This Blog Is Going Smash

Each month, we feature an interview with a contributor whose work stood out to us in some way. This month, we’re featuring Sarah Beck, whose excerpt from her book Currency can be found in our current issue.

Where do you live?

I currently live and work in Toronto, but consider myself a Saskatchewan artist. You can’t take the prairie out of the girl!

When did you start writing?

According to my parents I began very young – they always had a sense that I would become an artist or a writer. Turns out I have done both.

Your bio says that you are an artist, as well as a writer – what are you working on right now?

For the past year I have been preparing for a major exhibition that I am not at liberty to discuss until it is officially announced in August. I will say that it involves disaster, humour and postcards. You can see some of my other artworks on my website (sarahbeck.com).

Your last couple of pieces in TGS are excerpts from a full-length book. Can you tell us more about the book and how it originated?

The book is titled Currency. Originally it was supposed to be an artwork, not a book, to thank the late Kurt Vonnegut who inspired me to become an artist. He asserted that artists and writers can be agents of great change, that we are the canaries in the coal mines of our society.

Within a year of his death I was entering grad school in pursuit of my MFA, so I chose this time to make Kurt a monument. At the time I was also traveling the world to make artworks at major events. The research, the art, the travel and the writing all fed one another, and I ended up instead with an illustrated novel…so Currency is my thesis, the story about my thesis and an artwork. It turned out a little weird!

On Kurt’s advice found in the pages of his books, I began to study paper money for the clues he suggested would reveal the nonsense that concealed great crimes. I began a journey that lead me to explore money, art, colonization, assholes, fakes and escaped animals.

You should read the book – it is far more charming than my description!

What inspires you in your art and writing?

I entered university initially to become a photo journalist, and through a series of twists and turns I think I’ve found the ideal venue to report visually on the world and its events. Vonnegut’s ideas about the arts got me thinking that this would be a great platform to address political and social issues. Frequently I am drawn to ecological and economic events.

My sketch book is filled with stories I’ve ripped from the newspaper. When I respond to the world like Kurt’s previously mentioned canary in a coal mine, that is when I’m on to something. Art and writing give me a way to not only talk back, but to get other people to look at the world from a new point of view. I really like to embrace his use of humour so as to not be lecturing the audience in a didactic way. As long as the world is filled with ecological disasters, imbalance, and strange stories, I will continue to be motivated and inspired to create.

I keep wondering if I have another book in me, but figure when the time is right it will happen. Sooner or later something will make me yell at the TV, or doodle furiously on napkins, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Are you influenced by anyone’s work?

Obviously Vonnegut has been a major influence. Since film school I have been a great admirer of Orson Welles, and not for his outstanding achievements in film, radio and theatre; what gets me is that after bursting onto the scene as a wunderkind, then being ostracized and mocked by his community, he kept going. He needed to make the work he had inside of him. He’d do embarrassing commercials to fund the projects he believed in. He held on tenaciously and pursued his work until the end. It’s easy to be talented and on top, it is very, very hard to be talented and broke, with the odds against you and a head full of projects with little commercial value.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I belong to a poetry group that meets twice a month. One of the meetings is a presentation night where one person gives a talk about a particular poet, and the other is a “workshop” night where we write poetry according to a particular exercise.

The inspiration behind this month’s workshop, which was given my friend Philip, was translation. When I hear the word “translation,” I usually think of  interlingual translation — translation from one language to another. But the focus of this workshop was intralingual translation — translation within the same language, e.g., by rewording or paraphrase.

Here’s what we did:

Each person in the group received a journal or a collection of poetry. After looking through the book we were given, we each picked a poem to “translate” and we wrote a prose summary of that poem. Then each of us passed our summary on to the next person who had to “re-translate” the prose back into poetry, creating a new poem. The re-translator was not allowed to see the original poem.

Once we finished writing our new poems, we read out each of the original poems followed by the new, “translated” poem.

The results were very interesting. The original poem and the new one were, of course, very similar in subject matter, but they differed in style and substance — e.g., overall length, line length, division of lines, word choice, pacing. In other words, the poems were similar while still being unique.

And in some sense, all of literature is like this for our stories are inherently human stories. What makes each work of literature different is the writer — her perspective and the way she chooses to express it.

P.S. Today marks the end of NaNoWriMo. Cheers to all of this year’s participants!

I belong to a poetry group that meets twice a month. One of the meetings is a “workshop” night where we actually write poetry, and the other is a presentation night where one person gives a talk about a particular poet or group of poets.

Last month, I gave a presentation on Margaret Atwood’s The Journals of Susanna Moodie, while my friend Kate led a workshop where the group collectively wrote several poems using the method of the cadavre exquis – the exquisite corpse — a creative technique invented by the Surrealists.

Here’s what we did:

Each of us was given a blank sheet of paper and the option to choose a “topic” for our poem. (I chose “body.”) Then we each had five minutes to write a few lines of poetry before folding the paper so that only the last line of the poem was visible and passing the sheet of paper on to the next person. We passed twice so that, by the end, each poem had three stanzas.

Writing the first stanza on my own was fairly straightforward, but when I tried to add to the work of others, I found my mind stretched, as I was forced to immerse myself in the previous author’s words and imagine new connections and directions.

The results of the exercise were fun and fascinating. Some of the poems cohered so well it seemed as though one person had written them; other poems featured three completely different voices, even three completely different topics (like, how did we get from Descartes to gossip magazines?).

Another version of the exquisite corpse (which we didn’t try) involves adding to a poem according to a rule — for example, ”The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun“.

The name of the technique derives from a phrase that was created by the Surrealists when they first played the game: “Le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau” (The exquisite corpse will drink the young wine).

The Surrealists applied the exquisite corpse to drawing as well as writing. The example to the right (which I’ve borrowed from Wikipedia) was done by Man Ray, Joan Miró, Max Morise, and Yves Tanguy.

If you have never tried this method of group writing/creating, I would highly recommend it.

A few weeks ago I talked about my writer crush on Sloane Crosley. This week I was reminded of a past crush when I learned that flash fiction wonder Amelia Gray will have a story in the 39th edition of McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (my favourite literary journal). I discovered Amelia and her tender collection of flash fiction, AM/PM, a couple years ago. In fact, I fell so hard for her that I wrote a series of Amelia-inspired stories in the Ninth Issue of This Great Society. My stories don’t do her justice, so I’ll let “16:PM” speak for itself:

Imagine if you could call up all your exes, and bring them together on a basketball court to play a pickup game. Maybe you could also call the girls you’ve ever loved, split them into the Girls You Had a Chance With and the Girls You Never Had a Chance With. Have them play shirts and skins. It won’t be for your honor, though you’ll be the only one watching. You will promise pizza and beer to the winners. The girls you never had a chance with will spit and glare, and the girls you still may have a chance with will snivel and look at you when they make jump shots.

            The winners will take your wallet and invite the losers out. Everyone will forget to give you directions, and you’ll be left sitting in the gym parking lot.

            You’ll go home and watch basketball movies. You’ll build a makeshift court from scrap lumber in your backyard, and leave messages on all of their answering machines, inviting them back. You’ll go out back every night and play H-O-R-S-E, waiting for them to return. You will wear your shirt when you are shirts and you will remove your shirt when you are skins.  

That’s Amelia for you: funny, heartbreaking, and strangely sexy. She’s also pretty cute. Her first novel comes out next spring and already has an awesome cover. She lives in Austin, Texas, which is also kind of awesome.

For more Amelia, visit her site.

- Joel

Tromping through a field of clover, you spot it: four leaves. It’s your lucky day. This month, we look at luck–where it does and does not come from, how it does and does not affect us. Stumble upon the good fortune of good writing and art with us.

Here’s a teaser:

ARTS

‘First Photos’ by Magnolia Rush
“What surprises me is that her images are more emotive, more interesting than the ones we take.”

‘Elimidate’ by Caroline Weaver
“For a while I painted men simply as horses, but now I paint racehorses. They’re very celebratory.”

‘Feathers Found and Collected’ by Mark Gunderson
“My wife and I were on the San Juan islands when I came across a beach covered in driftwood, and I knew what I had to do.”

WRITING

‘Finely Distinguished Writing’ by Thomas Cairns
“The books are a fantastic web of complex language, defined by rhythm, cadence and peculiar obscurity that form a complete narrative world.”

‘That Feeling’ by April Chye
“the frame of a soul with fractures that / Might have stitched up at / another train stop.”

‘Seek, Find, Keep’ by Sheena Devota
“In the midst of talking about his cat, I realize that this is the most spectacular moment of my life.”

‘Milk Trees’ by Patrick O. Strickland
“He turns to start up the driveway and a carton of milk tumbles down, bursts on the concrete, splatters against the side of the car.”

CALENDAR WALLPAPER

This month’s fantasticly dark calendar wallpaper is from our nonfiction editor Linnea McNally.
See more of here work here.

PROPS

A big thanks to Joel Bentley and Linnea McNally for their illustrations this month, and special thanks to Jim for once again designing the cover and border illustrations, this time in the midst of planning and prepping for a wedding.

And a GIGANTIC congratulations to Jim and Veronica: We wish you all the best in your new married lives!

UPCOMING ISSUES

Accepting Contribution Pitches: We have a few spots left in our November issue – Technology. And we are also now accepting pitches for our December/January Double issue: The Great Outdoors.

Upcoming issues:
November – Technology
December/January – The Great Outdoors
February – Hearsay
March – Coasts

Enjoy!

- the Editors

poetry selection from “back at the vines” by linnea mcnally

slick beneath the lisping breath of an oxon morn,
poppy petals, unfurling up against peeled fences
behind a misses and mister’s back lawn; yellow faces
so grateful for God’s great grace to offer yet another day.

i’m here, alone, letting myself into memories of waking
upon this new life, entering into this dampened field
where dust is not bone of yesterday, but
materials for tomorrow, rocks
frayed clay for my hands to feel.

…

lilacs laughing. pages turning. i wrote it all down inside
my heart.

and here they are, this morning, still rolling their shoulders,
berries rubbing out bruises we’d gifted,
that day we left our heavy body
printed against their palms.

they held us as we saw heaven spelled out
in mulch,
in mud,
in all that joined us there,
alive and breathing
on our behalf.

i will say a thank you to them,
for they were good to us,
to you and to me.

We’re excited to have some of our favorite contributors back, including Camilla d’Errico in our arts section with ‘Vain Remains’ and Kyle Irion with ‘Every Show Needs an Audience’ in our fiction section.
We’re also featuring a number of new contributors, like Simon Perchik with his poetry series, ‘Five Poems’ .

This month our calendar wallpaper goes back to school with the illustrious Andrea Robin Juby! See more of here work here. (We’re still all talking about her borders for our Sleep issue.)

IN OTHER NEWS

Keep a look out as we’ll be launching a two-year anniversary campaign later this month.

Also, a HUGE thanks to our TGS power couple, Jim and Veronica, who held the ship together and ensured this issue got out with five editors traveling, one moving and waiting out a hurricane, one starting a 12-hours-a-day-Monday-to-Friday job, and two couples wedding planning.

Not only did Jim lay out the entire issue, he also created those beautiful green borders and backgrounds you see.

UPCOMING ISSUES

Accepting Contribution Pitches: We have a few spots left in our October issue – Luck, particularly in our Arts section. And we are also now accepting pitches for our November and December issues: Technology and The Great Outdoors.

You can find our submission guidelines here.

Enjoy!

- Lauren

Once upon a time short story writing was a good way to make a quick buck. In Matthew J. Bruccoli’s anthology of F. Scott Fitzgerald stories, The Price Was High, he says that Fitzgerald supported his novel writing by churning out short stories of fiction. At his peak he was paid over $10,000 – and this was in the 1920′s. Until recently short stories used to be published in mainstream magazines like GQ and Esquire and The Atlantic, now fiction is rumor to most periodicals (The Atlantic confines its fiction to one – albeit wonderful – summer issue). The television market has stooped to more “reality show” programming, and away from smart, plot-based, fictional sitcoms. Ask a pessimist and they’ll tell you that short fiction of the future is little more than a period at the end of the sentence.

Electric Literature is a twist of a title. It is both “electric” because it uses the mediums of the modern age and “electric” because its goal is to create something fantastic and fresh without undermining the product.  According to their website, “…Before we write the epitaph for the literary age, we thought, let’s try it this way first: select stories with a strong voice that capture our readers and lead them somewhere exciting, unexpected, and meaningful. Publish everywhere, every way: paperbacks, Kindles, iPhones, eBooks, and audiobooks. Make it inexpensive and accessible. Streamline it: just five great stories in each issue. Be entertaining without sacrificing depth. In short, create the thing we wish existed.”

I’ve heard people trash the Kindle because they love holding a hardcover book: dog-earing the pages, underlining fine passages, defining words in margins, and the smell, the smell. Literature is a palpable thing, they argue. And I’ve heard Kindle converts argue sensibly that the reality of publishing clings to the cost of production, the advent of the digital age, the changing of the times. There is no right or wrong in a war of preference unless good literature comes out the victim. Electric Literature’s message is don’t stop reading – form and function is up to you. It’s a bottom line I’m willing to pay for.

-Will

“The purpose of literature is to entertain and instruct.” – Horace

When I was sixteen I submitted a poem to a journal called Voices of Youth. Soon after I was told I’d been selected – as a national finalist – and my poem would be published if I paid them $40. If you are sixteen and you receive a letter in the mail on official letterhead that is post-marked from some far away state like Ohio you will make your parents pay the price to see your name in print. And this is what I did.

The poem was something dreadful. Although a crime that this poem was sold to it’s own author, the darker sin is how we have come to believe that we are all genius, that everything we do should be published immediately without any thought to revision. (Please ignore the fact that you are reading this on a privately owned blog – my case in checkmate.)

This Great Society is Going Smash was started by the nicest girl in Canada. A journalism student who couldn’t help but help other writers improve their craft, she started a publication that was more concerned with bettering young writers than making the voyeurs happy. Instead of a slush pile, there was an inbox of great potential. Instead of money exchanged, there was honest workshopping, holding firm to the page, “that in every line is something gained.”

Over the next few weeks I’m going to spotlight different literary journals that are making a significant impact both on what we read and how we read. And just for you it’s going to be free.

-Will

The last three days have had me chairing the “Times Out of Joint” Graduate Conference at SFU. It’s always inspiring to come across writers, readers, speakers, and artists who are willing to share their current research with you.

Enter Sandy Pool: she opens her paper with a confession that she really “tried to write an academic paper, but in the end, just couldn’t.” The crowd loves her already, because we know we can, for a moment, let our minds go —not out of the realms of intelligence, but into the realm of story-telling.

Pool tells us the story of Undark. Women working at a radium factory, painting the dainty hands on watch faces, licking their camel-hair paintbrushes into points. Painting their fingernails, their mouths, their bodies. Beauty and the bizarre. Dying. Teeth falling out, bleeding. Bodies glowing from the inside out at night, as one woman reported upon fainting after seeing her own “ghost.” Doctors being paid off, telling their patients they have syphilis, so that these rotting, suddenly-dispensable factory girls won’t ask for workers’ compensation. Instead, they die in shame.

Then Sandy reads her poetry. It’s careful, and pulsating: with every “tick-lick,” my perverse curiosity falls away, and I’m left sad. Feeling sick that I want to travel back and see this phenomenon.

I won’t reproduce Sandy’s work here, and will hope that you’ll bookmark her name and find her next collection on “Undark and the Chronotope of Poetry.” Already recognized for her work by the GG’s, Sandy is someone worth watching, and someone who deserves her own Saturday post. So, Sandy Pool is what makes this a Sandy Pool Saturday.

-

Linnea