Nine
Days at the Ottawa International Writers Festival 2007
The Ottawa International Writers Festival 2007 was held October
13-21 at the Library and Archives Canada. Website: http://www.writersfestival.org/
Photos from the festival
Report by Amanda Earl
In the hospitality suite, a BC writer
tells me Ottawa’s festival is the friendliest she’s ever attended.
The instigators of such friendliness are the Wilsons: Neil, Sean, Thea (Yateman)
and Leslie, who twice yearly organize an amazing celebration of authors.
This year’s had cake, guinea pigs, fiery debates between authors, and
jokes involving persimmons and posteriors.
Day One: Monty Reid wins Lampman-Scott
Award for Poetry for Disappointment Island
(Chaudiere Books). He
knows dinosaurs and poems. We have both in Ottawa.
Day Two: Kathleen Winter reads about an
iguana in a wedding dress from BoYs
(Biblioasis) and receives the
Metcalf-Rooke Award, which if you believe John Metcalf, was initiated by
a bookstore franchise operation called Page and Turner that bounced the
first award cheque and disappeared. Metcalf reads from a story
lambasting Alberta and Albertans so strongly, their ears must burn...it’s
all good satire, ...of course. Leon Rooke reads about gypsies with
impromptu musical accompaniment by Glenn Nuotio on keyboards and Patrick
DeDauw on cello
Day Three: George Elliott Clarke evokes
Pierre Elliott Trudeau in rhyming couplets in Trudeau, Long
March/Shining Path (Gasperau Press). Bywords hands out the
2007 John
Newlove Poetry Award as selected by Clarke. The winner is PhD student
Sean Moreland. Festival organizers surprise me with a birthday cake
cleverly disguised as a book.
Day Four: Mary
Borsky, Marilyn Bowering
and Nadine McInnis speak of madness, repression and identity with host
Rhonda Douglas of the Tree Reading
Series.
Day Five: Michael Winter and
David
Gilmour give us tips on writing; Gil Courtemanche tells us what’s
wrong with North American fiction; it seems to involve his publisher not
being able to explain his second book properly at the Frankfurt Book
Fair
Day Six: David
McGimpsey reads about nipple burn and the Tony Danza Show, and makes
rhyming couplets about giant squids in his wonderful poetry collection Sitcom
(Coach House Books).
Stephen
Brockwell, John Pass and
Rob
Winger emotionally debate the role of emotion in poetry and read from
their works The Real Made Up (ECW Press), Stumbling In the Bloom
(Oolichan Books) and Muybridge’s Horse (Nightwood
Editions).
Day 7: Mikiki,
Joey Comeau, Francisco
Ibanez-Carrasco and Ivan E. Coyote commit acts of transgression as
organizer Capital Xtra, Ottawa’s gay and lesbian paper, queers
up the festival. This is one of the best attended events. We need more
raunch in Ottawa.
Day 8: Helen
Oyeyemi, Francis Itani and
Gil Adamson read from The Opposite House (Nan A. Talese), Remembering
the Bones (Harper Collins Canada) and The Outlander (Harper
Collins Canada). Oyeyemi finished writing her first novel before
completing high school and, at the ripe old age of 23, is on her third.
Day 9: Robert McTavish’s excellent
documentary on John Newlove’s life and poetry is finally shown in
Ottawa, where Newlove lived for the last twenty years of his life.
Jasper Fforde talks to an overflowing room of ardent fans about the
Council of Genres otherwise known as the centre of gravity, his main
character Thursday Next and the burning questions he had about the
Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
The Relit
Awards moves from the shores of Newfoundland to Ottawa’s National
Library and Archives. There are no bonfires, but there is a furry
creature standing in for Bill
Gaston, unable to attend. Gaston reads
from his award-winning novel Gargoyles (House of Anansi) via cell
phone held by host Kenneth J.
Harvey. Daniel Scott Tysdal wins for his
poetry collection Predicting the Next Big Advertising Breakthrough
Using a Potentially Dangerous Method (Coteau Books) and Ivan E.
Coyote for the novel Bow Grip (Arsenal Pulp Press). Harvey throws
books to the audience. Sadly there is no screech involved. |
