the regina mom has been on retreat with a bunch of writers at her favourite monastery. Yes, she knows it’s rather odd for a feminist to be hanging out with Catholic monks, but she finds their worship of the Virgin Mother to be very interesting…
Anywho, she has learned that the Saskatchewan Writers Guild has been granted special ‘transition funding’ amounting to 90 percent of what the City of Regina had provided before. (Apparently, there are some readers on Council.) Regardless what happens in the next go-round of grants, according to trm‘s source, the City of Regina Writing Award will be funded and may even be increased. It’s been separated out from the ginormous pool of money being shared around amongst a bajillion cultural and social justice groups.
Well done, writers! We can breathe a sigh of relief. For now.
the regina mom struggles with how to describe Tyler Trafford. He is not your average writer. And his story is not your average story. He explained that at a young age he became enthralled with the classic hero’s journey, thanks to his mom’s reading of great literature such as The Old Man and the Sea. It became his way of understanding the world.
And then he went on to talk about lies. He said, “Lies help you feel the truth, help you express the truth for other people.” And he took it further, to show how Kate Braid had used a lie in her book, Journeywoman. She uses an extended moment, a psychological reality, to detail a fall, taking time to notice all around her as it happened. He named that as a lie because, in fact, the fall would take only 1/8th of a second — and he provided the math for it, too! It’s a necessary lie, one that is fundamental to the truth of the story.
In his book, Almost A Great Escape, Trafford tells his mother’s story, a story he had to unravel after her death.
He uncovered her lie — what she had kept hidden — all her life. It’s an amazing story and another book on trm‘s To Read list. And it’s an interesting concept, this lying bit. Poets and fiction writers are expected to tell lies in their work. But to suggest that creative nonfiction writers also do so seems to go against the grain of what nonfiction is about. But his examples — in Braid’s work and in his own — harken back to what Kostash spoke of in her opening remarks to this session, that bit about the anxiety in society about nonfiction.
What lies will the regina mom tell in order to make her nonfiction stories true? She knows how to do it in poetry and fiction, but to transfer that to nonfiction is an interesting concept, to say the least! Perhaps they’re already there, lying in wait (pun not intended), for her to discover. Oh, her editing process is going to be a lot more fun now, that’s for sure!
Perhaps URcomm attempted cutesy-fartsiness when it posted this video as a news story on the front page of the University of Regina’s website.
the regina mom thinks it’s kinda hurtin’ to see that there, especially when there are hard times at the U of R. An Academic Program Review that was done cheaply and poorly, rejigging by the Administration and reduced funding from the right wing Wall government have forced cuts across the board within the institution (even though The Premier Himself says the province’s economy is booming).
However, certain faculties at the U of R will face deeper cuts to their budgets because the research dollars they bring in are lower than those of other faculties. It seems, then, that Arts, Fine Arts and the Humanities faculties — the fundamental pieces of any university education — are under attack. And the regina mom finds that to be very sad, especially because the U of R was once regarded as one of the most progressive institutions in the country.
It strikes the regina mom rather hard right now because she’s been hearing from her daughter, a student at the University of Ottawa, about the Orientation Week activities on that campus. In particular, the regina mom is excited about the Alt101 activities, offering up something a little more real to students.
No doubt, student groups at the U of R are doing their best to be real with new students, too. With an administration that treats new students to meaningless tripe such as the video above, it’s not gonna be hard.
the regina mom is pumped for a performance at the Vertigo Reading Series tonight in Regina. She’s edited this poem and will slip it into the mix because she has to try out the change and thinks it will fit into her love-themed, genre-hopping set list.
trm‘s favourite guitar guy will be on hand to accompany her on a performance piece, “Love Song for Emma Lake,” an earlier version of which you may have caught at the Regina Folk Festival or a Briarpatch Magazine fundraiser a few years ago.
It’ll be an eclectic mix of kidlit, poetry, performance and song. See you there! 7:30 pm Crave Kitchen & Wine Bar, 1925 Victoria Ave.
the regina mom participated in the Saskatchewan Council for International Co-operation (SCIC) Global Justice Poetry Slam last week. This poem got her into the second round where a false start netted her a wicked time count violation that knocked her out of the competition.
This week, she gets to try again. SCIC recorded the performances in Regina and the ones in Saskatoon, too. You can see them at YouTube and vote for your favourites. Vote for trm by clicking the thumbs-up under her piece at YouTube.
the regina mom 