Though home in body

...my mind is still making its way back from St. Peter's Abbey. There I spent the last two weeks working on Bone Conduction, my seemingly endless manuscript, resolving many of its troubles and creating more trouble in the process. Perhaps I'll spend the rest of my days writing this book or at least arguing with it.

It will take some time to catch up with the news and the goings-on on the blogs I regularly visit. I did notice that John MacKenzie had discussed Sue Sinclair's poetry on Salt and Ice the other day. I ran across Sinclair's Secrets of Weather & Hope in the St. Peter's College library a few days ago. Though I didn't have time to read more than a few poems, I was struck by perception, by the act of perceiving, and felt wholly involved in a process, in what it means to make sense.

Over the past few years St. Peter's College has been hosting Canada Council readings that are nicely timed with the winter colony. Last year I saw Fred Stenson and Greg Hollingshead read there the year before. This year Douglas Barbour, author of Lyric/Anti-lyric, gave a lively reading. I was especially pleased to hear him read from A Flame on the Spanish Stairs, a chapbook of experimental sonnets and acrostics inspired by or arising from the letters of John Keats, a chapbook I've owned and happily puzzled over for some time.

I also saw Maureen Scott Harris give a moving reading from her new collection Drowning Lessons. She will be reading at the Grant Park McNally Robinson tomorrow night, so you Winnipeg people should check it out. The Drowned Boy poems are stunning.

One more thing to wind up this scattered post: I bought a copy of Sacred Electric, a CD by Brother Kurt Van Kuren and Janice Weber which takes the guitar to Gregorian chant. Great stuff. It leaves me feeling almost at home in what I do.