WordWorks Fall 2014

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T h eS p a c e b e t we e nu s Ar ewel o s i n g t h ei ma g i n a t i o n i t t a k e st oe n j o y ag o o db o o k ?

T o ps e l l e r ’ s I n d i ea d v i c e Ma r t i nC r o s b i e o nwh a t i t t a k e s t oma k ei t b i g a sa ni n d i ewr i t e r

WordWorks / Fall 2014

WordWorks / Fall 2014

WordWorks / Fall 2014

Publication of the Federation of BC Writers PO Box 3887 Stn Terminal, Vancouver, BC V6B 3Z3 www.bcwriters.ca / communications@bcwriters.ca Editor Craig Spence | communications@bcwriters.ca Business Manager Katherine Melnyk | booktailor@shaw.ca Editorial Board www.bcwriters.ca/wordworks/editorialboard © The Federation of BC Writers, 2014 All Rights Reserved Submissions Content of WordWorks is, with very occasional exceptions, provided by members of the Federation of BC Writers. If you would like to submit something, or if you have a story idea you would like to see included in WordWorks, contact the Editor via the email address above. Join at bcwriters.ca/membership Advertising WordWorks is pleased to advertise services and products that are of genuine interest to writers. Space may also be provided to honour sponsors, whose generous contributions make it possible for the Federation of BC Writers to provide services to writers and poets in BC. For information about advertising policies and rates contact the Business Manager via the email address above or see bcwriters.ca/wordworks/advertisers Content Editorial decisions are guided by the mandate of WordWorks as ‘BC’s magazine for writers, about writing’, and its role as the official publication of the Federation of BC Writers. WordWorks will showcase the writing and poetry of FBCW members; provide news and feature coverage of writing and writers in BC, with an emphasis on stories about writing techniques and the business of writing; carry news about the Federation of BC Writers and its work supporting and advocating for writers.

Distribution WordWorks is published quarterly for members of the Federation of BC Writers, and distributed by mail to a broad list of readers interested in literature in BC. From time to time special theme editions of WordWorks are also produced.

WordWorks’ unique approach...

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Ads that add to our story...

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Indie Publishing: Don’t go it alone

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An Inside Story: Youth on writing...

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• “Dear Young Writers” from the Fed Pres...

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• Does The Space Between Us make imagination a lost art...

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• Why Read? Why Write? when you can game instead?...

Gloria Barkley: Poet and Sculptor...

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Nanaimo to host Cascadia Festival... 20 Glen Valley, Poem & Imagery...

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A Gathering of Words in Kaslo...

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Member 2 Member...

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Look good Fed Writer’s Profiles...

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Short Story: Ways of Parting...

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WordWorks, a magazine with a unique approach Literary association magazines “...they not only belong to their readers, they belong to their writers too... their readers are their writers.”

by Craig Spence, Editor Literary association magazines like WordWorks are in a unique and somewhat curious position: they not only belong to their readers, they belong to their writers too.

Or, put another way: their readers are their writers. At least that’s the case with WordWorks. Almost all the material you will find between its covers will have been written by members of the Fed. Hopefully all of it will be of interest to at least a segment of the Fed’s membership.

So to understand the editorial directions WordWorks should pursue, I think it’s important to first understand the mandate of the organization. The Fed’s motto, Writers helping writers, is a good place to begin.

As is the phrase ‘A community of writers’. Together, I think those statements give rise to a third, which specifically describes the direction and purpose of WordWorks: A magazine for writers, about writing.

There are a lot of spokes connected to that wheel. But most of them can be grouped into three categories: • Showcasing the fiction, creative non fiction and poetry of members; • Providing insightful articles about the art, craft and business of writing; • Keeping members up to speed on news about their organization in particular, and the BC writing community in general.

That pretty much covers the editorial bases WordWorks has to touch - it overlaps with the advertising mandate, too, but I’ll let Business Manager Katherine Melnyk describe that facet of WordWorks, simply stating that an important objective in the coming year is to increase revenue for the magazine with ad content of genuine interest to writers.

Now that we’ve got a general idea of what WordWorks is about, it’s really important to ask some ‘how’ questions, as in: How do we get the stories we’re going to run? We have to go back to the beginning, and that ‘unique and somewhat curious’ niche WordWorks occupies as a literary association magazine.

The Federation of BC Writers prides itself on being an organization that welcomes writers at every stage in their career; it’s important that every member see WordWorks as a magazine they can aspire to being published in.

If, from the perspective of a member-reader, you’re hearing the sound of thin ice cracking, take heart. WordWorks will strive to achieve the highest literary and journalistic standards. But we must also offer new writers, youth, experimental writers and every writer in the Federation camp an opportunity to have their work genuinely and sincerely considered for publication by their magazine.

The editorial mindset of WordWorks will be to capture the most interesting material in every genre

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for Fed readers, and to work with writers and poets getting their stories and poems over that bar and into print. We need to develop strategies and opportunities for mentoring writers whose material isn’t ready, rather than issuing something analogous to a rejection slip.

Ideas that have been floated include: editorial mentorship; WordWorkshops; and mentored contests - particularly for young writers. We can’t claim to have worked through this challenge yet, and will never be able to assure every Fed writer that they will get published in WordWorks, but we can promise to try our best to build our members’ strengths as writers and poets.

WordWorks is your magazine. That adds another nuance to its editorial approach: accessibility.

Mainstream magazines and media are often looking to ‘scoop’ their competitors. The sense of secrecy and urgency that competition engenders tends to isolate them, not only from other media outlets, but even from their own publics. WordWorks doesn’t need to be guarded about its story lineup. Editorial planning should be open and the editor - that would be me available to talk to members about what’s in the queue and why. If you’re interested, go to bcwriters.ca/wordworks and click the Storyboard link.

Maybe you’ll see something there you’d like to comment on; or maybe you won’t see something there you think should be. Either way contact me and let me know. In the meantime, enjoy your read!

We’ve got Str-AD-egy I am aiming to have advertising in WordWorks financially support the publication...

By Katherine Melnyk, Business Manager I am pleased to be working with the new WordWorks Publication Committee for the Federation. As Business Manager, I am looking to match our publication with appropriate advertising that will support the writer. As WordWorks is a publication for writers, about writing, the advertising needs to inform and/or inspire our members.

Appropriate advertisers include book designers, writing schools, editors, book marketers and distributors, literary festivals, other publications, and printers specializing in print-on-demand. Apt advertising also lends well to editorial inspiration.

Ultimately I am aiming to have the advertising in WordWorks financially support the publication, so that we can grow in quality and expand our distribution to areas outside of our membership. WordWorks can truly become an excellent representation of the talents of our members and a key marketing tool for the Federation of BC Writers. A successful advertising strategy for WordWorks - based on focused, high quality, high interest content - means a successful publication.

Know someone who might like to advertise?

Have them contact Katherine by email at booktailor@shaw.ca or by phone at 250-737-1145 for advertising rates.

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Indie publishing? It’s not all about going it alone “Humility’s a great trait, but as authors we have to have a little bit of ego and we have to believe that our book is something that readers want to read.”

by Craig Spence

it going, to keep moving up the rankings and finding readers.”

The way Martin Crosbie sees it there are three basic Success on Amazon, his preferred platform types of success trajectories for books on the virtual because it has the market ‘muscle’ to reach the most shelf: in rare cases they take off, racking up phenomereaders, takes consistent effort, smarts and hard work. nal sales and netting their authors enough money to do It has to be part of who you are and what you do as a nothing but write forevermore; sometimes they ‘hang writer every day, Crosbie believes. “You have to enjoy it around’ in the ratings, selling 10 to 15 copies a day and and know that the readers are right there, that they’re earning a tidy income supplement of $25 to $45 for waiting for your book.” their creators; or they can yoyo up and down on the What does Crosbie mean by muscle? About charts, depending on how actively they are promoted.

65% of online book sales are made through Amazon.

You’d think the author of How I Sold 30,000 And online sales account for about 30% of total book eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle and the chart topping novel sales in the US. That’s a significant chunk of the marMy Temporary Life could claim to be in the first catket. But it’s chump change when it comes to Amazon’s egory, or at the very least in the second, but Crosbie total revenues: books account for $5.25 billion of the is straight up about that: he can’t sit back and reap the Internet giant’s take, or roughly 7% of the $75 billion rewards of his writing just yet. For now he’s going to that rings through the corporation’s tills every year. have to keep following his own advice about what indie Conclusion: There’s not much Amazon can’t do if it authors must do to succeed. “I’ve got to work for it,” he sets its mind to it, and it’s determined to remain the said. “I’ve got to do a promotion every month to keep whale in its book selling pond.

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Tapping into that behemoth’s consciousness and nudging your way higher up the ratings takes applied savvy Crosbie will tell you... but that’s not the main key to success as an author on Kindle.

So what is?

Connect For many authors - me included - entering the realm of online publishing is like stepping onto a minefield, in the fog, under enemy fire. It’s such a huge change from where we’ve been and where we, as authors, thought we were going only a few short years ago that many of us prefer to close our eyes and hope things will revert to ‘normal’. They won’t. Crosbie believes indie publishing, with Amazon as the main platform, is the new normal. So we’d better get used to it; and good at it.

But, he’s quick to point out, we don’t have to go it alone as indies. It’s almost ironic but, more than conventional writers, indies have to make friends and build community. It’s a message Crosbie repeats over and over: build your support group. Use Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In - whatever channel you can to connect with people who are on the same journey as you.

“You need to have people - other authors around you who are on the same path as you, that have the same set of values and are trying to connect with readers the same way.” That’s how you keep ahead of the wave. “Anything that’s happening, I hear about it,” Crosbie said. “Surrounding yourself with people who are in the know is absolutely huge because you’re the publisher, Amazon is just the distributor.”

So embedding yourself in a community of indies, who can help you as you ‘pay it forward’ by helping them is important... but that’s not the main key to success as an author on Kindle, either.

Make it Perfect “A beta reader is a reader who doesn’t know you, and is

going to read your book, and is going to give you input and tell you what’s going on with it: whether it’s got plot holes, or character development problems, or whatever it is, and it’s up to the author to listen to the truth, and if several beta readers are saying the same thing, you’ve got to make those changes,” Crosbie said. “I preach beta readers. People get tired of hearing me say this but I talk about beta readers over and over and over again.”

They are a key part of the step by step process indie authors must use to make sure they are posting their best possible book on Amazon when they push the button - a book that could stand proudly on the shelf next to any conventionally published work.

But there’s another benefit beta readers extend to authors. “Beta readers will help market your work,” Crosbie said. “If they believe in your book, they can be a great, great resource in terms of spreading the word.”

Why do beta readers do what they do: “They enjoy finding the work that nobody else has read, and helping with it,” Crosbie said. It’s that simple.

So teaming up with beta readers - then bringing on editors and book designers and whoever else you need to make your book perfect - is important.

Said Crosbie, “My mandate is to try and show authors a method of producing a book that looks every bit as good as a professionally published eBook, and stands spine to virtual spine with a professionally published eBook, and do it in a cost efficient manner.” He spends ‘under a thousand dollars’ getting his books shelf ready... but that’s not the main key to success as an author on Kindle, either.

Find Balance Crosbie said it’s important to wear the publisher’s hat sometimes; the writer’s hat others; but to keep the two on separate hooks. There are things you have to do, decisions you have to make as a publisher that the

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writer in you will not be too happy about; and there are things you have to do as a writer with the door closed and ‘No Publishers Allowed’ taped to the outside.

The challenge is to strike a balance between business and creative output. It’s easy to let the publishing end squeeze writing out. “It is a lot of work, but there’s got to be balance too,” Crosbie warned.

To set things aright when he found them getting out of kilter, Crosbie created a spreadsheet to track the time he was spending at publishing tasks, compared to his time writing. Now he figures he’s spending 60 percent of his time as a writer, and he’s happy with that. “I commit to writing x amount of words a day and revising x amount of words a day, and I do that every day,” Crosbie said. “There will be times when I’m running promotion after promotion after promotion, and trying to capture the elusive reader, and I need to know that I’m working on books too.”

For Crosbie, balance is about making the dream real. “I turned 50 this year, and this is what I’ve wanted to do my whole life, is write and have people read my stories. So I’m running at this thing hard and I’m enjoying doing it.”

Balance is important... but that’s not the main key to success as an author on Kindle, either.

Believe “You’ve got to believe in what you’re doing. You’ve got to believe in your work,” Crosbie said. “Humility’s a great trait, but as authors we have to have a little bit of ego and we have to believe that our book is something that readers want to read.”

There’s a nuanced balance to be achieved between humility and chutzpah: you have to attenuate ego so it doesn’t block out legitimate criticism, because if you aren’t listening, you aren’t improving, and if you’re not improving - always - you’re likely going to fail.

At the end of the shelf what matters most is a really good book that you know is a really good book.

“I can give you all this information, but everything is contingent on you having a good book, a book that readers want to read, and if you don’t have that, you can market all you like, it isn’t going to work.” At the same time, you can have the best book in the world, but if you don’t believe in it, you won’t have the mustard to push it to the max.

So believing in yourself and your books, but constantly checking to make sure you’re not deluding yourself, that might be the key to success as an author on Kindle... or anywhere else.

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Words to our youth members; to our future!

“Write. …. Don’t write it right, just write it –and then make it right later. Give yourself the mental freedom to enjoy the process...”

by Ben Nuttall-Smith, President of the Federation of BC Writers “Dear younger writers,” is a fairly safe form of address for me, as almost everyone is younger than I. And it’s appropriate, too, as this issue of WordWorks, presents perspectives to and from our Youth members – 25 and under.

I’d like you to know we consider you our most valued members. You represent Canada’s Literary Future.

Our motto and raison d’être Writers Helping Writers says it all. We’re here to help you in any way we can through workshops and personal consultation.

One day, it will be your turn. Here’s what you can do to become accomplished writers.

Study the rules of grammar and composition.

This might seem boring, but you need structure, otherwise your writing is in danger of becoming sloppy.

“On writing, my advice is the same to all. If you want to be a writer – write. Write and write and write.

If you stop, start again. Save everything that you write.

If you feel blocked, write through it until you feel your creative juices flowing again. … Writing is what makes a writer, nothing more and nothing less.” - Anne Rice.

If you’re still in school and have the opportunity, join the student newspaper. Submit to student editors even if you think you know way more than they. The Ubyssey, UBC’s official student paper, has

produced a number of Canada’s top journalists and authors. Look up the Ubyssey archives. If you attend or plan to attend Simon Fraser, look up The Peak. U Vic has The Martlet.

Study people. Study people of all ages and classes. Study them with empathy. Try to understand people as they are. Study yourself. This will help you develop characters who will not be: shallow or warped versions of yourself; or of those you love, admire and enjoy; or of those you despise.

Read everything you can get your hands on – even if it’s work that bores you. If it’s published, someone sold it to a publisher or magazine editor. If it doesn’t turn your crank, ask yourself why. Study it.

Explore the library. Books are free.

If you’re into writing for magazines, read lots of magazine articles. What makes them good? What makes them bad? Become a good critic. If you just want to be a reader, then read only what you like. If you want to be a published writer, read the people who have their work published.

“You must read dreadful, dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head” - Ray Bradbury Enjoy yourself. Don’t shut yourself up and just write. Find out what holds your attention and why.

Live life. If you do decide to attend The Writer’s Studio (SFU), good for you. But do other things as well. Don’t become a boring, dull writer.

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Learn a little about the publishing industry.

You’ll one day want to sell your work. Explore writers’ blogs. Find out what other scribblers are doing.

Be prepared for rejection. Stephen King had his stories rejected numerous times before he found a publisher willing to take a chance on him. Just because a piece is rejected by 20 publishers doesn’t mean the 21st won’t accept your story.

Round out your life experience by volunteering - and, please, include writing associations like the Fed in your list, where there’s always help wanted and it’s always deeply appreciated.

“Write. …. Don’t write it right, just write it – and then make it right later. Give yourself the mental freedom to enjoy the process, because the process of writing is a long one. Be wary of “writing rules” and advice. Do it your way.” - Tara Moss Go for it!

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The Space Between Us is jammed with big media “Problem is we live in a society that has persuaded us entertainment is all about letting someone else do the imagining and thinking for us.”

by Marlow Gunterman As a writer of the Millennial Generation, I find myself asking: why should youth in a media saturated world pick up a book or go to a live literary performance?

And if I can’t come up with a satisfactory answer to that question, I must ask a supplementary: Is our obsession with big, wrap-around entertainment increasing the space between spectator and performer, and dissolving the bonds of what a creative, truly literate community can be?

Two years ago I was invited to Anvil Press’s celebration of that year’s published authors. I already knew one of the performers, Catherine Owen, because she had written Seeing Lessons, a mixed genre novel of letters, dialogue and poetry based on the life of my Great Great Grandmother Mattie Gunterman. So I was expecting something truly enticing.

Owen read from her newly published book Trobairitz. But it wasn’t the words she spoke that captured and held my imagination, it was her presentation. Anyone can read a book of poetry; most everyone can adopt a ‘poetic’ voice; but it takes a gifted reader to really get into a poem and draw an audience in with her. And it’s that savoring of words, language and the nuanced meanings of literature that makes a masterful reading more compelling in its own right than other artistic modes.

Owen’s haunted, hushed tones seduced me. I was no longer in the over-dressed, high-class bar I had walked into that evening; she had opened up a portal in thin air and beckoned me inside with her entrancing words, the siren call of her feelings in lines like “the lily opening/the same time as the rose.” (Trobairitz, 25).

And then - as if we had been summoned from one dream into another, Owen, with her long black hair and punk dress, thrashed her fist in the air and began chanting, the honed voice of metal music intertwining with her poetry. The audience joined in, her energy radiating through what had become a collective unconscious.

Surreal, right? But intensely real, too, for it is these out-of-body, out of mind events that bring to life our innermost selves - that part of us we yearn to experience, especially when we’re young, and want to make life’s journey memorable with milestones of triumph and error.

Performance art and readings bring us closer to a genuine sharing of experience than other modes of expression because literature is usually narrative. It evokes imagery and feelings inside each participant’s consciousness in a more intimate way than movies, or TV, or video games ever can. Literature incites emotions of warmth, ecstasy, dread - and from one of my favourite writers, Billeh Nickerson - humour, in his “come and get it” performances. Nickerson

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finds humorous nuances in the mundane to lift his audiences up, a collective sharing of all-too-often missed details in our lives. Literature makes stories our own, just as it did in those ancient times when they were handed down generation to generation around the flickering light of a campfire.

Literary events cross wires between viewers and performers, and this active engagement - buzzing with tension - attracts youth. There’s room for diversity here, for the unexpected, for the poet or author to be spontaneous. Or, to put things more bluntly, the literary community makes room for the misfits and oddballs that big screen, big sound productions shove aside or drown out. It’s expected in a room full of literary types to encounter statements of fashion, gesture or speech that say: “I’m weird, deal with it.”

In fact, being a misfit could be considered a cachet at a literary soiree; immediately trendy.

My colleague at Misfit Lit, Connor Doyle writes of literature and literary events, “It’s a meaningful alliance of energies, an intimate one, empowering for all who make it.” We need a little danger, and what could be more dangerous than intimacy - the kind of intimacy and self-realization that can be achieved by attending a literary event or reading a novel.

I went to the web site Quora - a sort of oracle where you can ask anything - and posed the question:

“What would make you read a book or go to a live literary performance versus going to the movies or watching everything on your computer?”

Reading a book is a personal thing. If two people read the same passage, they may imagine the scene differently, may “see” the characters in their mind’s eye differently.

When I watch a film, someone else has done most of the imagining for me.

—Daniel Schwarz Carigiet Problem is, we live in a society that has persuaded us entertainment is all about letting someone else do the imagining and thinking for us.

It’s not easy to compete with movies and television shows that can be downloaded right into a computer.

I’m a sucker for that myself. But when live literary performances or the reading of books get squeezed out by a market-targeted deluge of online and on air and on screen entertainment we lose something in the bargain. These pre-packaged modes add space between viewer and performer, the screen becoming a mere framing device that presents an unalterable reality we had nothing to do with as creators.

A hundred people in a theatre all see the same movie; a hundred people reading the book the movie Continued Next Page

For Marlow Gunterman performance poets like Catherine Owen put on stage what can’t be conveyed on YouTube.

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was based on make up the entire story in their own heads, transforming runes and squiggles on pages into their own unique versions of events; and at a reading or slam, performers and audience interact, making a poem or story unique, new, different every time it’s read or presented. In movies there’s no real danger for you as viewer, no risk that the outcome can be anything other than what’s etched onto the celluloid medium that carries the images flashing by.

Do young people play too many video games?

Do they watch too many TV shows? Do they want to escape from reality into the endless mirages delivered on a plethora of screens? I don’t think so. Reality is exactly where they want to be, but they are being lured by a perpetual motion they mistake for action, change, direction, and real human voices. They end up in repetitive loops of entertainment. Many of us, especially we Millennials, want something less formulaic, more unpredictable.

Our literature - in the form of live performances and edgy books - needs to be new, and fresh, and challenging. It needs to engage audiences and readers with ideas and feelings that take shape in our own minds, not on movie screens or piped in through ear buds. When was the last time you watched a concert online and didn’t wish you were there, right in the center of the pack? Could you watch a YouTube of Catherine Owen, pumping her fist in the air and chanting metal poetics with the audience, and get the same feeling you would if you were actually there, shouting it out?

I say not.

Marlow Gunterman is a Vancouver-based writer who is heavily influenced by misfits and her family’s historical presence in the Kootenay town of Beaton. She is earning her Bachelor of Creative Writing at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

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Books: Why Read Them? Why Write Them?

“I’m a writer, but more and more I find myself trapped in others’ make-believe worlds, fighting the allure of countless screens...”

by Braque Hesselink Video Version: bcwriters.ca/wordworks/why-readwhy-write Summer’s in full swing. I’m up with the sun, long before my parents, and sleepy eyed I find myself in that familiar seat in front of the computer. By the time my parents wake, I feel like I’ve been in a trance, driving but not quite sure where, or even if there was a destination.

I’m a writer, but more and more I find myself trapped in others’ make-believe worlds, fighting the allure of countless screens, from the TV to the computer to my personal tablet. The battles that I find myself drawn to in games like Gears of War and Halo are conflicts taking place on screen and off, as I find it harder to break away from my virtual entertainments.

Modern-day media-fare is starting to feel like fast food, which makes me wonder: Are people losing the ability to slow down and savour the essence of a really good book, let alone write one?

I love to read and write, but there’s definitely a struggle. I don’t think of these different kinds of entertainment as competing, but they do. As a young writer, with my future grounded in a world where text messages seem to be read more than novels, I was curious to see if I was alone with these thoughts. So I asked some fellow writers and a mentor to contribute their

insights as to where we stand today.

Books have always played an important part in my life, but I wanted to get to know their significance in the lives of those around me. I began with the question, “What personal importance do books have for you?”

“Books are a place where I can lose myself and have an adrenaline rush. They bring me into a different world and a different perspective, and I really enjoy that,” said Lucas, a Grade 11 student poet at King George Secondary. “When I was a really little kid, my parents would always read books to me. And we’d always go on trips to the library and come home with a whole basket of books. Every day when I’d come home from school I would just pick up another chapter book and get immersed in a totally new world,” said Kiko, a Grade 11 student writer at Earl Marriott Secondary.

Kiko’s experience was certainly my own, and many friends shared similar childhood memories. And if the success of series like Harry Potter and Hunger Games is any indication, it would appear that books continue to provide excitement for new generations of young readers.

But what about novels that have been adapted to movies? Aren’t they more satisfying? “I’d say no,” replied Kiko. “Books capture more of a character’s essence because in a book there’s always little details

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and quirks about a character. The movie can’t exactly capture that, not to mention I always feel more satisfied finishing a book rather than finishing a movie.”

Lucas replied, “In all honesty I find that books are better than movies. Movies just lack detail from a book and also they don’t have as much perspective. I just find more of a rush reading books than watching movies.”

Toji, another Grade 11 student writer at King George Secondary, said, “I find the books better than the movie versions because the movies always tend to skip out on the little details, and you don’t get to hear the character’s inner monologues. Movies lack that depth.”

While not everyone reads books — and I admit I spend most of my time with active readers and writers — it seems most who have read the book prefer their own imagination to the movie version.

But what about video games? Ever since my dad’s generation, which was raised on Atari, gaming has been regarded by adults as literature’s nemesis. So I asked, “Are video games more engaging than books?

Why or why not?”

“I think the two are on different levels,” said Lucas. “I play and read, and I think they’re both engaging on different levels. I can’t find either more engaging. I have different thrills doing each one.” Kiko said, “They’re both really different mediums for storytelling.

I’d say it depends on what you feel like at the time, because video games are definitely more visual. But personally, I could spend all night doing both.”

Critics of video games — many of whom are unfamiliar with the scope and diversity of gaming — have passed them off as mindless entertainments that threaten traditional storytelling. However, the relationship between video games and literature is much more complex. Not only do conventional games have story lines, but recently I’ve discovered the Japanese phenomenon of visual novels (text-based video games

l Konnova Brandon

Lucas

Toji

Kiko

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in which various narrative paths can be chosen) - an example that blurs the lines between books and virtual entertainment and demonstrates how literature has always adapted to new media.

It’s one thing to be an active reader, quite another to be a writer. I started writing in Grade 2, inspired by the mythical creatures of the island Jurassic Park. This movie (ironically) kick-started my passion for writing. I was curious about my fellow writers, so I asked, “Why and when did you first start writing?”

“I started writing about two years ago,” said Lucas, “and why I started writing was to open my mind more and to release my emotions, as I’m kind of closed. Writing is a medium that helps me to express my emotions in different ways.” Kiko said, “It’s a way of expressing myself. I like to write because I’ll come up with an entirely different world of characters and places, and it’s really nice to put myself in that kind of environment when I write. It’s really relaxing, too.”

UBC’s ArtsONE mentor Dr. Brandon Konnoval quoted Nietzsche, describing why reading is so vital to students today. “Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality says that ‘to understand this book you need to read it like a cow chews its cud,’ and I think that’s a wonderful image because the idea is of something intensely engaged, but is also of something that’s not easily accomplished.

It takes time, dedication and devotion; the singlemindedness of a cow.”

He finished with a thought-provoking idea on why students should write. “I have a terrible thing that I say to students at the start of every year,” he said. “I tell them that the sad reality is that nobody cares what you think. What they care about is actually what you make them think. As a writer, that personal experience, that insight, that perspective you have, what you’re thinking about is how you can make somebody else have your mind, have your feelings. Can you create that experience for them? And if you can do it well,

people will actually always care what you have to say, because they want more of that experience.”

Reading and writing help youths understand their place in the world, and the ideas of those who came before them; at the same time older generations have a chance to understand my generation through our written and spoken words.

When I started writing this article, I feared for the future of reading and writing. But these interviews showed me that, even though it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of literature in a world of more immediate pleasures, our patience and dedication in the pursuit of a good book hasn’t been lost.

Braque Hesselink is a Grade 11 student at King George Secondary. He loves all things science fiction and has written several short stories, though recently he has explored essay writing with his time as an intern at the Federation of BC Writers.

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Gloria Barkley: Poet, Sculptor and Survivor When a doctor told Gloria Barkley to cure herself of chronic dietary allergies, she enrolled in what is now the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

by Katrin Horowitz The only thing that frightens Gloria Barkley anymore is spiders. So much so that her Coquitlam clay studio is equipped with a special trap to keep them from running over her feet. But this poet and sculptor uses her fear to create artistic spiders, because spiders as metaphor intrigue her: they show up both in her poems and as figures she fashions from clay.

She has lived with her fear of spiders for a long time. Back when she was little, she and her sister were roughhousing in their bedroom, jumping on the beds and tossing pillows, when a spider landed in Gloria’s mouth. Now 87, she is still creeped out by the memory of those eight tiny legs squirming on her tongue as the creature tried desperately to escape.

It turns out that more than spiders needed to stay out of her mouth. Decades later, after a medical journey that included far too many misdiagnoses, she discovered she was allergic to 95 different foods and food additives, ranging from wheat to caffeine, nitrates to sulphites. And much in the same way she transforms her fear of spiders into art (which she wryly names after food additives), she has turned her long narrative of frightening hallucinations, feelings of non-reality, anxiety, depression and something like the flu — together with the attempts to treat her

symptoms — into an impressive book of poems, entitled Water Window Mirror.

Although her symptoms began when she moved to Vancouver at the age of sixteen, she didn’t take them seriously until she turned thirty, when her occasional, vague, disconcerting feelings turned into something more pervasive and pernicious. At times she wasn’t sure if her children were there or not: she could feel the infant in her arms, although she couldn’t see him. And her older child, standing next to her, faded in and out of view.

The doctors she consulted classified her problems as psychosomatic, schizophrenic, even something bizarre called arthritis of the blood. As Gloria writes in her book, “misdiagnoses piled up like wet diapers.” As did all the pills — thousands of white, pink, red and beige pills that she remembers sardonically in a poem called ‘Polka Dots.’ The pills numbed and dulled her into a “non-stop nap,” but her hallucinations and her chronic low-grade headaches continued.

Meanwhile, a doctor who knew his limitations told her to find something she loved and do it: “cure yourself,” was his advice. She took that to heart. In the sixties she enrolled in art school at what is now Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She found an affinity for the 3D world of clay, both as art and as therapy.

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Clay felt real, it didn’t disappear in a hallucination, and it let her “get behind things.”

She was over fifty years old and sicker than ever when she was finally referred to an allergist who eliminated medicines, food additives and many foods from her diet. And just like that, her many symptoms vanished. Her Water Window Mirror poems gain power by exploring both parts of her journey — the long struggle with baffling symptoms and then their abrupt end — a turn of events that was in some ways as disorienting as her previous hallucinations. When she works on her poetry or her sculpture she often has Beethoven’s 9th Symphony playing in the background, the piece of music she refers to as ‘the great healer.”

Both the music and her creativity are important elements in achieving Wordsworth’s poetic ideal of “emotions recollected in tranquility.”

But she also knows that her symptoms can return at any time — all it takes is a single, careless mouthful contaminated with additives or preservatives. Then Gloria’s perceptions once again turn into a hall of mirrors, and her panic and her aches recur. It can take up to four days for her body to return to normal. One of her dreams is that her poems and her clay spiders will inspire her audience to “consider the pile of chemicals they’re having for lunch,” and what games those chemicals might be playing in their own minds.

Gloria Barkley knows a thing or two about turning fears and problems into art. And in my opinion she has already exceeded her stated goal: “to leave the world with one good poem and one good clay piece.”

Gloria Barkley at work in her studio.

Katrin Horowitz is author of The Best Soldier’s Wife (Quadra Books, 2013), a novel about a Canadian military family, Canada’s war in Afghanistan, and coping with PTSD. She lives in Victoria, where she is Federation of BC Writers’ co-Area Rep. Page 19

POEMS FROM WATER WINDOW MIRROR Mixed Metaphor aka Pill Time (p.69) Minute by planet hour by jowl her mood moos plush to burned jam Metamorphic mental muddle mixed meta-phive.

Side Effects (p.53) Phantom spiders crawl along her skin pause at pores their legs tap erratic codes she dare not decipher.

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Poets Bring Cascadia Festival -2015 to Nanaimo The third Cascadia Poetry Festival is expected to bring more than 400 visitors to Nanaimo, and generate intense ‘bioregional’ dialogue

by Ann Graham Walker The Cascadia Poetry Festival is coming to Nanaimo.

The third in a festival series that originated in Seattle, CPF3 is expected to bring more than 400 visitors to this Vancouver Island city.

The Cascadia Poetry Festival began as the brain-child of Seattle poet and arts activist, Paul Nelson. It started out small, with about one hundred poets and attendees from both sides of the border. By its second year in 2014 that number had quadrupled.

Canadian poets have participated from the outset, but this will be the first time the festival has come north of the 49th. “For me last year’s CPF in Seattle was the best festival I have ever attended,” says Vancouver Island poet and Festival Co-chair David Fraser. While poetry is the heart and soul of the event, he says it’s part of a larger conversation that is sparked among the poets, scientists and environmentalists who attend.

“The sharing of words and ideas amongst the invited personalities and the attendees creates a rich dialogue from which yet more ideas and solutions arise,” he says. “Cascadia brings together people who want to build awareness about our rich, transnational community.”

The CPF website (www.cascadiapoetryfestival. org) sets out the festival’s guiding concept - an international festival that seeks to “bioregionally animate and

culturally construct” Cascadia by gathering writers, artists and scientists to “collaborate, discover and foster deeper connection between inhabitants and the place itself.” That word - ‘Cascadia’ - has been defined by writer and scientist David McCloskey as the bioregion that stretches “in a great curving arc from Northern California to southeast Alaska” - a vast swath that encompasses Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and more than half of British Columbia.

Transcending the “artificial boundaries” that bisect the region is one of the key objectives, says CPF3 co-chair, Nanaimo poet Kim Goldberg. “The Cascadia Poetry festival deliberately throws innovative poets and bioregional activists together over a four-day period for a whole range of activities and discussions, all for the purpose of fostering new thinking and some fertile cross-pollination.”

It’s serious fun, she says. “The focus at the Cascadia Poetry Festival is on the dialogue that arises between events rather than on individual stars or personalities.”

A Gold Pass to four days of readings, panels and discussions costs $25 (only $10 for students).

The four scheduled workshops aren’t covered by the pass, but at $60 they are a literary bargain. Tickets are available through the CPF website, as is the Cascadia 2015 schedule, and bios of 42 participating poets from Canada and the US.

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There’s also an email link for people who want to volunteer.

Want a taste of what Cascadia poetry looks like, sounds like? Lantzville poet and publisher, Ursula Vaira, writes about kayaking through the region in her book And See What Happens: The Journey Poems, published by Caitlin Press in 2011. Here are two couplets from her extended poem, Frog River: Perfectly still, river becomes mountains becomes cloud.

Canoe becomes bird. the hollow bone.

Vaira will be part of the Cascadia 3 lineup - a lineup that brings together emerging and established poets. One of the featured participants, Brenda Hillman, just won the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Taking the lead in organizing CPF3 is the small Nanaimo-based arts society called WordStorm (www. wordstorm.ca) - a dynamic group of writers who run monthly Spoken Word performances in local cafés (currently the Vault Café on Nanaimo’s Wallace Street).

“Spreading the word that Nanaimo is not only a gorgeous place, but also a major arts destination, is one of the city’s key strategic goals,” says Fraser, who aside from his Cascadia chairing duties is also WordStorm’s Artistic Director and President.

“It is gratifying that a small, volunteer group of poets is helping to manifest that strategic mission. “ • Check it all out here: www.cascadiapoetryfestival.org • On Facebook for news and updates: Cascadia Poetry Festival • To sponsor or volunteer, contact David Fraser at ascentaspirations@gmail.com

Ann Graham Walker is the Island Regional Representative on the Federation of BC Writers’ Board of Directors and Co-Chair of the Poetry genre on the WordWorks Editorial Board. Find out more about Ann on her Fed Writer’s Profile at: bcwriters.ca/profile/ann-graham-walker/ Page 21

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Glen Valley The river glides past sun-dried grass, tufts elongated through water’s body where geese escape the jangle of keys igniting a crew of motorcycles; chrome monsters rear their heads as the sky, pastel orange, highlights the little girl’s hair tousled by failed handstands.

Thump.

Thump.

And the blond boy looks forward towards big-busted adolescents who still believe the world is in their grasp; silk knots of hair wrapped around their slender fingers. Mine no different lost in the mix of peach skin blushed by the day-old sun.

The river runs silent next the hiss of grasshoppers and their mates, a whoosh, wings lurch amid the nursery of spring-growth branches have abandoned their seeds.

Snow, mid-May, chalks the man-made street.

Speech sounds foreign on river’s bank while young and old scatter atop astro turf-strive to leave their mark, footprints in the grass-soon to be dead as I walk away from ants who build hollow caves.

Marlow Gunterman

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A Gathering of Words and kindred spirits “...nirvana would be time to write while living in a community of likeminded writers.”

by Keith Liggett To most writers a realized nirvana would be time to write while living in a community of like-minded writers. In the simplest terms, that is the model for a Gathering of Words in Kaslo, BC. Weeklong workshops with time left over. A broad spectrum of writers hanging out, walking, talking while watching the sun pass over the Kootenay Lake and mountains.

There’s more. Afternoons of loose discussion on different aspects of writing—agents, work habits, independent publishing pros and cons, editors and more about those elusive agents. Evenings of wine and beers in pubs. Some readings. Some more talk.

And to top the week off, the premier of a play in the local theater.

On July 21st a few writers gathered in Kaslo to spend the week in fiction sessions with Calgary writer Naomi Lewis, or “Finding their Voice” with me and/or studying songwriting for four days with Juno Award winning singer songwriter Cara Luft.

The mornings were dedicated to intensive group work. After lunch the three groups would gather in the Kaslo Hotel’s conference room and discuss mutually agreed upon topics. We went through independent publishing, how you find an agent (be Page 23

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recommended), the similarity between poetry and songwriting, the value of reading and writing poetry in improving your prose and so on.

Wednesday evening the group gathered in the Kaslo Hotel Pub for an open mic. The star of the night was a local bus driver who happened to wander in and ripped off a hip-hop rap that had the room laughing, clapping and stomping their feet.

On Thursday evening the Langham Cultural Center hosted the premier of Denine Milner’s play Front-Door Women.

Directed by guest Vancouverite Barbara Pollard, the play was an opportunity to discuss the creative process from start to finish. On the afternoon of the premier we Keith and fellow writers shared notes, and a view of Kooteinvited Denine, Barbara and Holly Rabinowitz (a nay Lake in Kaslo during the Gathering of Words retreat. local writing workshop leader whose workshops helped Denine finish the play) to join the group in a discussion of process and production.

The end of the week brought a mixed reaction: the desire to continue was strong, but even stronger was the simple realization underlying all the work – it was now time to return home and start the real work.

There will be weekend Gathering of Words in Kaslo in mid February, 2015 and a second week long Gathering from July 19 to 26, 2015. For more information on the workshops offered and the visiting faculty for the Gatherings visit www.agatheringofwords.ca or www.facebook.com/gatheringofwords Contact Keith Liggett at t.keith.liggett@gmail.com

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Look Good Profiles hosted online with the Fed “Establishing yourself as a Fed member, and introducing yourself on a Fed profile page, connects you to BC’s community of writers.”

by Deb Clay

link to your website, and information such as the genres you work in, where you live, published works, writing

One of the benefits of being a Federation of BC Writers member is a profile page hosted at bcwriters.ca, showcasing you as writer. But why bother? you may ask.

Perhaps you already have a website filled with news about you, or maybe you’re just starting out and feel you don’t have anything to share?

awards and writer-related services you may offer.

Think connection.

Establishing yourself as a Fed member, and introducing yourself on a Fed profile page, connects you to BC’s community of writers. The page becomes a kind of brochure or business card you can refer to when promoting your writing or the services you offer. Even if you think you have nothing to share, letting people know you are a writer can connect you to others who are on the same path.

And there are unexpected benefits: some members find the focus of creating a member profile helps them better understand what it means to be a writer; others have found connections to writing groups or formed groups of their own.

Your Page A basic membership page includes a bio (with optional “digital portrait”), your preferred method of contact, a

Searchable, help people find you For the most part, being a writer means writing, writing, writing, then getting your work out into the world.

Advancements in the World Wide Web and social media make it easier and more important that you do get your name ‘out there’. A Fed profile helps by making you more ‘visible’ and ‘findable’. Being found increases your potential for sales, meeting other writers, and connecting with readers by: • Establishing you as a part of a larger writing community; • Showcasing your work; • Letting people know you’re available as a writer, reader, workshop leader; • Connecting you to a large network of other writers and editors.

Your profile is like a resume or CV posted where prospective readers, clients and colleagues can easily find it.

The search function, which is being added to Continued Next Page

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the Fed’s new profile index, is key. Within the FBCW site profile visitors will be able to be filter information according to a member’s location, or by genres and services offered. For example, anyone looking for a reader or workshop presenter in their community will be able to go to the FBCW site and sort member pages for those specific attributes. The search function will provide a path direct to you for anyone on the web.

Submitting your profile, first things first FBCW makes it easy for you to create a profile page, if you follow the recommended steps. Before you go to submit, prepare the following materials (see details below): • A required 200 word introductory bio; • An optional description of your works and the services and workshops you offer; • An optional portrait-style image of you.

Have those files ready and things will go smoothly; all you’ll have to do is attach the files to an online form,

which requests some additional basic information for your profile, and submit. Then we take over.

If you find online forms a hassle, submit your material and additional information via the email link provided on the Fed’s Profile Builder page, and we’ll get back to you if anything is missing.

What to write in your bio?

Think of your bio as an introduction. If you’re not comfortable talking about yourself, do a little research to see what other writers are saying in their bios.

Check out the term “elevator speech” online - an elevator speech is a short summary used to efficiently define a person, profession or business, delivered in the approximate time span of an elevator ride - about 45 to 60 seconds. Also helpful is a mention of what community you live in (town, rural area, city etc) and information about the genres you work in.

Final Checklist What you need to submit Your Bio (Required | doc, docx, rtf or txt files only) Up to 200 words.

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Your Works (Optional | doc, docx, rtf or txt files only) - Information about your published (including self-published) works, genres, awards, services and workshops. Be sure to indicate which search categories you want to be included in from the following lists:  Current genre categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, children’s writing, screenplay writing, play writing, song writing  Current service categories: workshop presenter, speaker, reader, editing, writing services, judge A Picture of You (Optional | jpg or png files only) A digital portrait of yourself. Recommended file size 200kb The image will be cropped to 200 pixels wide (about 3 inches) by 250 pixels high (3.5 inches) Enhanced Options add more pizzazz!

If you want to add extras to your Writer’s Profile, we can do that at a very reasonable cost. For example, you can post an extended profile in PDF format (so people can download and print it). The same goes for posters about readings or other events you may want to share.

Perhaps you’d like to include links to specific web sites, or to areas of your website that describe workshops or other services. Contact Deb Clay (deb@dlclay.com) to discuss available enhanced options.

Upload Members can upload their profile info via the ‘Members Profile Builder’ sub-heading, under the ‘Our Members’ menu item at bcwriters.ca. There’s a link to a sample profile page to show you how your information will be formatted.

Whatever you choose to share, posting a profile helps establish and strengthen your literary roots by connecting you to a community of writers and readers.

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From The Feel of Gravity a collection in progress A little bit of me was relieved when Andy passed. I know that doesn’t sound too terrible, that anyone with half-a-heart listening to this confession would say, “Tsk, tsk, don’t be so hard on yourself, dear. It’s only natural.”

And that’s true.

Just the same I can’t forgive myself. And whenever I remember Andy that little pinprick of guilt punctures the membrane of my widow’s sorrow, letting the infection in. Again. There is no immunity. Can’t be.

What’s mourning like? I’ll be on the Number 75 Saanichton and, before I can even see it, I feel the immense weight of Victoria City Hall, where Andy worked thirty-five years. That damned building sits like God’s paperweight dead center on my world map, an immovable, irreducible pile of brick and mortar… an inertia so great that - even if you did demolish it, the dead weight of its memory would remain pulling everything down with an incalculably slow but accumulating momentum into the very centre of the

universe - the point of final and absolute stasis.

I could catch the 75 just past the bifurcation of Douglas and Blanshard, near the northwest corner of Beacon Hill Park. But I always walk the extra block or so to the Government Street terminus by the Legislature. It just seems more official there, like a place where buses are meant to actually arrive and congregate and pick people up to take them places.

Andy used to tease me about that, called me a worrywart. And I enjoyed his teasing. We were nothing, if not an ordinary couple, punched belatedly out of the 1950s, post-war mold when all around us 1970s couples were rebelling against everything we stood for… or as Lorraine once put it, in that inimitable way of hers: “You two were cupcakes born into the age of granola bars.” Andy laughed so hard when she said it that Lorraine had to leave the room in a huff. She even shouted an obscenity, something about us “never fucking getting it.”

And I suppose that’s true.

Anyway, by the time the Number 75 rounds the corner of Superior and Douglas, lumbering north

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toward my stop an hour away at Brentwood Bay, I can already feel the gravitational force of City Hall pulling down the center of my universe. Neither of us ever questioned Andy’s three-and-a-half decades in the Finance Department. Why should we have? He made good money, had incomparable benefits, and was low enough in the order of things that he needn’t think too much about ‘the job’ when he wasn’t actually at it.

I remember being surprised at his retirement dinner by the genuine fondness people showed Andy - I might even go so far as to call it affection. I knew so little about his work and the people he worked with that it came as something of a revelation when his secretary Alisha - well not his secretary, actually, but a clerk who seems to have adopted him… when Alisha actually almost cried, forcing me to console her with a hug and pat on the back. “He’s just such a wonderful, gentle man,” she quavered. “He makes everyone smile.

Now we’re all going to be glum and business-like.”

Soppy as this scene played out, Alisha spoke the truth.

So I was surprised when she didn’t show up at Andy’s memorial.

How Andy and I ended up together I’ll never know.

How we didn’t end up hating each other - like Lorraine and what’s-his-name (as she calls her ex) - is an even greater mystery. We should have fought, but never did; should have been a simmering pressure-cooker filled with a poisonous brew of hatred and resentment, but weren’t. Somehow Andy tricked me into putting all that aside and laughing like there was nothing wrong.

Now, of course, I’m left wondering what I could have been.

Not seriously, of course. If I could have been anything other than what I turned out to be, that’s what I would have become. I’m essentially an existential determinist, if you need a peg to hang your idea of me on - if you want to place me like a raincoat in the hallway, amidst the outfits of all your other friends.

Young people tend to think we have more choice than we do about things, an illusion exacerbated by bigscreen TV and marketing flattery, which inflates egos to a grotesque degree. Lorraine and what’s-his-name, for instance, ended up hating each other because their egos were too big - they couldn’t pass in a hallway without bumping into each other and creating static, they couldn’t even fit in the same house anymore. So they divorced. But it turns out even that doesn’t give

them enough room.

That’s how I ended up taking the Number 75 out to her place in Brentwood Bay twice a week to mind our grandson Bryson. What’s-his-name had been evicted, Lorraine had a career in real estate to pursue, she couldn’t afford childcare seven days a week - such are the realtor’s hours - and I was recently retired. Mom into the fray, so to speak. Now Lorraine can afford as much childcare as she needs so my shifts have become a habit, I suppose - a weekly pilgrimage I’m loath to give up as much for its moments of anguish as its delightful interludes. “Salt and sugar,” as Andy once put it in an uncharacteristically sour mood, “the one to rub into a wound, the other to distract us and shut-up our whining.”

When he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer just a year after he retired the significance of that pearl became more apparent, polished - as it were - by a year of looking hard into the truth at the same time as we tried to pretend it wasn’t there, every day, festering and gnawing at what was left of us, becoming something unavoidable. We knew he was done. We put on a brave face. Snatched at scraps of hope the same way a hungry dog waits for something to fall off your fork. But even Dr. Harmon, the specialist, couldn’t give us anything better than palliative aspirations. “With treatment you can have some good years, Andy,” was the best he could do. I suppose he didn’t have the heart to admit the only denomination of time he could pluralize would be months. Nor did he have the stomach to spell out the balancing act we’d have to engage in between the quality of life remaining and the benefits of surgery, radiation, chemo and so on. Who would?

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Andy laughed.

He laughed! And for the first time in our forty years I was infuriated by his laughter - as if my blood had been transfused with naphtha and his faux jollity was the lethal, blundering spark. My whole being erupted - an utterly incomprehensible and confounding rage turned everything to ashes in an instant. I couldn’t know it at the time of conflagration, but there were no survivors. Everything had changed. I cried, inconsolably and alone.

I had to take my fury out of there because it wasn’t right, wasn’t fair for me to be outraged. I walked all the way to Dallas Point, then along the thrashing shore, and finally home. Andy never asked where I’d been, but he knew, and forgave everything he knew… as always. But he didn’t laugh. And I was able to forgive him too, but not forget. No! Never that.

My love for Andy had not diminished of course.

After all, we were the ones meant for each other if ever that saying had even a grain of meaning. Even now that love casts its shadows, but they are getting longer and longer, and fainter by the day - almost blending completely with the dappled impressions of shivering leaves, flitting birds, towering buildings on the sidewalks I traverse. It’s not your memories that get old, it’s you. Chemistry, biochemistry I should be more precise, cannot retain the impressions of a lifetime.

A process of letting go - our euphemism for decay sets in. I don’t know how to say this - how to admit it - but my recollection of our love is receding farther and farther into a distance I can’t distinguish between past and future. I have to pretend to honour Andy’s memory the way people expect. Is that disgraceful? If so it can’t be helped because when I look for what we had, all I see now is something akin to a seam of light seeping through the chink under a closed door. Does that make sense? Or am I being silly with this tortuous extrapolation of the plain truth: There is no going back. You can’t even look back because whichever way you turn your face is forward. *** When your mind rolls over inside your skull even things that look the same after you’ve righted yourself are completely and forever altered. It’s like what you’d always thought of as ‘real’, as ‘reality’ in the larger context, now seems a fabric that conceals the truth - the gorgeous, shifting sari of a dark-skinned, dark eyed

and somehow inscrutable Indian woman, dancing perhaps by the ocean. My previous interpretations of my and Andy’s life together seem trivializations to me.

But now he’s gone I can’t go back and invest those years with the true meaning they concealed. I simply have to take them as they are and were and forget what I missed in the first place. There’s no direction but forward. That’s the true depth of mourning; the salt and the sugar of it.

Andy was handy - a trite moniker fitted together as aptly and tightly as the bonds of a genetic code. I sometimes think his mother and father must have deciphered his peculiar talents through some mystical parental forensic, which guided them toward an appropriate baptismal. As Andy put it, he was a ‘hammer and nails’ kind of guy… when he wasn’t at his desk job.

It was Lorraine, the saucy teen, who dubbed him “Mr. Prefix,” that is: “The guy who fixes things before they’re even broken.” Andy never stopped laughing at the label. He even made up a little plaque in his workshop that he took into ‘The Hall’ and put on his desk. “Mr. Prefix,” it said. “Getting it right before it gets wrong.”

It’s in a box in the basement along with all the other stuff he brought back when he finally packed it in.

But after his diagnosis - or AD as we put it - Handy Andy’s endearing hobby transmogrified into something like obsession. His scraping and banging and wrenching and painting and muttering and mumbling acquired a desperate tempo inversely proportional to his physical strength - his ability to carry on. He became a latter-day Noah, trying to cobble together an ark in a single afternoon - in every single, single afternoon that remained to him.

We could do nothing but watch in anguish and offer hints, which he never even heard let alone heeded, that perhaps he should slow down, that everything was fine. But I dared not push or show impatience. It was, after all, the end of his life, not mine - or as he once put it: “I’m about to become a human-been, my love.

There’s chores need doing.” It was more than chores, though, this exercise in utter futility he engaged in toward the end.

If you don’t believe in God, how do you build an ark on your mountain top? How can you even begin?

I mean, even if your bloody ark is watertight, how can you be sure you’ll get every plant, animal and insect on board to repopulate the world you are leaving behind?

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And what makes you believe the world will need repopulating - that the wound of your parting will not be entirely healed even before you’ve breathed your last.

There’s an existential statement for you! The world goes on in spite of us, I have learned, not because of us and our gods.

Past the layer-cake architecture of City Hall the traffic usually thins on Douglas - at least in my direction - and the Number 75 accelerates. The built form flattens out, the crystalline structures of downtown - such as it is in Victoria - giving way to the stucco and parking lot interfaces of sprawling suburbia, then finally to the almost rural stretches of Saanich.

Country air is easier to breathe. I know that’s silly to say, but I swear, city air has a density and texture I can feel in my lungs and taste at the back of my throat.

Dr. Carruthers says the pressure I feel in my chest and the queasy sensation in my gut is anxiety. He prescribed pills to make the symptoms go away, but I’ve left the prescription unfilled because I have this feeling the symptoms are really Andy’s spirit inside me, communing in the only way open to him now. Ridiculous!

I know. Especially for one who would be condemned an atheist by most any truly religious judge. But I’ve become something of a spiritual crackpot since Andy. I notice things I didn’t before.

For instance, there’s a strange similarity of design and purpose between a coffin and a boat; and when you think about it, there’s also an overlap in purpose, intent. They both convey people and things from one world to another… both are crafted with a destination in mind. In a coffin the words ‘people’ and ‘things’ merge - or you could say coffins convey people as things, as what remains after the fire’s burned out. In

boats people and things are usually distinct entities that is, if you exclude inevitable exceptions like slave ships and Norse funeral pyres, which my academic’s mind must make note of. But for now let me set them aside. I would never have discovered the symbolic connection between coffins and boats if I hadn’t been so intensely aware of Andy’s carpenter’s hands at work during those last sad and desperate months before he died - sad for me; desperate for him. His final project was a hand-made front door, you see. This after he’d replaced all the windows with ‘more efficient’ triple glazed panes; supervised the digging up and replacing of the perimeter drain tile, which had been damaged by the invasive roots of our cedar hedge; cut a balcony - unfortunately reminiscent of a widow’s watch - into the sloped section of roof off our second-floor master bedroom; replaced our fence… enough! Even reciting the litany of his projects exhausts me, so I’ll segue to the end, or the beginning of the end.

“I never liked that door,” Andy said, tapping the panels of our plain, unvarnished entrance with his cane.

“Which way don’t you like it, dear, coming in or going out?”

God, we can be stupid sometimes. Andy laughed.

“Neither,” he said. “You deserve something grander.”

I wanted to say: “Me?”, but clamped my jaws shut, beheading the commentary before it could out.

Watching him at work on that damned door - or rather, watching his hands molded around the grips of chisels, planes, mallets… it was watching his hands that led to the analogy between coffins and boats; boats and doors; doors and houses. They are all conveyances from A to B, from now to then, from cradle to grave.

Andy was planing and carving away layers of obfuscation and illusion as he worked on his ‘special project’ - his last we both knew.

“What’s it going to be?” I asked.

He scratched his scalp - close shaved ever since his first round of chemo. “Don’t know,” he said.

“But…” “I’m following the grain, hon. We’ll see where it takes me.”

I understood then that his work was well and truly finished, and that this last project was all about him,

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and me in him, and Lorraine out of me and him, and Bryson out of Lorraine and what’s-his-name and me and him - that in fact, this was a door never meant to be walked through. As far as he could determine his work on this planet was complete and this was something left behind with every curl shaved off it. He’d refurbished our ark in preparation for the flood we’d always expected in that secret part of us we don’t like to talk about. Now it was time for him to leave - that was obvious as cliché.

You have to understand, Andy had never carved anything in his life before. He’d always bought his newel posts, panels and fixtures ready-made from Home Depot or Ikea or whatever. So, encouraging as I tried to be, I dreaded what I might be left with after this, his first ‘artsy’ endeavour.

“Burn it if you don’t like it,” he said, sensing the weight of my anguish. “Honest, love, I mean it. I won’t miss it when I’m gone.”

In that moment our living together hung tenuously as a drop at the very tip of a drooping leaf - a heavy drop that contained within its perfectly clear membrane a complete vision of all we had been, were, or could be… I loved him more than ever, but knew the drop was suspended over the crystal clear surface of a vast, still ocean and once it let go and made its tiny splash and almost imperceptible circle of ripples there would be nothing left of it but the momentum of memory. He held me close and we cried. No! We wept.

I never had Andy’s door installed. The white, hollow-core, foam filled portal in and out of our place serves me fine. Instead I had it set up on a two sided pedestal-stoop (I have no other word for it) in the far corner of our back yard, near the fence. Lorraine of course had an opinion on the subject: “What, are you crazy, Mum?” she wanted to know. I still don’t have an answer.

The outer edge of Andy’s door begins as a river rising up from the lower right corner. It flows round the panels, transforming itself into a serpent whose head swims in its own current where the circle - if you can call it that - completes. I can’t get the image out of my head, which makes it more real than anything else I’ve ever imagined, I suppose. Inside the encircling form is the iconic scene of Eve handing Adam the poison fruit. Is it her apple? His? Theirs? I can’t say for sure, but I know Adam and Eve and Andy and me when I’m

looking at that damned door, and that anyone else can imagine whatever they want in what we’ve come to call our ‘Genetic Portal.’

Clumsy as the carving is, there’s no denying its power, its conviction. Adam and Eve clearly love each other in his depiction, and - excuse my English, but they don’t give a shit what God thinks.

I always get off the Number 75 on Wallace, just past Marchant, then walk up to the Fairway Market at West Saanich Road and wait for Lorraine under the red awning at the store’s entrance. She pulls up, I get into her SUV, and off we go, back to the house she appropriated from what’s-his-name after a ‘protracted’ and ugly legal campaign - he really was an ass-hole.

Bryson is always in his car seat behind us. He always says “Hi Nan” - sometimes brightly, sometimes grumpily, sometimes sleepily… but always in some manner of speaking. And that’s enough, isn’t it? He’ll know what to think of me when the time comes. As for Andy, I don’t think Bryson will remember him at all, except as someone he’s seen in family photo albums.

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A COLLECTION IN THE MAKING