Time for Contest Catherine (that’s me!) to process the entries and keep deep, dark secrets from the judges (such as the entrants names…)!

Time to answer all of your questions about the contest!

Time to fill the blog with contest fodder!

(We’ll stay classy, don’t worry.)

As you may know, TNQ’s website has a new design, and along with that brand new look, there is a brand new contest entry form where you can upload your entries on the website. Yay! Just visit the contest pages on the website and follow the directions. (See below for specific links.)

Directions giving you some grief? Email me: contests@tnq.ca

Now, in the past it was always a human being who sent you confirmation that your contest entry was received. Our shiny new website does that automatically.  If you submit your work and do not see that confirmation message, please let me know.

And if you just want to say hi, please let me know that too! The submission confirmation message is the only thing resembling a robot in these contests (robots are cool, but that’s for another blog). Behind the scenes are real, live(ly), people. I am still downloading your work one .doc at a time, using my human eyes to make sure there is no personally identifying information in the document, and taking care to ensure your subscriptions will go where you intend them to (that’s right, each entry comes with a 1-year Canadian subscription to TNQ).

Entries have already begun to arrive and deadlines are looming—most notably The Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest.

Keep this list posted on your fridge!

Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest deadline: February 28, 2012

Edna Staelber Personal Essay Contest deadline: March 28, 2012

Peter Hinchcliffe Short Story Contest deadline: May 28, 2012

Keep in mind that you don’t need to sit on that short story until April to send it in – all of the contests are open right now!

This is my third year as Contest Catherine, and I’m incredibly excited to peek at this year’s possibilities and chat with the entrants.

I hope to hear from you soon!

I was, however, delighted to hear stories from the Toronto Kiss Map read on CBC this V-day, and I have since become completely addicted to reading these tiny stories of first, last, and in-between kisses. I highly recommend browsing these stories. Not only are the kiss vignettes a pleasure to read, but they make excellent writing prompts, as the brevity of the format sends the imagination peeking around corners.

I suspect that the quality of the posted stories has to do with the fine advice that Firefly Creative Writing posted in the “How To Write a Dazzling Kiss Story” tab. The suggestions are fitting for most forms of short fiction/creative non-fiction (especially #3. I freaking love to read stories where the writer trusts me to fill in the gaps):

1. Get physical. You have five senses for a reason. Of course the person you’re kissing is the most important thing, but fill the scene out. What colour is the sky? What can you hear? What smells are lingering near your nose? This is how you bring the reader in and make your story real.
2. Be radically honest. This is anonymous after all! Take that permission and bust through any greeting card pleasantries. Tell us the real story. Show what makes this kiss different from every other one on the map. Let us in to the details that only you and your kissing partner know. Whisper in our ears.
3. Give us a tiny glimpse of the big picture. This isn’t the place to unload the entire saga of your relationship, but the greatest kiss stories give the reader a tiny look at where this kiss fits. “Twelve years and four kids later, we still kiss every night.” “She moved to Australia two weeks later and never wrote a post card.” “Now I’m married to his little brother.” You get the gist.

For this interview, we tried something a little different: we asked Graeme Lottering (whose postscript story, “Love is a Foreign Language,” appeared in issue #120) to talk to Don Charlton about his essay, “The Bald Aesthetic.” We met Graeme at our 30th “Birthday” party, and knew immediately that his sense of humour would be compatible with Don’s. Plus, they had a little something else in common…

DC: Thanks Graeme. I’m grateful to the TNQ jury for including my essay among so much good writing.

I am a little troubled that in selecting a bald writer to interview a bald writer a liberal-leaning arts organization such as TNQ, presumably composed of thoughtful, sandals-and-socks wearing listeners to CBC Radio, would seek to ghetto-ize bald writers. I think it’s wrong—I think it’s morally wrong. But it just means that glabrous scribblers such as you and I will have to work that much harder to resist attempts to marginalize us. Regarding your question about Group A, I can’t think about sex when an injustice is being done.

GL: Do you find it difficult to write humour?

DC: The ability to write funny is mysterious to people in the same way that I find the ability to write music and solve math problems to be a mystery. Writing humour is challenging and rewarding, and because I have a facility for it I have a head start. And I like the path of least resistance.

GL: How did you come to writing? Do you have any literary heroes?

DC: As a kid, I didn’t write anything outside of assignments at school. I spent one year in a writing for broadcast program at a community college before transferring to a liberal arts program at a university, where I took one course in creative writing. Since leaving school, I have held several jobs as a Copywriter for ad agencies and marketing companies. (Attention: any employers in Waterloo Region looking for a smart marketing guy, I’m available).

In answer to your question about literary heroes, here’s a list of three contemporary comic novels I wish I’d written: The Information by Martin Amis; Headlong by Michael Frayn; About the Author by John Colapinto. In addition to each being very funny and well-written books, they share another quality. The central character is driven to dishonesty by artistic envy.

GL: What was the source of inspiration for your essay?

DC: “The Bald Aesthetic” is the product of painful, hard-won life experience. The idea came to mind at least 15 years ago and I thought about it for several years before putting pen to paper—conceiving of the three “types” and their differences, for example. I wrote and tinkered with the essay over a ten year period (so it became a hobby and my magnum opus). In that time, I showed the essay to three professional writers serving as writer-in-residence at public libraries in Ontario. I accepted a few of their suggestions regarding word choices and sentence structure and ignored any good advice that would have challenged my writing skill.

GL: In your article you mention being exposed to the elements. How do you protect yourself?

DC: Graeme, I infer from your question an assumption that as a baldie I may have assembled a defence mechanism to protect me against a world that favours and rewards men with the hair of a Republican Presidential candidate. No, mostly I wear a hat.

GL: In your opinion, are bald men ahead of the game evolutionarily speaking?

DC: Yes. I also don’t have the vestigial tailbone of homo erectus.

GL: In my own experience, I have either never come across a vixen from Group C—’the carnivore’ as you call them—your interaction with them seems so surreal that I just write it off as impossible. Are women from Group C golden unicorns?

DC: Oh, they’re out there. Traditionally, there was an assumption that a man who lost his hair at a young age did so because the passions burning in his furnace were very hot indeed. Passion has always been an attractive quality to women.

I don’t wish to be critical of a segment of the world’s female population that is attracted to guys who might otherwise spend a lot of Saturday nights at home reading. But, to be candid, I think one is forced to conclude that women who are attracted to men whose hairline has aged them prematurely have a bit of daddy-thing going on. So, my balding brethren, if you wish to enhance the likelihood that you will attract a Group C, I recommend you wear a cardigan sweater. Preferably in navy blue or beige.

GL: Do you still struggle to “storm the battlements of Group B” or have you come to terms with never breaching that impregnable fortress?

DC: Nah. The terrific thing about women, which I argue in the essay, is that even though a man is bald there remains a large pool of potential romantic partners willing to give him reasonable consideration. Personally, I never married. I’m a confirmed bachelor. I had my confirmation, last year. Lovely ceremony. So many flowers.

GL: Lastly, which bald man sums you up, Bruce Willis or the Dalai Lama?

DC: The Dalai Lama. I follow a path of modesty and quiet contemplation and take pleasure in advising people on how to live their life.

So far, work has been very busy for the most part. It’s funny; people walk in the office and the first thing they see is a large table covered in manuscripts and envelopes. The look in their face is priceless. It’s fair to say that “overwhelmed” is a common feeling around the office. Either way, every day is fun and challenging in its own ways, and we all enjoy it. It was a really fascinating experience receiving the brand-new magazines from St. Jacob’s Printery and mailing them out. Over the past few weeks, I’ve constantly been in touch with writers, which has allowed me to realize that they put so much love and dedication into their work, and it’s great to know that our readers appreciate and enjoy it. We have managed to send out most of the issues by now and the feedback we’ve received has been phenomenal. I am already looking forward to helping put together Issue 122!

One thing that has become a weekly highlight is Ice Cream Mondays. Yup, you guessed it. Every Monday, Melissa, Kim, and I head over to the main UW campus and buy some ice cream. Most people on campus may think we’re ridiculous because it’s below zero outside, but that is only because they haven’t tried this ice cream, especially on a MONDAY – with a tough week ahead, it’s only fair.

On another note, just the other day, my sister (who lives in Toronto) came home to visit. She handed me a book, which turned out to be Tucker Max’s non-fiction “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell”. I have yet to start reading the book, but I’ve heard great things about it – updates will be coming in the future. It’s been quite a while since I picked up a book and actually read for pleasure, to be honest. School, sports, and part-time work keep me busy, so any “spare” time that I manage to find I usually spend with my family (great priorities, I know…). Regardless, I am now in co-op, so I can afford to trade my boring Environmental Law case textbook for something a little more exciting.

The contest “envelope please” time is always fun, our chance to see whether our winning poems’ authors are at all what we expected. Reading “Happy Heart Day,” we all pictured a woman in middle age, someone long-married, so we were surprised to discover that you are relatively new to the matrimonial state, a young writer as well as a newlywed. What made us assume you were older? Perhaps the reference to records. Are you one of those back-to-vinyl types, or were you just channeling a figure of speech from your parents’ era?

I’m flattered that the judges assumed I was older. I’d like to think it’s because I’m an old soul, but it probably was the reference to records. My husband—who’s the same age as me—is one of those snobby vinyl revivalists who insists that records sound “richer and warmer” than digital audio. His ear for music is more refined than mine and he’s probably right, but I still like to tease him for being pretentious. Since we moved to Seattle, we’ve also both been a bit influenced by the city’s hipster scene which embraces everything retro. He was listening to his parents’ old records as a student back in Waterloo, but now that we live in a place where record stores are fashionable, he’s building his own vinyl collection. So we actually do listen to records, and like the figures in the poem, we occasionally burst into impromptu dance numbers.

We recognized we were in the territory of light verse not only from your theme but from your fondness for rhyme, especially multiple-syllabic rhyme. Ogden Nash, for instance, was never so delighted (and delightful) as when he worked a three-syllable rhyme. Who are your favorite exemplars of light verse?

Ogden Nash was definitely a genius at creating surprising rhymes, which is something I thought about in writing this poem. A very obvious rhyme in a humourous poem can almost spoil the “punch line,” so I tried to avoid those.
I remember having to write an explication of The Waste Land in high school and hating it, having to slog through all those footnotes. I somehow stumbled upon Wendy Cope’s Waste Land Limericks and thought those were absolutely brilliant. They brought Eliot’s poem into a realm I didn’t feel as intimidated by and made it easier to wrap my mind around the original.

In April one seldom feels cheerful;
Dry stones, sun and dust make me fearful;
Clairvoyants distress me,
Commuters depress me—
Met Stetson and gave him an earful.

Is writing poetry a private pleasure only or do you have aspirations as a writer? Is yours a poetic sensibility or are you writing fiction as well?

My plan is definitely to be a writer—I’m in this for the long haul. I grew up writing little stories and thinking I might be a fiction writer. Once I got old enough to be critical of myself, I realized how difficult it is to write really convincing fiction. I took some creative writing workshops in university intending to focus on fiction and got sidetracked by poetry, which is probably even harder to write well, but also harder to criticize. I’m concentrating more seriously on writing poetry at the moment, but I still have lofty ambitions about fiction.

We all loved the playful tone of this poem, the way it manages to be both a poem of protest (against the mercantile interests that fuel Valentine’s Day) and a love poem. There’s a cheekiness to writing a Valentine’s Day poem to someone who abhors enforced professions of love (“your cynicism makes me swoon!”). Dare we ask how the poem was received?

My husband is most interested in poems that feature him as the main subject, particularly ones that cast him in an endearing light, so he loved the poem and was very excited to see it get published. I’ve gotten a fair deal of ribbing from him recently for being a highfalutin published poet, but I know that’s his way of showing that he’s proud. He’s extremely supportive and encouraging of all my writerly endeavors, which makes my life a lot easier. Richard Ford once wrote that it’s important for an aspiring writer to marry someone who really likes the idea of being married to a writer. So, according to Richard Ford, I’ve done at least one thing right.

I understand you followed your husband to the States. Have you been able to connect to the writing community there? Are you ever homesick? If so, what—aside from family—do you miss?

Maybe it’s the rainy weather or the fact that, geographically speaking, it’s kind of the end of the road, but Seattle is one of those places in the world that attracts writers, and I have been lucky enough to connect with a few of them. Soon after our move, I discovered Richard Hugo House—a kind of creative community centre founded by writers, for writers—which has been a tremendous resource for me. I’ve had the opportunity to take workshops with some of the amazing writers-in-residence there, including the great Northwestern poet David Wagoner. I’ve met people like Jennifer Borges Foster, the founder of a very exciting literary journal called Filter that’s entirely handmade, and Sarah Galvin, a columnist for a local newspaper who also runs a hilarious poetry blog called Tea Party. I took a class recently with Ed Skoog, whose poetry I’ve become a bit obsessed with. His first collection, Mister Skylight, just became available on Kindle and is great.
I’ve fallen in love with Seattle, but I’m certainly homesick sometimes. Many of the friends my husband and I made in university stayed in and around Waterloo after graduation, and we miss being able to hang out with them whenever we want. We’ve actually had a good number of our Canadian friends down to visit though, many of whom had never been out West before, and it’s been fun to show them around such a beautiful region. I do miss being able to walk into a bookstore and buy books by some of my favourite Canadian authors, many of whom are not on the shelves here. I have to get most of my Canadian literature online now. I also miss Swiss Chalet and Tim Hortons, as well as Canadian Chinese food, which is different from American Chinese food. Finding out that they don’t have chicken balls in the States was a very rude awakening for me, and the egg rolls here just aren’t the same.

Exhibit A.

St. Jerome’s University has just launched their 2012 reading series. Not only do they have a fabulous logo, they always invite spectacular writers for our general enjoyment. On Thursday, February 9 at 4:30 pm, you can enjoy the literary talents of not one, but TWO poets: Rishma Dunlop and Tanis MacDonald.

I’m unfamiliar with Risha’s work, but we were fortunate enough to publish Tanis Macdonald’s sestina in our Quarc Issue, and to enjoy the pleasure of her company (and fine poetry reading skills) at our Guelph issue launch—so I feel utterly secure in suggesting that if you’re in Waterloo Region, you should come and ask her how she became so awesome. Did I mention it’s free? St. Jerome’s is located at 290 Westmount Rd. N., Waterloo, ON.

Tanis MacDonald is the author of three books of poetry: Holding Ground, Fortune, and most recently, Rue the Day. She is also the editor of Speaking of Power: The Poetry of Di Brandt and her study on the feminist elegy in Canada, The Daughter’s Way: Canadian Women’s Paternal Elegies will be available in Spring 2012. Her poetry has been widely anthologized and she is well-known as a reviewer and personal essayist as well as a poet and an academic. She won the Bliss Carman Poetry Prize, awarded jointly by Prairie Fire Magazine and the Banff School of Fine Arts, in 2003. She is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. Visit her website at www.tanismacdonald.com

I remember writing a St. Patrick’s Day poem for my dad, who’s from Ireland. It fell a bit flat, partly because Dad isn’t much for poetry. I was about ten at the time. I’ve also written birthday poems for friends, although I don’t recall any examples. Overall I’d say that as an occasional verse writer, I was pretty much alone. I felt like this was something weird that normal people didn’t do. My family certainly wasn’t into it.

“House Blessing” was one of two poems of yours that made it onto our short list. The judges remarked about both that they had a lovely lilting quality, also a simplicity and a somewhat archaic vocabulary that reminded them of nursery rhymes. Were you schooled in nursery rhymes or books of poems for children? What were your favorites?

What a delightful compliment! I’ve always loved nursery rhymes, and still do. One of my earliest books—which I still own—is a beautifully illustrated book of nursery rhymes that my grandmother sent me from Ireland. There are rhymes in it that don’t seem to be generally known on this side of the pond. One of my favourites was always “Pussycat Mole jumped over a coal, and in her best petticoat burnt a great hole. Poor Pussy’s weeping, she’ll have no more milk until her best petticoat’s mended with silk.” I named a cat of mine Mole after that nursery rhyme. I also love The Golden Treasury of Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer, and bought a copy at the age of twenty, when I happened to see it in a bookstore. Folksongs and lullabies are other influences, as well as counting-out songs and skipping rhymes. I think the language of poetry should be just a little different from daily language, and old words can be both more precise and more beautiful than modern ones. “Garth,” for example, has overtones of safety, a walled enclosure, perhaps an herb garden or a thyme bench and certainly at least one fruit tree. Try fitting that into “backyard”!

I grew up with Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses and Walter De la Mare’s Peacock Pie. My children were read both, but we added in some contemporary practitioners like Shel Silverstein and Dennis Lee. De la Mare’s verse is often poignant or even melancholy, and though many of Stevenson’s poems are slyly humorous, they have a light touch when compared to the more overtly, more irreverently comic verse of today. I find your poems closer to the earlier tradition, perhaps because they are written for adults? How would you describe your poetic sensibility?

I’d probably describe it as “pagan.” I live in a rural area in Northern Ontario; it’s impossible to live in such a place and not observe the natural world. Many of my poems deal with animals and nature. Even when I don’t deliberately set out to do so, they seem to wiggle into almost everything. Another fairly regular theme is the incursion of other realities into this one; aspects of Deity, mythological beings, metamorphosis. You could call it fantasy. Children’s poetry takes fantasy matter-of-factly. Nobody says, “Wait a minute! A cat with a petticoat?” They just get on with the need to get that petticoat mended. The other side of my poetic sensibility is parody; I love to write it, and it makes people laugh. I also love Ogden Nash’s wordplay, and occasionally rise to it myself. “With gravity dancing a daring dalliance/because of his inborn sense of balliance” is one Nashian rhyme I’m quite fond of.

Am I right that you are an artist as well as a poet? What’s the connect between the two? Were the originals of “House Blessing” and “The Bannock Bakers” illustrated?

Yes, I am an artist. I used to be a printmaker, primarily an engraver, then a potter. I now make books and design pop-ups. I’d love to get back to printmaking and do some hand-printed pieces like Stan Washburn’s “The True Account of the Death by Violence of George’s Dragon.” “House Blessing” and “The Bannock Bakers” weren’t illustrated, although I designed a pop-up card to go with “House Blessing.” As for the connection between poetry and visual arts, I see all art as art; the medium is only a different expression. I can’t follow all the arts that interest me all at once, so I generally go with the one that I’m currently obsessed with. Right now it’s mainly writing, with a side of paper arts like origami, pop-ups, bookmaking. Eventually I’ll do an illustrated, hand-bound book of one of my poems, “The Goblin Baker”—I have ideas for linocuts dancing in my head.

Do you sometimes work in the elegiac mode, or are you primarily a celebratory poet?

Definitely celebratory. Then again, I’ve never been asked to write a poem for a sad occasion, and only once felt moved to do it unasked. That was when J.R.R. Tolkien died. It was a very short piece, a tad adolescent, as I was myself, but not too bad. I now write occasional poetry to order, which is fun and a good challenge. I’ve been asked to do birthday poetry, poetry for new businesses, love poems and once a short piece for inclusion in a fairy tale. I write parody as the mood strikes, and it’s always intentionally funny. Some pieces are ripe for repeated parody. I currently have two of “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” and could probably write a dozen.

Have you ever addressed a poem to your dog or your cat? (I sing to my dog, the only one who doesn’t complain about my tin ear.)

I’ve never addressed one to my dog or cat, but I did once write kind of a reverse occasional poem. I wrote a cycle of seasonal sonnets, each season built around observations of an animal. The autumn one featured my tortoiseshell cat, Lilith. In it I said, “This huntress of fat mice on summer days/Looks nightward now, and sets her golden gaze/On fluttermice that swiftly swoop in air.” I have a note in one of my commonplace books that the next fall I saw Lilith leaping after a bat one evening. Life imitates art—either that, or my sonnet was a premonitory occasional poem! I’d never seen her go after a bat before, and I never observed it again.

My name is Humberto Gutierrez Sors. As my name implies, I was not born in Canada. I moved here with my family from Mexico a little over four years ago (yes, we use two last names in Mexico but I drop the second when in Canada).

A little bit about me: I’m neat, athletic (futbol), easy-going, and injury prone. I love going out,  staying in, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Coffee is my one addiction; naps are a waste of time (so is sleeping in).

Academically speaking, I mainly come from a Business and Environment background. However, being a co-op student at the University of Waterloo has allowed me to submerge myself in different environments and experience a little bit of everything. I never really thought that I’d be involved working for a magazine—never mind a very prestigious one such as TNQ. Prior to my interview, I was going over the job description and the idea of working in a small office space with people that shared similar passions really caught my attention. I thought to myself: “That’s where I want to spend the upcoming months.”

So, here I am, TNQs newest Circulation Assistant (aka the office rookie). It took a few days for me to get settled in, but everyone here has been extremely warm and welcoming. It’s safe to say that TNQ has become like a second home to me, and I love it.

My daily tasks involve organizing submissions, updating databases, keeping in touch with writers, and providing assistance with whatever is going on at the office. Also, unlike some people, *cough Symon cough* I dread the times in which I get to bond with the PC at work. As nerds would say: “Macs FTW.”

Enough about me, though. How are you doing?

If you’d like to be entered for a free copy of TNQ # 121, before most people can get their hands on it, head on over to Carrie’s blog.  I’m sure once you’ve read her story in the issue, you’ll be as excited about her upcoming book as the rest of us.