Summer School

Finished Day 2 of TEMiC - that would stand for Textual Editing & Modernism in Canada. This week is all about theory. A LOT of theory - fortunately, I'm finding it all far more interesting than the theory we read in my Public Texts course - even the articles we actually READ for the Public Texts course (there are several) are more interesting now that we're actually going to have an opportunity to use them in practical, hands on sorts of ways.

While this week is all theory, next week is focused on PRACTICE - and we are actually going to do some editing and put together (short but) critical scholarly edition(s). I will also be doing a paper for the course - I took the credit option (I am such a sucker for punishment sometimes!) .... my plan is to focus on the intersect between editing theory and web usability; to look at issues of site design. There are several very effective online archives - the Rossetti Archive being the one most often mentioned - so I'm not starting from scratch...but hopefully I will come up with something useful. My goal is to come up with a paper that is not only potentially useful, but also, I hope, something publishable.

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Bad Blogger!!!

So .... here is is June 6 and I'm leaving for Victoria BC in a few hours to start learning all about digital editing ....and I haven't posted anything about Canadian fiction in eons; I'm sorry!

It's been a very busy couple of weeks - so busy that I really haven't read much of anything other than blogs and websites and ~stuff~ about pest control.

I now know WAY more about spiders, roaches, bats and bedbugs than I ever wanted to know - but hubby has his license and his product and his database and is good to go - so now tis time to focus on me and MY stuff.

I have a presentation to get done that has to take first priority - and a whack of reading about editing practice and theory, and about Canadian modernist poets. But I shall return - and when I do, will be about time to gear up for the Leacock Festival, which is one of the highlights of my summer.

It is a writers' festival that is held in Orillia every summer... normally I go to just about every event. Not sure that I'll be able to get to them all this year (there are a lot) as I still can't drive - but will get to as many as I can, and then will likely fill this blog with way more than you could ever want to know about Canadian authors and Canadian fiction.

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Do You Use Hubpages?

Apparently at some point about six weeks ago, I signed up for a hubpages account - and promptly forgot about it.

This week, I've come across quite a few bloggers talking about hubpages, so I went back and had another look.

I put up four quick pages.... but no real sense of whether it's worth continuing to add to them... seems to me I have enough with my blogs... but we shall see, I guess.

My hubs are:

• Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet
• Having Faith In The Polar Girls School
• Peace, Power, Righteousness
• Dear Author, Letters of Hope

Do you use hubpages? As a primary source of income, or as backlink builders?

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Virtual Freedom by Sean Kane

Still not reading much .... no attention span for it... but thought I would tell you about Virtual Freedom by Sean Kane, a novel that I read more than a year ago, as I just happened to see it on my newly organized CanLit shelves.

Published in 2001, Virtual Freedom was particularly interesting for me because it was written by a Trent U professor, and set in a fictional university called Avalon. It is dedicated to Thomas H.B. Symons, the Founding President of Trent, and the person that our graduate students lecture series is named after. Since at the time I purchased it, I had been accepted at Trent, but not yet been there, it was a natural choice when I saw it on a 4 for $20 table at my undergrad university's book sale.

The novel is an enjoyable read, with many very funny passages. I particularly remember the scenes involving a group of retired professors holding court - in a food court at a local mall. And student protests, and the interactions between the new Dean and students, particularly one who is all about women's issues..... hmmm...I think that now I have talked myself into reading it again.

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Coal and Roses by P.K. Page

Coal and Roses is P.K. Page's newest book of poetry. It includes a collection of twenty-one glosas, and is published by Canadian publisher Porcupine's Quill.

The glosa form opens with a quatrain, borrowed from another poet, that is then folowed by four ten-line stanas terminating with the lines of the initial passage in consecutive order. The sixth and ninth lines rhyme with the borrowed tenth. Glosas were popular in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries among poets attached to the Spanish Court.

P.K. Page's glosas are highly readable and enjoyable - one does not need a degree in English literature to understand and enjoy them. My particular favourite in this book is "How to Write a Poem" which builds off of a quatrain of John Ashbury's "Paradoxes and Oxymorons" It was one of the three glosas read by writer Andrea Johnston at yesterday's book launch.

Page did not attend the dedication and book launch, although several family members were there, and she did record a video which was viewed as part of the dedication ceremony.

The Colloquium Room in which most of the classes and meetings for the Trent University English Public Texts M.A. program are held is now officially called the Page Irwin Colloquium Room. It was a beautiful room already, but is even more remarkable now that it includes several of PK's paintings - and my favourite piece, which is an embroidered work that PK's mother did of some of her childhood drawings.

There was another book launched at the same event. This one is gorgeous but was way out of my price range, unfortunately. It is called The Golden Lilies, Poems by PK Page, and is a limited edition:

Hand-set 18 point Cloister Old Style type printed on St. Armand hand-made paper using a Vandercook #4 proof press. Wood engravings printed directily from the blocks on Iwami White hand-made Japanese paper, with a hand coloured frontspiece printed on Gampi Torinoko hand-made Japanese paper. Hand sewin into yellow linen hard covers. Binding by Taylor & Murdoch.

The book is truly a work of art and I would love to own a copy. Maybe someday!

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Canadian Modernist Poets - PK Page

Poetry has never really been my thing... I did study it in school, and I have written some... but will all there is to study in Canadian literature, I tend to head off in other more interesting to me directions.

But now that I have a new job - and one which will, I think, significantly enhance my CV - I shall have to pay more attention.

I have been offered a Research Assistantship with The National Archives of Canada, and will be working on Canadian Modernist Poetry, and especially with the many works of poet and artist PK Page. My role will be to tag digital images of her work and to create a database linking the finding aids to those images. At this point, I don't know all that much about tagging digital images - but since that is the focus of my three weeks of summer school, I will learn.

Tomorrow, we're off to Peterborough to the official dedication of the Page Irwin Colloquium Room at Trent. That's the room used for most of the classes for the MA in English Public Texts program, so I know it well.

The event will also be a book launch for 2 new works:

Coal and Roses is a collection of new poems published by The Porcupine's
Quill and The Golden Lilies is a selection of eight of these poems, with ten
wood engravings by Alan Stein hand printed at The Church Street Press.

PK Page was born in 1916 and is still publishing and still painting at 92. She has more than 37 published books to her credit, numerous awards and honours, and her art hangs in the National Gallery of Canada, among other places. I am looking forward to it.

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