the all-new...

Hello! Happy New Year!

My blog has moved locations...please go to http://lisapasold.blogspot.com/

cheers,
Lisa

much afoot

i keep meaning to update my blog, come up with a witty new design, etc etc

but life keeps getting in the way.

and i can't complain, because some of the things in the way are pretty fabulous...my new book, "A Bad Year for Journalists" has just been reviewed in The Globe & Mail (see a brief excerpt below) and the plan to turn the book into a theatre piece seems to be gaining speed. we have funding from the Toronto Arts Council & the Canada Council--hallelujah! the theatre project is a collaboration with Emily Pearlman, Bremner Duthie, and Craig Desson, and i can't wait to get to Toronto in October to get our plans in motion.

meanwhile, it is impressively hot in Paris, but there is a lot of cool jazz in the city to keep temperatures at bay (especially after the madness of the World Cup)

______________________________

"But a good year for poetry"
KATIA GRUBISIC (The Globe & Mail, Toronto, July 8/06)
BOOKS: POETRY

...Lisa Pasold's second collection, A Bad Year for Journalists, is steeped in homelessness. By turns sympathetic, critical, darkly funny and painstakingly lyrical [...] Pasold's colloquial, cynical squint is refreshing, disarming and often funny (reporters making up guidebook titles: "Let's Go Mogadishu"). ....In an increasingly hyperbolic idiom where everything is so conveniently unspeakable, Pasold speaks up, conveying more than impressions or exaggerations; these poems "explain what it was/ not what it was like."

Frontenac House presents

this is the cover for A Bad Year for Journalists, my new book of poetry coming out this spring - Neil Petrunia took the photo of the Chinese resto & photoshopped it to be this great eerie green colour.

kudos to my excellent editor Rose Scollard & her design team at Frontenac House. if you're in Calgary or Toronto in late April, mark your calendar for two blow-out launch parties, where i'll be reading with three really excellent Frontenac House writers - Ali Riley, Nancy Jo Cullen (who has written a book about Calgary's famous madame, Pearl) and Ven Begamudré. there will be wine, doorprizes, & (logically enough) lots books!

the two dates to remember are: April 20th, for the Calgary launch of Quartet 2006, at Memorial Park Library, 1221-12 Ave, SW, Calgary, starting at 19h, and April 24th for the Toronto launch at the Edward Day Gallery, 19h also. now if i can just get my Canadian passport renewed in time for my flight...

decorative ducky

have been trying to ignore the news lately--what with the New Conservatives in Canada, the caricature debacle, more repression for journalists in Jordan and Egypt, & now an anti-Semitic murder in Paris, i feel just about ready to retreat to the Burgundian countryside and raise decorative ducks. oh, but what with the bird flu warning, i can't do that, either...

Orhan Pamuk

a bit of good news: last week, the case against writer Orhan Pamuk was dropped by the Turkish government. Pamuk faced charges of "insulting Turkishness", largely because he has dared to write of the 20th century Turkish genocide of Armenians and Kurds. Pamuk is one of Turkey's best-known novelists, and his case drew criticism in the EU. it's probably because of EU pressure that the case has been dropped - but Turkey currently has eight other freedom of speech trials coming up, so Ankara shouldn't get any bouquets of flowers just yet.

on the café table today...a box of kleenex from monoprix (i have a cold), Hugh Kenner's The Elsewhere Community (which i read a few years ago & am finding, on rereading, that it's every bit as brilliant as i remembered, pulling in Ezra Pound, the internet, modernism, travel, Paris expats...) and Nikki Giovanni's poems, Those Who Ride the Night Winds (the first half is so good that the dated second half of the book doesn't change my enthusiasm).

and if you are celebrating Chinese new year, happy year of the dog!

kodjo

went to the PA magazine launch at the hipster shop/gallery KODJO (54 rue Letort) just around the corner from my house. are artists the shock troops of gentrification? what with dj amigo playing remixes of stuff i hadn't heard in eons, and all the free vodka and champagne, i have to admit that for once, i didn't really mind being gentrified... my friend helen bought an amazing jacket designed by artist Nico (part of the PA collective), the usual photographers turned up, and smokers thoughtfully congregated outside, yippee! KODJO is the brainchild of the suave Victor; his north-Paris take on rue saint-honore's Colette means there's artwork, fashion shows, jewelry and books for sale, plus free events to pull in people from our 'hood as well as hip visitors. stay tuned at www.kodjo.fr

dégonfleurs

saw a huge shiny SUV with its tires deflated yesterday evening: the dégonfleurs have been at work, shrinking the egos of those who drive immense vehicles through the tiny streets of Paris. surely even parking the thing is a nightmare, let alone actually driving it through Montmartre on a weekend... so leave your SUV at home & take the metro tonight to the Highlander Pub (just across Pont Neuf on rue de Nevers) - I am reading some poems with Jonathan Wonham and Amy Hallowell.

good luck

went to see "Good Night, and Good Luck."--an impeccably-tailored film that's as firm an indictment of the current W era as it is of McCarthyism. exciting to see a nuanced appeal for intelligence and empathetic reason--qualities in such short supply these days!

listening to "In the Heart of the Moon" from Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté, in an effort to counteract the incredible grey outside the window. looking forward tonight to a play-reading...the new in-progress translation of "Whiskey Bars" from Bremner Duthie. it'll be a good reason to get me out of the house (well, that and les soldes, which started in Paris yesterday...anybody else notice the great piles of shopping bags crammed onto the metro last night?)