lapsus linguae

Air Holes

In 2006 my short story “Air Holes” was one of the three winners of the CBC/QWF Quebec Short Story Competition. The competition called for short stories under 1200 words, my favourite category. “Air Holes” weighs in at a wee 930 words or so. The story was broadcast on Cinq à Six CBC RadioOne July 2006.

In 2007 the competition changed its name and rules and regulations. Now now short fiction, travel writing and memoir all fall into one category, which seems like a cruel and unusual thing to do to short fiction. Oh well. Every three years Véhicule Press still publishes an anthology of winners and honourable mentions. “Air Holes” appears in the most recent of these anthologies, In Other Words: New English Writing from Québec, launched last weekend at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival in Montreal. Here is the opening paragraph:

“The tide will go out at two today. The kids and I will go down to the beach. Between the tidemarks, beneath our feet, tight-lipped steamer clams will burrow sandy deep. But we’ll find them. Their air holes will give them away.”
J. R. Carpenter, “Air Holes”

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The Fruit Man and Other Poems

Next month the Montreal chapbook press WithWords will publish The Fruit Man and Other Poems, by Jason Camlot, illustrated by me, J. R. Carpenter. Not only do Jason and I have the same initials (JC), as you can see, our names (Camlot and Carpenter) are quite close alphabetically. If we had gone to grade school together I would have sat behind Jason in class. If I had gone to grad school, Jason might have been one of my professors. But neither of these is the case. I’m not quite sure how we actually met, but I do know that before we ever met our poems appeared sequentially in a number of alphabetically ordered anthologies including: 100 Poets Against the War (Salt) and Future Welcome: The Moosehead Anthology X (DC Books), both edited by Todd Swift.

When Jason first asked me to consider illustrating The Fruit Man and Other Poems, I was a little worried that he might have me confused with an illustrator. My background is in Fine Arts, and I vaguely remember studying Life Drawing and Anatomy at the Art Students’ League of New York way back in the Pre-Cambrian Epoch, but I hadn’t done any drawing for a very long time. In my “mini-books” I use many small single images to punctuate the text rather than illustrate it (in so far as illustrations tend toward the emblematic, whereas my use of images tends toward the diagrammatic). But for The Fruit Man I’d have to come up with something more original. Drawing is not exactly like riding a bike. As my friend Camilo, who draws everyday, said before embarking on a round of etchings recently: I am rusty as old german submarines in the deep underwaters of the atlantic.

Another thing to consider: Jason is a Victorianist – that’s a pretty daunting era in book illustration. Think Beardsly’s Salome. Not to mention all that Art Nouveau stuff. But I agreed to illustrate The Fruit Man and Other Poems anyway, because I love the poems. Anyone who knows me will immediately know why when they read them. They are filled with small things: thimbles and pocket combs, mice and china cups. They reference big systems of thinking: the list, the collection, the cabinet of curiosities, phrenology, “the new technology in underclothes,” and Ruskin. I have a real soft spot for Ruskin. The title piece is a long poem modelled on Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” (which was illustrated by D.G. Rossetti back in the day). Here is an excerpt from “The Fruit Man” followed by my cover illustration:

When I asked the foreman if he’s seen
a fruit man selling apples, green,
like the one in my hand,
he brought me to his cabinet
of cardboard drawers
stuffed with buttons and safety pins,
butcher’s paper, razor blades,
and numberless scraps of animal skin.
In a pantry for needles,
behind a sewing machine,
the foreman kept his apples,
green, like the one in my hand,
brought weekly to him
by the same Fruit Man.

Jason Camlot, The Fruit Man

J. R. Carpenter, cover image: The Fruit Man and Other Poems, by Jason Camlot
The Fruit Man and Other Poems cover illustration by J. R. Carpenter

The Fruit Man and Other Poems will launch in March. Check back here in a week or two for dates. Or try the WithWords Press website: http://www.withwordspress.com/
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Getting In On The Ground Floor: A Hazy History of How and Why We Banded Together

In the beginning there were only a few of us. That we knew of. We thought there might be others, but we weren’t sure where to look. We were in a room. It was a small room. If it had a glass ceiling, we couldn’t see it. The point was to share the room, and what was in it. What was in it was a lot of paper and also, a computer. It was our understanding that the computer would replace the paper. We hadn’t got that working yet. We had other, more pressing questions: Where is this place called cyberspace? And who pays for it? We asked around, but no one would tell us anything. Go away, they said. You’re no good at math, they said. Which only made us ask more questions: What are they hiding from us – passwords, codes, equipment? What are we missing – information, networks, power? What don’t they want us to know – that if they can do it we can do it? If they can do it than how hard could it possibly be?

One day we decided we would ask the computer. Computer, do you contain any answers to the many questions you engender? We huddled around it. We only had the one. It was a grey-beige box with a beetle-black glass eye. We knew we had to get past the surface of the thing. We knew that deep down inside our grey-beige box was much larger than it appeared. It was connected to other grey-beige boxes in other rooms. Stashed away inside these millions of boxes there must be billions of answers.

We switched the computer on. There was a click, a whir, and then a steady hum. Soon enough we sat basking in a blue-green glow. A cursor blinked at us. We blinked back. Now what do we do? Expectations were running high. We’d been promised progress, deliverance, another chance. And there was this cursor clearing a path to the command line for us, a clean slate. Before we knew it we were giving it orders: run, kill, execute. This kind of language was hard for some of us to take. Some of us just wanted to: sleep, jobs, stop, exit. Others wanted to know more: list, who, finger, history. Cables coiled at our feet. They snaked out the door. We slipped out with them. So this is how we shed our skin!

We had stumbled into uncharted territory, an outlaw zone where we could be anything, anyone, anywhere. We could be logical. We could be abstract. We could be “it” or “he/she” or we could log in as Guest and cruise anonymous through Archie, Gopher, Telnet and FTP. We wandered around like this for a dog’s age. Which, in Internet years, was just a few days. We still had bodies. Our wrists were sore. And everywhere we went we were: @gender, language thwarting us at every turn.

One day we were minding our own business writing shell scripts on the command line when a bright spec appeared on the horizon. It was a pixel. It was a mass of pixels. The pixels joined forces. Soon they formed a thumbnail, and then a whole jpeg. An image! The next thing we knew no one knew who was issuing commands anymore. We were all clicking away on icons. What we saw was what we got. One thing linking to another, faster and faster, around and around we went.

Now all we have to do is ask, and answers come racing at us. So many answers. What were the questions again? They were merely predictions. They enabled us to move forward. Toward what? We never would have guessed. How many of us there are. How much we do and do not know. How are we going to remember all this? Will our uncertainties be stored online, along with our desires? Maybe we’d better print them out just in case. How necessary is closure? Well, it’s a start anyway.

“Getting in on the Ground Floor: A Hazy History of How and Why We Banded Together,” an essay by J. R. Carpenter, published in xxxboîte, an artifact produced in celebration of the first ten years of Studio XX, a Feminist art centre for technological exploration, creation, and critique.

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xxxboîte

Official launch: Wednesday 17 October , 5 à 7
Galerie Yerge au, 2060 Joly, Montreal [map]

xxxboîte is an artifact produced in celebration of the first ten years of Studio XX, Centre d’artiste féministe engagé dans l’exploration, la création et la critique en art technologique. The boîte contains a publication featuring new texts from Kim Sawchuk, Marie-Christiane Mathieu, Anna Friz, J.R.Carpenter, and Michelle Kasprzak and a DVD comprised of documentation of selected projects, presentations and events of the first ten years of programming at studioxx. Inserted into this collection is a limited edition print from Montréal based artist, beewoo.

Faced with the impossibility of fully describing something that continues to shift in form and intentions, commissaire invitée, jake moore, has instead assembled the residue and remnants of the studio’s affects and actions for your consideration. The resulting collection indicates a centre ripe with exchange, diversity, and energy whose development parallels that of contemporary digital technologies.

Artists and projects represented on the DVD include: Kim Sawchuk, Kathy Kennedy, Sheryl Hamilton, Deb Van Slet, Histoire Orales, MXXR, Élène Tremblay, Anna Friz, Annabelle Chvostek, Katarina Soukup, Valerie Walker, Nancy Wight, Hope Peterson, Stephanie Lagueux, Diane Labrosse, Chantal Dumas, Caroline Martel, Miriam Verburg, Genevieve Heistek, Nancy Tobin, Bernadette Houde, Anne-Francoise Jacques and more…..

For more information and/or to order xxxboîte contact studioxx
4001 Rue Berri, espace 201, Montréal. Québec H2L 4H2
tél: 514-845-7934 . fax: 514.845.4941, accès (carte) | info@studioxx.org
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Roads Out of Rome

Roads Out of Rome appears in Geist #63, on newsstands now.

All roads lead to Rome. It stands to reason that they lead out of Rome as well. It’s helpful to know someone who has a car. And isn’t afraid to use it. When in Rome, one thing to do not as the Romans do, is to drive. In Roads Out of Rome, my Roman friend Barbara drives me around and I live to tell the tale.

Here’s an excerpt:

“So now I trust Barbara: to not kill us, even when she’s shout-talking in Roman dialect on her mobile phone; to know where we’re going, even if not how to get there; and to always be late, unless I’m late, in which case she will be early. Today I was early and she was very late.”

J. R. Carpenter, Roads Out of Rome

See also: How I Loved the Broken Things of Rome
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The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1

THE CAPE – a recent web art fiction – has been included in the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1, edited by N. Katherine Hayles, Nick Montfort, Scott Rettberg, and Stephanie Strickland, now available in CD-ROM format and online: http://collection.eliterature.org/

The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 features 60 digital literary works by: Jim Andrews, Ingrid Ankerson, babel, Giselle Beiguelman, Philippe Bootz, Patrick-Henri Burgaud, J.R. Carpenter, John Cayley, M.D. Coverley (Marjorie Luesebrink), Martha Deed, David Durand, escha, Damien Everett, Sharif Ezzat, Edward Falco, Mary Flanagan, Marcel Fr’emiot, Elaine Froehlich, geniwate, Loss Peque~no Glazier, Kenneth Goldmith, Tim Guthrie, Richard Holeton, Daniel C. Howe, Jon Ingold, Shelley Jackson, Michael Joyce, Aya Karpinska, Robert Kendall, Deena Larsen, Kerry Lawrynovicz, Donna Leishman, Bill Marsh, Talan Memmott, Maria Mencia, Judd Morrissey, Brion Moss, Stuart Moulthrop, Jason Nelson, Marko Niemi, Millie Niss, Lance Olsen, Jason Pimble, William Poundstone, Kate Pullinger, Melinda Rackham, Aaron A. Reed, Shawn Rider, Jim Rosenberg, Megan Sapnar, Dan Shiovitz, Emily Short, Alan Sondheim, Brian Kim Stefans, Reiner Strasser, Dan Waber, Noah Wardrip-Fruin, Rob Wittig, Nanette Wylde.

The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 is an initiative of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), a non-profit organization established in 1999 to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing, and reading of electronic literature, headquartered at The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland, College Park: http://eliterature.org
THE CAPE
AUTOSTART – A Festival of Digital Literature – will celebrate the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 in a series of workshops, discussions, readings and jams at the Kelly Writers House, 3805 Locust Walk, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA on October 26 & 27, 2006: http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/autostart.html

WARNING: Cape Cod is a real place, but the events and characters of THE CAPE are total fiction. The photographs have been retouched. The diagrams are not to scale. Don’t believe everything you read: http://Luckysoap.com/thecape
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Two Generations Ago

Look for my very short story, Two Generations Ago, on the streets of Brooklyn this September. Literally. It will be on on a street somewhere near the Williamsburg Bridge.

Rachelle Viader Knowles has included the story in her FORMER RESIDENT PROJECT, which launches during Conflux Festival September 14 – 17, 2006, in Brooklyn NY, USA.

THE FORMER RESIDENT PROJECT explores the city through the narratives of the no-longer resident, people whose lives have been shaped by their experiences of places they no longer inhabit. For many of us, ‘residence’ is a multiple thing, a series of narratives and residues that shift and slip over time. When we leave a place, what do we take? And what do we leave behind? The project includes stories donated by former ‘residents’ of Brooklyn about something that happened in a particular location. Each story has been printed onto a fridge magnet and posted near that location. The the address are listed on the website: http://www.former-resident-project.net

If you don’t happen to be in Brooklyn you can also read my story here:
Two Generations Ago
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POETS FOR RED CROSS: 9/11 FIVE YEARS ON

Nearly 90 poets from around the world have contributed to Babylon Burning: 9/11 five years on, an anthology of poems reflecting on direct and indirect consequences of 9/11. These poems aim for more than pious hand-wringing. The anthology is free to download, but readers are requested to donate to the Red Cross.

nthposition, the London-based website behind the anthology, has listed Babylon Burning on iTunes as a PDF in hopes of maximising the money raised . Poetry editor Todd Swift notes: “Auden said that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’, but we think it can, and we’d like to prove it.”

Contributors to Babylon Burning are: Ros Barber, Jim Bennett, Rachel Bentham, Charles Bernstein, bill bissett, Yvonne Blomer, Stephanie Bolster, Jenna Butler, Jason Camlot, J R Carpenter, Jared Carter, Patrick Chapman, Sampurna Chattarji, Maxine Chernoff, Tom Chivers, Alfred Corn, Tim Cumming, Margot Douaihy, Ken Edwards, Adam Elgar, Elaine Feinstein, Peter Finch, Philip Fried, Leah Fritz, Richard Garcia, Sandra M Gilbert, Nathan Hamilton, Richard Harrison, Kevin Higgins, Will Holloway, Bob Holman, Paul Hoover, Ray Hsu, Halvard Johnson, Chris Jones, Jill Jones, Kavita Joshi, Jonathan Kaplansky, Wednesday Kennedy, Sonnet L’Abbé, Kasandra Larsen, Tony Lewis-Jones, Dave Lordan, Alexis Lykiard, Jeffrey Mackie, Mike Marqusee, Chris McCabe, Nigel McLoughlin, Pauline Michel, Peter Middleton, Adrian Mitchell, John Mole, David Morley, George Murray, Alistair Noon, D Nurkse, John Oughton, Ruth Padel, Richard Peabody, Tom Phillips, David Prater, Lisa Pasold, Victoria Ramsay, Harold Rhenisch, Noel Rooney, Joe Ross, Myra Schneider, Robert Sheppard, Zaid Shlah, Henry Shukman, Penelope Shuttle, John Siddique, Goran Simic, Hal Sirowitz, Heather Grace Stewart, Andrew Steinmetz, John Stiles, William E Stobb, jordan stone, Sean Street, Todd Swift, Joel Tan, Nathaniel Tarn, Mark Terrill, Helên Thomas, Vincent Tinguely, Rodrigo Toscano, John Tranter and John Welch. All gave their work for free.

Download Babylon Burning: 9/11 five years on: http://www.nthposition.com/babylonburning911.php
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The Greyhound Eulogy

I’m back from Banff, caught up on sleep, reacclimatized to high heat and humidity and happy to announce that my short story The Greyhound Eulogy appears in Matrix Magazine #74, in stores now, in Montreal at least.

I can’t remember who, but someone said – Gordon Lish maybe, or John Gardner – that it’s impossible to write an unsentimental story about your grandmother. Even though The Greyhound Eulogy is about writing my grandmother’s eulogy on a Greyhound bus bound for NYC, it’s hardly depressing at all thanks to the unsentimental readers: Amy Hempel, Ibi Kaslik, Lilly Kuwashima and Kate Sheldon. Much thanks also to Matrix editors Rob Allen and Jon Paul Fiorentino.

Here’s an excerpt of The Greyhound Eulogy:

“In the town of Glens Falls, N.Y., the Greyhound passes through a protest in progress. On one street corner, amid a cluster of hand-printed placards one small sign stands out: ‘Another veteran against the war.’ On the other side of the street, a wind-warped banner reads: ‘America is worth fighting for.’ I write: ‘Always the optimist, she brought humour to every situation,’ and try to remember her favourite burning Bush joke.”

J. R. Carpenter, The Greyhound Eulogy, Matrix #74, Montreal QC, Summer 2006.
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Hennessey’s High Pasture

Hennessey's High Pasture
My short story, Hennessey’s High Pasture, appears in The New Quarterly, #98, Waterloo, ON, Spring 2006. This story used to be called The Bayley-Hazen Road. I began writing in 1996, and submitted it to at least a dozen journals since then. I am grateful to every editor who had the good sense to reject it before it was ready. My thanks to the Trautz family, for helping start the story off; to Jenn Goodwin, first reader; Amy Hempel, generous reader; and Kim Jernigan, The New Quarterly editor who turned up at end of the old Bayley-Hazen Road.

Excerpt from Hennessey’s High Pasture:

“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
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