ate Paris (Grant Morrisson)
12 – Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan
13 – The Chomsky-Foucault Debate: On Human Nature
14 – Forget Foucault (Jean Baudrillard)
15 – Neuromancer (William Gibson)
16 – Welcome to the Desert of the Real! (Slavoj Zizek)
17 – The Spirit of Terrorism (Jean Baudrillard)
18 – Emergency Hallelujah (Jason Heroux)
19 – The Book Collector (Tim Bowling)
20 – Civilization and Its Discontents (Sigmund Freud)
21 – Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord)
22 – Mrs Dalloway (Virginia Woolf)
23 – The Humbugs Diet (Robert Majzels)
13 Movies
1 – Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
2 – Top of the Food Chain (John Paizs)
3 – Highway 61 (Bruce McDonald)
4 – I’m Not There (Todd Haynes)
5 – Torn Curtain (Alfred Hitchcock)
6 – Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock)
7 – The Others (Alejandro Amenábar)
8 – The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock)
9 – No Direction Home (Martin Scorsese)
10 – The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (Slavoj Zizek, Sophie Fiennes)
11 – John Carpenter’s The Thing: Terror Takes Shape
12 – The Thing (John Carpenter)
13 – Videodrome (David Cronenberg)
Stephen Harper
February 24, 2009
Stephen Harper is in my face again. Why? What did I ever do to Stephen Harper? Why must I always feel at war with my own government? I just want to pay my taxes in peace.
It’s not enough that the government wants to impose bizarre regulations on the Canadian Magazine Fund, effectively destroying the literary periodical industry by limiting funding to periodicals with circulations less than 5000. No, they also have to try to kill SSHRC by making it fund only “business-related degrees” (I don’t know what kind of “business-related degrees” people get in the Social Sciences and Humanities).
The only good to come out of this is a new literary journal, Stephen Harper, run by Ryan Fitzpatrick and Natalie Zina Walschots. Their call for submissions is below. But first, my own contribution, composed mostly of lines from this CNN interview with Harper:
And now the poem:
That said, Wolf
If there is one thing
that could turn a recession into a depression,
it’s Stephen Harper.
If any country
doesn’t respect its obligations,
then Stephen Harper.
I think this is a debate we would rather avoid.
You can’t “Buy Canadian” but you can buy Canada.
And the call:
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
Announcing the formation of a new Canadian literary magazine!
STEPHEN HARPER: a journal of the literary arts
Dedicated to the publication of Canadian literary talent, STEPHEN
HARPER is looking for said talent to bombard our inbox with your best
writing. We are looking for submissions from across Canada in both
official languages.
Submissions should be made via email to
stephen.harper.literary.concern@gmail.com. Submissions should remain
under 1 page as budget constraints are also size restraints. Deadline
is as soon as possible! We will start reading as soon as submissions
start rolling in!
We look forward to reading your submissions!
ryan fitzpatrick & Natalie Zina Walschots
STEPHEN HARPER Managing Editors
About STEPHEN HARPER:
STEPHEN HARPER was started as the first magazine under new funding
guidelines made by the Canadian Periodical Fund. We believe that the
best response to these new guidelines is to try to produce a literary
journal streamlined enough to meet the new realities of today’s
publishing industry. STEPHEN HARPER has an official subscription base
of 413 – each MP and senator in the Canadian government is a
subscriber, including our namesake! As well, STEPHEN HARPER will be
starting a list of unsubscribers (the SH! list) of people not quite
lucky enough to be members of Canada’s own government, but who still
wish to receive the light of STEPHEN HARPER into their heart.
Pontypool will change everything
February 18, 2009
That’s a grandiose claim, but I do think Pontypool will rock. Director Bruce McDonald (Highway 61, Hard Core Logo) adapting Tony Burgess’s novel Pontypool Changes Everything, perhaps the best zombie book I’ve ever read. A zombie virus that spreads through language. Zombies as, in the words of Burgess, “a metaphor for metaphors that keep hunting you long after they’ve been meaningful.” Here’s Tony Burgess discussing the forthcoming film:
Clockfire poems in filling Station
February 6, 2009
The latest issue of filling Station (#42: The Digust Issue) contains six poems from my Clockfire manuscript. Clockfire is a series of prose poems that serve as instructions for plays that would be impossible to produce. Some more work from this ms is coming out in Grain this year.
I should note a misprint in the fS issue, in case you read it: “The Play Begins” is a complete poem in itself, but as it is printed it looks to be a continuation of text from the poem “Like Lambs.”
I also must acknowledge the support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, which provided me with a grant to write Clockfire. The book is currently sitting with publishers and awaiting decisions.
