31 March 2009

(flood basement


Jeremy Stewart's first book, (flood basement, is a young poet's search for and discovery of his place in the local landscape. The poet is haunted by the legacy of colonialism and propelled by the struggles of a community seeking its own identity. (flood basement is the raw, shocking and innocent journey of an emerging artist in a seemingly inflexible world. In this collection Stewart shares a collage of fragments that amount to a portrait of the Prince George of his youth, a transcription of a midnight audio journey, and an introspection of the fluctuating and sometimes fragile identity of the writer. Stewart's work pushes the boundaries of innovative and experimental poetry while weaving a visual narrative of the world in which he lives.

“Finally! Lyrics of outrageous displacements! Stewart’s experimental narrative text will bust up your tedious humdrum ideas! Poetry as subversion! (flood basement—buy this book, muthaflippas!” —Jake Kennedy

Please join Jeremy Stewart as he launches his
book of poetry, (flood basement, at Books and
Company (1685 3rd avenue) in Prince George on
Wednesday, April 15 at 7:00pm.

24 March 2009

Bridges Festival


Call for Entries – Bridges Festival of Arts and Culture 2009 Juried Exhibition

What impact does the non-human or human landscape have on our sense of self and location? How do we represent ourselves in a reality where our physical environment has been pervaded by mass media and globalization? This multitude of physical and virtual layers of existence challenges our sense of place and presence. This group exhibition will reflect the wide-ranging practices of artists in the region and provide a forum to express a sense of who you are in relation to where you are. We are looking for work that explores the notions of space specific to our central interior region.

The first annual Bridges Festival of Arts and Culture is currently seeking submissions for our June 11-13, 2009 exhibition in the UNBC Rotunda. The Bridges Festival of Arts & Culture welcomes artists working in all media (painting, sculpture, fiber, video, poetry, short story, etc.) to submit up to three works of art or two pieces of writing up to four pages each. If you have a piece of work or any ideas which you would like to develop further in relation to this project and in dialogue with the Bridges Festival, we would very much like to hear from you.

Works need to include some marker that locates the work in the general Prince George region. Submission topics might include but are not limited to:

• Public vs. private places
• Phenomenological approaches to space and place
• Home/land
• Borders
• Changing landscapes
• How people occupy the city

Notes:

Travel and exhibition expenses are the responsibility of the artist; however, some of the work will be published in “The Small Cities” book project that is a result of the research and discussion at the festival. Writing will be published in a chapbook format. Artworks will be displayed in safe but unsecured area and will be moved, if possible, to a secured area each evening of the show. Work that requires production budgets or extensive set-up times cannot be taken on. Single screen films should be no longer than 15 min.

Please fill in the Submission Form download at this site.

Submissions should be received/postmarked by April 15. Files and essays should be sent to: Bridges Festival Exhibition c/o Gina MacDonald, Admin 2014, University of Northern British Columbia, 3333 University Way, Prince George BC, V2N 4Z9.
Writing:
• Please send hard copies.
Images:
• slides, prints, or digital images are acceptable; please submit only one format. Multiple images will be accepted if needed to best represent the work; details are encouraged.
Slides or Prints:
• slides and prints should be clearly labelled with artist’s name and title of work, and marked with an arrow in the upper right hand corner to indicate the top and correct viewing side of the slide. If submitting details, number images in order of viewing. Submit with completed art submission form.
Digital Images;
• Images should be either jpeg or tif files at a resolution of 72 dpi with a maximum width of 1024 pixels and a maximum height of 768 pixels in RGB mode.
• Images must be pc compatible.
• Label each file (image) with the artist’s name and title of the work in the following format: last name, first name. title of work. format (eg. brown,jane. title. jpg)
• If detail images are included, label each file (image) with the artist’s last name, first name. title and sequential number. (eg. brown_jane_title01.jpg, brown_jane_title02.jpg
• Submit with completed art submission form.
*Media files and 50-word bios from all accepted contributors. Artistic submissions should include a brief original statement that elucidates, expands or reflects on a conceptual or technological aspect of the work.

Contributors will be notified of acceptance by May 24, 2009.
Deadline for Submissions: May 10, 2009.
For More Information:
Joanna Smythe 250.970.0144 or smythej@unbc.ca
Gina MacDonald 250.960.6788 or macdonag@unbc.ca

Please check out our website.

23 March 2009

LANGUAGE POETRY AND THE LYRIC SUBJECT by MARJORIE PERLOFF

It was Roland Barthes, after all, who insisted, in "The Death of the Author" (1968), that writing, far from being the simple and direct expression of interiority, is "the destruction of every voice, every point of origin. Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing." "Linguistically, " Barthes declared, "the author is never more than the instance writing, just as I is nothing other than the instance saying I: language knows a 'subject', not a 'person'." And he famously concludes:

We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the message of the Author-God). . . . The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture. The writer can only imitate a gesture that is always anterior, never original. His only power is to mix writings, to counter the ones with the others. . . . Succeeding the Author, the scriptor no longer bears within him passions, humours, feelings, impressions, but rather this immense dictionary from which he draws a writing that can know no halt: life never does more than imitate the book, and the book itself is only a tissue of signs, an imitation that is lost, infinitely deferred.

Here Barthes anticipates Foucault's equally famous pronouncement, in "What is an Author?" (1969), that "The writing of our day has freed itself from the necessity of 'expression'." In Foucault's words:

Writing unfolds like a game that inevitably moves beyond its own rules and finally leaves them behind. Thus, the essential basis of this writing is not exalted emotions related to the act of composition or the insertion of a subject into language. Rather, it is primarily concerned with creating an opening where the writing subject endlessly disappears.
The author is now replaced by the "author function"--the function of a particular discourse-- and the pressing questions about a given text become, not "What has [the author] revealed of his most profound self in his language?", but "Where does [this discourse] come from; how is it circulated; who controls it?"

_____________

Read the entire essay here.

16 March 2009

Films about Writing

Adaptation
Stranger than Fiction
Pinero
Smoke
Almost Famous
Finding Forrester
Il Postino
Sylvia
Wonder Boys
Deconstructing Harry
Barton Fink
Elling
Henry & June
The Hours
Storytelling
Secret Window
The Shining
Gothic
Factotum
Barfly
Where the Buffalo Roam
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Before Night Falls
Shakespeare in Love
Whisper of the Heart
Slam
Naked Lunch
Throw Momma From the Train
Finding Neverland
My Left Foot
Misery
Bullets Over Broadway
An Angel At My Table
Nim’s Island
Funny Farm
The Producers
Wilde
Atonement
Freedom Writers
Dead Poets Society
Delta of Venus
Winter Passing
The Neverending Story
Capote
The Holiday
The Fountain
Music and Lyrics
I Want Candy
He Said, She Said
Tenebre
Stand by Me
The Philadelphia Story
84 Charring Cross Rd
Shadowlands
Cyrano de Bergerac
Martian Child
The Pillow Book
Prospero's Books
Possession
Little Women
I Capture the Castle
Wit
Blue in the Face
Sideways
Moulin Rouge
Leolo
Inkheart
Casanova
Becoming Jane
Beatrix Potter
Diary of Anne Frank
Tom and Viv
Henry Fool
Kafka
Beloved Infidel
The English Patient
Velvet Goldmine
1001 Nights
My Brilliant Career
Impromptu
Stealing Heaven
Julia
His Girl Friday
The Front Page
Gaily, Gaily
All the President's Men
The Year of Living Dangerously
Sunset Boulevard
Breakfast at Tiffanys
Behind the Lines
The Lost Weekend
Watchmen
Tune in Tomorrow
Sex and Lucia
Quills
Suddenly Naked
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Cabaret
The Moderns
Stevie
Miss Potter
The Jane Austen Book Club
Capote
In the Mood for Love
2046
Children of Huang Shi
Just Write

4th Annual Barry McKinnon Chapbook Award

Chapbook displays, sales, and trading

Friday, April 24
7:30 pm
College of New Caledonia 1-306

Even free and open to the public

Eligible chapbooks:
--between 8 - 48 pages
--written and published by an author from Northern BC
--produced after April 2008
--printed in a run of a minimum of 20 copies

Submission deadline April 10th
Judging will be based on a coordination of form and content but an emphasis will be placed on poetry.
$250 prize sponsored by the UNBC Arts Council.

Send chapbooks (2 copies) to:
Graham Pearce (pearce@cnc.bc.ca)
English Program, CNC
3330-22nd Ave.
Prince George BC V2N 1P8

10 March 2009