Little criminals

A week of trying to catch up with projects I've fallen behind in, and there are a lot of those.

My last day at the Ottawa International Writers' Festival was very nice and very poignant. Only caught one reading — Baba Brinkman doing his rap versions of The Canterbury Tales. I was pretty skeptical when Terry Taylor first told me about this MC Chaucer guy, but when she loaned me the CD, I was sold. So it was a nice surprise to see that he was at the Ottawa festival. His hourlong performance was funny and smart.

Met up with Kira and friends Claire and Shawn for dinner dominated by their little sons, then headed back to the hotel to do a bit of work and writing before what I thought was going to be a huge blowout in the hospitality suite. Turned out to be the quietest "last night" of the festival I've ever witnessed. Got into an intense debate with Neil about whether guilt is an emotion or a choice, and this kept a handful of us going for about four hours. I quasi-insulted rob mclennan (time was running out — I had to work quickly!) and Sean took me to task on it.

Headed to bed around 5. Had a slow, luxurious morning before hitting Elgin Street for Mags & Fags and hitting the road for Toronto. The literary-mag selection at Mags & Fags has done really downhill. A great disappointment. They used to have tons of American magazines, and som very good ones. Stumbled onto a recently opened used bookstore on Bank Street: by coincidence, the one David McFadden book they had was the one I'd misplaced and had overlooked while assembling David's Selected. Anonymity Suite, his last M&S book. So now I have it. And then further up Bank Street I picked up the new Arrogant Worms CD for the ride home.

Saturday I'm heading to Ajax for the Writers' Circle of Durham Region Chapbook Festival, which I triggered at my morning talk there last February. I'm to give three short talks on different aspects of the chapbook. It's about 12 hours away now, and I still don't know exactly what I'll be saying.

Saturday night, Dana and I go to Convocation Hall to see Randy Newman. Due to chaos on the home front, I didn't manage to get my name on the backstage list, as official Little Criminal, but we may try to squeeze our way back there. After I made an ass of myself meeting him in Rochester, redemption would be nice. Can't wait to hear his new songs.

Sunday I'm conducting a Poetry Boot Camp at This Ain't the Rosedale Library from 10 am to 5 pm. I love doing those. It's a marathon, but there's always so much great stuff that gets written. And there are still a few spaces left (but just a few) -- call 416-929-9912 to register!

Over and out.