MA-moore

I see I did another blog with the same theme and so I’ve added the year to this one. “The circle is open” is something I say at the end of a women’s writing circle:

The circle is open but unbroken
May the love of the goddess
be ever in our hearts
Merry meet and merry part
and merry meet again.

In fact we sing the words when there are women who have been in the circle for a long time and know the words and tune.

I needed to continue offering writing circles throughout the summer for the grounding it offers to me and to others. I mean that literally as well because we walk the land as part of the writing circle which we did for the summer circle with the theme of “All Our Relations.”

I so appreciate Nature’s support for the unfolding journey of each of us and walking the property where I now live has really helped to add to my personal field guide. “Even the stones are storytellers” someone wise once said and we can tell our stories to the stones as well.

I have some women’s writing circles coming up, in person and on Zoom, and hope women, wherever they may be, will consider joining the circle.

An invitation to the Writing Life women’s writing circle
Wednesday, August 24 from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in person, in Nanaimo
Fee: $25

If you’d like to experience a Writing Life women’s writing circle and would like like some respite for a few hours, I’m offering one with the theme of “Writing for the Love of It” at my home in Nanaimo.  We’ll take a walk around the property as “A Walk of Your Own” is one of our topics. Have a […]

Lori Fox, based in Whitehorse, Yukon, describes their new book of essays, This Has Always Been a War (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021), as a “scrappy, angry little book” with its sub-title of “The Radicalization of a Working-Class Queer.”

In an interview with Yukon News for which she has been a writer, Lori said: “The book is incredibly vulnerable. I’m incredibly blunt, and really upfront with some very difficult things. And I pull no punches.”

Indeed, there is much to be angry about as Lori describes in their wonderfully written, often visceral, essays. The essays describe their confrontations “with the capitalist patriarchy through their experiences as a queer, non-binary, working-class farmhand, labourer, bartender, bushworker, and road dog . . .” As the book’s cover description says: “Capitalism has infiltrated every aspect of our personal, social, economic, and sexual lives.”

It is their work as a journalist that led me to Lori’s book as I’ve very much appreciated their opinion pieces in The Globe and Mail.

The dog on the cover, designed by Jazmin Welch, probably represents Herman who has been by Lori’s side through many hardships and adventures, at lean times sharing a meal of ramen noodles.

This Has Always Been a War is, Lori says, “for my people, the working classes, who cook the meals and pick the fruit, who serve the tables and stock the shelves, who work the gigs and deliver the orders. We are the makers and builders and doers of this world, and all that is in it belongs to us.”

If you don’t already consider the wait staff in the restaurant you visit, or the people who have picked the fruit that you buy at your local grocery store or any number of people who […]

If You are Reading This is Sheila Norgate’s a/mem.oir/ish, a book of personal essays published under her own imprint: LIP (Ladies Institute Press).

As Sheila told me in a phone conversation, she’s a “one girl band” having written the book, designed it (including the amazing cover) and published it. I’ve always thought writing to be one of the healing arts and taking one’s story and putting it into the world is all part of that healing. Sheila agrees, that it’s especially important for women to put our words into the world.

Readers will have their own endings to “If You Are Reading This” which could be similar to my responses: “be forewarned;” “be prepared to laugh;” “expect to be shocked and amazed,” and “you’ll have your socks knocked off.”

Sheila’s memoir includes all that a feminist memoir ought to. She lets us know what happened in her life, how she felt about it and she has observed and researched the bigger picture that has affected her and in fact, all women.

If You Are Reading This reads on the page as Sheila sounds in her performances, sharing her stories from life with humour and gravitas. She has given one-woman performances for many years, doing the writing, producing and presenting to enthusiastic audiences. I’m grateful I was able to attend several of them on Gabriola Island, B.C. where she lives with her partner Debbie, as well as in Victoria and Nanaimo.

Sheila told me she wouldn’t be performing if she hadn’t moved to Gabriola in 1999. Besides Gabriolans being a fabulous audience, publicizing an event and renting a hall is much more inexpensive than it would be in Toronto or Vancouver.

Sheila has also done much research into issues concerning women […]

Nancy Slonim Aronie is the founder of the Chilmark Writing Workshop on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts where she lives.  She’s been facilitating Writing from the Heart workshops for forty-five years at various venues such as Kripalu, Omega and Esalen. In her new book, Memoir as Medicine: The Healing Power of Writing Your Messy, Imperfect, Unruly (but Gorgeously Yours) Life Story, she shares her good advice about writing, essays she has written for various publications, and excerpts from a previously unpublished memoir about her son Dan.

In an interview with her publisher, New World Library, Nancy said: “Getting your rage on the page and getting to the truth of what shaped you instead of having those stories marinating in your body, that’s the medicine.” As for the benefits of telling your story, Nancy said: “Telling your story and getting it out of your body is the beginning of healing. You will get a new perspective, maybe new insights, a new way of seeing the whole picture instead of just that tiny thing that happened or even a big thing that happened.”

When asked about a spiritual component to memoir, Nancy said: “Spiritually, if you are willing to take the lessons from the information you’re accessing, because all you want to do is grow and be a more loving being on the planet, then of course there is a spiritual element.”

I appreciate what  Nancy says about writing groups for writers: “Everyone needs a support system.”  She recommends, as I do, that people don’t “criticize and destroy your voice.” Nancy said: “They can give you good advice, but to me, the most important part of that equation is that they find beauty in your work first.”

Where to start? Nancy said […]

Patrick Lane often greeted poets in the reception area of Honeymoon Bay Lodge  on Lake Cowichan, Vancouver Island, when he led poetry retreats there. He’d also help carry our luggage to our rooms. I was remembering that about Patrick, who died in March 2019, when I went to a retreat with Lorna Crozier earlier in April 2022.

Patrick Lane was born in Nelson, B.C. in 1939 and grew up in the Kootenay and Okanagan regions of the BC interior, primarily in Vernon.  He won nearly every literary prize in Canada, received several honorary degrees, and in 2014 became an Officer of the Order of Canada.

When Lorna did a reading on one of the evenings at the retreat in April, she had a few of us read poems from Patrick’s posthumous collection, The Quiet in Me, which she compiled following his death.

Lorna said  when putting the poems together for the book, she chose the first and last poems and then figured out, by putting them on the living room floor, which poems belonged beside one another in the collection. It was an intuitive process as she chose poems “that want to slide between the sheets together.”

The first poem in the book is “Living in a Phantom Hut” which begins: “A wolf-hair brush in a yellow jar, a pool at dawn, / Basho on the road to the deep north.”

The speaker in the poem reflects on the Japanese haiku master  Basho  and notes the Barriere River, one of the main tributaries of the Fraser River in British Columbia. The classic poets and northern B.C. were significant to Patrick’s life and his poetry.  And Basho is the name of one of his cats still living as far as […]