13 Ways of Looking at New Denver

On Saturday, I kayaked across Slocan Lake. I think it was the sixth time I'd been in a kayak, and the third time I'd been in a one-seater kayak. It was terrifying, producing a kind of vertigo. But I was pretty proud of myself.

This morning, I watched Beckham walk by my cabin carrying a deer's hoof with about 20 inches of deer leg attached to it.

I read twice last Friday with George Bowering, and during the Q&A I was the Rowan to his Martin, the Martin to his Lewis. The Grades 7-10 kids from Lucerne read too, at the Friday night Lucerne School & Community Coffee House, and they were amazing and brave.

Yesterday my new book arrived here in New Denver for me. I'm thrilled with it. With the heft of it. The fantastic cover painting. The great stock inside that makes my photos so sharp. I wanted Dead Cars in Managua to be a different kind of book for me, and it certainly is. I find it sort of bewildering and weird. So I'm pretty excited by it, to see what people think of it. The Toronto launch is May 21 at the Dora Keogh. Toronto seems really far away right now.

I visited with Peter McPhee at his Slocan Park estate last week. That place blows me away. It blows me away that Peter so quickly made the transition from hectic Toronto to the extreme laidbackedness of the Kootenays. We had dinner in Nelson.

Last week was a crazy teaching week: from hour to hour, each day, I jumped from one grade to another, never staying with one class long enough to learn the kids' names. But it was a great experience: the kids' were game to try any insane writing strategy, and so much fantastic stuff was written. This week: an entire week with the same group of 15 Grade 5/6's. It'll be a great experience in a different way, and one I'm more accustomed to.

Still no reading set up for Edmonton. Anyone have a living room?

This has been good, this getting away from Toronto and listening to woodpeckers pummel the metal roof of the cabin.

On Sunday, Dave and Alison and their daughter Lily arrived from Vancouver; they're teaching animation to the secondary school students all week. Dave and Alison are the creators of Ricky Sprocket and Bob and Margaret. And they are my lift to Vancouver on Friday, and my hosts there for nearly a week.

Terry is a phenomenal teacher, and a wholly excellent person. I learn this more with each visit to New Denver.

I've written more poems in the past week or so than I had in the previous several months. Some of them are pretty corny.

Twelve.

Thirteen.

Over and out/talk soon.