On My Bookshelf

ON MY BOOKSHELF asks QWF authors what they're reading, perusing, consulting, reconsidering.
jkjk
............................................................
CAROLYN MARIE SOUAID
hjhj

"Aside from the books I read for review or editing, poetry has been on the back burner these days. It seems the books I've had my nose in lately have chosen me rather than the other way around. While I was in Winnipeg last month for the International Writers' Festival, I found a used copy of The Lover by Marguerite Duras in a second-hand book shop and devoured it on the plane ride back to Montreal. Others are books I read in my youth, books that didn’t really register on a profound level at the time. Siddhartha, for instance, which was on a high school reading list for English class. It came up again, after a car accident with my son this summer – I read it in one sitting and found myself weeping by the end. This led me back to Walden and Other Writings by Henry David Thoreau, which has been on my bedside table for the past couple of years. I pick it up now and then when I have a hard time getting to sleep.

Today, I finished re-reading (for about the fifth time) Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet and I was astonished at the similarities between Rilke and Hesse regarding the importance of being “solitary and attentive when one is sad.” (Rilke) He also says: “We are solitary. We can delude ourselves about this and act as if it were not true… But how much better it is to recognize that we are alone; yes, even to begin from this realization.”

To write from that place.

It makes me want to roll up my sleeves, grab a pencil, and go at it again."
jhjh

Montreal based poet CAROLYN MARIE SOUAID is the co-producer of Circus of Words / Cirque des mots and co-founder/editor of the online literary magazine PQ (Poetry Quebec), dedicated to the English language poetry of Quebec. She currently serves as poetry editor for Signature Editions. Her fifth collection, Paper Oranges, appeared in 2008.

www.souaid.com

www.poetry-quebec.com

Author photo: Michael Towe

The Writing Room

kjkj
Ever wonder where writers write, how they write and why, if their physical writing space is private – or if it’s mobile, the neighbourhood internet café or university library?

In THE WRITING ROOM, QWF members talk about their writing space and writing process.
gggggggggggggggggggg

~~~
8787

LAURA FABIANI

ghgh

Laura's office in the den

When I first started writing seriously, I wrote wherever I happened to be. At the park, at the pool, even at Fundomondo, while my kids climbed and hollered from the jungle gym. The best place was always in my bedroom, late afternoon sunshine streaming in, cocooning me in its warmth as I sat at a tiny desk and wrote to my heart’s content.

Things quickly changed as I began writing more extensively and launched my NouveauWriter Web site. The mounting books, paperwork, and reference material threatened to take over our sleeping sanctuary, prompting my husband to give up his space in the basement den in exchange for my writing space in the bedroom. I whooped with joy at the prospect of having a large, well-organized writing corner all to myself. But I lost Mr. Sunshine. The den’s north facing window barely let in enough light to satisfy a mole.

So I battled with my need for the nourishing light of the sun versus my obsession to be well set up with everything at my fingertips. I finally opted for the office in the den. However, not all my writing is done there. As I work on my second novel, The Red Cloak, a YA time-travel story of a young woman’s legacy to secretly protect sacred ancient writings, my family has become accustomed to seeing me with a pencil and notebook in hand. I sit wherever the comforting rays of sunshine soothe my soul as it journeys through the imaginary worlds I create solely with my words.

LAURA FABIANI is the author of Daughter of Mine, and the founder of NouveauWriter.com, an online resource for new and aspiring writers. She currently teaches creative writing workshops in both English and French at the Saul Bellow Library, and blogs about books at Library of Clean Reads.

lkl
www.laurafabiani.com

www.nouveauwriter.com

libraryofcleanreads.blogspot.com

ON MY BOOKSHELF – the iPod EDITION!

ON MY
ON MY BOOKSHELF asks QWF authors what they're reading, perusing, consulting, reconsidering.

In this special edition, Eric Siblin, the author of The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece, talks about what he’s currently listening to (instead of what he’s reading).

Here’s a peek at his iPod – including Eric’s Exercise Mix!

...................................................
ERIC SIBLIN
As soon

As soon as I finished writing a book about Bach’s Cello Suites, my ears felt suddenly free. After immersing myself in so much classical music, from Alkan to Zelenka, and Bach, Bach, Bach, I figured I would remove the powdered wig, let down my hair and rock out. Having force-fed myself all this serious fare, there was the slightly bitter aftertaste of sonic spinach, as if the highbrow harmonies were in my system only because they were good for me.

But I came to like the classical taste a great deal. It is now part of me. At the same time, I’ve regained the freedom to listen to whatever turns my crank, bending genres with rhythmic abandon. “Music is music,” the serious classical composer Alban Berg reassured George Gershwin in a scene from Alex Ross’s terrific book, The Rest is Noise.

Music is also mood-centric. What works at one time may not cut it at another point. J.S. Bach produces a certain thrill and James Brown another. There are times when “The St. Matthew Passion” cannot hold a candle to “I Got You (I Feel Good)” and other times when J.S Bach blows the Godfather of Soul out of the water.

So here’s some of what’s jockeying for position on my iPod, with music for many moods, ranging from Lisa Gerrard for a trance-like state to Sufjan Stevens for a frothy pop feeling to Wilco for alt-country road trips; Tricky, The Tragically Hip and Mick Harvey to increase the beats-per-minute for exercise; and Bach for, well, Bach.

On my iPod:

JENNY LEWIS & THE WATSON TWINS – Rabbit Fur Coat

OLIVE – Extra Virgin

J. S. BACH – Cello Sonatas (Martha Argerich and Mischa Maisky)

WILCO – Wilco (The Album)

AMADOU & MARIAME – Dimanche à Bamako

SIBELIUS – Symphonies Nos. 1 and 5

MEDESKI, MARTIN & WOOD – Last Chance to Dance Trance

J. S. BACH – 6 Suites per violoncello solo senza basso (Pieter Wispelwey)

MARC RIBOT – Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos

MESSIAEN – Quartet for the End of Time

LISA GERARD & PIETER BOURKE – Duality

J. S. BACH – Cantatas with violoncello piccolo, BWV 180, 49, 115 (Christophe Coin)

Extracts from my Exercise Mix:
mmm
mmm TRICKY, Black Steel
mmm MICK HARVEY, Requiem
mmm TRAGICALLY HIP, Fireworks
mmm HIS NAME IS ALIVE, Everything Takes Forever
mmm RADIOHEAD, Pearly

ERIC SIBLIN is an award-winning journalist and filmmaker and former pop music critic at the Montreal Gazette. His documentary, Word Slingers, which explores the wacky subculture of competitive Scrabble tournaments, won a Jury Award at the Yorkton Short Film & Video Festival. He also co-directed the documentary In Search of Sleep: An Insomniac’s Journey. The Cello Suites, his first book, has been nominated for the Pearson Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize.

http://www.ericsiblin.com/
http://www.anansi.ca/

RECENTLY LAUNCHED!

Because I Have Loved and Hidden It
by Elise Moser

kjkj
"The heart is a strange fruit ... Elise Moser is an expert at peeling back its thick rind of sorrow, fear, and guilt to expose the love concealed beneath. Because I Have Loved and Hidden It

is a sophisticated and graceful debut."

Neil Smith, Bang Crunch

mm Julia is in limbo. Her mother has just died and her married lover, Nicholas, has gone missing in Morocco. Thirsting for love, for sex, for connection, she grasps at the trailing threads of those who have left her behind: a birth certificate, issued two years before she was born and kept secret from her; and memories of Nicholas, his touch, his scent, his every action consuming her waking moments and filling her lonely nights.
mm Her need to fill the void is so great that when Deepa, Nicholas's wife, walks through her door, they begin a passionate affair, carried along by desire and desperation. This — along with the mysterious birth certificate — leads Julia to question where she fits in other peoples’ lives, and where she has fallen through the cracks.
lkj
Elise Moser’s short stories have won the CBC/QWF Short Story Competition in 2004 and 2006 and been published and broadcast in Canada, the U.S., and across the Commonwealth. She is the literary editor of The Rover, an electronic independent review of arts and culture. Elise lives in Montreal.
lkj
Cormorant Books
http://www.cormorantbooks.com/