It's not that bad

Maybe it was the cigarette I smoked with Gregory Scofield, or the proposition I received from Jon Paul Fiorentino, or the time I met George Elliot Clarke, but I rather liked my first Thin Air experience. Maybe it's the cheese. Or maybe I am brainwashed. But for whatever reason, here I am again.

Psychotropic drugs or no psychotropic drugs, I'll be there. Watching, listening, wondering, photographing, drifting, blogging. And ignoring my (formal) education for a few days.

So you may see me at the library for the nooners, or you may see me in the audience at the mainstage or more likely lurking in the shadows by the wine and cheese bar, or you may see me downtown at the university taking in the events there, but you won't see me at opening night. I'll leave that one for Jason to battle on his own.

And you know, he could be right, I may very well be brainwashed, or better yet drugged. But who knows? He is, after all, only the second best poet to come out of Hastings Junior High.

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Brandon James Bertram is a perpetual student. When he's not at the university you might find him going casually about his business in his West Broadway apartment or spending his leftover student loans on beer at Cousins. He sometimes reviews music for the Uniter and his poetry has been published in Rhubarb magazine. He might graduate with a bachelor's degree next year.

This Festival is a Big Jerk

This festival is a big jerk. Ya, that’s right I said it. It’s a big jerk. I thought after last year we were letting bygones be bygones, but this festival holds a vendetta longer than the nastiest, car scratchingest, where’d my cat go?, ex-boyfriend or girlfriend anyone have ever had. Let me explain.

You see, last year I tried to be a good boy. I tried to write nice little posts about how quaint everything was. I tried to make amends for the mass hysteria caused by my first year’s posts. Even though it wasn’t my fault I got some bad information about the festival using psychotropic drugs to enslave and fleece this city’s literarily inclined public, I still tried to make nice.

But they couldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. No, they had to go digging around in my past and find some nefarious way to make me pay. They needed revenge. They needed Ismaila Alfa.

Ya, that’s right, first they trick me into doing this blog thing again, then they go and get Ismaila Alfa for opening night. I know you’re probably wondering what that sweet, foggy voiced, young man responsible for the traffic on CBC has to do with anything, but let me tell you, we all have pasts.

You see, there once was a little boy who really liked sports, especially football and basketball. Now this boy wasn’t the fastest, or the jumpiest, but he had heart. He worked hard, made both teams and things were good. However, there was another boy who also liked sports, like football and basketball. Now this boy was the fastest and the jumpiest boy there was and he even had heart too. So naturally, he also made both teams. But what a sad day it was when the poor boy who only had heart realized that because he only had heart he would forever ride the pine, and watch the fastest and jumpiest kid get all the girls. Though you wouldn’t think it from seeing me now, that poor little boy with heart was me. And that fastest, jumpiest kid...you guessed it, Ismaila Alfa.

Now as time went on, I eventually came to grips with the fact that my sports dreams were over. I decided to take up something I knew no athlete would even want to beat me at. I took up poetry. I thought the failures of my past would be buried in the accolades I would receive as being the best poet ever to come out of Hastings Junior High. Evidently, the festival felt it necessary to rob me of that delusion too. Let’s check the scoreboard:

International Writer’s Festival Reading Gigs

Ismaila Alfa 1

Jason Diaz 0

And the best poet ever to come out of Hastings Junior High is....Ismaila Alfa!!

He’s probably still faster than me too.

Now please, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Ismaila is in on this. He was a good guy. And the warm hug in his voice as he informs me that Osborne is backed up to Jubilee, tells me he still is. He’s just being used as the festival’s pawn. But not me, not anymore.

If Ismaila goes down with a bad hammy opening night, I will not be stepping in to read. Hear that festival, I’m out. Your scheme won’t work. I’ll write your blog, tweet your twitters and eat your room temperature cheese, but if you think for a second that I’m going to let you make me feel like I should quit poetry like I did sports by making me the back up again, you’ve got another thing coming. Dig up whoever you want. Being a poet is my life. It’s what I do. It’s the only good reason I have for working in a bookstore at the age of thirty five when I have four kids. It’s all I’ve got.

Anyway, psychological warfare, that’s why the festival is a big jerk. See you opening night.

PS I’m sneaking into the comp room this year and I will not be there getting Ismaila water. Take that Festival!

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Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer, bookstore employee and handyman (the bookstore business isn't as stable as you'd think). His poetry and prose has been published in dark leisure magazine. He has no idea why he keeps working for these meanies and volunteers coaching basketball to all the artsy kids in Wolseley so they never have to sit on the bench. He has a wife and many children.

THIN AIR author at Aqua

Ignatius Mabasa is a writer and storyteller from Zimbabwe. He'll be the storyteller-in-residence at the U of M this fall...and also doing events at THIN AIR. And he walked into Aqua last week and headed straight for the theology section. Where I persecuted him with my camera.

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Ariel Gordon has two chapbooks to her credit, The navel gaze (Palimpsest Press) and Guidelines: Malaysia & Indonesia, 1999 (Rubicon Press), and this spring, Palimpsest published her first full-length poetry collection, Hump. She recently won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer at the Manitoba Book Awards. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.

A little birdie...

...sent me this photo of the THIN AIR programmes spread out on the reception desk of the Winnipeg Free Press newsroom.

(Speaking of programmes, I have to start poking through mine and figure out, precisely, what I'm going to...)

Hands on: Jay Diaz

This is Jay's third year blogging.

Here's last year's bio:

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and stay at home dad. His poetry and prose has been published in dark leisure magazine. Last year he joined the Thin Air collective and has been awaiting the festival’s arrival ever since. He has still only been interviewed by The Uniter once, and is sadly no longer licensed to drive forklift.

Here's 2008's bio:

Jason Diaz is a Winnipeg-based writer and bookstore employee. His poems and prose have been previously published in dark leisure magazine. He was interviewed for the Uniter once and is probably the only blogger here licensed to drive forklift. He doesn’t have any books coming out, but would most likely write one if asked.

Hands on: Stacy Doiron

This is Stacy's first year blogging.

I'm looking forward to getting to know her. You should too.

Hands on: Brandon Bertram

This is Brandon's second year blogging.

Here's last year's bio: Brandon James Bertram is an English/Creative Writing student at the University of Winnipeg. He reads, writes, rides bikes, and drinks coffee.

KHL! Into THIN AIR II

Host Kelly Hughes interviews Writers Festival performers Ismaila Alfa, Ignatius Mabasa and Dominique Rey, with music by Naomi Guilbert and Hiroshi Koshiyama of Fubuki Daiko

When: Friday, September 17/10 7pm
Where: Aqua Books, 274 Garry Street
Cost: Free

Winnipeg's only live talk show, Kelly Hughes Live! brings you all the trappings you've come to expect from the television talk show: comedy, music and celebrities.

The only difference is that (with the exception of a few ringers like Kids in the Hall's Kevin McDonald and Hugo-nominated writer Nick DiChario), it's all local heroes.

Guests like Tina Keeper, Fred Penner, Al Simmons, Brian Glow, Margaret Sweatman and Robert Enright have been joined onstage by the likes of stellar Winnipeg musicians The Paperbacks, Todd Hunter, Ingrid Gatin and Rollin Penner and the Traveling Medicine Show.

(But it's not like TV in that you will have to leave your house.) It's the TV talk show without the TV.

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Ismaila Alfa completed his early school years in Edmonton, then moved to Winnipeg. After starting a civil engineering degree at the University of Manitoba, he followed his musical dreams and spent eight years touring North America as a hip hop musician. Magnum KI, a band he formed in 2005 with DJ Michael Arnone, opened for the legendary band The Roots at this year’s TD Winnipeg International Jazz Festival. When he’s not on a stage tangling with words, he is an audio technician, jingle writer, and traffic reporter for CBC Radio.

Ignatius Mabasa is an acclaimed writer and storyteller from Zimbabwe. He has published stories and poems for children and adults in both English and his native language, Shona. His most recent book, The Man, Shaggy Leopard and Jackal and other stories (Lion Press), was nominated for Zimbabwe’s National Arts Merit Award as the best book in the children’s literature category. Mabasa has performed his stories and poems in many countries, and will spend the fall term in Winnipeg as storyteller-in-residence at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.

Dominique Rey is a painter, photographer, video artist and performance artist. She has shown her work across North America with solo exhibitions at Plug In ICA, Clark Gallery, Michael Gibson Gallery, Alternator Gallery, Gallery TPW, Truck Gallery, Gallery One One One and La Maison des artistes. As part of the Winnipeg Cultural Capital of Canada 2010 program, Dominique was selected as the Arts Ambassador for Visual Arts.

As founding members of Fubuki Daiko, Naomi Guilbert and Hiroshi Koshiyama have shared a stage with luminaries such as Blue Rodeo, the Nylons, the McGarrigle Sisters, Cake and a ventriloquist. They received their formal training from the founder of North American Taiko, Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka. After leaving the San Francisco Taiko Dojo and moving to Winnipeg, they’ve been in constant contact, rehearsing, performing, touring, and writing/editing bios for close to fifteen years. Not once have they ever wanted to kill each other (well, maybe once).

KHL: Charlene Diehl

Thanks to M and his incessant gadgeteering for this pic...

Raffled

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After five years in a writers group together and four years doing a blog about Perry's day job, I've gotten to the point where I can persecute him...

...as in this photo, where I asked him to hold up one of the festival's raffle prizes. And, in doing so, made him blush. And then I chased him around the office, trying to get a picture of him blushing.

So this is Perry Grosshans, THIN AIR GM, hiding from the camera.

Heh.

New swag

Old swag