ALONE ON A WINDY RIDGE: The Creative Writing Exhibition at Congress 2018

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

The Creative Writing Exhibition at Congress 2018

...took place on Sunday in Regina at the Campion Commons. Tea Gerbeza, Judith Krause, Randy Lundy, and Kate Spencer gave wonderful readings! It was an honour to be there with them. Thank you to the University of Regina, Community Connections for hosting and a great big thank you to Medrie Purdham and Michael Trussler for organizing this fabulous event and inviting me to take part. Here's the lovely poster.

Here's what I saw before I set out that morning. Today I note

a sign carved by hand

tops the opening

I failed to sand

Here's me reading from my new book Culverts Beneath the Narrow Road. Thank you to the great audience and thank you so much to those who took a copy home.

Here's a group pic after the readings. It was a fun time!

H and I were talking about this great event on our way home the next day when we came upon this great egret.

Hours later we came upon culverts no longer beneath the narrow road. Or culverts beneath the narrow road no longer.

I'll try not to read into that.

"This is a skilled poet having good fun, and inviting us all to join the party." - Shelley A. Leedahl, SaskBooks Reviews. Read more.

"Employing a variety of forms and the culvert stories — who knew? — of numerous people, she digs beneath the obvious roads to find out what keeps the water — the subconscious, the unconscious — flowing smoothly, discovering a variety of things about herself, notably the everyday masks we wear and the aging process we won’t always admit to." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"For Schmidt is indeed a poet. Readers can expect to encounter many visual and acoustic delights along the way, from internal rhymes to arresting images." - Trevor Cook, The Antigonish Review #196.

"In Grid..., Creighton's Brenda Schmidt turns a colder eye to the landscape than most other Canadian poets." - Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press. Read more.

"You can just feel the stones rattling off your undercarriage on this Grid." - Bill Robertson, The Star Phoenix. Read more.

"Like the Prairies, this is not a collection that gives itself away: the true beauty of this book lies in subtleties that may not be obvious at first glance." - Emily McGiffin, The Malahat Review. Read more.

"In Grid, moments are approached in their apparent stability only to be swept away in song rife with interruption and fresh stimuli, lending a new perspective. It is as though the familiar ground is an eye glancing back and the reflection only a nodal-point, open to opportunity and play." - Justin Dittrick, SPG Book Reviews. Read more.

"There is grit in these poems, so much that it seems unfair to think of them as nature poems; like the best nature writing, they undo our expectations of nature rather than uphold them." - Tanis MacDonald, Arc Poetry Magazine. Read more.

"In her fourth collection Grid, Schmidt’s wry humour transcends what we have watched heap up in Canada for more than a century—nature poems—balancing in canola fields between the beautiful lure of nature and our curious urge to separate ourselves from disappearing allotments of our own solace. We have wandered “off the grid” but fortunately Schmidt is an entertaining and insightful guide who can still find Li Po in a Dark-eyed Junco, if she has to." - Garry Thomas Morse, Jacket 2. Read more.

"These supple, witty, and incisive poems delineate our relationship to grids and systems both visible and invisible, natural and political." - Judges' citation, Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry nomination. Jurors: Shawna Lemay, Barbara Nickel, Sharon Thesen.