My Internal Combustion
It’s been an exhilarating week. I was reminded by one of my selves about stand-alone poems. It had been 
nearly a year since a conversation with Stuart Ross about his work with Anvil Press and my work. I described a few projects and he with great clarity said I don’t do “project” books. I took that to heart, but it it didn’t beat on the door of opportunity until last week. I cut my teeth on stand-alone poems, Alden Nowlan the first, then Irving Layton, Dorothy Livesay, Leonard Cohen. I booked the University of Manitoba Canadian Writers’ Series for two years, and was able to bring and hear Pat Lane and Lorna Crozier, Milton Acorn, and Al Purdy who spent a winter as the U of M Writer-in-Residence. He looked at me rather skeptically when I ordered whisky at the pub, because “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t drink beer.” So I had a beer chaser.
The thing is I never stopped writing singular poems. So I spent the last week looking for them and checking out all my iPad notes, with few exceptions all written since I moved to Gimli. The ninety-five page manuscript, with about 105 poems is now with some of my first readers as I start fishing for a publisher and editor. There are many revisions ahead, but it feels good.