ReallyGoodWriter | Food • Writing • Poetry Iambic Cafe

food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

Sunday’s treat was a trip to Mr Spudd’s Snack Shack, which was busy even before and even after we taxed the kitchen’s assembly skills with our multiple orders for veggie burgers, smokies, monster burgers and the like. A surprising number of locals were stopping in for ice cream treats, although the temperature hovered just around 10 degrees celsius. Well, prairie folk: hardy or what?

But all too soon it was bye-bye blackbird

and little bird-house on the prairie

and prairie dog

and tick-proof walks

which a number of us decided to have, against all sanity, on the last morning whose weather was too sweet to leave outside. Off we went through the long and short grasses…

And subsequently, consequently and unwillingly, a number of us carried eight-legged souvenirs back with us on planes and buses and body parts. So I confess I’m quite pleased to be out of ticksville once more, although it is true they are also present here on Vancouver Island. Just not as numerous or active as in this particular season in the lovely Qu’Appelle Valley.

Some interesting discussion yesterday about the different ways of reading: for academic purpose vs for writing. Erin and John talked about their ways of preparing during the writing of a poetry project, reading widely and employing techniques of serendipity, or delving and re-delving into more challenging works in order to find directions of thought from them.

Between our excellent meals we have been trying to walk off a pirogy here, a cookie there. One popular destination is Prairie Cherries, where the proprietors sell organic cherry products from their orchard. The variety they grow is a cross between the sturdy prairie classic, the Mongolian Cherry, which is short and hardy but a bit on the tart side; and the pie cherry for sweetness, a variety developed by the University of Saskatchewan.

On our after-dinner tick-catching stroll, we saw another prairie fruit in bloom everywhere: Saskatoon blossoms everywhere.

We met a Red Wing Blackbird.

And a wee Warbler.

A beaver dam…

…and a beaver.

A white horse….

…a black horse.

A deer on a hillside.

And lots of what Gary described as prairie wool. It’s like walking on a down quilt. Would’ve lain down to look at the stars but for the ticks.

In the self-serving-don’t-mess-with-my-lifestyle department, a recent Pew poll says that over half of Americans surveyed don’t feel humans are responsible for global warming.

In the interesting angle department, Raj Patel draws some interesting conclusions from a recent Lancet article and the ensuing media headlining.

And in the bee-keeping department, here’s a cool manual on bee-keeping produced by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity.

Such fun with words we’re having. We started off doing translation exercises, similar to this “Homophonic Translation” routine, which we did using a latin text. Last night it occurred to me that I might be able to find a way into revision work by using an online translation tool, so I’ve been blasting a few pieces apart by translating them into Japanese, Greek, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, French, Italian and Spanish — and back again, sometimes more than once. It’s been a fun way to take apart a dull line or sentence and see what might enliven it. Or perhaps start me off in a new poem or image.

Here are the opening lines of an old poem of mine I chose at random:

The path of disaster is so often
just beyond the window we’ve turned
away from for that critical
moment

and the translated version (via Japanese and Greek)(with a few tweaks to make the syntax work, more or less):

Such a certain street of destruction
a precise and often window
that exceeds our regard
with empty importance
turns because this

So, a different world and a different meaning, and a lot of nonsense, but maybe something in there presents an opening for new directions and energy.

According to the note I received from my MP today, Bill C-517, which proposed mandatory labelling of genetically modified foods in Canada, did not pass second reading on May 7th 2008. I suppose this gives us a fair sense of which interests are running our country, and the public interest is not being considered. Now would be the time to write to your MPs and tell them to try again. I don’t think they heard us the first time. Or the second.

This feels like about my fourth springtime this year; where I am today, the Qu’Appelle Valley is starting to green.

Last night being chef’s night off, we went to Regina, to the Mediterranean Bistro where the 4-cheese tortellini looked somewhat better than it tasted (seriously overwhelmed by smoked salmon and dill, and using pretty ordinary tortellini; the asparagus was the best thing in it..)

I couldn’t see much to choose from if you have issues about industrial food: a lot of chicken on the menu with nothing to defends its origins. Maybe next time I’ll try the bouillabaisse, which had a pretty nice fennel broth to commend it… setting aside for one evening my many questions about the origins of the prawns.

This morning I picked up a couple of books of poetry from the Sage Hill library, and found a (now deceased) female American Dog Tick (Dermacentor variabilis)

hanging onto a corner of Worn Thresholds, by Julie Berry.