POETRY/PROSE
“After placating concerned taxpayers who were horrified at the thought of contributing one penny per person per year for a town jester, Calgary got its first poet laureate in 2012. I was this jester. It was fascinating, and all snideness aside, illuminating. For two years I entertained at various launches, symposiums, memorials, and soirees, composing about 30 new pieces and doing my best to connect some of the different literary silos within Calgary’s writing culture. One such attempt was this legacy project, co-edited by Dymphny Dronyk. ”
How to be an Asshole of Calgary
Regularly on the non-fiction best seller list in Calgary for the past four years, this How-To booklet, though it could now be a large text book, still does the trick.
*from back cover
Nobody knows who they are, but everyone knows what they wish to become: an asshole. There really is no other short cut to not being utterly destroyed. And like the saxophone, you aren’t born an asshole. You learn it. Here.
This manual, crafted out of forty seven years of experience in the Canadian city of Calgary, promises to get you doing, saying, and feeling what will bring it all home in a safe, practical manner.
This indispensable volume comes complete with the chapters:
How to be the Greatest Outdoor Asshole on Earth
How to be an Asshole in a Recession
How to be an Asshole Abroad
and
Idle More!
Buy it at Calgary’s amazing independent bookstore, Shelf Life:
https://shelflifebooks.ca/
The Calgary Project:
A City Map in Verse and Visual, compiles the work of over 70 local poets and visual artists, with a youth component and a section highlighting work based around the flood of 2013.
You can order it here:
http://frontenachouse.com/book/the-calgary-project-a-city-map-in-verse-and-visual-2/
Knock on any Door (A Revised History):
is a truly unique collection of essays about Calgary that re-imagine the city through social experiments that are in essence creative acts. I do a piece about the Mawson Plan, a vision of a utopic Calgary created by a British city planner 100 years ago that was very nearly implemented.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18216376-knock-on-any-door-a-revised-history
http://payhip.com/b/B4Mz
Alberta Views magazine
A bastion of common sense in an often single-minded territory, Alberta Views magazine takes on the presumptive power base of Alberta through very well researched pieces, humour, and literature. "I Am Sure We Will Be Happy" explores the pitfalls of home ownership in a boom/bust economy, and "Fool of the New West" details my two years as poet laureate.
https://albertaviews.ab.ca/2014/07/16/i-am-sure-we-will-be-happy/
https://albertaviews.ab.ca/2013/11/27/fool-of-the-new-west/
Get a Real Job
My first published prose was a creative memoir piece called "Get a Real Job" in the now defunct Unlimited Magazine. I won Best New Writer at the Canadian Magazine Awards for it, so people must have identified with the series of humiliating early forays into the work force. Read it here:
http://www.unlimitedmagazine.com/2008/01/get-a-real-job/