Canadian girl out and aboot

So on Friday, I found out that my name was randomly selected for the Harbourfront Open stage on March 31. Twenty poets will be competing in front of judges to see who gets a spot at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto. It's pretty exciting! Last year, about 5 of the 20 poets got to participate in the Festival of Authors. Great promotional gig!

Unfortunately, I have to pay for my own airfare, but I knew that when I signed up. The other hassle was making sure that Fergus will be taken care of while I'm away. Mari has offered to take him for the 3.5 days that I'll be away.

I'm excited!

Now I just need a place to stay.

I went to a poetry reading on Wednesday night. It was good to get out of my house and meet some new people. I met a friend of a friend who is a spoken word artist here in town, and a guy who is a spoken word artist, youth mentor and novelist. He lives five houses away from my former house in Vancouver, which is pretty neat.

Yesterday morning I got up early to drive to Lacombe. I had to go to a field day, which involved standing around looking at plots and learning about various kinds of crops. There were over a 100 people at this field day and it was possibly one of the biggest ones I've been to in a while. I met a neat girl from Edmonton who is specializing in rangeland management.

Last night I watched "Before Night Falls", which is an incredibly movie about the gay Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas. Arenas is wonderfully played by Javier Bardem. I'm not sure why it took me so long to see this film. I absolutely loved it and recommend it to anyone who is interested in writers and the writing life. It's a sad film about persecution. I guess it was made in English, but somehow this didn't register with me, so I ended up watching the entire film in Spanish with English subtitles. Somehow this seemed more fitting.

Today is my one year anniversary in Edmonton!!!! There have been a few ups and downs over the year, but in all honesty, it's been a great year and I feel happier than I've been in a long time. I've been really fortunate to have so many good experiences and meet so many great people this year.

I've been up, down and all over the place. Today one of the phone jacks in my apartment decided to die, which means that I have one jack to cover phone and Internet. I'm checking my messages and am mostly relying on my cell. I'll be in this situation until Wednesday. Fortunately, I've already told my parents how they can get hold of me, and I guess they are the most important people to notify.

Last night I went to see the Weakerthans and the Constantines. It was my first time at Winspear Centre, and I really loved the venue. It has a huge pipe organ and round seating and it's truly fabulous. I did not enjoy the Constantines at all, but the Weakerthans were fabulous. This was my first time seeing them and they were great- excellent act, good sound and tight music. I was smiling the whole concert. Unfortunately I don't think my friends knew what to expect and I'm not sure if they enjoyed them that much. Oh well.

Today I spent most of the day just doing errands, then went to check out one of the events at the Edmonton Poetry Festival tonight. The PO FEST runs all weekend, and it's a great time. I attended it in September and had a fantastic time, met lots of great people and got exposed to a lot of new work. Tonight I attended a reading in a bookstore. The first section was pretty good, but the second reading was amazing. Edmonton based poet Titi Sonuga read. I heard her read in September and completely fell in love with her work. She's originally from Nigeria and basically performs spoken word. Her parents came to see her read for the first time. She read a poem about how they had left Nigeria and the sacrifices they had made. She started crying, and they started crying, and a few of us who were in the audience started crying. It was incredibly moving and powerful.

Following this, aboriginal poet Greg Scofield read some really powerful pieces. After this amazing reading, I went across the street to chat with some friends who were at another reading, then walked home.