VAGABONDAGE

Graffiti left by Rimbaud near Karnak, Egypt.

… J’avais en effet, en toute sincérité d’esprit, pris l’engagement de le rendre à son état primitif de fils du soleil, – et nous errions, nourris du vin des cavernes et du biscuit de la route, moi pressé de trouver le lieu et la formule.

- Arthur Rimbaud, ‘Vagabonds’

One of those themes not known to inspire summer blockbuster films, the idea of homelessness is central to last year’s Wendy And Lucy, directed by Kelly Reichardt, and Vagabond, a 1985 release by France’s Agnes Varda. I picked up both at Montreal’s Grand Bibliothèque recently, amongst more prosaic fare like Stargate Continuum, and of course it’s the smaller, more thoughtful films that have stayed with me, while the special effects vehicles fade as quickly as the indigestion wrought by a bag of Frito’s ‘Original’ Corn Chips (‘Original’ cuz only the Undead can eat the BBQ-style).

WALKING SPANISH DOWN THE HALL

The latest issue of The Apostle's Review.

Just a couple of random and unrelated things literary / artistic that I have had the honour to be included in. First, an artists’ book called Drop Names that I co-created with Victoria Stanton in 1995 has appeared in the newly-launched ‘virtual’ exhibition Artists’ Books: Bound in Art. The exhibit is a project of Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa. Our work is only represented by a single picture, but there’s more than 140 artists’ books digitized on the site and available for browsing.

Second, two of my poems have appeared in the latest issue of The Apostles Review, a Spanish-language literary magazine published here in Montreal. The poems, ‘The Aesthetics of Emotional Control’ and ‘Prayer’, originally appeared in my triple-chapbook set SEX, POWER, MYTH, which I self-published back in late 2004. Alejandro Saravia bought a set at the launch party, and was quite taken with a few of the pieces.

Some of you might remember our performance at the April 2008 Words and Music at the Casa, where I read my poems in English and Alejandro then read the translated versions. At first, he’d translated a few of them just for his own pleasure. Then he floated the possibility that they might appear online. Imagine my delight when they actually appeared in print! It’s a really nice magazine, too, and features a lot of Spanish poets and prose writers, including Saravia himself, Angel Mota and Nela Rio.