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Closing Time
Almost done the 2006 winter colony, and counting down to this evening’s final readings and (thank you artists) studio visits. We have scaled the chip mountain and made our contributions to the local economy. We have written and read and walked and skied and skated and scrabbled. We have exchanged the obscurest trivia and the easiest recipes; blogged and emailed and even pinned writings to our doors. And tomorrow we return to reality.
Wednesday’s afternoon highlight was a visit to St Peter’s Cathedral, with live commentary from Fr. Demetrius. I’d heard about the paintings by Berthold Imhoff from people who’d been there before, and they were something to see in the streaming sunlight.
Spent the past three days wrestling with terza rima. Fiendish, I call it. Paul Farley calls it “the very devil of a form” in his review of George Szirtes’ book, Reel. But it was an invigorating work-out, and although I’m still grappling with a final sticky rhyme (–any suggestions for rhyming “novel” with other than “grovel”??) I might be fool enough to attempt it again sometime. Some other imaginary time when I have the luxury of three days to spend on nothing but sifting three way rhymes for iambic lines. **11:21 Update – since I can’t figure out how to include hyperlinking in comments – Thanks Ariel: hovel it is. I love Rhymezone too but I must say that after this exercise I have developed a renewed passion for my poet-centric Poet’s Manual and Rhyming Dictionary, which gives masculine, feminine and triple rhymes, and makes it fairly easy to work out half rhymes.
Hoping I experience again the miracle of St Peter’s and weigh in at home to discover I haven’t gained (or lost) an ounce despite two weeks of feverish chip consumption, daily cocktails, lashings of gravy on everything, and a respectful sampling of each and every dessert on offer. And only two hours of badminton in the balance. But I like to believe that all those hours spent out on the lane to the cemetery, ungloved, with a palmful of peanuts, feeding chickadees and braving incipient frostbite, have some counter-calorific effect.And so, as that classic British football ballad has it,
Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go-o…
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From candles to homestyle cooking
Thanks to dear prairie expat poet Nancy – she’s here in Saskatchewan in spirit, and certainly by email – for pointing me to a lovely UK poetry site, Poetry PF where I saw some familiar names and faces, and lots of good poems.
But dropping out of the virtual clouds and back to earth where we’re enjoying balmy -10c weather with sunshine and heaps of ornamental hoarfrost… who’d visit Muenster without stopping for a sniff at the Canadian Prairie Candles shop? Just the place to thaw your frozen nostrils on a fine winter’s day. They have a staggering selection of scented votives, very reasonably priced. Among the dozens of seriously intoxicating flavours we investigated today were Let It Snow; Plum Spice; Wedding Day; Blackberry; Freshly Mown Hay; Bailey’s Irish Cream; and (oh yum) Banana Nut Bread. We have long admired their custom made grain elevator candles, but it’s worth noting they’re writer-friendly in there, so if you want something different for your book launch, talk to them about having a candle made from your book cover.
And my, we do enjoy an annual trawl of the treasures at The Muenster Consignment Centre. This year we spotted, among the everythings, a reading lamp whose stand was a glow-in-the-dark fist; a couple of old flip-down toasters (working) suitable for use in a hermitage; red cowboy boots; a siwash (Cowichan) sweater; an old painted cowboy lunchbox. We did not buy it all, because as the saying goes, if you have everything, where do you put it?
The Muenster Family Restaurant is only open till 4 on weekdays, but its kitchen is blessed with Shirley, one of the former cooks from St. Peter’s Abbey. She made Kathleen, Mari-Lou and me a dandy brunch today, eggs as we like ’em and lovely bacon and hash browns, with a generous hand on the coffee pot. The lemon-poppyseed muffins were warm and wonderfully lemony. Across the room we spotted fellow literary diners Paula Jane and Kimmy; from the oo-ing and ah-ing going on during their soup course, they were having themselves a noteworthy bowl, and we left them tucking in to some very special cheeseburgers with crinkle cut fries and gravy.
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Soups and Sales
After last night’s massive snackathon – jalapeno havarti, pita with red pepper feta, asiago cheese and tzadziki dips (thank you oh thank you Kimmy) – and a nice buncha grapes – we were treated to a reading by the erudite and entertaining Myrna Kostash, who graced us with a sample from her memoir-in-progress – and a visual nod to Saint Demetrius.
A couple of days last week we dropped our pens and headed into Humboldt to re-stock the chip supply and do a little shopping. We decided to lunch in town, and took ourselves to a prairie gem, the Prairie Perk. Land of latte, but they make a fine brew. I had their cafe breve on my last visit: and what a wonderful substance it was. A close relative of cappuccino, a mountain of thick creamy foam surmounting an excellent roast. Satisfying in every way, not too big: not too small. The box of Mexican chocolate perched discreetly on the countertop augers well for their hot chocolate, which they promise is the best in town.
But it was their soup of the day that’s earned my slavish devotion. Sopa Poblano, which seems to be a Latin cousin of leek and potato soup, a smooth suspension of potato with a well aimed bolt of green chile to finish. This recipe looks pretty close; I can’t wait to experiment at home.
Right next door to Prairie Perk was the real reason for our visit: our cherished clothing store, The Cottage Boutique, which obligingly holds its Winter Blow-Out Sale around the same time as our colony each year. There is much rejoicing on both sides when the writers waft into town and stagger out again adorned and laden with those understated beige bags.
Here’s a little bit of a poem – a ghazal of sorts – from a previous year, commemorating a visit with Lorri and Maureen, which will be in the new book:
Holding the door for each other, we file in
and blossom in three directions.When you reach into the unknown
hangers click an abacus along the rack.Colour pulls our hands into its field:
some treasure lies camouflaged in there.The door chimes and opens, chimes and closes:
shimmering breath of a room of women.
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In her latest collection, Rhona McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.
“…A beautiful, filling collection, Larder is a set of poems to read at the change of the seasons, to appreciate alongside a good meal, and to remind yourself of the beauty in everything, even the things you may not appreciate before opening McAdam’s collection….”
Rhona McAdam is a writer, poet, editor, and Registered Holistic Nutritionist with a Master’s in Food Culture from Italy and a deep-rooted passion for ecology and urban agriculture. Her work spans corporate and technical writing to poetry and creative nonfiction, often exploring the vital links between what we eat and how we live. Based in Victoria, BC, and available via Zoom, Rhona is always open to new writing commissions, readings, or workshops on nutrition and the culinary arts.
