Reading Martial

When I’m invited to dinner
these days, I don’t get paid
the way I used to. So why
don’t you serve me the same dinner
you eat? You get oysters, fattened
in Lake Lucrine. I cut my mouth
sucking a mussel from its shell.
Mushrooms for you. Pig’s fungus
for me. You’re busy with turbot,
I with brill. You stuff yourself
with a golden turtle dove’s
fat rump. I’m served a magpie
that died in its cage. Why is it,
Ponticus, when I dine with you,
I dine alone? Now the dole’s gone,
you owe me the courtesy
of letting me share your dinner.

Martialis, Epigram lx, Book III
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Epigram, after Martial

Recently my résumé was invited out to dinner
and graciously extended the invitation to me.
In that case, our hosts said, miffed,
please also bring a hot side dish.
My résumé roasted, carved and consumed,
I was left to pay my own cab fare home.
. . . . .

Hennessey's High pasture

The New Quarterly has accepted my short story Hennessey’s High Pasture for publication. It will appear in Issue #97 (due out January 2006).

"Most nights the dogs and I walk up to Hennessey’s high pasture. You can see the whole King’s County from up there. Even when it’s dark you feel it, the earth curving away from you. But I’m not ready yet. I smoke a cigarette. No matter which way I hold it, the smoke blows toward Earl." J. R. Carpenter, Hennessey's High Pasture

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Entre Ville, Commissioned by OBORO

I am pleased and honoured to announce that I have been commissioned by OBORO (Montréal) to create a new web art project to be presented in conjunction with the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Conseil des arts de Montréal in January 2006. As a result, this autumn I will once again have the great pleasure and privilege to work with the fine folks at the Oboro New Media Lab.

Artist's Statement: My studio window opens into a jumbled intimacy of back balconies, yards and alleyways. Daily my dog and I walk through this interior city sniffing out stories. Poetry is not hard to find between the long lines of peeling-paint fences plastered with notices, spray painted with bright abstractions and draped with trailing vines. The result is Entre Ville, a web-based project presented in the vernacular of my neighbourhood, where cooking smells, noisy neighbours and laundry lines criss-cross the alleyway one sentence at a time.



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