ReallyGoodWriter | Food • Writing • Poetry Iambic Cafe

food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

So, the latest word is that the Cultural Section at Canada House is being ‘restructured’; our previous five representatives in performing arts and music, film and television, the visual arts and literature, have all been made redundant. Two new appointments will be made in Public Affairs, with responsibility for the entire cultural program.

On the one hand it’s a relief to know the program is not gone, but on the other hand, five experienced, well-connected and knowledgeable people have been jettisoned in favour of two new generalists. These are not interchangeable bolts that can be plugged in and out of a program, but dedicated employees taking their years of collective experience out the door with them. What a shocking waste.

Taking comfort in food and poetry then.

Madeleine sent me a stunning wee poem by Alden Nowlan, after we talked about the difficulties of making meaningful lives for our aged relatives. It’s called Aunt Jane, and it begins…

Aunt Jane of whom I dreamed the nights it thundered,
was dead at ninety, buried at a hundred.
We kept her corpse a decade, hid upstairs,
where it ate porridge, slept and said its prayers.

Speaking of porridge, I was interested to learn when I lived in Britain that there the word is used to mean any hot cereal, almost always oatmeal. But here in Canada, or at least as I understand it, porridge means hot cereal made of rolled oats. Our understanding of oatmeal is different too: what Brits call oatmeal we might mistake for oat bran, as it’s more finely ground than ours. And our distinction over use of the word porridge itself may be because we have so many commercially available hot cereals to choose from: Cream of Wheat, Sunny Boy, and my personal favourite Red River Cereal. Not to mention variations made with cornmeal, semolina and any combination of dried grains.

Continuing in this starchy vein, here’s an easy and simple sauce for pasta or better yet gnocchi, my current favourite comfort food. In a roasting pan, drizzle 3 garlic cloves (not peeled) and 2 large shallots, peeled and halved or quartered, with a tbsp of olive oil and salt and pepper and then roast for 20-25 minutes at 400, turning often, till golden brown. While you’re waiting, pan fry half a diced zucchini in olive oil till golden and set aside. Squeeze out the garlic and pop it with the shallots into a blender or food processor; whizz together with 1 large tin tomatoes with juices, 6 chopped basil leaves or 1/2 tsp dried basil, and 1 tsp balsamic vinegar. Sieve it so it’s smooth, and heat gently in a saucepan for about 10 minutes, until slightly thickened. Add the zucchini; heat through, season to taste, add 1 tbsp olive oil and serve over hot cooked gnocchi or pasta.

As I have been making regular visits to the UK since I stopped living there in ’02, I thought I’d let Ruth Petrie, for many years now our esteemed and capable literature officer at Canada House in London, know that I had a new book in print, and see if I could perhaps arrange a reading for next year’s visit. We launched my last collection, Old Habits, at Canada House in 1993.

So, on this the first day of Canada’s new parliamentary session, I was sickened to receive an auto-reply from Ruth, advising correspondents that “We in the Cultural section have, as of 3 April, been given redundancy notice. “

So much for the High Commission’s mandate to represent us in “Canada’s most important cultural export market in Europe and second only to the United States in the world..”

For more than a year now I’ve been dipping into Spreading the Word: Editors on Poetry which was one of last year’s great finds at the AWP conference in Vancouver. It’s a collection of essays by poetry editors of American literary journals published back in 2001. Though not many of the titles will be familiar to Canadian readers, it is enduring and enlightening reading for anyone submitting poems to literary journals anywhere. The big message that comes through here is the amazing volume of submissions the American editors must plough through to find gold. I’d be interested to know how Canadian submission figures compare: anyone out there know?

For example: the then editor of the (somewhat presumptuously named) North American Review, poet Peter Cooley, said he received about twelve thousand poems a year, all of which he read, before choosing the fifty (yes 50) he could publish per year. And that was at least five years ago, so I’d guess the numbers have been elevating since then. Think on them numbers, folks, while you are gazing bleakly upon yet another photocopied rejection slip, and try to feel a little sympathy for the editors and readers at these publications.

On the editor’s side, he comments bleakly

“…writing the cover letter appears the major creative act for a poet. Yes, life is tough, we know that. But to hear of the author’s abusive parent, recovery through therapy, botched career, tedious job, demanding children, broken dishwasher or car or toilet, dying parent, dead kitten, impotent husband, rat-infested bar, or frigid wife is not to claim my attention…”

Geez. Obviously I have been needlessly terse in my cover letters if this is what other poets have been sending in.

The other thing I’ve enjoyed about reading this collection is the sample poems each editor chooses to illustrate points of taste; none of the poets included is familiar to me, but the poems, which the editors in some cases discuss in light of their selection process, are enlightening and often dazzling.

There’s also mention of editorial meetings where each shortlisted poem is presented and discussed and argued over before being selected. Certainly I had never given much thought to the passion that the selection process can inspire in editorial staff: neither do the rather businesslike form letters that announce most acceptances give us much insight into that realm of things. Anyway, it makes me feel almost privileged to be kept waiting by a journal if I can imagine that the delay is due to my poems being read so closely and passionately (and not just lost in a pile of unread stuff somewhere on someone’s desk).

Most of the editors say that they can tell on first reading if there’s anything there for them, so a swift rejection is much worse in some ways than a long-postponed one, though it’s all the more clear from all the editors that their tastes are subjective, so we still have that to cling to.

For the prose writers out there, there’s a fiction version available too: The Whole Story: Editors on Fiction.

On a rather different note, Mary shared this strange Japanese video the other day, which shows you how to peel a potato, and I think it deserves a wider viewing public. I confess to being rather disturbed, however, by the image of mashing what must be a pretty cold spud after its polar dip.

It was a Black Moss kind of night last night. Heard Paul Vasey and Marty Gervais at Mocambo, and had a chance to wave my new book around. Paul had just recovered from laryngitis and a wicked cold but he read well from his novel Last Labour of the Heart, published by Marty’s Black Moss Press of Windsor, whence hails our new favourite CBC morning show host. Marty showed off his design and photography skills with his letterpress book Taking My Blood, and read from his new collection Wait for Me, also published by Black Moss.

A couple of nice ‘n spicy lunches with ladies this week. We were going to attempt a novelty lunch at the Provincial legislature restaurant, but we were a little late since they close it to the public at 11:30 when the house is in session, and there were a couple of bus tours downstairs taking up space, so we wandered off in search of something else.

Our sure-footed local expert Aurelie took us by the noses and led us to Santiago’s, a bright happy Thai, Mexican and tapas place; lively in the evenings and fills up for lunch. It’s only a block or so from the legislature, tucked away on Belleville. We got to perch up above the crowd in a booth, while the spring daylight streamed in through the conservatory-like front of the restaurant.The menu includes tapas items which actually seemed large enough for main courses: Thai red curry with shredded squash looked and was confirmed to be amazing; chicken quesadilla is said to be a reliably good standby; and my beef burger with jalapeno relish was very good indeed.

I’ve walked past The Reef a zillion times, as it’s next door to the Yates Street parkade where I often park when visiting Ferris’ Oyster Bar directly opposite. I discovered the room is deceptively deep inside and equipped with several comfy booths, each with their own mechanical fish tanks which grind a little strangely in your ear as you read the menu. I’d never had roti, and wondered what it was like, so had one filled with Jerk Chicken, a dark spicy mixture that soaked nicely into the flatbread wrapper. (So the answer is, it’s like spicy stuff in a flat bread, and it works!) It came with a fairly bland coleslaw – which was ok given the spice in the roti. I allowed myself to be talked into a noontime Mojito which went a little too well with everything else. We had some plantain chips to start with and enjoyed dabbling them lightly in the spicy Caribbean hot sauce.

Back home, in milder mood, I made a rhubarb custard pie the other night… yum… My recipe also called for a tablespoon of orange peel and a quarter tsp of cloves. You can cover it with a lattice if you like, but it is fine as a single crust.

Well, I have it in my hands, Cartography, this product of a 13 year gestation. Delighted I am, but U.A. Fanthorpe captures that sense of our poems never quite living up to the perfection we’d aspired to (which is why we keep trying?!): “As usual, when they’re together, and bound, I feel ashamed of them. Individually, they had a right to exist. But when they gape out at me, cheek by jowl, I feel like a mother with a whole clutch of unsatisfactory children.”

Anyway, it is here, and it is particularly lovely thanks to a cover image by the quite extraordinary Calgary artist Colleen Philippi, whose art has blessed the cover of three of my books now. The launch will be lovely too, and I hope anyone in the area will come and celebrate with me on May 3.

Supper tonight will be arroz con pollo which I haven’t had for a very long time, and which I saw described as the Cuban cousin of paella. I can’t help but admire a meat dish that incorporates both starch and vegetable, yet doesn’t come across as a casserole. Or maybe I’m just falling for an exotic sounding name for good ol’ chicken and rice.