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The self imposed story hiatus is off, and I now have to stop writing poetry and start working on my short stories again.
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Yesterday I watched "Midnight Cowboy" (Best Picture 1969). That's a great film. I bet it was probably quite risque for its time. I was struck by how much Angelina Jolie really looks like her dad, Jon Voight.

My mother is leaving tomorrow for Toronto. She'll be in Toronto for five days, then she and a friend will be vacationing in Azores, an island of Portugal.

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Last night my friend Laura and I attend "The Grain Cotillon" in a ballroom at a swank hotel. There were six readers, and they all got up and read a variety of different things throughout the night. They didn't have to read their own work (though some of them did), so we heard quite a variety of things during the evening.

The event was held to mark the new editorial direction of "Grain magazine", a literary magazine which has been around for about 70 years. The new editor is Kent Brunyeel, from Coquitlam, BC. He seems like a nice guy, who is dedicated to his work.

Yann Martel was there. He claimed he was sick of reading his own work, so he read a selection from a book called "You're an animal, Viskovitz" by Alessandro Boffa. The book is a collection of fables about a man who goes through the experience of becoming several animals. The section Yann read was about a snail who falls in love with himself. It's one of the funniest things I've heard in a while. Luckily, I was able to find that section online- the section on snails and sex

I didn't speak to Yann (for those new to my journal, I interviewed him in the fall) because he was surrounded by people who wanted to meet him. He's a nice, down to earth guy, who can accept a lot of teasing (which means he fits in well in Saskatchewan, as we seem to like to tease).

Another highlight of the evening was Steven Ross Smith. Steven is a local writer, who happens to be one of Canada's sound poets. He performed a variety of b.p. nichol's sound poetry. Sound poetry is rather odd stuff, but if you love words and rhythm, you might like it.

Here's a site on b.p. nichol. -http://www.chbooks.com/projects/bp/index.html

And one on Steven Ross Smith- http://www.writersunion.ca/s/smith_s.htm