From Tom Ložar: How to learn Italian
2011-04-18
What was it Christ said? Unless you be like little children, you cannot be great poets.
From Judith Fitzgerald: April Is the Coolest Month, or, GO HABS GO!!!™
2011-04-16
The real poetry happening on this continent? The playoffs.
The Quebec e-opportunity?
2011-04-16
Quebecers are less than excited by le livre numérique.
Accelerating change in the book world
2011-04-12
"The change from print-books to e-books is happening even faster than Heather predicts." -- Bruce Batchelor
Opening Night in Quebec City
2011-04-11
Looking forward to getting together with the other festival participants: Todd Denault, Sheree Fitch, Paul Kropp, Rabindranath Maharaj, Andrew Potter, Ami Sands Brodoff, Claire Holden Rothman, Alexander MacLeod, Nigel Thomas, Charles H. Mountford and John Whitt.
Becoming a writer in the digital age
2011-04-07
Some writers will choose not to self-publish. They may prefer not to spend the time it takes to edit, publish, market and sell their own work. But if they do wish to self-publish, it is now possible to do so without losing face and without losing money. That’s the game changer.
Brave New (Book) World: New York publishing guru Mike Shatzkin in Montreal
2011-04-05
"We are living through an extraordinarily dynamic period of change from which no one will escape unscathed." -- Mike Shatzkin
From Yan Liang: The Terracotta Warriors Go West
2011-04-03
“The First Emperor could never have dreamed that 2200 years later, his terracotta soldiers would travel to almost every corner of the world, while he still rests in his mysterious underground palace.”
From Margaret O'Brien: John Vaillant's The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival
2011-04-02
The Tiger is a Poe-like thriller, an analysis of post-perestroika economic disintegration (with plenty of black humour included), a treatise on biodiversity, an overview of paleoanthropology, and a completely absorbing read. But its essence is an intricate and measured plea for humans to understand and value our co-existence with the natural world.
April Fool
2011-04-01
In the venerable tradition of the 1957 BBC documentary on the Spaghetti Harvest and other media hoaxes which combine familiar formatting and a plausible style with invented (and inventive) content, Canada’s book trade paper Quill & Quire has produced a clever online April Fool’s joke on the Canadian book world.
Launch of $50,000 Montreal International Poetry Prize
2011-03-28
Asked to comment on the audacity of launching a global English poetry prize in Montreal, Epp says, “It’s not necessarily audacious. It’s certainly interesting. We think it’s a great thing for Montreal, not just for the English-speaking community.
Becoming a writer
2011-03-27
Email, the Internet, Facebook and newspapers – whether in print or online – are the enemies of writing. Reading is the enemy of writing.
The Literary Life (Part 2 of 2)
2011-03-23
Writers are always complaining they don’t have enough time to write, even those who are “full-time” writers. I used to find that puzzling, but now that I have joined the ranks of full-time writers, I understand better. The question, “When do you write?” is not a silly question. This is why writers are careful to broach it only with close friends. The answer has something to do with what I write – and a lot to do with whether I write at all.
The Literary Life [Part 1 of 2]: A day to bottle?
2011-03-21
Is there a way of bottling the good reviews? Steeping them in brine? Or, given the wintry day, flash-freezing them so that there they'll be ready to cheer me up all over again another day?
Photo: Linda Leith
The Social Network: A good film, but not a great film
2011-03-20
Would anyone have bothered making The Social Network – or praising it – if it weren’t for the fact that Zuckerberg ended up with $26 billion?
From Tom Ložar: "It totters when she licks it with her tongue" / Trema se lei con la lingua lo lambisce
2011-03-17
Translation is not something we do for the lazy who cannot be bothered to learn the language of the original. Translation is so that you can read a poem you've already read … for the first time again.
Mavis Gallant, Home Truths & the Anglo Literary Revival
2011-03-12
The best stories I have ever read about Montreal are the Linnet Muir stories that appeared in The New Yorker in 1978 and 1979. Set mostly in wartime Montreal, the stories dip back into the more distant past of Linnet Muir’s—and Mavis Gallant’s own—childhood memories of Montreal in the 1920s.
"In Other Words" posts, Globe Books
2011-03-11
From Samuel Beckett to Nelly Arcan, and from Scottish writing to Blue Metropolis, literary posts from "In Other Words" on Globe Books.
Arguments for brevity, the possibility of wit
2011-03-11
It’s not as though we have such precise notions of the length of a novel, which has been described as a narrative fiction of “a certain length.”
From Erika Ritter: "You're not Uncle Bunny! Uncle Bunny is good and kind!"
2011-03-11
Who can forget Hancock's saggy, saturnine face in a bunny costume he was forced to wear while working as a toy store clerk--until he was outed by a child shrieking in a very English accent, "You're not Uncle Bunny! Uncle Bunny is good and kind!"?
From far away, from right here
2011-03-05
It used to be that you could get better Hungarian sausages in Montreal than you could in Budapest. So many of the Hungarians have left, taking with them their flourless cakes and their cafés, so I’m not sure that’s still true, but others have arrived to take their place. Ingredients are now available here to make dishes from across the globe, and there are now Iranian, Russian, Georgian, Polish, Italian, Tamil, Vietnamese, Peruvian, Mexican, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Lebanese, and Ethiopian restaurants all within walking distance.
