ReallyGoodWriter | Food • Writing • Poetry Iambic Cafe

food & poetry, but mostly the poetry of food

Food • Writing • Poetry

Cooked my first proper meal since my return last night: salmon coulibiac, which reminded me of my childhood favourite, kedgeree (my mother’s super simple version: mix hot cooked rice, chopped hard-boiled eggs, canned or leftover salmon, parsley and a good spoonful of butter). This grown-up puff-pastried incarnation tasted even better – with lemon, dill and mushrooms to zip it up a bit. It was easy to make but it took me a long time, here in the land of a thousand distractions. Apparently the beauty of it is you can make it ahead and then put it in the oven when your guests arrive.

We had it with an aubergine/eggplant pasta casserole I’d hidden in my freezer, and followed with leftover chocolate mousse cake from Thrifty’s.

Ok, so it was starch night at the hacienda, but on the other hand it was cold, wet and miserable outside. Starch keeps the rain out, I always think.

Here’s what the source of the mystery bark looked like before Tracy turned it into art.

Drove up to Nanaimo on Saturday, in the always entertaining company of Peter Such, to a regional meeting of the Writers Union of Canada.

As ever there were lots of things to talk about. The digitalization initiatives of libraries is a looming concern: what will it do to our already slender income (according to our regional rep’s research the average income for Canadian writers is $11,000 – well below the poverty line)? How on earth can it be done without violating an author’s copyright? These initiatives place at risk the very channels through which Canadian writers have managed – by virtue of some very hard battles fought by our union members among others – to receive some reliable payments for their created works: copyright payments and PLR, as well as royalties; and publishers, whose sales and subsidiary rights deals will be jeopardized, have big concerns about their digital income prospects as well.

Writers were asked to consider doing something for Freedom to Read Week this week, February 26th-March 4th.

My lovely publisher, Oolichan’s General Editor Hiro Boga, a writer herself (ambidextrous: she’s published a novel and a poetry collection) was also at the meeting, so we got to talk shop for a moment or two. Peter had swiftly stepped in when I mused aloud about where I would have my book launch for Cartography, and so it will be at his fabulous home, sometime in April.

At the potluck meal which followed, our BC rep Marion Quednau demonstrated her finesse with some hand made perogies, which she’d bought on Terminal Avenue in Nanaimo. She says she likes them best boiled and then gently browned in butter till golden; her secret weapons are leeks and cumin, and of course she serves them with a dollop of sour cream. Lots of other good stuff: home smoked oysters, dolmathes, chocolate mousse cake. Enough ballast to set off back down-island through snow flurries which tapered off as we approached Victoria.

Looking forward to the BBC Afternoon Play on Monday – a broadcast of Rapture, the TS Eliot award winning poems by Carol Ann Duffy. Online for 7 days from broadcast.

And finally, I welcome back Anton the Orphan, who spent three weeks working with me as my personal trainer before I headed to the writing retreat, and who will be lodging here for another week while his current custodian is otherwise occupied. He is being fostered through a great animal rescue society called Animals for Life – it is a sort of animal shelter, but its shelters are all private homes. They have a charity shop in Sidney which you’re advised to steer clear of if you have a weakness for kittens, as they keep a cage of them there which is always surrounded by animal lovers.

So, Tracy explained about the Thursday night party which ended the 2006 Winter Colony. As she was in Saskatoon reading from the works of Al Purdy, she missed our final group reading, alas, although she was there in spirit, having composed a sonnet which she printed on wood shavings, glued to bark strips, and left in her place: we were well impressed. And we had studio presentations from our awesomely talented artists, Cherie and Frances, which were just breathtaking.

Here are some snaps of those gifted souls who shared their musical stylings with us.

Brother Kurt happened along and gave us some good old favourites.

Mari-Lou brought a new classical guitar and a Leonard Cohen songbook to her hermitage and we got to hear the results of her cloistered toil. She’s promised us a full Beatles repertoire next year.

And Terry O’Flanagan – who thought he had come to St Peter’s to re-build the college entryway – became part of the colony, and all the more so (was it the snappy cowboy shirt? the Johnny Cash numbers?) that last night.

On to the next and final morning. I heard tell there was a food cellar at the Abbey, and I asked our Colony Coordinator Anne if I could have a look, and so this is what I got to see before I left.

Imagine a whole room full of potatoes!

And then there was the canned goods collection. Who could not be comforted by all those big, beautiful jars of food? And all of it grown on the Abbey’s farm. Fabulous and delicious.

Actually there is no rain here in Victoria (–but–gasp– it snowed for about ten minutes this morning!!). Quite a change from the biblical deluge we were experiencing when I left two weeks ago. I returned from St Pete’s on Westjet – the jokes were not quite as good as on the outgoing journey, and the trip felt endless. Saskatoon to Calgary, Calgary to Kelowna, Kelowna to Victoria. Luckily it was pretty clear all the way and I got to look down on the snowy world before stepping back on the green green grass of home. My taxi driver kindly advised me to put on my coat before leaving the terminal: very cold, he said, only about 4 degrees. Hah, I said, recalling the -30something low we had in Muenster last week.

Here’s a cold cat I met at the Abbey. It had a lot to say; I suspect it was telling me the many words for snow in its language. I have more photos to download.. after which I will tell my version of events of our last evening’s entertainments: you can read Tracy’s while you’re waiting.

I rushed home to find my very good pal Jennifer had dinner on the plates and waiting for me, so I don’t have to remember how to cook for a little while yet. She’s here from Calgary to work further towards her Feldenkreis practitioner certification, and she’s their webmaster too. And she makes a mean chicken dinner.

After dinner I rushed out again to Mocambo to hear Tom Wayman read, and it was worth the trip: he’s endlessly entertaining. I bought his latest book, My Father’s Cup, which includes some powerful poems about his parents. While there, Wendy Morton broke the news that she’s been successful in her campaign to city council to get a Victoria Poet Laureate position in place.

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…
(rep. refr.)