Janvier
Happy New Year. May you get what you want this year.
Algoma is reviewed in today’s Globe & Mail and the January/February 2012 issue of THIS Magazine.
For all Algoma-related press, click here.
In the meantime, work on a new book begins. Here’s my super fancy set up. The oven fries are an integral part of the process.
Decembre
Algoma was included as one of the books in the Toronto Star’s reviewers’ Top 100 books of 2011.
A new review can be found in The Winnipeg Review.
A review by Shannon Webb Campbell in The Coast (Halifax):
“Dani Couture’s background as a poet, and now a first time novelist, shines with finely tuned insights. She’s a line writer and builds on her sentences to form gorgeous paragraphs.”
For all things Algoma, click here.
Writer’s Trust
Was lucky enough to attend the Writer’s Trust gala for a second year in a row. They put on such a lovely event. To learn more about the Writer’s Trust and its programs, please visit their website.
Writers Devon Code, me, Trevor Cole, and Tanis Rideout
More photos in the Globe and Mail, Open Book Toronto, and the Writer’s Trust.
Al
Review in Atlantic Books Times:
“…[Couture's] affinity for deft and delicious imagery is much in evidence in her first novel…temptation to tie the story up with a trite little bow, choosing instead to reflect the truth that losing a loved one changes families irrevocably.”
Algoma is favourably reviewed in the December 2011 issue of Quill and Quire, which is now on fine newsstands everywhere.
“…this is a very good first novel from a refreshing new voice.”
And the lovely (lovely) gals at the Keeping It Real Book Club (KIRBC) took Al for as spin on their blog.
All things Algoma can be found here. What a lovely fall. Hope yours is good, too.
Invisibly Yours
You know you have a kick ass publisher when they send you pics of your favourite ship.
Thank you Robbie MacGregor for this:
Mom will be geeked (and so am I)
Algoma is listed as an Editor’s Pick in the December 2011 issue of Chatelaine. I grew up with that magazine. This…makes me happy.
Also, the amazing and beloved Type Books in Toronto included Algoma in a recent Type Talk e-newsletter: “The debut novel from Toronto poet Dani Couture. Think early Atwood style … and plenty of weather.”
Literary Death Match
While no actual blood was spilled, beer was. I also attempted (key word: attempted) to spell authors names with my body (Give me an “H”!). In the end, I had to phone a friend to help me spell “Chinua Achebe.” Amazing night at the Literary Death Match. Thanks to all, especially my brothers in arms, Rebecca Rosenblum, Carolyn Black, and Grace O’Connell. And let’s not forget the judges, Mark Medley, Ryan Kamstra, and Lindy Zucker.
Heavy is the head that wears the blunt bangs (Photo by Natalie Zina Walschots)
Bronchitic and no-sleep eyes. Charming.
But let’s be honest. The real winner was Grace’s stilettos. And the comedic hosting styles of Book Madam, Julie Wilson, and LDM co-creator Todd Zuniga.
More photos of the lovely contestants and judges coming…
In the meantime, a pre-Death Match interview with the National Post.
Note the beer. Dad would be proud.
Behold the Canadian Tuxedo, the double double of denim.
Seven girls named after ships pass each other in the night
Sweet!
Craig Francis Power, Tony Burgess, Dani Couture, Kenneth J. Harvey (Photo by JohnMacDonald.com)
All Things Al
Algoma will be launched and released in October. Admittedly, I’m nervous.
For details on the book, click here (Sorry, the previous link apparently went to YouTube).
Take care & enjoy the fall.
Dani
Sweet Launch – June 2010
Some pics from the launch for Sweet, which was also the launch for Taddle Creek‘s Summer Issue and Peter Darbyshire’s new book, The Warhol Gang.
Kevin Connolly BBQs. I was the bun and cheese girl. I was terrible at my job.
Where the Wild Things Are
(As published in Broken Pencil)
Poet Dani Couture walks the fine line between urban life and the natural world
Canadian poetry has a long tradition of exploring and surviving the wilderness. Pratt, Service, Lee, Atwood — all have been interested, obsessed even, with a landscape both beautiful and terrifying. In fact, it’s become cliché that our national poetry is infatuated with the wild and man’s place in it. For this reason, Toronto-born Dani Couture is the much-needed urban update of our national literary obsession with a natural world.
Born on a military base to a Francophone father and an Anglophone mother, Couture has lived everywhere from Vancouver to North Bay, and while her work shows a reverence to the wilds of the canon that came before her, her sensibilities are firmly rooted in an awareness of the concrete coldness of her Toronto home. For Couture, disconnection to our environment is the source of our modern failings. Her poetry, while populated with bears and blue herons, tree bark and frost, is also heavy with the modern panic of illness and mortality.
Couture’s infatuation with these two extremes inspired her to create her online project Animal Effigy (animaleffigy.com), a photo essay that she refers to as “tracking urban prey” and that obviously has a strong connection to her writing. “[Animal Effigy] focuses on the strained relationship between urban life and the natural world,” she says. “We’ve divorced from our environs. We’ve razed the earth and repopulated it with animal effigies. Defanged and neutered, these animals live static lives in corporate logos, on T-shirts, as plush toys. We wear them, we sell them, and sometimes we make them sell their flesh to us: happy cartoon chickens offering plates of fried drumsticks.” The project is a fitting one for someone who describes her relationship with animals as “adoration, respect, and in some cases, a healthy dose of fear.”
“If writing poetry is like a three metre springboard dive, then writing fiction is to swim across a lake and back again a half dozen times.”
Couture’s Sweet, her recently released second collection of poetry, pushes the collision between the modern life and the wild even further. With its consistent references to the natural world, the book is often preoccupied with the very opposite — artificial, sterile hospital spaces and man working against the process of decay. “Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the connections between poetry, the body and illness. Poetry reminds me of the loose order of the body,” says Couture. “When the tension and order of words are perfect, we barely register what makes it so. It is the same with the body. When the body is healthy, we do not question its functions and processes. We take for granted that the hand picks up the glass from the table, that the heart beats automatically, pushing blood through endless highways of veins. It’s only when there is a new pain, lump or weakness, that we look inside, that we question how things work.”
When asked about the reoccurring theme of illness in the book, Couture is candid. She says she’s spent most of her life watching a close family member endure a long-term illness. Doing so has changed her in way she says she didn’t realize at first. “Anything can become normal if you keep its company long enough. So writing about illness, for me, is like writing about lunch.”
With two collections of poetry to her name — Good Meat in 2006, and this year’s Sweet, both from Pedlar Press — Couture is currently at work on her debut novel, aptly titled Black Bear on Water. “I enjoy both [fiction and poetry] equally for different reasons. If writing poetry is like a three metre springboard dive, then writing fiction is to swim across a lake and back again a half dozen times.”
Fittingly, when Couture was asked where and how her work was best read she responded succinctly: “Over a campfire.”
Sweet
Sweet is listed as one of Maisonneuve’s Best Books of 2010.
Invisible
I’m excited to say that my first novel will be coming out with the great folks at Invisible Publishing in fall 2011.
Algoma
A year after watching his brother go through the ice, twelve-year old Ferd refuses to believe Leo is gone. Convinced his brother is still alive, Ferd enters into a campaign of letters to persuade his brother to come home, mailing notes in any pool of water he can find. Soon, sopping notes begin to appear around the house folded squares of paper in the rain reservoir, kitchen sink, and washing machine. Ferd’s mother, Algoma, finds the letters and keeps them to herself in an attempt to hide them from her increasingly distant husband. Gaetan, a bartender who obsessively records the weather, rejects his family’s increasingly erratic behaviour and disappears one night leaving behind his weather journal, a newly pregnant wife, and a son consumed with talking to the dead.
Now, I encourage you to go out and buy their entire front and back lists. No, really. Do it. You’ll like it.
If you’re looking for one to start with, I encourage you to pick up the lovely Stacey May Fowles’ Fear of Fighting.
It’s late and I’m tired. Let’s be honest.
I also like lists. Here’s another:
*On May 28th, I read in Amherstburg with the talented Carolyn Black and Robert Earl Stewart. Kim Hutchinson reviews the night.
*My new poem, “Salvage,” appears in the June 2011 issue of The Walrus (on newsstands soon). While you’re there, check out Moez Surani’s lovely poem.
*Another Spring – A Renga in 27 parts by 27 Toronto poets for Japan. A wonderful project by Toronto To Japan. Thanks to the wonderful Sachiko Murakami for putting this together.
*I recently completed a project with the visionary Carolyn Black: Mind:Hand. Carolyn wrote the words; I drew the illustrations; neither one knew what the other one was doing. Also: Carolyn Black’s launch for her debut collection of short stories, The Odious Child (Nightwood Editions), will be on May 26th in Toronto. The stories are, well, astounding. Come to the launch and pick up a copy.
*An article on Animal Effigy will appear in the summer issue of Taddle Creek. I will be BBQing at the launch of the issue on June 17th.
*Poet Angela Hibbs interviewed me for Open Book Toronto.
& recent(ish) mentions:
* “Down East, they’re “uniquely hard to discourage,” National Post (Danila Botha)
*”They’ve yet to top Homer,” National Post (Michael Lista)
*”Maisonneuve’s Best Books of 2010,” Maisonneuve (Rebecca Rosenblum)
I’m sleepy. That’s all I’ve got. Oh, and this.
Late Spring
It’s late spring of an already good year. This week, it got even sweeter and I’m grateful.
24th Annual Trillium Book Awards
Sweet is on the shortlist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry!
The shortlist:
Dani Couture, Sweet (Pedlar Press)
Jeff Latosik, Tiny, Frantic, Stronger (Insomniac Press)
Shane Neilson, Complete Physical (The Porcupine’s Quill)
Peter Norman, At the Gates of the Theme Park (Mansfield Press)
I’m also elated to see fellow Pedlar Press-mate Ken Sparling on the shortlist for the Trillium Book Award.
Update: The lovely Jeff Latosik won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry for his outstanding debut collection. Congrats, Jeff. Glad we share the same taste in Trillium footwear…
Photo credit: @biancaspence
The Writers’ Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Grant for Emerging Gay Writer
The Writer’s Trust recently announced that Farzana Doctor is the recipient of the fifth annual Dayne Ogilvie Grant. The $4,000 grant, funded by an endowment established by Robin Pacific, is given annually to an emerging gay or lesbian writer who demonstrates great literary promise through a body of work of exceptional quality.
Matthew J. Trafford, author of The Divinity Gene (Douglas & McIntyre), and I were selected by the jury to receive an Honour of Distinction, which means a great deal to me.
Looking for something to do on June 20th?
Grant Presentation
Monday, June 20, 2011
12:00 – 2:00 pm
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre
12 Alexander Street, Toronto
“Hosted by Julie Wilson of Book Madam & Associates. The presentation will feature a panel discussion with the grant winner, Farzana Doctor, honour of distinction recipients, Dani Couture and Matthew J. Trafford, along with members of the jury, and grant founder Robin Pacific. The event is free and open to the public.”
Summer, Summa, Sumher, Summortime
The extended daylight hours means I’m sleeping on average 2.5 hours per night. I find this completely acceptable (most days). What I also find acceptable: lists. So: another, in no particular order…
ps: It’s my hope that in September I’ll be able to use this as my “What I did this summer” essay.
Last updated August 8, 2011
On tunes: Open Book Toronto noticed a little something I’ve been doing with playlists on this site.
On having the answers, or at least an answer:I was lucky enough to get to try my hand at George Murray’s Questionless Interviews at Open Book Toronto.
On TATAS: Grace O’Connell wants you to get the best out of your summer in Toronto. Visit her website to read her Toronto According to Authors Surveys (TATAS). I offer up my favourite East End haunts with a few west of Yonge for good measure.
On kissing: On June 29th, the lovely folks at Book Bakery held a Fund-fair in Toronto. Think: Games! Raffles! Baked goods! Kissing booth! Like a real trooper, I gave literal lip to the cause and staffed the kissing booth for twenty minutes. More on the Book Bakery in The Star. I highly encourage you to support their efforts (hint: buy books).
On effigies: The dedicated staffers at Taddle Creek sure know how to throw a summer party. For the second year in a row, I drew upon the years I worked at Burger King and worked the grill at Jet Fuel to feed the hungry masses. The summer issue is now on stands and it’s gorgeous. Pick up a copy. You’ll even find a post-mortem on Animal Effigy by Jackie Linton in the issue: “Concrete Forest.”
On Algoma: The 2011 Fall Preview in the July/August 2011 issue of Quill & Quire mentions my forthcoming novel, Algoma, which is due out in October. I guess this means it’s actually happening, yes? Deep breaths…
On writing like a man: Stacey May Fowles, as always, talks about the subjects many avoid. Her piece “Write like a man: The unspoken rule for avoiding the pink cover” recently appeared in The National Post. In the article, you will find pink wine, deck stories, and the word “uterus-y” for which I take full blame.
On endings: The Scream Literary Festival will end its long haul this year. There will be a big hole in my heart after the festival is over. Spackle will be in order. I’m honoured to be able to read on the main stage one last time with friends. Hope to see you in High Park on July 11th.
The Scream in High Park
When: Monday, July 11, 2011, 7 p.m.
Where: High Park Amphitheatre, High Park
What: The one that started it all – 12 readings under the High Park stars
Who: Gary Barwin and Gregory Betts, Christian Bök and Darren Wershler, Margaret Christakos, Dani Couture, Sheila Heti and Misha Glouberman, Aisha Sasha John, Shawn Micaleff, Alisha Piercy, Angela Szczepaniak, Hugh Thomas, Nick Thran, Mark Truscott, and mystery guests…
On kitsch: (There can only be one) Nathaniel G. Moore recently put together a unique essay and book installation that cannot be easily described. Instead, jump into the NGM experience feet first and read up on his latest project, “Our History is Your Kitsch.”
Tour excerpt:
Now turn around. Go to the Annex. Walk past Book City (you might be returning shortly), and head to Theodore 1922 (497 Bloor Street West). Here you’ll be impressed by the finest threads for the man in your life, even if that man is yourself! And remember, dads need clothing all year long (and books too), not just on Father’s Day.
Hot pink, swordfish blue, canary yellow fine cut shirts, sports jackets, ties and fancy pants, all perfect for the martini bar after the polo match. This store is where all future and current literary clotheshorse stallions should shop, and I’ve been told that from time to time, the odd crime writer does show up to refurbish his or her luxury wardrobe. And once you’re man-dolled up, read Claudia Dey’s haunting family novel, Stunt. Another perfect match. You can also sit back in your soft pastel contentment and lounge in the Trillium Award-finalist poetry of Dani Couture’s Sweet. There’s a part of you that may long for change, a new job perhaps? Once you’re dressed to the nines you can delve into the vocational hilarity that is Joey Comeau’s Overqualified, a book of satirical cover letters.
When you’re feeling slightly more courageous in your new duds (which may include the new line of designer swimwear for men), grab a glimpse into the cerebral side of life with RM Vaughan’s confrontational and confessional poetry book, Troubled
On metal: Natalie Zina Walschots, the Golden Spruce of Canadian publishing and metal, has organized a “take that” event to end all events.
The Scream Literary Festival, a Toronto institution for the past eighteen years, is closing its doors this summer. This will be this final Scream. Rather than the usual festival events, Scream supporters and alumni are throwing their own UnFestival in honour of the Scream, a celebration and a wake for a festival that has meant the world to us. I am throwing The Wrecking Ball, a heavy metal/poetry hybrid event. It’s going to be a hell of a party, and you should come. The event is also sponsored by Canada Arts Connect, which makes it even more awesome.
What: A literary demolition derby, pairing heavy metal bands with experimental poets.
When: July 9th, 2011. Doors at 8pm
Where: The Hard Luck Bar, 812 Dundas St. West
Who: poets! angela rawlings, Damian Rogers, Chris Doda, and Dani Couture
Bands! Sylvus, Vilipend, and Ein Traum
How much: $8
Novel Playlists – Grace O’Connell
When working on a project, I often listen to a selection of songs on repeat, which helps me focus. If a particular section, sentence, or image is giving me pause, I sometimes cue up one song and hit repeat until the issue is resolved. This can mean one listen or 100. By the time a project is done, I’m left with a mixed tape of where I’ve been with the work. This, I suspected, was not unique. And so I’ve asked some writers to share their playlists.
Grace O’Connell: Torontonian with a novel forthcoming from Knopf Canada in 2012. An enthusiast of couches, CanLit, sailboats, board games, and bicycles.
Okay. I generally don’t listen to music once I’m really into the swing of it with a first draft or substantive rewrite. Sometimes when I’m just getting started though, or if I’m doing less intensive edits, I’ll listen to music to get things (mentally) shakin’. I read a piece at the Taddle Creek launch that was actually loosely inspired by the Decemberists’ song “The Bagman’s Gambit,” so there we go. I also have a guilty habit of trying to “score” longer projects in my head. There’s one scene in my novel which, whenever I re-read it, I always hear the same song in my head (it’s a song on the list below, too).
Grace’s Go-To Playlist
(Click here to listen to the entire playlist on YouTube)
1. In the Summertime – Rural Alberta Advantage
2. My Baby Takes the Morning Train – Sheena Easton
3. Ilfracombe – Hawksley Workman
4. Nothing Better – Postal Service
5. She’s Losing It – Belle & Sebastian
6. Books Written for Girls – Camera Obscura
7. Grace Cathedral Hill – The Decemberists
8. I Can’t Decide – Scissor Sisters
9. Chancellor – Gord Downie
10. Each Coming Night – Iron & Wine
Novel Playlists – Stacey May Fowles
When working on a project, I often listen to a selection of songs on repeat, which helps me focus. If a particular section, sentence, or image is giving me pause, I sometimes cue up one song and hit repeat until the issue is resolved. This can mean one listen or 100. By the time a project is done, I’m left with a mixed tape of where I’ve been with the work. This, I suspected, was not unique. And so I’ve asked some writers to share their playlists.
Stacey May Fowles: Writer and magazine professional living in Toronto. Her first novel, Be Good, was published by Tightrope Books in 2007. In fall 2008 she released an illustrated novel, Fear of Fighting, and staged a theatrical adaptation of it with Nightwood Theatre. Her writing has appeared in various venues, including The Walrus, Quill and Quire, The National Post, Taddle Creek, and Prism. She has been widely anthologized in Nobody Passes: Rejecting The Rules of Gender and Conformity; First Person Queer; Yes Means Yes; and PEN Canada’s Finding The Words. Most recently, she co-edited the anthology She’s Shameless: Women write about growing up, rocking out and fighting back. She is the former publisher of Shameless magazine, and currently works at The Walrus.
When I’m writing fiction I can’t write without music. It’s always got to be in the headphones on 11 or I simply can’t focus – I’ll just wander around aimlessly without direction without a song to ground me. I usually make playlists specifically for scenes or chapters and then listen to them on repeat for hours until I’m done. The last novel I finished is about a train wreck romance, so most of the songs on repeat were about lovelorn woe and betrayal. When I was in almost total isolation up at the Banff Centre last fall finishing the manuscript, I might have driven myself a bit mad with the angst and sadcore. It was a bit of a Shining moment, but hey, at least the book got done.
Stacey May’s Shining Playlist
(Click here to listen to the entire playlist on YouTube)
1. Listen Up – The Gossip
2. Girl Is On My Mind – The Black Keys
3. Jumpers – Sleater Kinney
4. Ghosts – Ladytron
5. Y-Control and Cheated Hearts – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6. Strict Machine – Goldfrapp
7. Oh My God – Ida Maria
8. Hounds of Love – The Futureheads
9. Polar Nettles – Neko Case
10. Need You Around – The Smoking Popes
11. Acid Tongue – Jenny Lewis
12. Wild Gardens – Magneta Lane
13. Pursuit of Happiness (cover) – Lissie
14. The Entirety of Robyn’s Body Talk Part Two on repeat.
Have a playlist you want to share? Email me at dani dot couture at gmail dot com.
Short Story Collection Playlist: Michael Bryson
When working on a project, I often listen to a selection of songs on repeat, which helps me focus. If a particular section, sentence, or image is giving me pause, I sometimes cue up one song and hit repeat until the issue is resolved. This can mean one listen or 100. By the time a project is done, I’m left with a mixed tape of where I’ve been with the work. This, I suspected, was not unique. And so I’ve asked some writers to share their playlists.
Photo credit: Kate O'Rourke
Whether I write with the music on or the music off, there’s always a tune in my head. Often the song in my head will tell me what I’m thinking. I’ll find myself repeating “A Day in the Life” by The Beatles, for instance, and only then realize that I’ve been reflecting on a particular headline that I read on the way in to work: “I’ve read the news today, oh, boy.” My subconscious seems to transport messages to me through music. Of course, I also have an affinity to certain lyrics, certain phrases, certain rhetorical approaches: “Poets, priests, and politicians/ have words to thank for their positions,” sang The Police. That’s one of my favourite lyrics; it’s clear about the lack of clarity that can be provided by language (“Who’s Zoomin’ Who?” as Aretha Franklin said). You can see this theme in many of the songs on my list. Also, I dig the 2/4 beat, so the first song on the list was a natural. It’s very hard for me to select a 15 song list, so I’ve cheated a bit. As Janis Joplin said, “I’m ready, man!”
Micheal’s 2/4 Playlist
(Click here to play the entire playlist on YouTube)
1. I Love Rock and Roll – Joan Jett & the Blackhearts
2. Back to Me – Kathleen Edwards
3. All I Want – Joni Mitchell
4. Eminence Front – The Who
5. Smoking Banana Peels – The Dead Milkmen
6. Fulsome Prison Blues – Johnny Cash
7. Short Sharp Shocked (entire LP) – Michelle Shocked
8. A Sort of Homecoming – U2
9. High Water (For Charlie Patton) – Bob Dylan
10. Mimi on the Beach – Jane Sibbery
11. Helpless – k.d. lang sings Neil Young
12. Stage Fright – The Band
13. Revolution (White Album version) – The Beatles
14. Shelter from the Storm (live, Hard Rain version) – Bob Dylan
15. Lucky Star – Madonna
16. The Seeker – The Who
17. Won’t Get Fooled Again – The Who
18. I Don’t Want to be a Soldier – John Lennon
19. Both Sides Now – Joni Mitchell
Have a novel/short story collection/poetry playlist you want to share? Email me at dani dot couture at gmail dot com.
ReLit Award Longlist
Sweet and a truckload of great titles have made it onto the ReLit Award longlist.
YA Novel Playlist: Evan Munday
When working on a project, I often listen to a selection of songs on repeat, which helps me focus. If a particular section, sentence, or image is giving me pause, I sometimes cue up one song and hit repeat until the issue is resolved. This can mean one listen or 100. By the time a project is done, I’m left with a mixed tape of where I’ve been with the work. This, I suspected, was not unique. And so I’ve asked some writers to share their playlists.
Evan Munday is the illustrator of the novel Stripmalling, written by Jon Paul Fiorentino (ECW 2009), and is the cartoonist behind the self-published comic book, Quarter-Life Crisis, set in a post-apocalyptic Toronto. He works as a book publicist for Coach House Books. The Dead Kid Detective Agency is his first novel. He is currently illustrating Natalie Zina Walschots’s DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains (forthcoming in Spring 2012 from Insomniac Press).
I’m simple-minded, so I find it extremely difficult to listen to music and concentrate. This may be because I listen to my music at a volume whereby other people in the apartment can learn the lyrics to all my favourite songs, even when I have headphones on. Accordingly, when I’m writing my first drafts on paper or pencilling illustrations, I’m music-free. But while typing or inking, I do listen to music heavily. It helps me forget it’s three in the morning (or whenever it is).
For my juvenile novel, The Dead Kid Detective Agency, I made a ‘spooky’ mix, to help me get in the macabre mood of the book. This largely involved finding the more ghostly or haunting tracks on whatever CDs I had at the ready. Seems like punk, ska and electronic bands had the spookiest music. Or comprise the majority of my CD collection. Probably a little from Column A, a little from Column B.
Evan’s Spooky Playlist
(Click here to listen to the entire playlist on YouTube.)
1. The Specials – Ghost Town
2. VCR – Die Zone
3. The Faint – Violent
4. The Dead 60s – You’re Not the Law
5. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Ghost of Stephen Foster
6. Rancid – Red Hot Moon
7. The Organ – I Am Not Surprised
8. Fischerspooner – Emerge
9. The Coral – Shadows Fall
10. The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – God Is a Spider
11. The Epoxies – Stop Looking at Me
12. The Cure – Jumping Someone Else’s Train
13. Siouxsie and the Banshees – Spellbound
14. The Raveonettes – The Love Gang
15. The Aquabats – Cat with 2 Heads
Have a novel/short story collection/poetry playlist you want to share? Email me at dani dot couture at gmail dot com.
Novel Playlist: Dani Couture
When working on a project, I often listen to a selection of songs on repeat, which helps me focus. If a particular section, sentence, or image is giving me pause, I sometimes cue up one song and hit repeat until the issue is resolved. This can mean one listen or 100. By the time a project is done, I’m left with a mixed tape of where I’ve been with the work. This, I suspected, is not unique. And so I’ve asked some writers to share their playlists. So far, I’ve posted playlists from Grace O’Connell, Stacey May Fowles, Natalie Zina Walschots, and Evan Munday. More are scheduled. Today, I hope you don’t mind if I share my own.
Dani Couture is the author of two collections of poetry: GOOD MEAT (Pedlar Press, 2006) and SWEET (Pedlar Press, 2010). SWEET was named one of Maisy’s Best Books of 2010 by Maisonneuve Magazine and nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. In 2011, Dani also received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Grant. Her debut novel, ALGOMA, is forthcoming with Invisible Publishing in Fall 2011.
The bulk of Algoma was written over several winters. During those cold months, I sat at my desk in my apartment with the lights off and my headphones on. While I need music to write, I can’t listen to new music. Rather, I need tried and true tracks I know so well they’ve become part of my aural landscape. As the novel grew, so did my playlist, but not exponentially so. I listened to a small set of songs on repeat, which helped me remain focused and channel the feeling of loss and longing I needed for the book. Even now when I listen to songs from that playlist, I’m brought back to certain scenes. Forever editing and adding even when a project is complete, I’ve added four bonus tracks to my playlist — songs I wish I would have listened to while I was writing the book.
My Left & Leaving Playlist
(Listen to the entire playlist on YouTube)
1. All my little words – Magnetic Fields
2. Maybe sparrow – Neko Case
3. Left and leaving – The Weakerthans
4. I lost my baby – Jean Leloup
5. Love is like a bottle of gin – Magnetic Fields
6. Only in dreams – Weezer
7. Le Dôme – Jean Leloup
8. Winter – Tori Amos
9. Babe, you turn me on – Nick Cave
8. Emmenez-moi – Charles Aznavour
9. Con toda palabra – Lhasa de Sela
11. To be by your side – Nick Cave
10. [Removed]
12. Maps – Yeah Yeah Yeahs
13. How to say goodbye – Magnetic FieldsBonus Tracks
1. Sur l’océan couleur de fer – Alcest
2. Video games – Lana Del Rey
3. Metal heart – Cat Power
4. L’ours – Tricot Machine
Poetry Playlist: Natalie Zina Walschots
When working on a project, I often listen to a selection of songs on repeat, which helps me focus. If a particular section, sentence, or image is giving me pause, I sometimes cue up one song and hit repeat until the issue is resolved. This can mean one listen or 100. By the time a project is done, I’m left with a mixed tape of where I’ve been with the work. This, I suspected, was not unique. And so I’ve asked some writers to share their playlists.
Photo by Adam Wills
Music is an absolutely essential part of the writing process for me. I could not imagine working on DOOM successfully without an epic, supervillainous soundtrack.
Natalie’s Doom(ed) Playlist
(Click here to listen to the entire playlist on YouTube)
Iced Earth – Damian
By Your Command – Devin Townsend
Faith No More – Caffeine
Agalloch – Kneel To the Cross
Amorphis – Perkele
Gaza – He Is Never Coming Back
Devin Townsend – Planet Smasher
Gojira – Esoteric Surgery
Graf Orlock – Hauser
Isis – The Beginning And The End
Neurosis – Through Silver In Blood
Vader’s Imperial March – Star Wars Soundtrack
The Fine Art of Basking
Illustration by Julie McLaughlin for National Post
NP Books Editor, Mark Medley, on the piece, which you can read here:
This summer saw the publication of No Rest For The Dead, a crime novel with an unusual twist: Authorship was shared by 26 different writers. Around the same time it was released, we were in the midst of planning our own Summer Fiction issue, so when the book came across our desk we decided to ask some of Canada’s literary luminaries to team up for a similar experiment, albeit on a much smaller scale — a short story. The only thing we provided was a sentence (“He’d/She’d always hated the summer”), which was promptly ignored, though it does in fact appear in a slightly altered form. The story began with Steven Heighton, who passed it on to the next writer, and so on, until all 11 writers had contributed a section. We hope you enjoy The Fine Art of Basking (the title was suggested by Kate Pullinger) as much as we do.
The piece also includes some great author illustrations by Julie McLaughlin.
24th Trillium Book Award – Reading
A recording of my reading at the 24th Trillium Book Award readings in June 2011.
Verse, Chorus, Bridge, Lyrics, Authors
Authors making cameos in song lyrics.
“Margaret Atwood,” The Parkas
This is a photograph of me shouting my obscenities.
Underwater, no one can hear you.
When did I come up for air?
Is a part of me still down there distorting, becoming something new?
The people that we used to be are waiting for us underneath, but if we dive into the black, when we surface we just come back alone.
Margaret Atwood I confess, I’m drowning like all the rest.
My lungs are slowly changing shape.
This is not a ship to sail, it’s the belly of a whale, and I know this time we can’t escape.
“Stuck Between Stations,” The Hold Steady
The devil and John Berryman
Took a walk together.
They ended up on Washington
Talking to the river.
He said I’ve surrounded myself with doctors
And deep thinkers.
But big heads with soft bodies
Make for lousy lovers.
There was that night that we thought John Berryman could fly.
“We Call Upon the Author,” Nick Cave
I say prolix! Prolix! Something a pair of scissors can fix.
Bukowski was a jerk! Berryman was best!
He wrote like wet papier mache, went the Heming-way weirdly on wings and with maximum pain.
We call upon the author to explain.
“Sylvia Plath,” Ryan Adams
And she and I would sleep on a boat
And swim in the sea without clothes
With rain falling fast on the sea
While she was swimming away, she’d be winking at me
Telling me it would all be okay
Out on the horizon and fading away
And I’d swim to the boat and I’d laugh
I gotta get me a Sylvia Plath
Relit Shortlist
Sweet has made the Relit Award shortlist. I couldn’t be happier.
Poetry Playlist: Amanda Earl
When working on a project, I often listen to a selection of songs on repeat, which helps me focus. If a particular section, sentence, or image is giving me pause, I sometimes cue up one song and hit repeat until the issue is resolved. This can mean one listen or 100. By the time a project is done, I’m left with a mixed tape of where I’ve been with the work. This, I suspected, was not unique. And so I’ve asked some writers to share their playlists.
Amanda Earl‘s poetry has appeared in poetry journals in Canada, the US, and the UK. Her chapbooks have been published by above/ground press, avantacular press, Book Thug and Laurel Reed Books. Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal and the angel of AngelHousePress. For more on her literary & otherwise shenanigans, please visit amandaearl.com or follow her on twitter: @KikiFolle.
I often listen to specific music when I’m working on a project, or create the playlist after the fact. For “Sessions from the Dream House Aria” (an unpublished long poem), I listened exclusively to Ghosts I-IV by Nine Inch Nails during its creation, and for me, “Medusa,” another unpublished long poem, I listened primarily to heavy metal music, which isn’t even a kind of music I enjoy typically, but i needed the sounds and textures of metal for the images and sounds I was trying to create. Here’s a part of my playlist for my long poem Welcome to Earth (Book Thug, 2008).
Amanda’s Earthly Playlist
(Click here to listen to the entire playlist on YouTube.)
1. The Earth is Broken – Tim Buckley
2. Golden Star – My Brightest Diamond
3. Guided by Wire – Neko Case & Her Boyfriends
4. I Can Be A Rock – Hawksley Workman
5. I Must Belong Somewhere – Bright Eyes
6. Around the Sun – REM
7. Just Want to See – Cowboy Junkies
8. House of the Risin’ Sun – Bob Dylan
9. Is There Anyone Here – Eulogies
10. Invisible City – The Wallflowers
11. Human Thing – The Be Good Tanyas
12.You Are One of the Few Outsiders Who Really Understands Us – Fanfarlo
Book Launch for Algoma
Dani Couture in Conversation with Jen Knoch at Algoma Book Launch
This Is Not a Reading Series presents author Dani Couture and ECW Editor and book blogger Jen Knoch in a conversation about writing, ships, and weather at the launch of Couture’s debut novel, Algoma. Through a guided slideshow, Couture shares the story behind her obsession with freighters and her favourite fleet. Listen to Dani’s “Channeling Algoma” greatest-hits-playlist and get ready to tweet throughout the evening as we feature live feed from the acclaimed David Leonard Weather Service, #DLWS.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen Street West
Doors Open 7pm, Event Starts 7:30pm
Admission is $5.00 or FREE with a book purchase
ALGOMA A year after watching his brother go through the ice, twelve-year-old Ferd refuses to believe Leo is gone. Convinced his brother is still alive, Ferd enters into a campaign of letters to persuade his brother to come home, ”mailing“ notes in any pool of water he can find. Soon, sopping notes begin to appear around the house—folded squares of paper in the rain reservoir, kitchen sink, and washing machine. Ferd’s mother, Algoma, finds the letters and keeps them to herself in an attempt to hide them from her increasingly distant husband. Gaetan, a bartender who obsessively records the weather, rejects his family’s increasingly erratic behaviour and disappears one night leaving behind his weather journal, a newly pregnant wife, and a son consumed with talking to the dead.
For more information on Algoma, visit: www.blackbearonwater.com/algoma or www.invisiblepublishing.com
“To read Dani Couture’s Algoma is to be reminded of the aching beauty of loss, the thin, pale terror of hope, and the strength and sacrifice required just for living, day by day. Haunting and fundamentally human, Algoma is a gift.” — Robert J. Wiersema, author of Bedtime Story
“Toronto-based poet Dani Couture returns with her first novel, a surreal and iconoclastic take on that perennial CanLit staple: the family drama. Algoma tells the story of a family attempting to cope with the aftermath of a young child falling through the ice and drowning.” — Quill & Quire, 2011 Fall Preview
“Couture is another poet-turned-novelist, and the Torontonian offers up a beautiful story about the nature of expectations and our frequent inability to accept the cards we’re dealt…Algoma is a thoughtful book from a promising young voice about what it means to love and accept loss.” — Zoe Whittall, FASHION magazine
DANI COUTURE is the author of two collections of poetry: Good Meat (Pedlar Press, 2006) and Sweet (Pedlar Press, 2010). Sweet is currently shortlisted for a ReLit Award and was named one of Maisy’s Best Books of 2010 by Maisonneuve Magazine; it was also nominated for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. In 2011. Dani also received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Grant. For two years, Dani curated Animal Effigy, an online photo essay on urban faux animal tracking. Her writing has appeared in a number of publications including The Globe and Mail, Grain, The Walrus, and several anthologies. In 2007, her short story “The Port-Wine-Stain-Removal Technique” won first place in the fiction category of This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt. Algoma is Couture’s debut novel.
JEN KNOCH is an editor at ECW Press and a secret scribe of teen pop culture books. She also runs popular book blog The Keepin’ It Real Book Club, which features reviews, recommendations, videos and special projects like the Canada Reads spinoff Civilians Read. Visit The Keepin’ It Real Book Club at www.kirbc.com.
The David Leonard Weather Service (#DLWS) is a network of Twitter correspondents posting the weather they see right now. Real-time, crowd-sourced weather. According to his Twitter bio, David Leonard is a reader, enviro, vinyl junkie, soccer fan, and the accidental creator of an eponymous crowd-sourced weather service (the #DLWS), Walrus, dilettante.
This Is Not A Reading Series (TINARS) offers a ground-breaking theatrical dimension to the appreciation of fine writing. Employing music, comedy, psychodrama, dance, multimedia performance, lectures, dialogue—everything but reading—TINARS investigates the creative process behind literary works. For more information visit www.tinars.ca
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Publisher Contact: Chloe Vice, Publicist, Invisible Publishing, phone: 647-343-2662 promotion@invisiblepublishing.com
This Is Not A Reading Series: Anna Withrow, phone: 416-805-2174, awithrow@rogers.com
